Asymmetric quantum cloning machines in any dimension

A family of asymmetric cloning machines for $N$-dimensional quantum states is introduced. These machines produce two imperfect copies of a single state that emerge from two distinct Heisenberg channels. The tradeoff between the quality of these copies is shown to result from a complementarity akin to Heisenberg uncertainty principle. A no-cloning inequality is derived for isotropic cloners: if $\pi_a$ and $\pi_b$ are the depolarizing fractions associated with the two copies, the domain in $(\sqrt{\pi_a},\sqrt{\pi_b})$-space located inside a particular ellipse representing close-to-perfect cloning is forbidden. More generally, a no-cloning uncertainty relation is discussed, quantifying the impossibility of copying imposed by quantum mechanics. Finally, an asymmetric Pauli cloning machine is defined that makes two approximate copies of a quantum bit, while the input-to-output operation underlying each copy is a (distinct) Pauli channel. The class of symmetric Pauli cloning machines is shown to provide an upper bound on the quantum capacity of the Pauli channel of probabilities $p_x$, $p_y$ and $p_z$.Comment: 18 pages RevTeX, 3 Postscript figures; new discussion on no-cloning uncertainty relations, several corrections, added reference

Understanding entanglement as resource: locally distinguishing unextendible product bases

It is known that the states in an unextendible product basis (UPB) cannot be distinguished perfectly when the parties are restricted to local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Previous discussions of such bases have left open the following question: What entanglement resources are necessary and/or sufficient for this task to be possible with LOCC? In this paper, I present protocols which use entanglement more efficiently than teleportation to distinguish certain classes of UPB's. The ideas underlying my approach to this problem offer rather general insight into why entanglement is useful for such tasks.Comment: Final, published version. Many revisions following very useful suggestions of the referee have been added. In particular, Appendix A has been completely rewritte

Detection and prevention of financial abuse against elders

This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund. Copyright @ The Authors. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 3.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/ by/3.0/legalcode.Purpose – This paper reports on banking and finance professionals' decision making in the context of elder financial abuse. The aim was to identify the case features that influence when abuse is identified and when action is taken. Design/methodology/approach – Banking and finance professionals (n=70) were shown 35 financial abuse case scenarios and were asked to judge how certain they were that the older person was being abused and the likelihood of taking action. Findings – Three case features significantly influenced certainty of financial abuse: the nature of the financial problem presented, the older person's level of mental capacity and who was in charge of the client's money. In cases where the older person was more confused and forgetful, there was increased suspicion that financial abuse was taking place. Finance professionals were less certain that financial abuse was occurring if the older person was in charge of his or her own finances. Originality/value – The research findings have been used to develop freely available online training resources to promote professionals' decision making capacity (www.elderfinancialabuse.co.uk). The resources have been advocated for use by Building Societies Association as well as CIFAS, the UK's Fraud Prevention Service.The research reported here was funded by the UK cross council New Dynamicsof Ageing Programme, ESRC Reference No. RES-352-25-0026, with Mary L.M. Gilhooly asPrincipal Investigator. Web-based training tools, developed from the research findings, weresubsequently funded by the ESRC follow-on fund ES/J001155/1 with Priscilla A. Harries asPrincipal Investigator

Singlet states and the estimation of eigenstates and eigenvalues of an unknown Controlled-U gate

We consider several problems that involve finding the eigenvalues and generating the eigenstates of unknown unitary gates. We first examine Controlled-U gates that act on qubits, and assume that we know the eigenvalues. It is then shown how to use singlet states to produce qubits in the eigenstates of the gate. We then remove the assumption that we know the eigenvalues and show how to both find the eigenvalues and produce qubits in the eigenstates. Finally, we look at the case where the unitary operator acts on qutrits and has eigenvalues of 1 and -1, where the eigenvalue 1 is doubly degenerate. The eigenstates are unknown. We are able to use a singlet state to produce a qutrit in the eigenstate corresponding to the -1 eigenvalue.Comment: Latex, 10 pages, no figure

Optimal probabilistic cloning and purification of quantum states

We investigate the probabilistic cloning and purification of quantum states. The performance of these probabilistic operations is quantified by the average fidelity between the ideal and actual output states. We provide a simple formula for the maximal achievable average fidelity and we explictly show how to construct a probabilistic operation that achieves this fidelity. We illustrate our method on several examples such as the phase covariant cloning of qubits, cloning of coherent states, and purification of qubits transmitted via depolarizing channel and amplitude damping channel. Our examples reveal that the probabilistic cloner may yield higher fidelity than the best deterministic cloner even when the states that should be cloned are linearly dependent and are drawn from a continuous set.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure

Several experimental realizations of symmetric phase-covariant quantum cloner of single-photon qubits

We compare several optical implementations of phase-covariant cloning machines. The experiments are based on copying of the polarization state of a single photon in bulk optics by special unbalanced beam splitter or by balanced beam splitter accompanied by a state filtering. Also the all-fiber based setup is discussed, where the information is encoded into spatial modes, i.e., the photon can propagate through two optical fibers. Each of the four implementations possesses some advantages and disadvantages that are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figure

A Topological Study of Contextuality and Modality in Quantum Mechanics

Kochen-Specker theorem rules out the non-contextual assignment of values to physical magnitudes. Here we enrich the usual orthomodular structure of quantum mechanical propositions with modal operators. This enlargement allows to refer consistently to actual and possible properties of the system. By means of a topological argument, more precisely in terms of the existence of sections of sheaves, we give an extended version of Kochen-Specker theorem over this new structure. This allows us to prove that contextuality remains a central feature even in the enriched propositional system.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, submitted to I. J. Th. Phy

Experimental reversion of the optimal quantum cloning and flipping processes

The quantum cloner machine maps an unknown arbitrary input qubit into two optimal clones and one optimal flipped qubit. By combining linear and non-linear optical methods we experimentally implement a scheme that, after the cloning transformation, restores the original input qubit in one of the output channels, by using local measurements, classical communication and feedforward. This significant teleportation-like method demonstrates how the information is preserved during the cloning process. The realization of the reversion process is expected to find useful applications in the field of modern multi-partite quantum cryptography.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Strategies and Networks for State-Dependent Quantum Cloning

State-dependent cloning machines that have so far been considered either deterministically copy a set of states approximately, or probablistically copy them exactly. In considering the case of two equiprobable pure states, we derive the maximum global fidelity of $N$ approximate clones given $M$ initial exact copies, where $N>M$. We also consider strategies which interpolate between approximate and exact cloning. A tight inequality is obtained which expresses a trade-off between the global fidelity and success probability. This inequality is found to tend, in the limit as $N{\to}{\infty}$, to a known inequality which expresses the trade-off between error and inconclusive result probabilities for state-discrimination measurements. Quantum-computational networks are also constructed for the kinds of cloning machine we describe. For this purpose, we introduce two gates: the distinguishability transfer and state separation gates. Their key properties are describedComment: 12 pages, 6 eps figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Helstrom Theorem by No-Signaling Condition

We prove a special case of Helstrom theorem by using no-signaling condition in the special theory of relativity that faster-than-light communication is impossible.Comment: Minor corrections (A reference added, discussion part deleted, typos in equations corrected), 2 pages, RevTe