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We developed new concentration inequalities for a quantum state on an $N$-qudit system or measurement outcomes on it that apply to an adversarial setup, where an adversary prepares the quantum state. Our one-sided concentration inequalities for a quantum state require the $N$-qudit system to be permutation invariant and are thus de-Finetti type, but they are tighter than the one previously obtained. We show that the bound can further be tightened if each qudit system has an additional symmetry. Furthermore, our concentration inequality for the outcomes of independent and identical measurements on an $N$-qudit quantum system has no assumption on the adversarial quantum state and is much tighter than the conventional one obtained through Azuma's inequality. We numerically demonstrate the tightness of our bounds in simple quantum information processing tasks., Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, the proof of Theorem 2 is simplified, introduction is modified

We propose a scheme for generating a high-purity single photon on the basis of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). This scheme employs a four-level system including two excited states, two ground states, and two driving lasers; this structure allows the suppression of the re-excitation process due to the atomic decay, which is known to significantly degrade the single-photon purity in state-of-the-art photon sources using a three-level system. Our analysis shows that the re-excitation probability arbitrarily approaches zero without sacrificing the photon generation probability when increasing the power of the driving laser between the excited states. This advantage is achievable by using current cavity-QED technologies. Our scheme can contribute to developing distributed quantum computation or quantum communication with high accuracy., Comment: Main text: 5 pages, 3 figures, Supplementary Material: 8 pages

Continuous Variable (CV) quantum key distribution (QKD) is a promising candidate for practical implementations due to its compatibility with the existing communication technology. A trusted device scenario assuming that an adversary has no access to imperfections such as electronic noises in the detector is expected to provide significant improvement in the key rate, but such an endeavor so far was made separately for specific protocols and for specific proof techniques. Here, we develop a simple and general treatment that can incorporate the effects of Gaussian trusted noises for any protocol that uses homodyne/heterodyne measurements. In our method, a rescaling of the outcome of a noisy homodyne/heterodyne detector renders it equivalent to the outcome of a noiseless detector with a tiny additional loss, thanks to a noise-loss equivalence well-known in quantum optics. Since this method is independent of protocols and security proofs, it is applicable to Gaussian-modulation and discrete-modulation protocols, to the finite-size regime, and to any proof techniques developed so far and yet to be discovered as well., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

Recent studies showed the finite-size security of binary-modulation CV-QKD protocols against general attacks. However, they gave poor key-rate scaling against transmission distance. Here, we extend the security proof based on complementarity, which is used in the discrete-variable QKD, to the previously developed binary-modulation CV-QKD protocols with the reverse reconciliation under the finite-size regime and obtain large improvements in the key rates. Notably, the key rate in the asymptotic limit scales linearly against the attenuation rate, which is known to be optimal scaling but is not achieved in previous finite-size analyses. This refined security approach may offer full-fledged security proofs for other discrete-modulation CV-QKD protocols., Comment: 32 pages, 3 figures, accepted version

Among various classes of quantum error correcting codes (QECCs), non-stabilizer codes have rich properties and are of theoretical and practical interest. Decoding non-stabilizer codes is, however, a highly non-trivial task. In this paper, we show that a decoding circuit for Calderbank-Shor-Stean (CSS) codes can be straightforwardly extended to that for a general QECC. In the extension, instead of the classical decoders of the linear classical codes that define the CSS code, we use decoding measurements of a pair of classical-quantum (CQ) codes associated with the QECC to be decoded.The decoding error depends on the errors of the two decoding measurements and the degree of complementarity of the CQ codes.We then demonstrate the power of the decoding circuit in a toy model of the black hole information paradox, in which we improve decoding errors over previous approaches and further show that the black hole dynamics may be an optimal encoder for quantum information but a poor encoder for classical information., Comment: Ver.1: 20 pages, 3 figures. Ver.2: 20 pages, 3 figures, an unnecessary assumption, which rarely holds, was removed. Theorem 1 was slightly improved. Ver.3: 20 pages, 3 figures, abstract and introduction are improved. Ver. 4: 25 pages, 5 figures, major update. Comments are welcome

Continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) has many practical advantages including compatibility with current optical communication technology. Implementation using heterodyne measurements is particularly attractive since it eliminates the need for active phase locking of the remote pair of local oscillators, but the full security of CV QKD with discrete modulation was only proved for a protocol using homodyne measurements. Here we propose an all-heterodyne CV-QKD protocol with binary modulation and prove its security against general attacks in the finite-key regime. Although replacing a homodyne measurement with a heterodyne measurement would be naively expected to incur a 3-dB penalty in the rate-distance curve, our proof achieves a key rate with only a 1-dB penalty., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures

Scalable realization of quantum computing to attain substantial speedups over classical computing requires fault tolerance. Conventionally, protocols for fault-tolerant quantum computation (FTQC) demand excessive space overhead of physical qubits per logical qubit. A more recent protocol to achieve constant-space-overhead FTQC using quantum low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes thus attracts considerable attention but suffers from another drawback: it incurs polynomially long time overhead. To address these problems, we here introduce an alternative approach using a concatenation of multiple small-size quantum codes for the constant-space-overhead FTQC rather than a single large-size quantum LDPC code. We develop techniques for concatenating different quantum Hamming codes with growing sizes. As a result, we construct a low-overhead protocol to achieve constant space overhead and only quasi-polylogarithmic time overhead simultaneously. Our protocol accomplishes FTQC even if a decoder has non-constant runtime, unlike the existing constant-space-overhead protocol. These results establish a foundation for FTQC realizing a large class of quantum speedups within feasibly bounded space overhead yet negligibly short time overhead. This achievement opens a promising avenue for the low-overhead FTQC based on code concatenation., Comment: 50 pages, 14 figures

Compared with entanglement with multiple types of noise, entanglement including only one type of error is a favorable fundamental resource not only for quantum communication but also for distributed quantum computation. We consider protocol that presents single-error-type entanglement for distant qubits via coherent-state transmission over a lossy channel. This protocol is regarded as a subroutine to serve entanglement for larger protocol to yield a final output, such as ebits or pbits. In this paper, we provide a subroutine protocol which achieves the global optimal for typical jointly convex yield functions monotonically non-decreasing with respect to the singlet fraction, such as an arbitrary convex function of a singlet fraction and two-way distillable entanglement/key. Entanglement generation based on remote non-destructive parity measurement protocol [K. Azuma, H. Takeda, M. Koashi, and N. Imoto, Phys. Rev. A 85, 062309 (2012)] is identified as such an optimal subroutine., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures

Quantum key distribution (QKD) establishes secure links between remote communication parties. As a key problem for various QKD protocols, security analysis gives the amount of secure keys regardless of the eavesdropper's computational power, which can be done both analytically and numerically. Compared to analytical methods which tend to require techniques specific to each QKD protocol, numerical ones are more general since they can be directly applied to many QKD protocols without additional techniques. However, current numerical methods are carried out based on some assumptions such as working in asymptotic limit and collective attacks from eavesdroppers. In this work, we remove these assumptions and develop a numerical finite-size security analysis against general attacks for general QKD protocols. We also give an example of applying the method to the recent Phase-Matching QKD protocol with a simple protocol design. Our result shows that the finite-size key rate can surpass the linear key-rate bound in a realistic communication time., Comment: 19pages, 2 figures

