Strong quantitative benchmarking of quantum optical devices

Quantum communication devices, such as quantum repeaters, quantum memories, or quantum channels, are unavoidably exposed to imperfections. However, the presence of imperfections can be tolerated, as long as we can verify such devices retain their quantum advantages. Benchmarks based on witnessing entanglement have proven useful for verifying the true quantum nature of these devices. The next challenge is to characterize how strongly a device is within the quantum domain. We present a method, based on entanglement measures and rigorous state truncation, which allows us to characterize the degree of quantumness of optical devices. This method serves as a quantitative extension to a large class of previously-known quantum benchmarks, requiring no additional information beyond what is already used for the non-quantitative benchmarks.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. Comments are welcome. ver 2: Improved figures, no changes to main tex

Entropy inequalities and Bell inequalities for two-qubit systems

Sufficient conditions for (the non-violation of) the Bell-CHSH inequalities in a mixed state of a two-qubit system are: 1) The linear entropy of the state is not smaller than 0.5, 2) The sum of the conditional linear entropies is non-negative, 3) The von Neumann entropy is not smaller than 0.833, 4) The sum of the conditional von Neumann entropies is not smaller than 0.280.Comment: Errors corrected. See L. Jakobcyk, quant-ph/040908

Optical implementation of continuous-variable quantum cloning machines

We propose an optical implementation of the Gaussian continuous-variable quantum cloning machines. We construct a symmetric N -> M cloner which optimally clones coherent states and we also provide an explicit design of an asymmetric 1 -> 2 cloning machine. All proposed cloning devices can be built from just a single non-degenerate optical parametric amplifier and several beam splitters.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, REVTe

Universal cloning of continuous quantum variables

The cloning of quantum variables with continuous spectra is analyzed. A universal - or Gaussian - quantum cloning machine is exhibited that copies equally well the states of two conjugate variables such as position and momentum. It also duplicates all coherent states with a fidelity of 2/3. More generally, the copies are shown to obey a no-cloning Heisenberg-like uncertainty relation.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex. Minor revisions, added explicit cloning transformation, added reference

Teleportation of two-mode squeezed states

We consider two-mode squeezed states which are parametrized by the squeezing parameter and the phase. We present a scheme for teleporting such entangled states of continuous variables from Alice to Bob. Our protocol is operationalized through the creation of a four-mode entangled state shared by Alice and Bob using linear amplifiers and beam splitters. Teleportation of the entangled state proceeds with local operations and the classical communication of four bits. We compute the fidelity of teleportation and find that it exhibits a trade-off with the magnitude of entanglement of the resultant teleported state.Comment: Revtex, 5 pages, 3 eps figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Directed percolation depinning models: Evolution equations

We present the microscopic equation for the growing interface with quenched noise for the model first presented by Buldyrev et al. [Phys. Rev. A 45, R8313 (1992)]. The evolution equation for the height, the mean height, and the roughness are reached in a simple way. The microscopic equation allows us to express these equations in two contributions: the contact and the local one. We compare this two contributions with the ones obtained for the Tang and Leschhorn model [Phys. Rev A 45, R8309 (1992)] by Braunstein et al. [Physica A 266, 308 (1999)]. Even when the microscopic mechanisms are quiet different in both model, the two contribution are qualitatively similar. An interesting result is that the diffusion contribution, in the Tang and Leschhorn model, and the contact one, in the Buldyrev model, leads to an increase of the roughness near the criticality.Comment: 10 pages and 4 figures. To be published in Phys. Rev.

Multi-Dimensional Hermite Polynomials in Quantum Optics

We study a class of optical circuits with vacuum input states consisting of Gaussian sources without coherent displacements such as down-converters and squeezers, together with detectors and passive interferometry (beam-splitters, polarisation rotations, phase-shifters etc.). We show that the outgoing state leaving the optical circuit can be expressed in terms of so-called multi-dimensional Hermite polynomials and give their recursion and orthogonality relations. We show how quantum teleportation of photon polarisation can be modelled using this description.Comment: 10 pages, submitted to J. Phys. A, removed spurious fil

Effect of Disorder Strength on Optimal Paths in Complex Networks

We study the transition between the strong and weak disorder regimes in the scaling properties of the average optimal path $\ell_{\rm opt}$ in a disordered Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi (ER) random network and scale-free (SF) network. Each link $i$ is associated with a weight $\tau_i\equiv\exp(a r_i)$, where $r_i$ is a random number taken from a uniform distribution between 0 and 1 and the parameter $a$ controls the strength of the disorder. We find that for any finite $a$, there is a crossover network size $N^*(a)$ at which the transition occurs. For $N \ll N^*(a)$ the scaling behavior of $\ell_{\rm opt}$ is in the strong disorder regime, with $\ell_{\rm opt} \sim N^{1/3}$ for ER networks and for SF networks with $\lambda \ge 4$, and $\ell_{\rm opt} \sim N^{(\lambda-3)/(\lambda-1)}$ for SF networks with $3 < \lambda < 4$. For $N \gg N^*(a)$ the scaling behavior is in the weak disorder regime, with $\ell_{\rm opt}\sim\ln N$ for ER networks and SF networks with $\lambda > 3$. In order to study the transition we propose a measure which indicates how close or far the disordered network is from the limit of strong disorder. We propose a scaling ansatz for this measure and demonstrate its validity. We proceed to derive the scaling relation between $N^*(a)$ and $a$. We find that $N^*(a)\sim a^3$ for ER networks and for SF networks with $\lambda\ge 4$, and $N^*(a)\sim a^{(\lambda-1)/(\lambda-3)}$ for SF networks with $3 < \lambda < 4$.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. submitted to Phys. Rev.