Quantum energy teleportation with an electromagnetic field: discrete versus continuous variables

Quantum energy teleportation (QET) is, from an operational viewpoint of distant protocol users, the transportation of energy via local operations and classical communication. QET has various links to fundamental research fields, including black hole physics, the quantum theory of Maxwell's demon, and condensed-matter entanglement. There are promising signs that QET will be experimentally verified using the chiral boson fields of quantum Hall edge currents. In this Letter, we prove that, using the vacuum state of a quantum field, the upper bound of the amount of energy teleported by QET is inversely proportional to the transfer distance. This distance bound can be overcome by using squeezed states with local-vacuum regions.

Quantum cryptographic systems have been commercially available, with a striking advantage over classical systems that their security and ability to detect the presence of eavesdropping are provable based on the principles of quantum mechanics. On the other hand, quantum protocol designers may commit much more faults than classical protocol designers since human intuition is much better adapted to the classical world than the quantum world. To offer formal techniques for modeling and verification of quantum protocols, several quantum extensions of process algebra have been proposed. One of the most serious issues in quantum process algebra is to discover a quantum generalization of the notion of bisimulation, which lies in a central position in process algebra, preserved by parallel composition in the presence of quantum entanglement, which has no counterpart in classical computation. Quite a few versions of bisimulation have been defined for quantum processes in the literature, but in the best case they are only proved to be preserved by parallel composition of purely quantum processes where no classical communications are involved. Many quantum cryptographic protocols, however, employ the LOCC (Local Operations and Classical Communications) scheme, where classical communications must be explicitly specified. So, a notion of bisimulation preserved by parallel composition in the circumstance of both classical and quantum communications is crucial for process algebra approach to verification of quantum cryptographic protocols. In this paper we introduce a novel notion of bisimulation for quantum processes and prove that it is congruent with respect to various process algebra combinators including parallel composition even when both classical and quantum communications are present. We also establish some basic algebraic laws for this bisimulation. In particular, we prove uniqueness of the solutions to recursive equations of quantum processes, which provides a powerful proof technique for verifying complex quantum protocols.

Teleporting energy to remote locations is new challenge for quantum information science and technology. Developing a method for transferring local energy in laboratory systems to remote locations will enable non‐trivial energy flows in quantum networks. From the perspective of quantum information engineering, we propose a method for distributing local energy to a large number of remote nodes using hyperbolic geometry. Hyperbolic networks are suitable for energy allocation in large quantum networks since the number of nodes grows exponentially. To realise long‐range quantum energy teleportation (QET), we propose a hybrid method of quantum state telepotation and QET. By transmitting local quantum information through quantum teleportation and performing conditional operations on that information, QET can theoretically be realized independent of geographical distance. The method we present will provide new insights into new applications of future large‐scale quantum networks and potential applications of quantum physics to information engineering.

In this paper, a new quantum mechanical method to extract energy from black\nholes with contracting horizons is proposed. The method is based on a gedanken\nexperiment on quantum energy teleportation (QET), which has been recently\nproposed in quantum information theory. We consider this QET protocol for N\nmassless fields in near-horizon regions of large-mass black holes with\nnear-horizon geometry described by the Minkowski metric. For each field, a\ntwo-level spin is strongly coupled with the local quantum fluctuation outside\nthe horizon during a short time period. After the measurement of N fields,\nN-bit information is obtained. During the measurement, positive-energy wave\npackets of the fields form and then fall into the black hole. The amount of\nexcitation energy is independent of the measurement result. After absorption of\nthe wave packets and increase of the black hole mass, a\nmeasurement-result-dependent local operation of the N fields is performed\noutside the horizon. Then, accompanying the extraction of positive energy from\nthe quantum fluctuation by the operation, negative-energy wave packets of the\nfields form and then fall into the black hole, decreasing the black hole mass.\nThis implies that a part of the absorbed positive energy emitted from the\nmeasurement devices is effectively retrieved from the black hole via the\nmeasurement results.\n

Resource theory of quantum coherence originated like entanglement in quantum information theory. However, still now proper classification of quantum states is missing under coherence. In this work, we have provided a classification of states under local incoherent operations. We have succeeded in deriving the necessary and sufficient condition for which two pure multipartite states are equivalent under stochastic local incoherent operations and classical communications (SLICC) and local incoherent operations and classical communications (LICC). In particular, we have succeeded in characterizing three qubit pure states under SLICC. Our result reveals the existence of infinite number of SLICC inequivalent classes for three qubit systems.

