313 research outputs found
How to perform the most accurate possible phase measurements
We present the theory of how to achieve phase measurements with the minimum
possible variance in ways that are readily implementable with current
experimental techniques. Measurements whose statistics have high-frequency
fringes, such as those obtained from NOON states, have commensurately high
information yield. However this information is also highly ambiguous because it
does not distinguish between phases at the same point on different fringes. We
provide schemes to eliminate this phase ambiguity in a highly efficient way,
providing phase estimates with uncertainty that is within a small constant
factor of the Heisenberg limit, the minimum allowed by the laws of quantum
mechanics. These techniques apply to NOON state and multi-pass interferometry,
as well as phase measurements in quantum computing. We have reported the
experimental implementation of some of these schemes with multi-pass
interferometry elsewhere. Here we present the theoretical foundation, and also
present some new experimental results. There are three key innovations to the
theory in this paper. First, we examine the intrinsic phase properties of the
sequence of states (in multiple time modes) via the equivalent two-mode state.
Second, we identify the key feature of the equivalent state that enables the
optimal scaling of the intrinsic phase uncertainty to be obtained. This enables
us to identify appropriate combinations of states to use. The remaining
difficulty is that the ideal phase measurements to achieve this intrinic phase
uncertainty are often not physically realizable. The third innovation is to
solve this problem by using realizable measurements that closely approximate
the optimal measurements, enabling the optimal scaling to be preserved.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures; new general definition of resource
Multiple-copy state discrimination: Thinking globally, acting locally
We theoretically investigate schemes to discriminate between two
nonorthogonal quantum states given multiple copies. We consider a number of
state discrimination schemes as applied to nonorthogonal, mixed states of a
qubit. In particular, we examine the difference that local and global
optimization of local measurements makes to the probability of obtaining an
erroneous result, in the regime of finite numbers of copies , and in the
asymptotic limit as . Five schemes are considered:
optimal collective measurements over all copies, locally optimal local
measurements in a fixed single-qubit measurement basis, globally optimal fixed
local measurements, locally optimal adaptive local measurements, and globally
optimal adaptive local measurements. Here, adaptive measurements are those for
which the measurement basis can depend on prior measurement results. For each
of these measurement schemes we determine the probability of error (for finite
) and scaling of this error in the asymptotic limit. In the asymptotic
limit, adaptive schemes have no advantage over the optimal fixed local scheme,
and except for states with less than 2% mixture, the most naive scheme (locally
optimal fixed local measurements) is as good as any noncollective scheme. For
finite , however, the most sophisticated local scheme (globally optimal
adaptive local measurements) is better than any other noncollective scheme, for
any degree of mixture.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figure
Mixed state discrimination using optimal control
We present theory and experiment for the task of discriminating two
nonorthogonal states, given multiple copies. We implement several local
measurement schemes, on both pure states and states mixed by depolarizing
noise. We find that schemes which are optimal (or have optimal scaling) without
noise perform worse with noise than simply repeating the optimal single-copy
measurement. Applying optimal control theory, we derive the globally optimal
local measurement strategy, which outperforms all other local schemes, and
experimentally implement it for various levels of noise.Comment: Corrected ref 1 date; 4 pages & 4 figures + 2 pages & 3 figures
supplementary materia
Preparation contextuality powers parity-oblivious multiplexing
In a noncontextual hidden variable model of quantum theory, hidden variables
determine the outcomes of every measurement in a manner that is independent of
how the measurement is implemented. Using a generalization of this notion to
arbitrary operational theories and to preparation procedures, we demonstrate
that a particular two-party information-processing task, "parity-oblivious
multiplexing," is powered by contextuality in the sense that there is a limit
to how well any theory described by a noncontextual hidden variable model can
perform. This bound constitutes a "noncontextuality inequality" that is
violated by quantum theory. We report an experimental violation of this
inequality in good agreement with the quantum predictions. The experimental
results also provide the first demonstration of 2-to-1 and 3-to-1 quantum
random access codes. Consequently, our experimental results also demonstrate
better-than-classical performance for this task. They also represent the first
demonstration of 2-to-1 and 3-to-1 quantum random access codes.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures; published version with supplementary material
included as appendice
Repressive and non-repressive chromatin at native telomeres in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In <it>Saccharomyces cerevisiae </it>genes that are located close to a telomere can become transcriptionally repressed by an epigenetic process known as telomere position effect. There is large variation in the level of the telomere position effect among telomeres, with many native ends exhibiting little repression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Chromatin analysis, using microccocal nuclease and indirect end labelling, reveals distinct patterns for ends with different silencing states. Differences were observed in the promoter accessibility of a subtelomeric reporter gene and a characteristic array of phased nucleosomes was observed on the centromere proximal side of core X at a repressive end. The silent information regulator proteins 2 - 4, the yKu heterodimer and the subtelomeric core X element are all required for the maintenance of the chromatin structure of repressive ends. However, gene deletions of particular histone modification proteins can eliminate the silencing without the disruption of this chromatin structure.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our data identifies chromatin features that correlate with the silencing state and indicate that an array of phased nucleosomes is not sufficient for full repression.</p
Testing sequential quantum measurements: how can maximal knowledge be extracted?