Spin systems such as silicon or nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond, quantum dots and quantum dot molecules coupled to optical cavities appear as key elements for creating quantum networks as not only constituting the nodes of the network, but also assisting the creation of photonic networks. Here we study deterministic preparation of arbitrary size $W$ states with spin systems. We present an efficient operation on three qubits, two being the logical qubits and one being the ancillary qubit, where no interaction between the logical qubits are required. The proposed operation can create a $W$-type Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pair from two separable qubits, and expand that EPR pair or an arbitrary size $W$ state by one, creating a $W$-like state. Taking this operation as the fundamental building block, we show how to create a large scale $W$ state out of separable qubits, or double the size of a $W$ state. Based on this operation and focusing on nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond as an exemplary spin system, we propose a setup for preparing $W$ states of circularly polarized photons, assisted by a single spin qubit, where no photon-photon interactions are required. Next, we propose a setup for preparing $W$ states of spin qubits of spatially separated systems, assisted by a single photon. We also analyze the effects of possible imperfections in implementing the gates on the fidelity of the generated $W$ states. In our setups, neither post-measurement, nor post-processing on the states of spin or photonic qubit is required. Our setups can be implemented with current technology, and we anticipate that they contribute to quantum science and technologies., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures

The Hayden-Preskill protocol is a qubit-toy model of the black hole information paradox. Based on the assumption of scrambling, it was revealed that quantum information is instantly leaked out from the quantum many-body system that models a black hole. In this paper, we extend the protocol to the case where the system has symmetry and investigate how the symmetry affects the leakage of information. We especially focus on the conservation of the number of up-spins. Developing a partial decoupling approach, we first show that the symmetry induces a delay of leakage and an information remnant. We then clarify the physics behind them: the delay is characterized by thermodynamic properties of the system associated with the symmetry, and the information remnant is closely related to the symmetry-breaking of the initial state. These relations bridge the information leakage problem to macroscopic physics of quantum many-body systems and allow us to investigate the information leakage only in terms of physical properties of the system., Comment: Ver.1: 7 pages + Supplementary. Ver.2: short version (14 pages) + long version (47 pages). Presentation improved. Connection to thermodynamics is much more elaborated. Ver.3: Substantial update of presentation. 21 pages + 6 pages of appendices. Ver 4-7: improved. Ver 8: Published version

Scalability of flying photonic quantum systems in generating quantum entanglement offers a potential for implementing large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computation, especially by means of measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC). However, existing protocols for MBQC inevitably impose a polynomial overhead cost in implementing quantum computation due to geometrical constraints of entanglement structures used in the protocols, and the polynomial overhead potentially cancels out useful polynomial speedups in quantum computation. To implement quantum computation without this cancellation, we construct a protocol for photonic MBQC that achieves as low as poly-logarithmic overhead, by introducing an entanglement structure for low-overhead qubit permutation. Based on this protocol, we design a fault-tolerant photonic MBQC protocol that can be performed by experimentally tractable homodyne detection and Gaussian entangling operations combined with the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) quantum error-correcting code, which we concatenate with the $7$-qubit code. Our fault-tolerant protocol achieves the threshold $7.8$ dB in terms of the squeezing level of the GKP code, outperforming $8.3$ dB of the best existing protocol for fault-tolerant quantum computation with the GKP surface code. Thus, bridging a gap between theoretical progress on MBQC and photonic experiments towards implementing MBQC, our results open a new way towards realization of a large class of quantum speedups including those polynomial., Comment: 55 pages, 33 figures

In comparison to conventional discrete-variable (DV) quantum key distribution (QKD), continuous-variable (CV) QKD with homodyne/heterodyne measurements has distinct advantages of lower-cost implementation and affinity to wavelength division multiplexing. On the other hand, its continuous nature makes it harder to accommodate to practical signal processing, which is always discretized, leading to lack of complete security proofs so far. Here we propose a tight and robust method of estimating fidelity of an optical pulse to a coherent state via heterodyne measurements. We then construct a binary phase modulated CV QKD protocol and prove its security in the finite-key-size regime against general coherent attacks, based on proof techniques of DV QKD. Such a complete security proof achieves a significant milestone in exploiting the benefits of CV QKD., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures

