Limits to clock synchronization induced by completely dephasing communication channels

Clock synchronization procedures are analyzed in the presence of imperfect communications. In this context we show that there are physical limitations which prevent one from synchronizing distant clocks when the intervening medium is completely dephasing, as in the case of a rapidly varying dispersive medium.Comment: 6 Pages. Revised version as published in PR

The role of entanglement in dynamical evolution

Entanglement or entanglement generating interactions permit to achieve the maximum allowed speed in the dynamical evolution of a composite system, when the energy resources are distributed among subsystems. The cases of pre-existing entanglement and of entanglement-building interactions are separately addressed. The role of classical correlations is also discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Revised versio

Quantum channels and their entropic characteristics

One of the major achievements of the recently emerged quantum information theory is the introduction and thorough investigation of the notion of quantum channel which is a basic building block of any data-transmitting or data-processing system. This development resulted in an elaborated structural theory and was accompanied by the discovery of a whole spectrum of entropic quantities, notably the channel capacities, characterizing information-processing performance of the channels. This paper gives a survey of the main properties of quantum channels and of their entropic characterization, with a variety of examples for finite dimensional quantum systems. We also touch upon the "continuous-variables" case, which provides an arena for quantum Gaussian systems. Most of the practical realizations of quantum information processing were implemented in such systems, in particular based on principles of quantum optics. Several important entropic quantities are introduced and used to describe the basic channel capacity formulas. The remarkable role of the specific quantum correlations - entanglement - as a novel communication resource, is stressed.Comment: review article, 60 pages, 5 figures, 194 references; Rep. Prog. Phys. (in press

Radiation Pressure Induced Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox

We demonstrate the appearance of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox when a radiation field impinges on a movable mirror. The, the possibility of a local realism test within a pendular Fabry-Perot cavity is shown to be feasible.Comment: 4 pages ReVTeX, 1 eps figur

Bosonic Memory Channels

We discuss a Bosonic channel model with memory effects. It relies on a multi-mode squeezed (entangled) environment's state. The case of lossy Bosonic channels is analyzed in detail. We show that in the absence of input energy constraints the memory channels are equivalent to their memoryless counterparts. In the case of input energy constraint we provide lower and upper bounds for the memory channel capacity.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Quantum state majorization at the output of bosonic Gaussian channels

Quantum communication theory explores the implications of quantum mechanics to the tasks of information transmission. Many physical channels can be formally described as quantum Gaussian operations acting on bosonic quantum states. Depending on the input state and on the quality of the channel, the output suffers certain amount of noise. For a long time it has been conjectured, but never proved, that output states of Gaussian channels corresponding to coherent input signals are the less noisy ones (in the sense of a majorization criterion). In this work we prove this conjecture. Specifically we show that every output state of a phase insensitive Gaussian channel is majorized by the output state corresponding to a coherent input. The proof is based on the optimality of coherent states for the minimization of strictly concave output functionals. Moreover we show that coherent states are the unique optimizers.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure. Published versio

A solution of the Gaussian optimizer conjecture

The long-standing conjectures of the optimality of Gaussian inputs for Gaussian channel and Gaussian additivity are solved for a broad class of covariant or contravariant Bosonic Gaussian channels (which includes in particular thermal, additive classical noise, and amplifier channels) restricting to the class of states with finite second moments. We show that the vacuum is the input state which minimizes the entropy at the output of such channels. This allows us to show also that the classical capacity of these channels (under the input energy constraint) is additive and is achieved by Gaussian encodings.Comment: 24 pages, no figures (minor typos corrected

Quantum metrology

We point out a general framework that encompasses most cases in which quantum effects enable an increase in precision when estimating a parameter (quantum metrology). The typical quantum precision-enhancement is of the order of the square root of the number of times the system is sampled. We prove that this is optimal and we point out the different strategies (classical and quantum) that permit to attain this bound.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Quantum MERA Channels

Tensor networks representations of many-body quantum systems can be described in terms of quantum channels. We focus on channels associated with the Multi-scale Entanglement Renormalization Ansatz (MERA) tensor network that has been recently introduced to efficiently describe critical systems. Our approach allows us to compute the MERA correspondent to the thermodynamic limit of a critical system introducing a transfer matrix formalism, and to relate the system critical exponents to the convergence rates of the associated channels.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Sub-Heisenberg estimation strategies are ineffective

In interferometry, sub-Heisenberg strategies claim to achieve a phase estimation error smaller than the inverse of the mean number of photons employed (Heisenberg bound). Here we show that one can achieve a comparable precision without performing any measurement, just using the large prior information that sub-Heisenberg strategies require. For uniform prior (i.e. no prior information), we prove that these strategies cannot achieve more than a fixed gain of about 1.73 over Heisenberg-limited interferometry. Analogous results hold for arbitrary single-mode prior distributions. These results extend also beyond interferometry: the effective error in estimating any parameter is lower bounded by a quantity proportional to the inverse expectation value (above a ground state) of the generator of translations of the parameter.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, revised version that was publishe