A photonic engine fueled by entangled two atoms

How to concentrate non-maximally entangled states for quantum communication is a fundamental problem in quantum information. In this paper, we will apply generalized measurements to entanglement concentration of known non-maximally entangled pure states in arbitrary dimensional system. How to design the generalized measurements for the unambiguous discrimination of linearly independent non-orthogonal states is crucial for the concentration of the known non-maximally entangled states. The result shows that, any known non-maximally entangled pure state (for arbitrary dimensional system) can be transformed to the maximally entangled state only by introducing a qubit as ancilla and a joint unitary transformation operation on one of the entangled particles and the ancilla. In addition, because the less entangled state of each fail round will be re-concentrated too, the entanglement waste during the concentration process will be greatly reduced.

Quantum interference is at the heart of what sets the quantum and classical worlds apart. We demonstrate that quantum interference effects involving a many-body working medium is responsible for genuinely nonclassical features in the performance of a quantum heat engine. The features with which quantum interference manifests itself in the work output of the engine depends strongly on the extensive nature of the working medium. While identifying the class of work substances that optimize the performance of the engine, our results shed light on the optimal size of such media of quantum workers to maximize the work output and efficiency of quantum energy machines.

In this paper, we propose a scheme for quantum information splitting based on the non-maximally entangled four-qubit state in order to realize the splitting of the specific two-qubit state |ψ〉AB=x|00〉+y|11〉. The information splitter will safely share an state to the receiver with help of the controller. Through introducing an auxiliary system and applying several appropriate unitary transformations the information receiver can reconstruct the original state sent by the information splitter. Due to the non-maximally entangled four-qubit state, the total probability that the receiver obtains the original information is P. Furthermore, we discuss the relationship between the successful splitting probability and the concurrence of the entangled state and get a specific expression. In addition, the scheme is tested against external and internal attacks, and we define a function to characterise the security with the concurrence of the entanglement.

To establish an entangled state of optimal fidelity between two distant observers when the available quantum channel is noisy, is a central problem in quantum information theory. We consider an instance of this problem for two-qubit systems when only a single use of the channel and local post-processing by trace preserving operations are allowed. We show that the optimal fidelity is obtained only when part of an appropriate non-maximally entangled state is transmitted through the channel. The entanglement of this state can be vanishingly small when the channel becomes very noisy. Moreover, in the optimal case no further local processing is required to enhance the fidelity. We further show that local post-processing can enhance fidelity if and only if the amount of noise is larger than a critical value and entanglement of the transmitted state is bounded from below. A notable consequence of these results is that the ordering of states under an entanglement monotone can be reversed even when the states undergo the same local interaction via a trace-preserving completely positive map.

Nonlocal advantage of quantum coherence (NAQC) based on coherence complementarity relations is generally viewed as a stronger nonclassical correlation than Bell nonlocality. An arbitrary two-qubit state with NAQC must be an entangled state, which demonstrates that the criterion of NAQC can also be regarded as an entanglement witness. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the NAQC for Bell-diagonal states with high fidelity in an optics-based platform. We perform local measurements on a subsystem in three mutually unbiased bases and reconstruct the density matrices of the measured states by quantum state tomography process. By analyzing characteristic of the $l_1$ norm, relative entropy and skew information of coherence with parameters of quantum states, NAQC for the quantum states is accurately captured, and it shows that our experimental results are well compatible with the theoretical predictions. It is worth mentioning that quantum states with NAQC would have higher entanglement, and thus NAQC could be expected to be a kind of useful physical resource for quantum information processing.

A coherent dynamics of two-and three-level atoms in the ideal cavity were investigated. In particular, the investigation of the dynamics of three-level atoms (qutrits) interacting with photons in the cavity having two resonant frequencies close to the frequencies of the two allowed atomic transitions were performed. This model generalizes the well-known Tavis-Cummings model. Time dependencies of mean number of the cavity photons and level populations of atoms are computed and entanglement of atoms and photon fields states are discussed.

A scheme for probabilistic teleportation of an unknown three-atom entangled state via a five-atom non-maximally entangled cluster state as quantum channel is proposed. In this scheme, the sender performs two Bell state and a single-atom measurements on the atoms, the receiver can reconstruct the original state with a certain probability by introducing an auxiliary atom and operating appropriate unitary transformations and controlled-not (C-not) operations according to the sender Alice's measurement results. As a result, the probability of successful teleportation is determined by the smallest two of the coefficients' absolute values of the cluster state. The considerable advantage of our scheme is that we employ a non-maximally entangled cluster state as quantum channel in the scheme, which can greatly reduce the amount of entanglement resources and need less classical bits. If we employ a maximally entangled cluster state as quantum channel, the probabilistic teleportation scheme becomes usual teleportation, the successful probability being 100%.

