QMetro++ is a Python package that provides a set of tools for identifying optimal estimation protocols that maximize quantum Fisher information (QFI). Optimization can be performed for arbitrary configurations of input states, parameter-encoding channels, noise correlations, control operations, and measurements. The use of tensor networks and an iterative see-saw algorithm allows for an efficient optimization even in the regime of a large number of channel uses ( N ≈ 100 ). Additionally, the package includes implementations of the recently developed methods for computing fundamental upper bounds on QFI, which serve as benchmarks for assessing the optimality of numerical optimization results. All functionalities are wrapped up in a user-friendly interface which enables the definition of strategies at various levels of detail.

We propose an efficient protocol to realize multi-qubit gates in arrays of neutral atoms. The atoms encode qubits in the long-lived hyperfine sublevels of the ground electronic state. To realize the gate, we apply a global laser pulse to transfer the atoms to a Rydberg state with strong blockade interaction that suppresses simultaneous excitation of neighboring atoms arranged in a star-graph configuration. The number of Rydberg excitations, and thereby the parity of the resulting state, depends on the multiqubit input state. Upon changing the sign of the interaction and de-exciting the atoms with an identical laser pulse, the system acquires a geometric phase that depends only on the parity of the excited state, while the dynamical phase is completely canceled. Using single qubit rotations, this transformation can be converted to the C k Z or C k NOT quantum gate for k + 1 atoms. We also present extensions of the scheme to implement quantum gates between distant atomic qubits connected by a quantum bus consisting of a chain of atoms.

Recent theoretical results in quantum machine learning have demonstrated a general trade-off between the expressive power of quantum neural networks (QNNs) and their trainability; as a corollary of these results, practical exponential separations in expressive power over classical machine learning models are believed to be infeasible as such QNNs take a time to train that is exponential in the model size. We here circumvent these negative results by constructing a hierarchy of efficiently trainable QNNs that exhibit unconditionally provable, polynomial memory separations of arbitrary constant degree over classical neural networks—including state-of-the-art models, such as Transformers—in performing a classical sequence modeling task. This construction is also computationally efficient, as each unit cell of the introduced class of QNNs only has constant gate complexity. We show that contextuality—informally, a quantitative notion of semantic ambiguity—is the source of the expressivity separation, suggesting that other learning tasks with this property may be a natural setting for the use of quantum learning algorithms.

We demonstrate a fundamental relation between the structures of physical space and of quantum theory: the set of quantum correlations in a rotational prepare-and-measure scenario can be derived from covariance alone, without assuming quantum physics. To show this, we consider a semi-device-independent randomness generation scheme where one of two spatial rotations is performed on an otherwise uncharacterized preparation device, and one of two possible measurement outcomes is subsequently obtained. An upper bound on a theory-independent notion of spin is assumed for the transmitted physical system. It turns out that this determines the set of quantum correlations and the amount of certifiable randomness in this setup exactly. Interestingly, this yields the basis of a theory-independent protocol for the secure generation of random numbers. Our results support the conjecture that the symmetries of space and time determine at least part of the probabilistic structure of quantum theory.

There has been a recent surge of interest within the field of quantum foundations regarding incorporating ideas from general relativity and quantum gravity. However, many quantum information tools remain agnostic to the underlying spacetime. For instance, whenever we draw a quantum circuit the effective spacetime imposed by the connectivity of the physical qubits which will realize this circuit is not taken into account. In this work, we aim to address this limitation by extending the framework of process theories to include a background spacetime structure. We introduce the notion of process implementations, i.e., decompositions of a process. A process is then embeddable if and only if one of its implementations can be embedded in such a way that all the component processes are localized and all wires follow timelike paths. While conceptually simple, checking for embeddability is generally computationally intractable. We therefore work towards simplifying this problem as much as possible, identifying a canonical subset of implementations that determine both the embeddability of a process and the causal structures distinguishable at least in some process theory. Notably, we discover countably infinite ''zigzag'' causal structures beyond those typically considered. While these can be ignored in classical theory, they seem to be essential in quantum theory, as the quantum CNOT gate can be implemented by all zigzag structures but not in a standard causal structure, except in the trivial undecomposed way. These zigzags could be significant for quantum causal modeling and the study of novel quantum resources.

