QUROPE Quantum Information Processing and Communication in Europe

Understanding how and to what magnitude solid-state qubits couple to metallic wires is crucial to the design of quantum systems such as quantum computers. Here, we investigate the coupling between a multi-level system, or qudit, and a superconducting (SC) resonator's electromagnetic field, focusing on the interaction involving both the transition and diagonal dipole moments of the qudit. Specifically, we explore the effective dynamical (time-dependent) longitudinal coupling that arises when a solid-state qudit is adiabatically modulated at small gate frequencies and amplitudes, in addition to a static dispersive interaction with the SC resonator. For the first time, we derive Hamiltonians describing the longitudinal multi-level interactions in a general dispersive regime, encompassing both dynamical longitudinal and dispersive interactions. These Hamiltonians smoothly transition between their adiabatic values, where the couplings of the n-th level are proportional to the level's energy curvature concerning a qudit gate voltage, and the substantially larger dispersive values, which occur due to a resonant form factor. We provide several examples illustrating the transition from adiabatic to dispersive coupling in different qubit systems, including the charge (1e DQD) qubit, the transmon, the double quantum dot singlet-triplet qubit, and the triple quantum dot exchange-only qubit. In some of these qubits, higher energy levels play a critical role, particularly when their qubit's dipole moment is minimal or zero. For an experimentally relevant scenario involving a spin-charge qubit with magnetic field gradient coupled capacitively to a SC resonator, we showcase the potential of these interactions. They enable close-to-quantum-limited quantum non-demolition (QND) measurements and remote geometric phase gates, demonstrating their practical utility in quantum information processing.

Port-based teleportation (PBT) is a variant of quantum teleportation that, unlike the canonical protocol by Bennett et al., does not require a correction operation on the teleported state. Since its introduction by Ishizaka and Hiroshima in 2008, no efficient implementation of PBT was known. We close this long-standing gap by building on our recent results on representations of partially transposed permutation matrix algebras and mixed quantum Schur transform. We describe efficient quantum circuits for probabilistic and deterministic PBT protocols on $n$ ports of arbitrary local dimension, both for EPR and optimized resource states. We describe two constructions based on different encodings of the Gelfand-Tsetlin basis for $n$ qudits: a standard encoding that achieves $\widetilde{O}(n)$ time and $O(n\mathrm{log}(n))$ space complexity, and a Yamanouchi encoding that achieves $\widetilde{O}(n^2)$ time and $O(\mathrm{log}(n))$ space complexity, both for constant local dimension and target error. We also describe efficient circuits for preparing the optimal resource states.

A key observable in investigations into quantum systems are the $n$-body correlation functions, which provide a powerful tool for experimentally determining coherence and directly probing the many-body wavefunction. While the (bosonic) correlations of photonic systems are well explored, the correlations present in matter-wave systems, particularly for fermionic atoms, are still an emerging field. In this work, we use the unique single-atom detection properties of $^3$He* atoms to perform simultaneous measurements of the $n$-body quantum correlations, up to the fifth-order, of a degenerate Fermi gas. In a direct demonstration of the Pauli exclusion principle, we observe clear anti-bunching at all orders and find good agreement with predicted correlation volumes. Our results pave the way for using correlation functions to probe some of the rich physics associated with fermionic systems, such as d-wave pairing in superconductors.

With the advance development in quantum science, constructing a large-scale quantum network has become a hot area of future quantum information technology. Future quantum networks promise to enable many fantastic applications and will unlock fundamentally new technologies in information security and large-scale computation. The future quantum internet is required to connect quantum information processors to achieve unparalleled capabilities in secret communication and enable quantum communication between any two points on Earth. However, the existing quantum networks are basically constructed to realize the communication between the end users in their own networks. How to bridge different independent networks to form a fully-connected quantum internet becomes a pressing challenge for future networks. Here, we demonstrate the quantum fusion of two independent networks for the first time based on multiuser entanglement swapping, to merge two 10-user networks into a larger network with 18 users in quantum correlation layer. By performing the Bell state measurement between two nonneighboring nodes, the users from different networks can establish entanglement and ultimately every pair of the 18 users are able to communicate with each other using the swapped states. Our approach opens attractive opportunities for the establishment of quantum entanglement between remote nodes in different networks, which facilitates versatile quantum information interconnects and has great application in constructing large-scale intercity quantum communication networks.

