2,198 research outputs found
Electromagnetic channel capacity for practical purposes
We give analytic upper bounds to the channel capacity C for transmission of
classical information in electromagnetic channels (bosonic channels with
thermal noise). In the practically relevant regimes of high noise and low
transmissivity, by comparison with know lower bounds on C, our inequalities
determine the value of the capacity up to corrections which are irrelevant for
all practical purposes. Examples of such channels are radio communication,
infrared or visible-wavelength free space channels. We also provide bounds to
active channels that include amplification.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. NB: the capacity bounds are constructed by
generalizing to the multi-mode case the minimum-output entropy bounds of
arXiv:quant-ph/0404005 [Phys. Rev. A 70, 032315 (2004)
Inequalities for quantum channels assisted by limited resources
The information capacities and ``distillability'' of a quantum channel are
studied in the presence of auxiliary resources. These include prior
entanglement shared between the sender and receiver and free classical bits of
forward and backward communication. Inequalities and trade-off curves are
derived. In particular an alternative proof is given that in the absence of
feedback and shared entanglement, forward classical communication does not
increase the quantum capacity of a channel.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures (references updated, minor changes
Positioning and clock synchronization through entanglement
A method is proposed to employ entangled and squeezed light for determining
the position of a party and for synchronizing distant clocks. An accuracy gain
over analogous protocols that employ classical resources is demonstrated and a
quantum-cryptographic positioning application is given, which allows only
trusted parties to learn the position of whatever must be localized. The
presence of a lossy channel and imperfect photodetection is considered. The
advantages in using partially entangled states is discussed.Comment: Revised version. 9 pages, 6 figure
Normal form decomposition for Gaussian-to-Gaussian superoperators
In this paper we explore the set of linear maps sending the set of quantum
Gaussian states into itself. These maps are in general not positive, a feature
which can be exploited as a test to check whether a given quantum state belongs
to the convex hull of Gaussian states (if one of the considered maps sends it
into a non positive operator, the above state is certified not to belong to the
set). Generalizing a result known to be valid under the assumption of complete
positivity, we provide a characterization of these Gaussian-to-Gaussian (not
necessarily positive) superoperators in terms of their action on the
characteristic function of the inputs. For the special case of one-mode
mappings we also show that any Gaussian-to-Gaussian superoperator can be
expressed as a concatenation of a phase-space dilatation, followed by the
action of a completely positive Gaussian channel, possibly composed with a
transposition. While a similar decomposition is shown to fail in the multi-mode
scenario, we prove that it still holds at least under the further hypothesis of
homogeneous action on the covariance matrix
Imaging using quantum noise properties of light
We show that it is possible to estimate the shape of an object by measuring
only the fluctuations of a probing field, allowing us to expose the object to a
minimal light intensity. This scheme, based on noise measurements through
homodyne detection, is useful in the regime where the number of photons is low
enough that direct detection with a photodiode is difficult but high enough
such that photon counting is not an option. We generate a few-photon state of
multi-spatial-mode vacuum-squeezed twin beams using four-wave mixing and direct
one of these twin fields through a binary intensity mask whose shape is to be
imaged. Exploiting either the classical fluctuations in a single beam or
quantum correlations between the twin beams, we demonstrate that under some
conditions quantum correlations can provide an enhancement in sensitivity when
estimating the shape of the object
KCrF_3: Electronic Structure, Magnetic and Orbital Ordering from First Principles
The electronic, magnetic and orbital structures of KCrF_3 are determined in
all its recently identified crystallographic phases (cubic, tetragonal, and
monoclinic) with a set of {\it ab initio} LSDA and LSDA+U calculations. The
high-temperature undistorted cubic phase is metallic within the LSDA, but at
the LSDA+U level it is a Mott insulator with a gap of 1.72 eV. The tetragonal
and monoclinic phases of KCrF_3 exhibit cooperative Jahn-Teller distortions
concomitant with staggered 3x^2-r^2/3y^2-r^2 orbital order. We find that the
energy gain due to the Jahn-Teller distortion is 82/104 meV per chromium ion in
the tetragonal/monoclinic phase, respectively. These phases show A-type
magnetic ordering and have a bandgap of 2.48 eV. In this Mott insulating state