Quantum teleportation is one of the most basic quantum protocols, which transfers an unknown quantum state from one location to another through local operation and classical communication by using shared quantum entanglement without physical transfer of the information carrier. And it has been widely used in various quantum information protocols such as entanglement swapping, quantum repeaters, quantum gate teleportation, quantum computation based on measurement, and quantum teleportation networks, which have important application value in quantum computation and quantum information. Quantum teleportation is a naturally bipartite process, in which an unknown quantum state can only be transmitted from one node to another. With the further development of quantum information research, it is necessary to transfer quantum states or quantum information among more and more nodes. Multipartite quantum protocols are expected to form fundamental components for larger-scale quantum communication and computation. A bipartite quantum teleportation should be extended to a multipartite protocol known as a quantum teleportation network. In this paper, a multifunctional quantum teleportation network is proposed theoretically. We first propose a special method of constructing four-partite quantum resources in continuous variables (CVs), and based on this, construct two different types of CV quantum teleportation networks. One type of network contains just one quantum teleportation process consisting of a sender, a receiver and two controllers. In this type of network, the unknown quantum state can be recovered at any other node according to the requirement after the measurement in the input node, which enriches the transfer direction and transfer mode of the unknown quantum state. And meanwhile, the two controllers can control the transfer of a quantum state from the sender to the receiver by restricting the sender and receiver’s access to their information, which makes the quantum teleportation network controllable. The other type of network has two quantum teleportation processes, each containing only a sender, a receiver and no controllers, which increases the number of quantum states that can be transmitted. Then we analyze the dependence of the fidelity of each quantum teleportation network on different physical parameters, and compare the characteristics, advantages and disadvantages among different types of quantum teleportation networks. The scheme for constructing a multifunctional quantum teleportation network in this paper shows some advantages, such as the greater number of quantum nodes, diversity of types, simple operation procedure. And all these advantages provide a broader application prospect for establishing larger and more complex quantum information networks in the future and quicken the pace of the application of quantum information.

We characterize the class of all physical operations that transform Gaussian\nstates to Gaussian states. We show that this class coincides with that of all\noperations which can be performed on Gaussian states using linear optical\nelements and homodyne measurements. For bipartite systems we characterize the\nprocesses which can be implemented by local operations and classical\ncommunication, as well as those that can be implemented using positive partial\ntranspose preserving maps. As an application, we show that Gaussian states\ncannot be distilled by local Gaussian operations and classical communication.\nWe also define and characterize positive (but not completely positive) Gaussian\nmaps.\n

Entanglement is a key resource in the emerging field of Quantum Information. The strong correlations between systems described by an entangled state allow us to perform certain tasks more efficiently than it would be possible by using only classical resources. This is why the characterization of entanglement is one of the most important problems in Quantum Information. In this thesis, we analyze several aspects of entanglement. First, we introduce a new family of criteria to determine if a bipartite mixed state is entangled or not. This family consists of a sequence of tests that can be implemented efficiently, and has the property that all entangled states can be detected by some test in the sequence. Each test in the family can be stated as a semidefinite program, which is a class of convex optimization problems. The duality structure of these programs allows us to explicitly construct an entanglement witness that proves entanglement of a state, whenever the state fails one of the tests in the sequence. The entanglement witnesses constructed in this manner have well-defined algebraic properties that can be used to give a characterization of the interior of the set of all possible entanglement witnesses, as well as the set of strictly positive bihermitian forms and the set of strictly positive maps. We also study deterministic transformations of three-qubit pure state when only local operations and classical communication (LOCC) are allowed. We derive strong constraints that the operations and states involved must satisfy, and we apply these results to characterize the set of real states that can be obtained from the GHZ state by LOCC.

We present a simple and general simulation technique that transforms any black-box quantum algorithm (a la Grover's database search algorithm) to a quantum communication protocol for a related problem, in a way that fully exploits the quantum parallelism. This allows us to obtain new positive and negative results. The positive results are novel quantum communication protocols that are built from nontrivial quantum algorithms via this simulation. These protocols, combined with (old and new) classical lower bounds, are shown to provide the first asymptotic separation results between the quantum and classical (probabilistic) two-party communication complexity models. In particular, we obtain a quadratic separation for the bounded-error model, and an exponential separation for the zero-error model. The negative results transform known quantum communication lower bounds to computational lower bounds in the black-box model. In particular, we show that the quadratic speed-up achieved by Grover for the OR function is impossible for the PARITY function or the MAJORITY function in the bounded-error model, nor is it possible for the OR function itself in the exact case. This dichotomy naturally suggests a study of bounded-depth predicates (i.e. those in the polynomial hierarchy) between OR and MAJORITY. We present black-box algorithms that achieve near quadratic speed up for all such predicates.