Kernel methods augmented with random features give scalable algorithms for learning from big data. But it has been computationally hard to sample random features according to a probability distribution that is optimized for the data, so as to minimize the required number of features for achieving the learning to a desired accuracy. Here, we develop a quantum algorithm for sampling from this optimized distribution over features, in runtime $O(D)$ that is linear in the dimension $D$ of the input data. Our algorithm achieves an exponential speedup in $D$ compared to any known classical algorithm for this sampling task. In contrast to existing quantum machine learning algorithms, our algorithm circumvents sparsity and low-rank assumptions and thus has wide applicability. We also show that the sampled features can be combined with regression by stochastic gradient descent to achieve the learning without canceling out our exponential speedup. Our algorithm based on sampling optimized random features leads to an accelerated framework for machine learning that takes advantage of quantum computers., Comment: 37 pages, 2 figures, accepted at Thirty-fourth Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020)

The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) quantum error-correcting code has emerged as a key technique in achieving fault-tolerant quantum computation using photonic systems. Whereas [Baragiola et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 200502 (2019)] showed that experimentally tractable Gaussian operations combined with preparing a GKP codeword $\lvert 0\rangle$ suffice to implement universal quantum computation, this implementation scheme involves a distillation of a logical magic state $\lvert H\rangle$ of the GKP code, which inevitably imposes a trade-off between implementation cost and fidelity. In contrast, we propose a scheme of preparing $\lvert H\rangle$ directly and combining Gaussian operations only with $\lvert H\rangle$ to achieve the universality without this magic state distillation. In addition, we develop an analytical method to obtain bounds of fundamental limit on transformation between $\lvert H\rangle$ and $\lvert 0\rangle$, finding an application of quantum resource theories to cost analysis of quantum computation with the GKP code. Our results lead to an essential reduction of required non-Gaussian resources for photonic fault-tolerant quantum computation compared to the previous scheme., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures

Distributing entangled photon pairs over noisy channels is an important task for various quantum information protocols. Encoding an entangled state in a decoherence-free subspace (DFS) formed by multiple photons is a promising way to circumvent the phase fluctuations and polarization rotations in optical fibres. Recently, it has been shown that the use of a counter-propagating coherent light as an ancillary photon enables us to faithfully distribute entangled photon with success probability proportional to the transmittance of the optical fibres. Several proof-of-principle experiments have been demonstrated, in which entangled photon pairs from a sender side and the ancillary photon from a receiver side originate from the same laser source. In addition, bulk optics have been used to mimic the noises in optical fibres. Here, we demonstrate a DFS-based entanglement distribution over 1km-optical fibre using DFS formed by using fully independent light sources at the telecom band. In the experiment, we utilize an interference between asynchronous photons from cw-pumped spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) and mode-locked coherent light pulse. After performing spectral and temporal filtering, the SPDC photons and light pulse are spectrally indistinguishable. This property allows us to observe high-visibility interference without performing active synchronization between fully independent sources., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) quantum error correcting code attracts much attention in continuous variable (CV) quantum computation and CV quantum communication due to the simplicity of error correcting routines and the high tolerance against Gaussian errors. Since the GKP code state should be regarded as a limit of physically meaningful approximate ones, various approximations have been developed until today, but explicit relations among them are still unclear. In this paper, we rigorously prove the equivalence of these approximate GKP codes with an explicit correspondence of the parameters. We also propose a standard form of the approximate code states in the position representation, which enables us to derive closed-from expressions for the Wigner functions, the inner products, and the average photon numbers in terms of the theta functions. Our results serve as fundamental tools for further analyses of fault-tolerant quantum computation and channel coding using approximate GKP codes., Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, published version

To guarantee the security of quantum key distribution (QKD), several assumptions on light sources must be satisfied. For example, each random bit information is precisely encoded on an optical pulse and the photon-number probability distribution of the pulse is exactly known. Unfortunately, however, it is hard to check if all the assumptions are really met in practice, and it is preferable that we have minimal number of device assumptions. In this paper, we adopt the differential-phase-shift (DPS) QKD protocol and drastically mitigate the requirements on light sources. Specifically, we only assume the independence among emitted pulses, the independence of the vacuum emission probability from a chosen bit, and upper bounds on the tail distribution function of the total photon number in a single block of pulses for single, two and three photons. Remarkably, no other detailed characterizations, such as the amount of phase modulation, are required. Our security proof significantly relaxes demands for light sources, which paves a route to guarantee implementation security with simple verification of the devices., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures

Among many quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols, the round-robin differential phase shift (RRDPS) protocol is unique in that it can upper-bound the amount of the information leakage without monitoring the signal disturbance. To expedite implementation of the protocol, however, the number of pulses forming a single block should be kept small, which significantly decreases the key rates in the original security proof. In the present paper, we refine the security proof of the RRDPS protocol in the finite-sized regime and achieve a tighter estimation for the information leakage without changing the original experimental setups. As a consequence, we obtain better key rates in both asymptotic and finite-sized cases while keeping the preferable features of the protocol, such as omission of phase randomization., Comment: 25 pages, 5 figures

Quantum key distribution (QKD) allows two distant parties to share secret keys with the proven security even in the presence of an eavesdropper with unbounded computational power. Recently, GHz-clock decoy QKD systems have been realized by employing ultrafast optical communication devices. However, security loopholes of high-speed systems have not been fully explored yet. Here we point out a security loophole at the transmitter of the GHz-clock QKD, which is a common problem in high-speed QKD systems using practical band-width limited devices. We experimentally observe the inter-pulse intensity correlation and modulation-pattern dependent intensity deviation in a practical high-speed QKD system. Such correlation violates the assumption of most security theories. We also provide its countermeasure which does not require significant changes of hardware and can generate keys secure over 100 km fiber transmission. Our countermeasure is simple, effective and applicable to wide range of high-speed QKD systems, and thus paves the way to realize ultrafast and security-certified commercial QKD systems.

Quantum error correction is an essential technique for constructing a scalable quantum computer. In order to implement quantum error correction with near-term quantum devices, a fast and near-optimal decoding method is demanded. A decoder based on machine learning is considered as one of the most viable solutions for this purpose, since its prediction is fast once training has been done, and it is applicable to any quantum error correcting code and any noise model. So far, various formulations of the decoding problem as the task of machine learning have been proposed. Here, we discuss general constructions of machine-learning-based decoders. We found several conditions to achieve near-optimal performance, and proposed a criterion which should be optimized when a size of training data set is limited. We also discuss preferable constructions of neural networks, and proposed a decoder using spatial structures of topological codes using a convolutional neural network. We numerically show that our method can improve the performance of machine-learning-based decoders in various topological codes and noise models., Comment: 27 pages, 19 figures; v2: fixed typos, added a section in appendix

Quantum network with a current telecom photonic infrastructure is deficient in quantum storages that keep arbitrary quantum state in sufficient time duration for a long-distance quantum communication with quantum repeater algorithms. Atomic quantum storages have achieved subsecond storage time corresponding to 1000 km transmission time for a telecom photon through a quantum repeater algorithm. However, the telecom photon is not directly accessible to typical atomic storages. Solid state quantum frequency conversions fill this wavelength gap and add more abilities, for example, a frequency multiplex. Here we report on the experimental demonstration of a polarization-insensitive solid-state quantum frequency conversion to a telecom photon from a short-wavelength photon entangled with an atomic ensemble. Atom-photon entanglement has been generated with a Rb atomic ensemble and the photon has been translated to telecom range while retaining the entanglement by our nonlinear-crystal-based frequency converter in a Sagnac interferometer., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

Characterization of photon statistics of a light source is one of the most basic tools in quantum optics. Although the outcome from existing methods is believed to be a good approximation when the measured light is sufficiently weak, there is no rigorous quantitative bounds on the degree of the approximation. As a result, they fail to fulfill the demand arising from emerging applications of quantum information such as quantum cryptography. Here, we propose a calibration method to produce rigorous bounds for a photon-number probability distribution by using a conventional Hanbury-Brown-Twiss setup with threshold photon detectors. We present a general framework to treat any number of detectors and non-uniformity of their efficiencies. The bounds are conveniently given as closed-form expressions of the observed coincidence rates and the detector efficiencies. We also show optimality of the bounds for light with a small mean photon number. As an application, we show that our calibration method can be used for the light source in a decoy-state quantum key distribution protocol. It replaces the a priori assumption on the distribution that has been commonly used, and achieves almost the same secure key rate when four detectors are used for the calibration., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