KCrF_3 has a substantial conduction bandwidth of 2.1 eV, leading to the
possibility for the kinetic energy of charge carriers in electron- or
hole-doped derivatives of KCrF_3 to overcome the polaron localization at low
temperatures, in analogy with the situation encountered in the colossal
magnetoresistive manganites.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figure
Evidence for the formation of a Mott state in potassium-intercalated pentacene
We investigate electronic transport through pentacene thin-films intercalated
with potassium. From temperature-dependent conductivity measurements we find
that potassium-intercalated pentacene shows metallic behavior in a broad range
of potassium concentrations. Surprisingly, the conductivity exhibits a
re-entrance into an insulating state when the potassium concentration is
increased past one atom per molecule. We analyze our observations theoretically
by means of electronic structure calculations, and we conclude that the
phenomenon originates from a Mott metal-insulator transition, driven by
electron-electron interactions.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Generating Entangled Two-Photon States with Coincident Frequencies
It is shown that parametric downconversion, with a short-duration pump pulse
and a long nonlinear crystal that is appropriately phase matched, can produce a
frequency-entangled biphoton state whose individual photons are coincident in
frequency. Quantum interference experiments which distinguish this state from
the familiar time-coincident biphoton state are described.Comment: Revised version (a typo was corrected) as published on PR
On the Interpretation of Energy as the Rate of Quantum Computation
Over the last few decades, developments in the physical limits of computing
and quantum computing have increasingly taught us that it can be helpful to
think about physics itself in computational terms. For example, work over the
last decade has shown that the energy of a quantum system limits the rate at
which it can perform significant computational operations, and suggests that we
might validly interpret energy as in fact being the speed at which a physical
system is "computing," in some appropriate sense of the word. In this paper, we
explore the precise nature of this connection. Elementary results in quantum
theory show that the Hamiltonian energy of any quantum system corresponds
exactly to the angular velocity of state-vector rotation (defined in a certain
natural way) in Hilbert space, and also to the rate at which the state-vector's
components (in any basis) sweep out area in the complex plane. The total angle
traversed (or area swept out) corresponds to the action of the Hamiltonian
operator along the trajectory, and we can also consider it to be a measure of
the "amount of computational effort exerted" by the system, or effort for
short. For any specific quantum or classical computational operation, we can
(at least in principle) calculate its difficulty, defined as the minimum effort
required to perform that operation on a worst-case input state, and this in
turn determines the minimum time required for quantum systems to carry out that
operation on worst-case input states of a given energy. As examples, we
calculate the difficulty of some basic 1-bit and n-bit quantum and classical
operations in an simple unconstrained scenario.Comment: Revised to address reviewer comments. Corrects an error relating to
time-ordering, adds some additional references and discussion, shortened in a
few places. Figures now incorporated into tex
Bosonic quantum communication across arbitrarily high loss channels
A general attenuator is a bosonic quantum channel
that acts by combining the input with a fixed environment state in a
beam splitter of transmissivity . If is a thermal state the
resulting channel is a thermal attenuator, whose quantum capacity vanishes for
. We study the quantum capacity of these objects for generic
, proving a number of unexpected results. Most notably, we show that
for any arbitrary value of there exists a suitable single-mode
state such that the quantum capacity of
is larger than a universal constant . Our
result holds even when we fix an energy constraint at the input of the channel,
and implies that quantum communication at a constant rate is possible even in
the limit of arbitrarily low transmissivity, provided that the environment
state is appropriately controlled. We also find examples of states
such that the quantum capacity of is not monotonic in
. These findings may have implications for the study of communication
lines running across integrated optical circuits, of which general attenuators
provide natural models.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures; v2 is very close to the published version. In
the SM we added Section I.D, on the comparison between quantum communication
and non-locality distribution, and Section V, where we discuss a possible
extension of our main result (Thm. 2
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