The extraction of information from a quantum system unavoidably implies a
modification of the measured system itself. It has been demonstrated recently
that partial measurements can be carried out in order to extract only a portion
of the information encoded in a quantum system, at the cost of inducing a
limited amount of disturbance. Here we analyze experimentally the dynamics of
sequential partial measurements carried out on a quantum system, focusing on
the trade-off between the maximal information extractable and the disturbance.
In particular we consider two different regimes of measurement, demonstrating
that, by exploiting an adaptive strategy, an optimal trade-off between the two
quantities can be found, as observed in a single measurement process. Such
experimental result, achieved for two sequential measurements, can be extended
to N measurement processes.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
The Glass Transition Temperature of Water: A Simulation Study
We report a computer simulation study of the glass transition for water. To
mimic the difference between standard and hyperquenched glass, we generate
glassy configurations with different cooling rates and calculate the
dependence of the specific heat on heating. The absence of crystallization
phenomena allows us, for properly annealed samples, to detect in the specific
heat the simultaneous presence of a weak pre-peak (``shadow transition''), and
an intense glass transition peak at higher temperature.
We discuss the implications for the currently debated value of the glass
transition temperature of water. We also compare our simulation results with
the Tool-Narayanaswamy-Moynihan phenomenological model.Comment: submitted to Phys. Re
Demonstration of Controllable Temporal Distinguishability in a Three-Photon State
Multi-photon interference is at the heart of the recently proposed linear
optical quantum computing scheme and plays an essential role in many protocols
in quantum information. Indistinguishability is what leads to the effect of
quantum interference. Optical interferometers such as Michaelson interferometer
provide a measure for second-order coherence at one-photon level and
Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer was widely employed to describe two-photon
entanglement and indistinguishability. However, there is not an effective way
for a system of more than two photons. Recently, a new interferometric scheme
was proposed to quantify the degree of multi-photon distinguishability. Here we
report an experiment to implement the scheme for three-photon case. We are able
to generate three photons with different degrees of temporal distinguishability
and demonstrate how to characterize them by the visibility of three-photon
interference. This method of quantitative description of multi-photon
indistinguishability will have practical implications in the implementation of
quantum information protocols
Heralded Noiseless Amplification of a Photon Polarization Qubit
Non-deterministic noiseless amplification of a single mode can circumvent the
unique challenges to amplifying a quantum signal, such as the no-cloning
theorem, and the minimum noise cost for deterministic quantum state
amplification. However, existing devices are not suitable for amplifying the
fundamental optical quantum information carrier, a qubit coherently encoded
across two optical modes. Here, we construct a coherent two-mode amplifier, to
demonstrate the first heralded noiseless linear amplification of a qubit
encoded in the polarization state of a single photon. In doing so, we increase
the transmission fidelity of a realistic qubit channel by up to a factor of
five. Qubit amplifiers promise to extend the range of secure quantum
communication and other quantum information science and technology protocols.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
Super-resolving phase measurements with a multi-photon entangled state
Using a linear optical elements and post-selection, we construct an entangled
polarization state of three photons in the same spatial mode. This state is
analogous to a ``photon-number path entangled state'' and can be used for
super-resolving interferometry. Measuring a birefringent phase shift, we
demonstrate two- and three-fold improvements in phase resolution.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
- …