QUROPE Quantum Information Processing and Communication in Europe

Quantum computing is finding promising applications in optimization, machine learning and physics, leading to the development of various models for representing quantum information. Because these representations are often studied in different contexts (many-body physics, machine learning, formal verification, simulation), little is known about fundamental trade-offs between their succinctness and the runtime of operations to update them. We therefore analytically investigate three widely-used quantum state representations: matrix product states (MPS), decision diagrams (DDs), and restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs). We map the relative succinctness of these data structures and provide the complexity for relevant query and manipulation operations. Further, to chart the balance between succinctness and operation efficiency, we extend the concept of rapidity with support for the non-canonical data structures studied in this work, showing in particular that MPS is at least as rapid as some DDs.

By providing a knowledge compilation map for quantum state representations, this paper contributes to the understanding of the inherent time and space efficiency trade-offs in this area.

In this work we strictly and accurately (within standard quantum mechanical formalism) consider quantum dynamical interaction between single photon and photographic plate in case when before this interaction photon trajectories (obtained by beam splitter) are not detected (when photographic plate detects interference patterns) as well as in case when before this interaction photon trajectories are detected in general case (when photographic plate effectively detects absence of the interference patterns). (We consider real experiment with Hong-Ou-Mandel superposition of two-photons where second photon can be considered as the micro detector of the first photon trajectories.) Also we consider collapse as a quantum-classical continuous phase transition with spontaneous (non-dynamical) unitary symmetry (superposition) breaking (effective hiding). (Practically, collapse can be considered as an especial case of the general formalism of spontaneous symmetry breaking with applications in many different domains of the physics, e.g. in elasticity of rigid bodies, quantum theory of ferromagnetism, quantum theory of electro-weak interactions as well as in chaotic inflation cosmology.) All this (that can be simply generalized for arbitrary quantum system) is in full agreement with existing experimental facts. More over it admits existence of the entanglement between photon (quantum system) and detector (metaphorically called Schr\"odinger cat effect) which clearly demonstrates that detection procedure (collapse) has no any absolute character. In this way it admits a simple solution of the quantum mechanics foundation problem.

Quantum technology offers great advantages in many applications by exploiting quantum resources like nonclassicality, coherence, and entanglement. In practice, an environmental noise unavoidably affects a quantum system and it is thus an important issue to protect quantum resources from noise. In this work, we investigate the manipulation of quantum resources possessing the so-called tensorization property and identify the fundamental limitations on concentrating and preserving those quantum resources. We show that if a resource measure satisfies the tensorization property as well as the monotonicity, it is impossible to concentrate multiple noisy copies into a single better resource by free operations. Furthermore, we show that quantum resources cannot be better protected from channel noises by employing correlated input states on joint channels if the channel output resource exhibits the tensorization property. We address several practical resource measures where our theorems apply and manifest their physical meanings in quantum resource manipulation.

We study bipartite correlations in Bell-type games. We show that in a setup where the information carriers are allowed to locally deform the manifold on which the game is played, stronger correlations may be obtained than those maximally attainable otherwise. We discuss the implications of our results in the context of Bell's theorem and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox.

Despite the extensive study of matter-wave superradiance in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) using its unique coherence property, the controllability of superradiant process has remained limited in the previous studies exploiting a phase-coherent condensate with isotropic contact interactions. Here, we combine tunable s-wave scattering with dipolar interactions in a BEC of $^{168}$Er atoms wherein the asymmetry and threshold of superradiance are independently controlled. By changing the s-wave scattering length near the Feshbach resonance, we tune the superradiance threshold with increasing phase fluctuations. In contrast to collective light scattering from a condensate only with contact interactions, we observe an asymmetric superradiant peak in a dipolar BEC by changing the direction of external magnetic field. This results from the anisotropic excitation spectrum induced by the dipole-dipole interaction. Our observation is expected to bring forth unprecedented application of matter-wave optics leading to controlled emission of matter wave.

