Quantum cryptographic ranging

We present a system to measure the distance between two parties that allows only trusted people to access the result. The security of the protocol is guaranteed by the complementarity principle in quantum mechanics. The protocol can be realized with available technology, at least as a proof of principle experiment.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure. Contribution to the proceedings of the IV edition of the Garda Lake Workshop "Mysteries, Puzzles and Paradoxes in Quantum Mechanics

The time as an emergent property of quantum mechanics, a synthetic description of a first experimental approach

The "problem of time" in present physics substantially consists in the fact that a straightforward quantization of the general relativistic evolution equation and constraints generates for the Universe wave function the Wheeler-De Witt equation, which describes a static Universe. Page and Wootters considered the fact that there exist states of a system composed by entangled subsystems that are stationary, but one can interpret the component subsystems as evolving: this leads them to suppose that the global state of the universe can be envisaged as one of this static entangled state, whereas the state of the subsystems can evolve. Here we synthetically present an experiment, based on PDC polarization entangled photons, that allows showing with a practical example a situation where this idea works, i.e. a subsystem of an entangled state works as a "clock" of another subsystem

Noise, errors and information in quantum amplification

We analyze and compare the characterization of a quantum device in terms of noise, transmitted bit-error-rate (BER) and mutual information, showing how the noise description is meaningful only for Gaussian channels. After reviewing the description of a quantum communication channel, we study the insertion of an amplifier. We focus attention on the case of direct detection, where the linear amplifier has a 3 decibels noise figure, which is usually considered an unsurpassable limit, referred to as the standard quantum limit (SQL). Both noise and BER could be reduced using an ideal amplifier, which is feasible in principle. However, just a reduction of noise beyond the SQL does not generally correspond to an improvement of the BER or of the mutual information. This is the case of a laser amplifier, where saturation can greatly reduce the noise figure, although there is no corresponding improvement of the BER. Such mechanism is illustrated on the basis of Monte Carlo simulations

Orthogonality relations in Quantum Tomography

Quantum estimation of the operators of a system is investigated by analyzing its Liouville space of operators. In this way it is possible to easily derive some general characterization for the sets of observables (i.e. the possible quorums) that are measured for the quantum estimation. In particular we analyze the reconstruction of operators of spin systems.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Ancilla-assisted schemes are beneficial for Gaussian state phase estimation

We study interferometry with Gaussian states and show that an ancilla-assisted scheme outperforms coherent state interferometry for all levels of loss. We also compare the ancilla-assisted scheme to other interferometric schemes involving squeezing, and show that it has the most advantage in the high-loss, high photon-number regime. In fact, in the presence of high loss, it outperforms many other strategies proposed to date. We find the optimal measurement observable for each scheme discussed. We also find that, with the appropriate measurement, the achievable precision of the proposal by Caves [Phys. Rev. D 23, 1693 (1981)] can be improved upon, and is less vulnerable to losses than previously thought