When a quantum system is distributed to spatially separated parties, it is natural to consider how the system evolves when the parties perform local quantum operations with classical communication (LOCC). However, the structure of LOCC channels is exceedingly complex, leaving many important physical problems unsolved. In this paper, we consider generalized resource theories of entanglement based on different relaxations to the class of LOCC. The behavior of various entanglement measures is studied under non-entangling channels, as well as the newly introduced classes of dually non-entangling and positive partial transpose (PPT)-preserving channels. In an effort to better understand the nature of LOCC bound entanglement, we study the problem of entanglement distillation in these generalized resource theories. We first show that unlike LOCC, general non-entangling maps can be superactivated, in the sense that two copies of the same non-entangling map can, nevertheless, be entangling. On the single-copy level, we demonstrate that every NPT entangled state can be converted into an LOCC-distillable state using channels that are both dually non-entangling and having a PPT Choi representation and that every state can be converted into an LOCC-distillable state using operations belonging to any family of polytopes that approximate LOCC. We then turn to the stochastic convertibility of multipartite pure states and show that any two states can be interconverted by any polytope approximation to the set of separable channels. Finally, as an analog to k-positive maps, we introduce and analyze the set of k-non-entangling channels.

We study when a multipartite non--local unitary operation can deterministically or probabilistically simulate another one when local operations of a certain kind ---in some cases including also classical communication--- are allowed. In the case of probabilistic simulation and allowing for arbitrary local operations, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the simulation to be possible. Deterministic and probabilistic interconversion under certain kinds of local operations are used to define equivalence relations between gates. In the probabilistic, bipartite case this induces a finite number of classes. In multiqubit systems, however, two unitary operations typically cannot simulate each other with non-zero probability of success. We also show which kind of entanglement can be created by a given non--local unitary operation and generalize our results to arbitrary operators.

The (k, n)-threshold quantum secret sharing scheme is an important and difficult field in quantum information processing and quantum cryptography. In this paper, the (k, n)-threshold quantum secret sharing scheme based on local operations and classical communication (LOCC-QSS) is investigated. Firstly, in order to effectively study the LOCC-QSS scheme, digital and graphical representations of judgement space are introduced creatively. These representations are simple and convenient. Secondly, an algorithm is designed to search optional states for any given k and n. For optional states, the unambiguous probability equals 0 when x participants cooperate (x < k). Thirdly, a method is proposed to decrease the guessing probability. Some schemes which are more secure than existing ones can be obtained further. Last but not least, the conditions of optimal LOCC-QSS schemes are given for the first time. Our research will be helpful for the development of LOCC-QSS scheme.

Suppose two distant observers, Alice and Bob, share some form of entanglement - quantum correlations - in some bipartite pure quantum states. They may apply local operations and classical communication to convert one form of entanglement to another. Since entanglement is regarded as a resource in quantum information processing, it is an important question to ask how much classical communication, which is also a resource, is needed in the inter-conversion process of entanglement. In this paper, we address this important question in the many-copy case. The inter-conversion process of entanglement is usually divided into two types: concentrating the entanglement from many partially entangled states into a smaller number of maximally entangled states (i.e., singlets) and the reverse process of diluting singlets into partially entangled states. It is known that entanglement concentration requires no classical communication, but the best prior art result for diluting to N copies of a partially entangled state requires an amount of communication on the order of /spl radic/N. Our main result is to prove that this prior art result is optimal up to a constant factor; any procedure for approximately creating N partially entangled states from singlets requires /spl Omega/(/spl radic/N) bits of classical communication. Previously not even a constant bound was known for approximate entanglement transformations. We also prove a lower bound on the inefficiency of the process: to dilute singlets to N copies of a partially entangled state, the entropy of entanglement must decrease by /spl Omega/(/spl radic/N). Moreover, we introduce two new tools - /spl delta/-significant subspaces and the standard form protocol reduction in entanglement manipulations. We hope that these two new tools will be useful in other work in quantum information theory.

We study the local distinguishability of general multiqubit states and show that local projective measurements and classical communication are as powerful as the most general local measurements and classical communication. Remarkably, this indicates that the local distinguishability of multiqubit states can be decided efficiently. Another useful consequence is that a set of orthogonal $n$-qubit states is locally distinguishable only if the summation of their orthogonal Schmidt numbers is less than the total dimension ${2}^{n}$. Employing these results, we show that any orthonormal basis of a subspace spanned by arbitrary three-qubit orthogonal unextendible product bases (UPB) cannot be exactly distinguishable by local operations and classical communication. This not only reveals another intrinsic property of three-qubit orthogonal UPB but also provides a class of locally indistinguishable subspaces with dimension $4$. We also explicitly construct locally indistinguishable subspaces with dimensions $3$ and $5$, respectively. Similar to the bipartite case, these results on multipartite locally indistinguishable subspaces can be used to estimate the one-shot environment-assisted classical capacity of a class of quantum broadcast channels.

Quantum Energy Teleportation without Classical Communication