In this paper, we present a new algorithm for generic combinatorial optimization, which we term quantum dueling. Traditionally, potential solutions to the given optimization problems were encoded in a ``register'' of qubits. Various techniques are used to increase the probability of finding the best solution upon measurement. Quantum dueling innovates by integrating an additional qubit register, effectively creating a ``dueling'' scenario where two sets of solutions compete. This dual-register setup allows for a dynamic amplification process: in each iteration, one register is designated as the 'opponent', against which the other register's more favorable solutions are enhanced through a controlled quantum search. This iterative process gradually steers the quantum state within both registers toward the optimal solution. With a quantitative contraction for the evolution of the state vector, classical simulation under a broad range of scenarios and hyper-parameter selection schemes shows that a quadratic speedup is achieved, which is further tested in more real-world situations. In addition, quantum dueling can be generalized to incorporate arbitrary quantum search techniques and as a quantum subroutine within a higher-level algorithm. Our work demonstrates that increasing the number of qubits allows the development of previously unthought-of algorithms, paving the way for advancement of efficient quantum algorithm design.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) based on the fundamental laws of quantum physics can allow the distribution of secure keys between distant users. However, the imperfections in realistic devices may lead to potential security risks, which must be accurately characterized and considered in practical security analysis. High-speed optical modulators, being as one of the core components of practical QKD systems, can be used to prepare the required quantum states. Here, we find that optical modulators based on LiNbO3, including phase modulators and intensity modulators, are vulnerable to photorefractive effect caused by external light injection. By changing the power of external light, eavesdroppers can control the intensities of the prepared states, posing a potential threat to the security of QKD. We have experimentally demonstrated the influence of light injection on LiNbO3-based optical modulators and analyzed the security risks caused by the potential green light injection attack, along with the corresponding countermeasures.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) allows Alice and Bob to agree on a shared secret key, while communicating over a public (untrusted) quantum channel. Compared to classical key exchange, it has two main advantages: (i) The key is unconditionally hidden to the eyes of any attacker, and (ii) its security assumes only the existence of authenticated classical channels which, in practice, can be realized using Minicrypt assumptions, such as the existence of digital signatures. On the flip side, QKD protocols typically require multiple rounds of interactions, whereas classical key exchange can be realized with the minimal amount of two messages using public-key encryption. A long-standing open question is whether QKD requires more rounds of interaction than classical key exchange. In this work, we propose a two-message QKD protocol that satisfies everlasting security, assuming only the existence of quantum-secure one-way functions. That is, the shared key is unconditionally hidden, provided computational assumptions hold during the protocol execution. Our result follows from a new construction of quantum public-key encryption (QPKE) whose security, much like its classical counterpart, only relies on authenticated classical channels.

Simulating the quantum dynamics of molecules in the condensed phase represents a longstanding challenge in chemistry. Trapped-ion quantum systems may serve as a platform for the analog-quantum simulation of chemical dynamics that is beyond the reach of current classical-digital simulation. To identify a "quantum advantage" for these simulations, performance analysis of both analog-quantum simulation on noisy hardware and classical-digital algorithms is needed. In this Review, we make a comparison between a noisy analog trapped-ion simulator and a few choice classical-digital methods on simulating the dynamics of a model molecular Hamiltonian with linear vibronic coupling. We describe several simple Hamiltonians that are commonly used to model molecular systems, which can be simulated with existing or emerging trapped-ion hardware. These Hamiltonians may serve as stepping stones toward the use of trapped-ion simulators for systems beyond the reach of classical-digital methods. Finally, we identify dynamical regimes where classical-digital simulations seem to have the weakest performance compared to analog-quantum simulations. These regimes may provide the lowest hanging fruit to exploit potential quantum advantages.

Relations among von Neumann entropies of different parts of an $N$-partite quantum system have direct impact on our understanding of diverse situations ranging from spin systems to quantum coding theory and black holes. Best formulated in terms of the set $\Sigma^*_N$ of possible vectors comprising the entropies of the whole and its parts, the famous strong subaddivity inequality constrains its closure $\overline\Sigma^*_N$, which is a convex cone. Further homogeneous constrained inequalities are also known.

In this work we provide (non-homogeneous) inequalities that constrain $\Sigma_N^*$ near the apex (the vector of zero entropies) of $\overline\Sigma^*_N$, in particular showing that $\Sigma_N^*$ is not a cone for $N\geq 3$. Our inequalities apply to vectors with certain entropy constraints saturated and, in particular, they show that while it is always possible to up-scale an entropy vector to arbitrary integer multiples it is not always possible to down-scale it to arbitrarily small size, thus answering a question posed by A. Winter. Relations of our work to topological materials, entanglement theory, and quantum cryptography are discussed.

