On cyclic branched coverings of prime knots

We prove that a prime knot K is not determined by its p-fold cyclic branched cover for at most two odd primes p. Moreover, we show that for a given odd prime p, the p-fold cyclic branched cover of a prime knot K is the p-fold cyclic branched cover of at most one more knot K' non equivalent to K. To prove the main theorem, a result concerning the symmetries of knots is also obtained. This latter result can be interpreted as a characterisation of the trivial knot.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figure

Optimal State Merging Without Decoupling

We construct an optimal state merging protocol by adapting a recently-discovered optimal entanglement distillation protcol [Renes and Boileau, Phys. Rev. A . 73, 032335 (2008)]. The proof of optimality relies only on directly establishing sufficient "amplitude" and "phase" correlations between Alice and Bob and not on usual techniques of decoupling Alice from the environment. This strengthens the intuition from quantum error-correction that these two correlations are all that really matter in two-party quantum information processing.Comment: 10 pages, accepted contribution to TQC 200

Conjectured Strong Complementary Information Tradeoff

We conjecture a new entropic uncertainty principle governing the entropy of complementary observations made on a system given side information in the form of quantum states, generalizing the entropic uncertainty relation of Maassen and Uffink [Phys. Rev. Lett. 60, 1103 (1988)]. We prove a special case for certain conjugate observables by adapting a similar result found by Christandl and Winter pertaining to quantum channels [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 51, 3159 (2005)], and discuss possible applications of this result to the decoupling of quantum systems and for security analysis in quantum cryptography.Comment: 4 page

Scholarship Reconsidered: A Challenge to Use Teaching Portfolios to Document the Scholarship of Teaching

This article examines the use of teaching portfolios in documenting the scholarship of teaching in the U.S. Portfolios are generally three-ring binders that create teaching records including most often three types of materials: products of good teaching; material from oneself; materials from others. The major contribution most advocates of portfolios mention is the perceived improvement of teaching. Portfolios increase reflection and action about teaching by: giving focus on teaching as part of a professor\u27s expected activities; encouraging faculty to seek ways to improve their teaching by attending conference meetings on teaching, reading about teaching techniques, and creating discussions about teaching within the department and university; and stimulating formal and informal research on teaching

Robust Quantum Communication Using A Polarization-Entangled Photon Pair

Noise and imperfection of realistic devices are major obstacles for implementing quantum cryptography. In particular birefringence in optical fibers leads to decoherence of qubits encoded in polarization of photon. We show how to overcome this problem by doing single qubit quantum communication without a shared spatial reference frame and precise timing. Quantum information will be encoded in pair of photons using ``tag'' operations which corresponds to the time delay of one of the polarization modes. This method is robust against the phase instability of the interferometers despite the use of time-bins. Moreover synchronized clocks are not required in the ideal situation no photon loss case as they are only necessary to label the different encoded qubits.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Unconditional Security of Three State Quantum Key Distribution Protocols

Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols are cryptographic techniques with security based only on the laws of quantum mechanics. Two prominent QKD schemes are the BB84 and B92 protocols that use four and two quantum states, respectively. In 2000, Phoenix et al. proposed a new family of three state protocols that offers advantages over the previous schemes. Until now, an error rate threshold for security of the symmetric trine spherical code QKD protocol has only been shown for the trivial intercept/resend eavesdropping strategy. In this paper, we prove the unconditional security of the trine spherical code QKD protocol, demonstrating its security up to a bit error rate of 9.81%. We also discuss on how this proof applies to a version of the trine spherical code QKD protocol where the error rate is evaluated from the number of inconclusive events.Comment: 4 pages, published versio

On abstract commensurators of groups

We prove that the abstract commensurator of a nonabelian free group, an infinite surface group, or more generally of a group that splits appropriately over a cyclic subgroup, is not finitely generated. This applies in particular to all torsion-free word-hyperbolic groups with infinite outer automorphism group and abelianization of rank at least 2. We also construct a finitely generated, torsion-free group which can be mapped onto Z and which has a finitely generated commensurator.Comment: 13 pages, no figur

Topological Symmetry Groups of K_{4r+3}

We present the concept of the topological symmetry group as a way to analyze the symmetries of non-rigid molecules. Then we characterize all of the groups which can occur as the topological symmetry group of an embedding of the complete graph K_{4r+3} in S^3