We consider the distillation of squeezing in single mode squeezed vacuum state using three different probabilistic non-Gaussian operations: photon subtraction (PS), photon addition (PA) and photon catalysis (PC). To accomplish this, we consider a practical model to implement these non-Gaussian operations and derive the Wigner characteristic function of the resulting non-Gaussian states. Our result shows that while PS and PC operations can distill squeezing, PA operations cannot. Furthermore, we delve into the success probabilities associated with these non-Gaussian operations and identify optimal parameters for the distillation of squeezing. Our current analysis holds significant relevance for experimental endeavors concerned with squeezing distillation.

Quantum random number generator harnesses the power of quantum mechanics to generate true random numbers, making it valuable for various scientific applications. However, real-world devices often suffer from imperfections that can undermine the integrity and privacy of generated randomness. To combat this issue, we present a novel quantum random number generator and experimentally demonstrate it. Our approach circumvents the need for exhaustive characterization of measurement devices, even in the presence of a quantum side channel. Additionally, we also do not require detailed characterization of the source, relying instead on reasonable assumptions about encoding dimension and noise constraints. Leveraging commercially available all-fiber devices, we achieve a randomness generation rate of 40 kbps.

Super-resolution overcoming the standard quantum limit has been intensively studied for quantum sensing applications of precision target detection over the last decades. Not only higher-order entangled photons but also phase-controlled coherent photons have been used to demonstrate the super-resolution. Due to the extreme inefficiency of higher-order entangled photon-pair generation and ultralow signal-to-noise ratio, however, quantum sensing has been severely limited. Here, we report observations of coherently excited super-resolution using phase-controlled coherent photons in a delayed-choice quantum eraser scheme. Using phase manipulations of the quantum erasers, super-resolution has been observed for higher-order intensity correlations between them, satisfying the Heisenberg limit in phase resolution. This new type of precision phase-detection technique opens the door to practical applications of quantum sensing compatible with current technologies based on coherence optics.

A time-dependent potential barrier has been used to probe the arrival-time distribution of the wave packet of a hot electron by raising the barrier to block the packet upon arrival of the packet at the barrier. To see whether the barrier precisely detects the distribution, it is necessary to study an error caused by a finite rising speed of the barrier. For this purpose, we study transmission of an electron wave packet through the dynamical barrier, and identify two regimes, the semiclassical regime and the quasistatic regime. In each regime, we calculate the arrival-time distribution reconstructed by using the barrier and quantify the error in the detection, the difference of the temporal uncertainty between the wave-packet distribution and the reconstructed distribution. Our finding suggests that for precise detection, the time scale, in which the barrier height rises over the energy distribution of the wave packet and the tunneling energy window of the barrier, has to be much shorter than the temporal uncertainty of the wave packet. The analytical results are confirmed with numerical calculations.

A quantum Otto engine based on a three-dimensional harmonic oscillator is proposed. One of the modes of this oscillator functions as the working fluid, while the other two play the role of baths. The coupling between the working fluid and the baths is controlled using an external central potential. All four strokes of the engine are simulated numerically, exploring the nonadiabatic effects in the compression and expansion phases, as well as the energy transfer during the working fluid's contact with the baths. The efficiency and power of several realizations of the proposed engine are also computed with the former agreeing well with the theoretical predictions for the quantum Otto cycle.

If a two-level system coupled to a single-mode cavity is strongly driven by an external laser, instead of a continuous accumulation of photons in the cavity, oscillations in the mean photon number occur. These oscillations correspond to peaks of finite width running up and down in the photon number distribution, reminiscent of wave packets in linear chain models. A single wave packet is found if the cavity is resonant to the external laser. Here, we show that for finite detuning multiple packet structures can exist simultaneously, oscillating at different frequencies and amplitudes. We further study the influence of dissipative effects resulting in the formation of a stationary state, which depending on the parameters can be characterized by a bimodal photon number distribution. While we give analytical limits for the maximally achievable photon number in the absence of any dissipation, surprisingly, dephasing processes can push the photon occupations towards higher photon numbers.