In this paper, we consider two versions of the Text Assembling problem. We are given a sequence of strings $s^1,\dots,s^n$ of total length $L$ that is a dictionary, and a string $t$ of length $m$ that is texts. The first version of the problem is assembling $t$ from the dictionary. The second version is the ``Shortest Superstring Problem''(SSP) or the ``Shortest Common Superstring Problem''(SCS). In this case, $t$ is not given, and we should construct the shortest string (we call it superstring) that contains each string from the given sequence as a substring. These problems are connected with the sequence assembly method for reconstructing a long DNA sequence from small fragments. For both problems, we suggest new quantum algorithms that work better than their classical counterparts. In the first case, we present a quantum algorithm with $O(m+\log m\sqrt{nL})$ running time. In the case of SSP, we present a quantum algorithm with running time $O(n^3 1.728^n +L +\sqrt{L}n^{1.5}+\sqrt{L}n\log^2L\log^2n)$.

Generating ion-photon entanglement is a crucial step for scalable trapped-ion quantum networks. To avoid the crosstalk on memory qubits carrying quantum information, it is common to use a different ion species for ion-photon entanglement generation such that the scattered photons are far off-resonant for the memory qubits. However, such a dual-species scheme requires elaborate control of the portion and the location of different ion species, and can be subject to inefficient sympathetic cooling. Here we demonstrate a trapped-ion quantum network node in the dual-type qubit scheme where two types of qubits are encoded in the $S$ and $F$ hyperfine structure levels of ${}^{171}\mathrm{Yb}^+$ ions. We generate ion photon entanglement for the $S$-qubit in a typical timescale of hundreds of milliseconds, and verify its small crosstalk on a nearby $F$-qubit with coherence time above seconds. Our work demonstrates an enabling function of the dual-type qubit scheme for scalable quantum networks.

We investigate the phenomenon of disorder-free localisation in quantum systems with global permutation symmetry. We use permutation group theory to systematically construct permutation symmetric many-fermion Hamiltonians and interpret them as generators of continuous-time quantum walks. When the number of fermions is very large we find that all the canonical basis states localise at all times, without the introduction of any disorder coefficients. This time-independent localisation is not the result of any emergent disorder distinguishing it from existing mechanisms for disorder-free localisation. Next we establish the conditions under which the localisation is preserved. We find that interactions that preserve and break the global permutation symmetry sustains localisation. Furthermore the basis states of systems with reduced permutation symmetry, localise even for a small number of fermions when the symmetry-reducing parameters are tuned accordingly. We show that similar localisation also occurs for a permutation symmetric Heisenberg spin chain and permutation symmetric bosonic systems, implying that the localisation is independent of the superselected symmetry. Finally we make connections of the Hamiltonians studied here to the adjacency matrices of graphs and use this to propose a prescription for disorder-free localisation in continuous-time quantum walk systems. Many of the models proposed here feature all-to-all connectivity and can be potentially realised on superconducting quantum circuits, trapped ion systems and ultracold atoms.

An integrated photonic circuit architecture to perform a modified-convolution operation based on the Discrete Fractional Fourier Transform (DFrFT) is introduced. This is accomplished by utilizing two nonuniformly-coupled waveguide lattices with equally-spaced eigenmode spectra and with different lengths that perform DFrDT operations of complementary orders sandwiching a modulator array. Numerical simulations show that smoothing and edge detection tasks are indeed performed even for noisy input signals.

A new measure of information leakage for quantum encoding of classical data is defined. An adversary can access a single copy of the state of a quantum system that encodes some classical data and is interested in correctly guessing a general randomized or deterministic function of the data (e.g., a specific feature or attribute of the data in quantum machine learning) that is unknown to the security analyst. The resulting measure of information leakage, referred to as maximal quantum leakage, is the multiplicative increase of the probability of correctly guessing any function of the classical data upon observing measurements of the quantum state. Maximal quantum leakage is shown to satisfy post-processing inequality (i.e., applying a quantum channel reduces information leakage) and independence property (i.e., leakage is zero if the quantum state is independent of the classical data), which are fundamental properties required for privacy and security analysis. It also bounds accessible information. Effects of global and local depolarizing noise models on the maximal quantum leakage are established.

