Improving gas sensing properties of graphene by introducing dopants and defects: a first-principles study

The interactions between four different graphenes (including pristine, B- or N-doped and defective graphenes) and small gas molecules (CO, NO, NO2 and NH3) were investigated by using density functional computations to exploit their potential applications as gas sensors. The structural and electronic properties of the graphene-molecule adsorption adducts are strongly dependent on the graphene structure and the molecular adsorption configuration. All four gas molecules show much stronger adsorption on the doped or defective graphenes than that on the pristine graphene. The defective graphene shows the highest adsorption energy with CO, NO and NO2 molecules, while the B- doped graphene gives the tightest binding with NH3. Meanwhile, the strong interactions between the adsorbed molecules and the modified graphenes induce dramatic changes to graphene's electronic properties. The transport behavior of a gas sensor using B- doped graphene shows a sensitivity two orders of magnitude higher than that of pristine graphene. This work reveals that the sensitivity of graphene-based chemical gas sensors could be drastically improved by introducing the appropriate dopant or defect

An arbitrated quantum signature scheme

The general principle for a quantum signature scheme is proposed and investigated based on ideas from classical signature schemes and quantum cryptography. The suggested algorithm is implemented by a symmetrical quantum key cryptosystem and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) triplet states and relies on the availability of an arbitrator. We can guarantee the unconditional security of the algorithm, mostly due to the correlation of the GHZ triplet states and the use of quantum one-time pads.Comment: 10 pages, no figures. Phys. Rev. A 65, (In press

Faithful remote state preparation using finite classical bits and a non-maximally entangled state

We present many ensembles of states that can be remotely prepared by using minimum classical bits from Alice to Bob and their previously shared entangled state and prove that we have found all the ensembles in two-dimensional case. Furthermore we show that any pure quantum state can be remotely and faithfully prepared by using finite classical bits from Alice to Bob and their previously shared nonmaximally entangled state though no faithful quantum teleportation protocols can be achieved by using a nonmaximally entangled state.Comment: 6 page

On the Interpretation of Energy as the Rate of Quantum Computation

Over the last few decades, developments in the physical limits of computing and quantum computing have increasingly taught us that it can be helpful to think about physics itself in computational terms. For example, work over the last decade has shown that the energy of a quantum system limits the rate at which it can perform significant computational operations, and suggests that we might validly interpret energy as in fact being the speed at which a physical system is "computing," in some appropriate sense of the word. In this paper, we explore the precise nature of this connection. Elementary results in quantum theory show that the Hamiltonian energy of any quantum system corresponds exactly to the angular velocity of state-vector rotation (defined in a certain natural way) in Hilbert space, and also to the rate at which the state-vector's components (in any basis) sweep out area in the complex plane. The total angle traversed (or area swept out) corresponds to the action of the Hamiltonian operator along the trajectory, and we can also consider it to be a measure of the "amount of computational effort exerted" by the system, or effort for short. For any specific quantum or classical computational operation, we can (at least in principle) calculate its difficulty, defined as the minimum effort required to perform that operation on a worst-case input state, and this in turn determines the minimum time required for quantum systems to carry out that operation on worst-case input states of a given energy. As examples, we calculate the difficulty of some basic 1-bit and n-bit quantum and classical operations in an simple unconstrained scenario.Comment: Revised to address reviewer comments. Corrects an error relating to time-ordering, adds some additional references and discussion, shortened in a few places. Figures now incorporated into tex

Continuous-variable Werner state: separability, nonlocality, squeezing and teleportation

We investigate the separability, nonlocality and squeezing of continuous-variable analogue of the Werner state: a mixture of pure two-mode squeezed vacuum state with local thermal radiations. Utilizing this Werner state, coherent-state teleportation in Braunstein-Kimble setup is discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Dynamics of Entanglement in One-Dimensional Spin Systems

We study the dynamics of quantum correlations in a class of exactly solvable Ising-type models. We analyze in particular the time evolution of initial Bell states created in a fully polarized background and on the ground state. We find that the pairwise entanglement propagates with a velocity proportional to the reduced interaction for all the four Bell states. Singlet-like states are favored during the propagation, in the sense that triplet-like states change their character during the propagation under certain circumstances. Characteristic for the anisotropic models is the instantaneous creation of pairwise entanglement from a fully polarized state; furthermore, the propagation of pairwise entanglement is suppressed in favor of a creation of different types of entanglement. The ``entanglement wave'' evolving from a Bell state on the ground state turns out to be very localized in space-time. Further support to a recently formulated conjecture on entanglement sharing is given.Comment: 25 pages, 21 figures; revte

Generation of atom-photon entangled states in atomic Bose-Einstein condensate via electromagnetically induced transparency

In this paper, we present a method to generate continuous-variable-type entangled states between photons and atoms in atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The proposed method involves an atomic BEC with three internal states, a weak quantized probe laser and a strong classical coupling laser, which form a three-level Lambda-shaped BEC system. We consider a situation where the BEC is in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with the coupling laser being much stronger than the probe laser. In this case, the upper and intermediate levels are unpopulated, so that their adiabatic elimination enables an effective two-mode model involving only the atomic field at the lowest internal level and the quantized probe laser field. Atom-photon quantum entanglement is created through laser-atom and inter-atomic interactions, and two-photon detuning. We show how to generate atom-photon entangled coherent states and entangled states between photon (atom) coherent states and atom-(photon-) macroscopic quantum superposition (MQS) states, and between photon-MQS and atom-MQS states.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Analysis of the vector and axialvector BcB_c mesons with QCD sum rules

In this article, we study the vector and axialvector $B_c$ mesons with the QCD sum rules, and make reasonable predictions for the masses and decay constants, then calculate the leptonic decay widths. The present predictions for the masses and decay constants can be confronted with the experimental data in the future. We can also take the masses and decay constants as basic input parameters and study other phenomenological quantities with the three-point vacuum correlation functions via the QCD sum rules.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figure

Inhibiting decoherence via ancilla processes

General conditions are derived for preventing the decoherence of a single two-state quantum system (qubit) in a thermal bath. The employed auxiliary systems required for this purpose are merely assumed to be weak for the general condition while various examples such as extra qubits and extra classical fields are studied for applications in quantum information processing. The general condition is confirmed with well known approaches towards inhibiting decoherence. A novel approach for decoherence-free quantum memories and quantum operations is presented by placing the qubit into the center of a sphere with extra qubits on its surface.Comment: pages 8, Revtex