Entanglement and nonlocal correlations constitute two fundamental resources for quantum information processing, as they allow for novel tasks that are otherwise impossible in a classical scenario. However, their elusive characterization is still a central problem in Quantum Information Theory. The main reason why such a fundamental issue remains a formidable challenge lies in the exponential growth in complexity of the Hilbert space, as well as the space of nonlocal correlations. Physical systems of interest, on the other hand, display symmetries that can be exploited to reduce this complexity, opening the possibility that, for such systems, some of these questions become tractable. This PhD Thesis is dedicated to the study and characterization of entanglement and nonlocal correlations constrained under symmetries. It contains original results in these four threads of research: PPT entanglement in the symmetric states, nonlocality detection in many-body systems, the non-equivalence between entanglement and nonlocality and elemental monogamies of correlations. First, we study PPT entanglement in fully symmetric n-qubit states. We solve the open question on the existence of four-qubit PPT entangled states of these kind, providing constructive examples and methods. Furthermore, we develop criteria for separability, edgeness and the Schmidt number of PPT entangled symmetric states. Geometrically, we focus on the characterization of extremal states of this family and we provide an algorithm to find states with such properties. Second, we study nonlocality in many-body systems. We consider permutationally and translationally invariant Bell inequalities consisting of two-body correlators. These constitute the first tools to detect nonlocality in many-body systems in an experimentally friendly way with our current technology. Furthermore, we show how these Bell inequalities detect nonlocality in physically relevant systems such as ground states of Hamiltonians that naturally arise e.g., in nuclear physics. We provide analytical classes of Bell inequalities and we analytically characterize which states and measurements are best suited for them. We show that the method we introduce can be fully generalized to correlators of any order in any Bell scenario. Finally, we provide some feedback from a more experimental point of view. Third, we demonstrate that entanglement and nonlocality are inequivalent concepts in general; a question that remained open in the multipartite case. We show that the strongest form of entanglement, genuinely multipartite entanglement, does not imply the strongest form of nonlocality, genuinely multipartite nonlocality, in any case. We give a constructive method that, starting from a multipartite genuinely multipartite state admitting a K-local model, extends it to a genuinely multipartite entangled state of any number of parties while preserving the degree of locality. Finally, we show that nonlocal correlations are monogamous in a much stronger sense than the typical one, in which the figure of merit compares a Bell inequality violation between two sets of parties. We show that the amount of Bell violation that a set of parties observes limits the knowledge that any external observer may gain on any of the outcomes of any of the parties performing the Bell experiment. We show that this holds even if such observer is not limited by quantum physics, but it only obeys the no-signalling principle. Apart from its fundamental interest, we show how these stronger monogamy relations boost the performance of some device-independent (DI) protocols such as DI quantum key distribution or DI randomness amplification.

We investigate relations between squeezing of separable input states and entanglement of output states generated by a beamsplitter, both of which are valuable nonclassical resources for quantum information processing. Motivated by the seminal work of Asboth´ et al [2005 Phys. Rev. Lett. 94 173602], where a systematic study of nonclassicality (including squeezing) and beamsplitter-generated entanglement is conducted, we consider the situation when the two input states are all Gaussian and identify certain constraints on the squeezing parameters to generate entanglement. Contrary to naive expectation, large squeezing does not necessarily guarantee large entanglement. Depending on the phase relations between the input states and the beamsplitters, the conditions to generate entanglement vary, which may be regarded as a manifestation of interference. In two typical cases, it is the difference or sum of the squeezing amplitudes that plays a key role in generating entanglement. Analytic expressions of entanglement in terms of the difference or sum of the squeezing amplitudes are obtained, which are further shown to be monotonic in the relevant parameters.