The majority of current understanding of the quantum correlations is in the field of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. To develop quantum information and computation tasks fully, one must inevitably take into account the relativistic effects. In this regard, the spin is one of the central tools. For this purpose, it is of paramount importance to understand and characterize fully the theory of spin in relativistic quantum information theory where the spin states act as qubit. This area is still far from being resolved. As a result, this article will explore the recent studies of the concepts of the spin and spin quantum correlations in inertial frames and some apparent paradoxes regarding this concept. We will mainly focus on the problem of characterizing the spin, reduced spin density matrices and spin quantum correlations in inertial reference frames and the apparent paradoxes involved therein. Another important aspect is the use of tools of quantum field theory to extend several concepts in non-relativistic domain to relativistic one. In this regard, we analyze the development of the theory of relativistic secret sharing and a correlation measure namely the entanglement of purification.

The notion of scale-invariant dynamics is well established at late times in quantum chaotic systems, as illustrated by the emergence of a ramp in the spectral form factor (SFF). Building on the results of the preceding Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 060404 (2023)], we explore features of scale-invariant dynamics of survival probability and SFF at criticality, i.e., at eigenstate transitions from quantum chaos to localization. We show that, in contrast to the quantum chaotic regime, the quantum dynamics at criticality do not only exhibit scale invariance at late times, but also at much shorter times that we refer to as mid-time dynamics. Our results apply to both quadratic and interacting models. Specifically, we study Anderson models in dimensions three to five and power-law random banded matrices for the former, and the quantum sun model and the ultrametric model for the latter, as well as the Rosenzweig-Porter model.

We have used quantum control to suppress the impact of random atom positions on coherent population transfer within atom pairs, enabling the observation of dipole-dipole driven Rabi oscillations in a Rydberg gas with hundreds of atoms. The method exploits the reduced coupling-strength sensitivity of the off-resonant Rabi frequency, and coherently amplifies the achievable population transfer in analogy to quasi-phase-matching in non-linear optics. Simulations reproduce the experimental results and demonstrate the potential benefits of the technique to other many-body quantum control applications.

In this paper, we consider exact WKB analysis to a ${\cal PT}$ symmetric quantum mechanics defined by the potential, $V(x) = \omega^2 x^2 + g x^2(i x)^{\varepsilon=2}$ with $\omega \in {\mathbb R}_{\ge 0}$, $g \in {\mathbb R} _{> 0}$. We in particular aim to verify a conjecture proposed by Ai-Bender-Sarkar (ABS), that pertains to a relation between $D$-dimensional ${\cal PT}$-symmetric theories and analytic continuation (AC) of Hermitian theories concerning the energy spectrum or Euclidean partition function. For the purpose, we construct energy quantization conditions by exact WKB analysis and write down their transseries solution by solving the conditions. By performing alien calculus to the energy solutions, we verify validity of the ABS conjecture and seek a possibility of its alternative form by Borel resummation theory if it is violated. Our results claim that the validity of the ABS conjecture drastically changes depending on whether $\omega > 0$ or $\omega = 0$: If ${\omega}>0$, then the ABS conjecture is violated when exceeding the semi-classical level, but its alternative form is constructable by Borel resummation theory. The ${\cal PT}$ and the AC energies are related to each other by a one-parameter Stokes automorphism, and a median resummed form, which corresponds to a formal exact solution, of the AC energy (resp. ${\cal PT}$ energy) is directly obtained by acting Borel resummation to the transseries solution of the ${\cal PT}$ energy (resp. AC energy). If $\omega = 0$, then, with respect to the inverse energy level-expansion, not only perturbative/non-perturbative structures of the ${\cal PT}$ and the AC energies but also their perturbative parts do not match with each other. These energies are independent solutions, and no alternative form of the ABS conjecture can be reformulated by Borel resummation theory.

One of the ways to encode many-body Hamiltonians on a quantum computer to obtain their eigen-energies through Quantum Phase Estimation is by means of the Trotter approximation. There were several ways proposed to assess the quality of this approximation based on estimating the norm of the difference between the exact and approximate evolution operators. Here, we would like to explore how these different error estimates are correlated with each other and whether they can be good predictors for the true Trotter approximation error in finding eigenvalues. For a set of small molecular systems we calculated the exact Trotter approximation errors of the first order Trotter formulas for the ground state electronic energies. Comparison of these errors with previously used upper bounds show almost no correlation over the systems and various Hamiltonian partitionings. On the other hand, building the Trotter approximation error estimation based on perturbation theory up to a second order in the time-step for eigenvalues provides estimates with very good correlations with the Trotter approximation errors. The developed perturbative estimates can be used for practical time-step and Hamiltonian partitioning selection protocols, which are paramount for an accurate assessment of resources needed for the estimation of energy eigenvalues under a target accuracy.