Is entanglement a unique resource in quantum illumination?

A theoretical scheme of generating a new kind of two-mode non-Gaussian entangled state is presented by means of beam splitters (BSs) and conditional measurement. Here, after detecting photon numbers at the output port of each BS with two kinds of two-mode squeezed vacuum-state inputs, the output state is proved to be two-variable Hermite polynomial excited squeezed vacuum states. Its success probability of detection, namely, normalization factor, is derived in compact expression related to the Jacobi polynomials. Based on the general expression of expectation value, the statistical properties are discussed by exploring the cross-correlation function and anti-bunching effect. The entanglement properties are also investigated by using the Shchukin–Vogel criteria and Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen correlation. The results show that the entanglement of the output state can be enhanced with the increasing photon detection number under the condition of simultaneously detecting the same photon number at the two output ports, which may have good potential for applications in the field of quantum information processing.

Entanglement swapping is gaining widespread attention due to its application in entanglement distribution among different parts of quantum appliances. We investigate the entanglement swapping for pure and noisy systems, and argue different entanglement quantifiers for quantum states. We explore the relationship between the entanglement of initial states and the average entanglement of final states in terms of concurrence and negativity. We find that if initial quantum states are maximally entangled and we make measurements in the Bell basis, then average concurrence and average negativity of final states give similar results. In this case, we simply obtain the average concurrence (average negativity) of the final states by taking the product of concurrences (negativities) of the initial states. However, the measurement in non-maximally entangled basis during entanglement swapping degrades the average swapped entanglement. Further, the product of the entanglement of the initial mixed states provides an upper bound to the average swapped entanglement of final states obtained after entanglement swapping. The negativity work well for weak entangled noisy states but concurrence gives better results for relatively strong entanglement regimes. We also discuss how successfully the output state can be used as a channel for the teleportation of an unknown qubit.

It has been proved that quantum illumination (QI) radar has the quantum advantages in error-probability exponent. However, the error-probability exponent is not a recognized figure of merit in the radar literature, nor does it correspond in a straightforward manner to any such figure of merit. Signal to noise ratio (SNR) gain is an important criterion in radar theory. While, the theoretical analysis of quantum enhancement in SNR gain of QI radar has not been reported. In this paper, we compare the physical fundamental of matched filter (MF), which can achieve the optimal SNR gain under white noise in classical radar theory, and phase conjugation (PC) receiver. Furthermore, the quantum enhancement of SNR gain in QI radar is studied. It is shown that QI radar with practical receivers can achieve about 3dB quantum advantage in SNR gain. In addition, in the case of extremely weak signal, it can potentially achieve tens of dB enhancement in SNR gain compared with the MF based classical radar.

Complete entanglement transfer between light and qubits

In this paper, we study the interaction between the two-level atom and a bimodal cavity field, namely, two-mode Jaynes–Cummings model when the atom and the modes are initially in the atomic superposition state and two-mode squeezed vacuum state, respectively. For this system we investigate the atomic inversion, linear entropy and atomic Wehrl entropy. We show that there is a connection between all these quantities. Also we prove that the atomic Wehrl entropy exhibits behaviors similar to those of the linear entropy and the von Neumann entropy. Moreover, we show that the bipartite exhibits periodical disentanglement and derive the explicit forms of the states of the atom and the modes at these values of the interaction times.

In this paper, we study some non-classical properties and propose the generation schemes of the superposition of multiple-photon-added two-mode squeezed vacuum state (SMPA-TMSVS). Based on the Wigner function, we clarify that this state is a non-Gaussian state, while the original two-mode squeezed vacuum state (TMSVS) is a Gaussian state. Besides, the SMPA-TMSVS is sum squeezing, as well as difference squeezing. In particular, the manifestation of the sum squeezing and the difference squeezing in the SMPA-TMSVS becomes more pronounced when increasing parameters r and e. In addition, by exploiting the schemes of photon-added superposition in the usual order, we give some schemes that the SMPA-TMSVS can be generated with the higher-order photon-added superposition by using some optical devices.

It has been demonstrated that using two-mode squeezed vacuum state for phase estimation can break the Heisenberg limit. Our results reveal that the two-mode squeezed vacuum state is also applied to the optical rotation angle measurement. In our scheme, the resolution and sensitivity of the optical rotation angle signal are the same as the case of phase estimation. For the parameter estimation, phase or rotation angle, we discuss the influences of several imperfect factors on the resolution and sensitivity. First, the effect that the upper limit of photon-number resolving has on the maximum amount of available quantum Fisher information has been analyzed. Then, we have also studied the impacts of both the transmission efficiency in the transmission process and the detection efficiency on the detection results. Finally, conditions where all of the above imperfect elements are taken into account at the same time have also been explored. Additionally, other imperfect factors such as squeezing efficiency and dark counts are briefly discussed.