Ambiguous optical illusions have been a paradigmatic object of fascination, research and inspiration in arts, psychology and video games. However, accurate computational models of perception of ambiguous figures have been elusive. In this paper, we design and train a deep neural network model to simulate the human's perception of the Necker cube, an ambiguous drawing with several alternating possible interpretations. Defining the weights of the neural network connection using a quantum generator of truly random numbers, in agreement with the emerging concepts of quantum artificial intelligence and quantum cognition we reveal that the actual perceptual state of the Necker cube is a qubit-like superposition of the two fundamental perceptual states predicted by classical theories. Our results will find applications in video games and virtual reality systems employed for training of astronauts and operators of unmanned aerial vehicles. They will also be useful for researchers working in the fields of machine learning and vision, psychology of perception and quantum-mechanical models of human mind and decision-making.

We propose a way to operationally infer different unravelings of the Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad master equation appealing to stochastic conditional dynamics via quantum trajectories. We focus on the paradigmatic quantum nonlinear system of resonance fluorescence for the two most popular unravelings: the Poisson-type, corresponding to direct detection of the photons scattered from the two-level emitter, and the Wiener-type, revealing complementary attributes of the signal to be measured, such as the wave amplitude and the spectrum. We show that a quantum-trajectory-averaged variance, made of single trajectories beyond the standard description offered by the density-matrix formalism, is able to make a distinction between the different environments encountered by the field scattered from the two-level emitter. Our proposal is tested against commonly encountered experimental limitations, and can be readily extended to account for open quantum systems with several degrees of freedom.

The quantum dynamics of a low-dimensional system in contact with a large but finite harmonic bath is theoretically investigated by coarse-graining the bath into a reduced set of effective energy states. In this model, the couplings between the system and the bath are obtained from the statistical average over the discrete, degenerate effective states. Our model is aimed at intermediate bath sizes in which non-Markovian processes and energy transfer between the bath and the main system are important. The method is applied to a model system of a Morse oscillator coupled to 40 harmonic modes. The results are found to be in excellent agreement with the direct quantum dynamics simulations of Bouakline et al. [J. Phys. Chem. A 116, 11118-11127 (2012)], but at a much lower computational cost. Extension to larger baths is discussed in comparison to the time-convolutionless method. We also extend this study to the case of a microcanonical bath with finite initial internal energies. The computational efficiency and convergence properties of the effective bath states model with respect to relevant parameters are also discussed.

In this paper, we introduce a quantum-secured single-pixel imaging (QS-SPI) technique designed to withstand spoofing attacks, wherein adversaries attempt to deceive imaging systems with fake signals. Unlike previous quantum-secured protocols that impose a threshold error rate limiting their operation, even with the existence of true signals, our approach not only identifies spoofing attacks but also facilitates the reconstruction of a true image. Our method involves the analysis of a specific mode correlation of a photon-pair, which is independent of the mode used for image construction, to check security. Through this analysis, we can identify both the targeted image region by the attack and the type of spoofing attack, enabling reconstruction of the true image. A proof-of-principle demonstration employing polarization-correlation of a photon-pair is provided, showcasing successful image reconstruction even under the condition of spoofing signals 2000 times stronger than the true signals. We expect our approach to be applied to quantum-secured signal processing such as quantum target detection or ranging.

The decoding of error syndromes of surface codes with classical algorithms may slow down quantum computation. To overcome this problem it is possible to implement decoding algorithms based on artificial neural networks. This work reports a study of decoders based on convolutional neural networks, tested on different code distances and noise models. The results show that decoders based on convolutional neural networks have good performance and can adapt to different noise models. Moreover, explainable machine learning techniques have been applied to the neural network of the decoder to better understand the behaviour and errors of the algorithm, in order to produce a more robust and performing algorithm.

