Entanglement as a resource for discrimination of classical environments

We address extended systems interacting with classical fluctuating environments and analyze the use of quantum probes to discriminate local noise, described by independent fluctuating fields, from common noise, corresponding to the interaction with a common one. In particular, we consider a bipartite system made of two non interacting harmonic oscillators and assess discrimination strategies based on homodyne detection, comparing their performances with the ultimate bounds on the error probabilities of quantum-limited measurements. We analyze in details the use of Gaussian probes, with emphasis on experimentally friendly signals. Our results show that a joint measurement of the position-quadrature on the two oscillators outperforms any other homodyne-based scheme for any input Gaussian state

Large Deviations Performance of Consensus+Innovations Distributed Detection with Non-Gaussian Observations

We establish the large deviations asymptotic performance (error exponent) of consensus+innovations distributed detection over random networks with generic (non-Gaussian) sensor observations. At each time instant, sensors 1) combine theirs with the decision variables of their neighbors (consensus) and 2) assimilate their new observations (innovations). This paper shows for general non-Gaussian distributions that consensus+innovations distributed detection exhibits a phase transition behavior with respect to the network degree of connectivity. Above a threshold, distributed is as good as centralized, with the same optimal asymptotic detection performance, but, below the threshold, distributed detection is suboptimal with respect to centralized detection. We determine this threshold and quantify the performance loss below threshold. Finally, we show the dependence of the threshold and performance on the distribution of the observations: distributed detectors over the same random network, but with different observations' distributions, for example, Gaussian, Laplace, or quantized, may have different asymptotic performance, even when the corresponding centralized detectors have the same asymptotic performance.Comment: 30 pages, journal, submitted Nov 17, 2011; revised Apr 3, 201

Quantum reading of digital memory with non-Gaussian entangled light

It has been shown recently (Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 090504 (2011)) that entangled light with Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlations retrieves information from digital memory better than any classical light. In identifying this, a model of digital memory with each cell consisting of reflecting medium with two reflectivities (each memory cell encoding the binary numbers 0 or 1) is employed. The readout of binary memory essentially corresponds to discrimination of two Bosonic attenuator channels characterized by different reflectivities. The model requires an entire mathematical paraphernalia of continuous variable Gaussian setting for its analysis, when arbitrary values of reflectivities are considered. Here we restrict to a basic quantum read-out mechanism with non-Gaussian entangled states of light, with the binary channels to be discriminated being ideal memory characterized by reflectivity one i.e., an identity channel and thermal noise channel, where the signal light illuminating the memory location gets completely lost (zero reflectivity) and only a white thermal noise hitting the upper side of the memory reaches the decoder. We compare the quantum reading efficiency of entangled light with any classical source of light in this model. We show that entangled transmitters offer better reading performance than any classical transmitters of light in the regime of low signal intensity.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, To appear in Phys. Rev.