We investigate the effects of weak value amplification on the nonclassical properties of the two-mode squeezed vacuum state. We calculate the quadrature squeezing and second-order cross-correlation functions to demonstrate the advantages of postselective weak measurement (WM). We also examine the entanglement between the two modes by evaluating various entanglement criteria, including the Cauchy-Schwartz inequality, Hillery-Zubairy correlation, and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations. Our results show that postselected von Neumann measurements significantly optimize the two-mode squeezed vacuum state. Notably, the amplification effect of weak values plays a critical role in this process. We demonstrated that in the WM regime, as the weak values increase, the nonclassical properties of the two-mode squeezed vacuum state such as entanglement and correlations between the two modes become more pronounced compared to the original state. We also propose possible implementation methods for our approach using trapped ion systems and optical platforms. Our enhanced two-mode squeezed vacuum state may have potential applications in quantum information processing scenarios, such as single-photon generation, advanced imaging techniques, quantum computation, and long-distance quantum communication.

Recently, we proposed an amplitude-shift keying asymmetric quantum communication system and evaluated its reliability when using the quasi-Bell state and two-mode squeezed vacuum state (TSVS) as an entangled light source. In this paper, we evaluate the security of the system and find that either security or reliability can be enhanced depending on the entangled light sources. We also consider an approach to enhance the security of the system as well as its reliability by increasing the number of signal modes. Interestingly, we find that the quasi-Bell state always performs better than the TSVS under certain conditions.

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR)-entangled state light field at a telecommunication wavelength of 1.5 μm is an important quantum source for realizing the continuous variable quantum information processing and some quantum protocols over optical fiber channel. When the EPR-entangled state light field is distributed over the optical fiber channel, the disentanglement is always present because the the EPR entangled state interacts with the fiber channel. It affects the performance of quantum information processing. In this paper, we theoretically calculate the positive partial transposition (PPT) of the entangled state distributed over the optical fiber channel in the single-channel and dual-channel distribution scheme, respectively. Three types of initial entangled light field are considered and analyzed, they being an initial EPR entangled state, an EPR entangled state with asymmetric quadratures, and an EPR entangled state with asymmetric modes. Furthermore, the influence of the extra noise in the optical fiber on the transmission distance of EPR entangled state over the optical fiber channel is investigated. In the single-channel scheme or dual-channel scheme, the extra noise in the optical fiber channel leads the entangled state light field to be disentangled, and the transmission distance of EPR entangled state over the optical fiber channel to decrease rapidly with the increase of the extra noise. For maintaining the robustness of EPR entangled states in lossy optical fiber channels, the dual-channel scheme has more stringent requirements for the correlation quadrature symmetry and purity of the initial entangled state than the single-channel scheme. In the single fiber noise channel scheme, the maximum transmission distance and the robustness of the EPR entangled states with asymmetric modes are not sensitive to the asymmetry between modes. The change of asymmetry between modes does not lead to being disentangled. The maximum transmission distance does not change either. However, the decrease of asymmetry between modes results in the disentanglement in the double fiber noise channels’ scheme. The maximum transmission distance is reduced and the sudden death occurs to the entanglement. The present results will lay a foundation for continuous variables quantum information processing based on optical fiber, such as realizing continuous variables quantum communication over optical fiber and constructing metropolitan quantum network over optical fiber.

In this paper, we have investigated the entanglement dynamics between two identical two-level atoms in the framework of two-photon double Jaynes-Cummings model taking into account the detuning between atoms and twice cavities frequencies and Kerr nonlinearities in both cavities. We have carried out the temporal dependence of the atom-atom negativity for Bell's initial entangled atomic states. The results show that these parameters have great impact on the amplitudes of the atom-atom entanglement oscillations and that presence of detuning and Kerr nonlinearity lead to stabilization of entanglement for all Bell-types initial atomic states. For a certain initial atomic entangled states, there is an entanglement sudden death effect between the two atoms. The detuning and Kerr medium in the cavities can prevent the undesirable entanglement sudden death from occurring.

Quantum illumination can utilize entangled light to detect the low-reflectivity target that is hidden in a bright thermal background. This technique is applied to the detection of an object in the curved spacetime of the Earth, in order to explore how the curvature of spacetime affects quantum illumination. It is found that the spatial quantum illumination with entangled state transmitter outperforms that with coherent-state transmitter in the near-Earth curved spacetime. Moreover, either the quantum illumination system or the coherent-state system is employed, and gravity can enhance the spacetime target detection by reducing the thermal signal at the receiver. Besides, our model in principle can be applied to microwave quantum illumination and thus provides, to some degree, a theoretical foundation for the upcoming spatial quantum radar technologies.

Nonclassical properties of two-mode squeezing-enhanced vacuum state

We investigate the time evolution of entanglement of various entangled states of a two-qubit system exposed to either thermal or squeezed reservoirs. We show that, except for the vacuum reservoir, the sudden-death of entanglement always exists in the thermal and squeezed reservoirs. We present explicit expression for the sudden-death time of entanglement for various entangled states. We find that the sudden-death of entanglement results from the portion of the double excitation component in the initial entangled state. In this sense, the maximally entangled states of a two-qubit system that do not have the double excitation component is more robust against the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum reservoir.

Taming decoherence is a critical issue in quantum information science. We here investigate amplitude-damping decoherence suppression of two-qubit entangled states by weak quantum measurements. It is shown that the weak measurements can effectively suppress the decoherence for different initial entangled states. More interestingly, we show that the weak measurements have different effects on the entanglement protection for two entangled states which are equivalent under a local unitary operation. This result implies that the entanglement protection effect could be modulated according to different demands.