We analyze the effect of impurity on the work output and efficiency of quantum Otto and quantum Carnot heat cycles, modeled as a single quantum particle in an infinite square well potential, which is the working substance. We solve this quantum mechanical system perturbatively up to first and second order in strength of the impurity for strong- and weak-coupling regimes, respectively. We derive the analytical expressions of work and efficiency for the strong-coupling regime to the first order in the strength parameter. The threshold value of the strength parameter in weak coupling is obtained up to which the numerical result agrees with the perturbative result for a repulsive and attractive impurity. To our surprise, an embedded impurity unlocks new operational phases in the system, such as a quantum heat engine, quantum refrigerator, and quantum cold pump. In addition, the efficiency of the quantum Otto heat engine is seen to reach Carnot efficiency for some parameter regimes. The cooling power and coefficient of performance of the quantum refrigerator and quantum cold pump are nontrivially affected by the impurity.

We consider a scenario where a party, say, Alice prepares a pure two-qubit (either maximally entangled or non-maximally entangled) state and sends one half of this state to another distant party, say, Bob through a qubit (either unital or non-unital) channel. Finally, the shared state is used as a teleportation channel. In this scenario, we focus on characterizing the set of qubit channels with respect to the final state's efficacy as a resource of quantum teleportation (QT) in terms of maximal average fidelity and fidelity deviation (fluctuation in fidelity values over the input states). Importantly, we point out the existence of a subset of qubit channels for which the final state becomes useful for universal QT (having maximal average fidelity strictly greater than the classical bound and having zero fidelity deviation) when the initially prepared state is either useful for universal QT (i.e., for a maximally entangled state) or not useful for universal QT (i.e., for a subset of non-maximally entangled pure states). Interestingly, in the latter case, we show that non-unital channels (dissipative interactions) are more effective than unital channels (non-dissipative interactions) in producing useful states for universal QT from non-maximally entangled pure states.

Two mechanisms of the inverse population of shallow impurity states in silicon under optical pumping have been proposed and analyzed, using a procedure allowing to reduce the number of required matrix elements of transitions. The first mechanism is based on the resonance interaction of the 2p0 state in Si:Bi with optical phonons. The other one is based on the suppression of acoustic-phonon-assisted relaxation from the 2p0 state in Si:P due to the momentum conservation law. Spontaneous emission was registered from shallow donors in Si:P under photoionization by a CO2 laser. The dependence of the spontaneous emission intensity on the intensity of pumping radiation confirms the possibility of amplification on impurity transitions.

We report entanglement of a single atom's hyperfine spin state with its motional state in a timescale of less than 3 ns.We engineer a short train of intense laser pulses to impart a spindependent momentum transfer of ±2 k.Using pairs of momentum kicks, we create an atomic interferometer and demonstrate collapse and revival of spin coherence as the motional wavepacket is split and recombined.The revival after a pair of kicks occurs only when the second kick is delayed by an integer multiple of the harmonic trap period, a signature of entanglement and disentanglement of the spin with the motion.Such quantum control opens a new regime of ultrafast entanglement in atomic qubits.

The concept of thermal machines has evolved from the canonical steam engine to the recently proposed nanoscopic quantum systems as working fluids. The latter obey quantum open system dynamics and frequently operate in non-equilibrium conditions. However, the role of this dynamics in the overall performance of quantum heat engines remains an open problem. Here, we analyse and optimize the efficiency and power output of two-stage quantum heat engines fuelled by non-equilibrium steady states. In a charging first stage, the quantum working fluid consisting of a qutrit or two coupled qubits is connected to two reservoirs at different temperatures, which establish a heat current that stores ergotropy in the system; the second stage comprises a coherent driving force that extracts work from the machine in finite a amount of time; finally, the external drive is switched off and the machine enters a new cycle.

Recent predictions for quantum-mechanical enhancements in the operation of small heat engines have raised renewed interest in their study both from a fundamental perspective and in view of applications. One essential question is whether collective effects may help to carry enhancements over larger scales, when increasing the number of systems composing the working substance of the engine. Such enhancements may consider not only power and efficiency, that is, its performance, but, additionally, its constancy, that is, the stability of the engine with respect to unavoidable environmental fluctuations. We explore this issue by introducing a many-body quantum heat engine model composed by spin pairs working in continuous operation. We study how power, efficiency, and constancy scale with the number of spins composing the engine and introduce a well-defined macroscopic limit where analytical expressions are obtained. Our results predict power enhancements, in both finite-size and macroscopic cases, for a broad range of system parameters and temperatures, without compromising the engine efficiency, accompanied by coherence-enhanced constancy for finite sizes. We discuss these quantities in connection to thermodynamic uncertainty relations.