We present a novel approach to quantizing Markov chains. The approach is based on the Markov chain coupling method, which is frequently used to prove fast mixing. Given a particular coupling, e.g., a grand coupling, we construct a completely positive and trace preserving map. This quantum map has a unique fixed point, which corresponds to the quantum sample (qsample) of the classical Markov chain's stationary distribution. We show that the convergence time of the quantum map is directly related to the coupling time of the Markov chain coupling.

The Entropy Accumulation Theorem (EAT) was introduced to significantly improve the finite-size rates for device-independent quantum information processing tasks such as device-independent quantum key distribution (QKD). A natural question would be whether it also improves the rates for device-dependent QKD. In this work, we provide an affirmative answer to this question. We present new tools for applying the EAT in the device-dependent setting. We present sufficient conditions for the Markov chain conditions to hold as well as general algorithms for constructing the needed min-tradeoff function. Utilizing Dupuis' recent privacy amplification without smoothing result, we improve the key rate by optimizing the sandwiched Rényi entropy directly rather than considering the traditional smooth min-entropy. We exemplify these new tools by considering several examples including the BB84 protocol with the qubit-based version and with a realistic parametric down-conversion source, the six-state four-state protocol and a high-dimensional analog of the BB84 protocol.

We propose a Bell test experiment using momentum-entangled atom pairs of different masses, specifically metastable helium isotopes 3 H e ∗ and 4 H e ∗ , though the method extends to other atom species. Entanglement is generated via collisions, after which the quantum states are manipulated using two independent atom interferometers, enabling precise phase control over each species. Numerical simulations predict a significant violation of Bell's inequality under realistic conditions. This proposal opens a new paradigm to study the intersection of quantum mechanics and gravity.

The existence and degeneracies of quantum exceptional, diabolical, and hybrid (i.e., diabolically degenerated exceptional) singularities of simple bosonic systems composed of up to five modes with damping and/or amplification are analyzed. Their dynamics governed by quadratic non-Hermitian Hamiltonians is followed using the Heisenberg-Langevin equations. Their dynamical matrices generally exhibit specific structures that allow for an effective reduction of their dimension by half. This facilitates analytical treatment and enables efficient spectral analysis based on characteristic second-order diabolical degeneracies. Conditions for the observation of inherited quantum hybrid points, observed directly in the dynamics of field operators, having up to third-order exceptional and second-order diabolical degeneracies are revealed. Surprisingly, exceptional degeneracies of only second and third orders are revealed, even though the systems with up to five modes are considered. Exceptional and diabolical genuine points and their degeneracies observed in the dynamics of second-order field-operator moments are also analyzed. Each analyzed bosonic system exhibits its own unique and complex dynamical behavior.

Nonlocal tests on multi-partite quantum correlations form the basis of protocols that certify randomness in a device-independent (DI) way. Such correlations admit a rich structure, making the task of choosing an appropriate test difficult. For example, extremal Bell inequalities are tight witnesses of nonlocality, but achieving their maximum violation places constraints on the underlying quantum system, which can reduce the rate of randomness generation. As a result there is often a trade-off between maximum randomness and the amount of violation of a given Bell inequality. Here, we explore this trade-off for more than two parties. More precisely, we study the maximum amount of randomness that can be certified by correlations with a particular violation of the Mermin-Ardehali-Belinskii-Klyshko (MABK) inequality. For any even number of parties, we find that maximum randomness cannot occur beyond a threshold quantum violation, which increases with the number of parties, and we give a conjectured form of the maximum randomness in terms of the MABK value. We also show that maximum randomness can be obtained for any MABK violation for odd numbers of parties. To obtain our results, we derive new families of Bell inequalities certifying maximum randomness from a technique for randomness certification, which we call "expanding Bell inequalities''. Our technique allows a bipartite Bell expression to be used as a seed, and transformed into a multi-partite Bell inequality tailored for randomness certification, showing how intuition learned in the bipartite case can find use in more complex scenarios.