We consider models of quantum computation that involve operations performed on some fixed resourceful quantum state. Examples that fit this paradigm include magic state injection and measurement-based approaches. We introduce a framework that incorporates both of these cases and focus on the role of coherence (or superposition) in this context, as exemplified through the Hadamard gate. We prove that given access to incoherent unitaries (those that are unable to generate superposition from computational basis states, e.g. CNOT, diagonal gates), classical control, computational basis measurements, and any resourceful ancillary state (of arbitrary dimension), it is not possible to implement any coherent unitary (e.g. Hadamard) exactly with non-zero probability. We also consider the approximate case by providing lower bounds for the induced trace distance between the above operations and $n$ Hadamard gates. To demonstrate the stability of this result, this is then extended to a similar no-go result for the case of using $k$ Hadamard gates to exactly implement $n>k$ Hadamard gates.

Recent work has proposed solving the k-means clustering problem on quantum computers via the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) and coreset techniques. Although the current method demonstrates the possibility of quantum k-means clustering, it does not ensure high accuracy and consistency across a wide range of datasets. The existing coreset techniques are designed for classical algorithms and there has been no quantum-tailored coreset technique which is designed to boost the accuracy of quantum algorithms. In this work, we propose solving the k-means clustering problem with the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) and a customised coreset method, the Contour coreset, which has been formulated with specific focus on quantum algorithms. Extensive simulations with synthetic and real-life data demonstrated that our VQE+Contour Coreset approach outperforms existing QAOA+Coreset k-means clustering approaches with higher accuracy and lower standard deviation. Our work has shown that quantum tailored coreset techniques has the potential to significantly boost the performance of quantum algorithms when compared to using generic off-the-shelf coreset techniques.

In this thesis, we focus on the problem of validating and benchmarking quantum annealers. To this end, we propose two algorithms for solving real-world problems and test how they perform on the current generation of quantum annealers. The first algorithm allows for solving the dynamics of quantum systems (or, in fact, any dynamical systems). The second of the proposed algorithms is suitable for solving a particular family of railway dispatching problems. We assess the performance of those algorithms on the current generation of D-Wave quantum annealers with the assistance of two novel, classical strategies for solving an Ising model also presented in the thesis. The first, tensor network-based approach is a heuristic algorithm tailored for solving instances defined on Chimera-like graphs, thus making it ideal for providing a baseline with which the results from physical annealers can be compared. The other presented approach is a massively parallel implementation of the exhaustive (brute-force) search through the whole solution space. Although the brute-force approach is limited to moderate instance sizes, it has the advantage of being able to compute the low energy spectrum and certify the solutions. Our results suggest that present-day quantum annealers are able to solve a subset of the aforementioned problems. In particular, we show that the D-Wave annealers are capable of capturing the dynamics of a simple quantum system in a specific regime of parameters, and can be used to obtain good-quality solutions for instances of railway conflict management problems. Finally, our findings indicate that the current generation of D-Wave annealers is far from perfect. We discuss problem instances for which the annealers failed to find a good or even feasible solution. We also provide, where possible, a plausible explanation of why some of the presented problems might be hard for the annealers.

In this article, we follow the framework given in the article Physica A, 158, pg 58-63 (1989) by R. Laflamme to derive the thermofield double state for a causal diamond using the Euclidean path integral formalism, and subsequently derive the causal diamond temperature. The interpretation of the physical and fictitious system in the thermofield double state arises naturally from the boundary conditions of the fields defined on the Euclidean sections of the cylindrical background geometry $S^{1}_{\beta}\times \mathbb{R}$, where $\beta$ defines the periodicity of the Euclidean time coordinate and $S^{1}_{\beta}$ is the one-dimensional sphere (circle). The temperature detected by a static diamond observer at $x=0$ matches with the thermofield double temperature derived via this path integral procedure.

This article deals with two classes of quasi-exactly solvable (QES) trigonometric potentials for which the one-dimensional Schroedinger equation reduces to a confluent Heun equation (CHE) where the independent variable takes only finite values. Power series for the CHE are used to get finite- and infinite-series eigenfunctions. Finite series occur only for special sets of parameters and characterize the quasi-exact solvability. Infinite series occur for all admissible values of the parameters (even values involving finite series), and are bounded and convergent in the entire range of the independent variable. Moreover, throughout the article we examine other QES trigonometric and hyperbolic potentials. In all cases, for a finite series there is a convergent infinite series.