We demonstrated the first-order interference between coherent light at 1580 nm and 795 nm by using frequency-domain Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). The MZI is implemented by two frequency-domain BSs based on a second-order nonlinear optical effect in a periodically-poled lithium niobate waveguide with a strong pump light. We achieved the visibility of over 0.99 at 50% conversion efficiencies of the BSs. Toward photonic quantum information processing, sufficiently small background photon rate is necessary. From the measurement results with a superconducting single photon detector, we discuss the feasibility of the frequency-domain MZI in a quantum regime. Our estimation shows that single photon interference with the visibility above 0.9 is feasible with practical settings., Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures

In order to realize fault-tolerant quantum computation, tight evaluation of error threshold under practical noise models is essential. While non-Clifford noise is ubiquitous in experiments, the error threshold under non-Clifford noise cannot be efficiently treated with known approaches. We construct an efficient scheme for estimating the error threshold of one-dimensional quantum repetition code under non-Clifford noise. To this end, we employ non-unitary free-fermionic formalism for efficient simulation of the one-dimensional repetition code under coherent noise. This allows us to evaluate the effect of coherence in noise on the error threshold without any approximation. The result shows that the error threshold becomes one third when noise is fully coherent. Our scheme is also applicable to the surface code undergoing a specific coherent noise model. The dependence of the error threshold on noise coherence can be explained with a leading-order analysis with respect to coherence terms in the noise map. We expect that this analysis is also valid for the surface code since it is a two-dimensional extension of the one-dimensional repetition code. Moreover, since the obtained threshold is accurate, our results can be used as a benchmark for approximation or heuristic schemes for non-Clifford noise., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. v2: extension to the surface code is added

The round-robin differential phase shift (RRDPS) quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol is a unique quantum key distribution protocol whose security has not been understood through an information-disturbance trade-off relation, and a sufficient amount of privacy amplification was given independently of signal disturbance. Here, we discuss the security of the RRDPS protocol in the asymptotic regime when a good estimate of the bit error rate is available as a measure of signal disturbance. The uniqueness of the RRDPS protocol shows up as a peculiar form of information-disturbance trade-off curve. When the length of a block of pulses used for encoding and the signal disturbance are both small, it provides a significantly better key rate than that from the original security proof. On the other hand, when the block length is large, the use of the signal disturbance makes little improvement in the key rate. Our analysis will bridge a gap between the RRDPS protocol and the conventional QKD protocols., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures

An essential step in quantum key distribution is the estimation of parameters related to the leaked amount of information, which is usually done by sampling of the communication data. When the data size is finite, the final key rate depends on how the estimation process handles statistical fluctuations. Many of the present security analyses are based on the method with simple random sampling, where hypergeometric distribution or its known bounds are used for the estimation. Here we propose a concise method based on Bernoulli sampling, which is related to binomial distribution. Our method is suitable for the BB84 protocol with weak coherent pulses, reducing the number of estimated parameters to achieve a higher key generation rate compared to the method with simple random sampling. We also applied the method to prove the security of the differential-quadrature-phase-shift (DQPS) protocol in the finite-key regime. The result indicates that, the advantage of the DQPS protocol over the phase-encoding BB84 protocol in terms of the key rate, which was previously confirmed in the asymptotic regime, persists in the finite-key regime., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures

We experimentally demonstrate a high-fidelity entanglement swapping and a generation of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger~(GHZ) state using polarization-entangled photon pairs at telecommunication wavelength produced by spontaneous parametric down conversion with continuous-wave pump light. While spatially separated sources asynchronously emit photon pairs, the time-resolved photon detection guarantees the temporal indistinguishability of photons without active timing synchronizations of pump lasers and/or adjustment of optical paths. In the experiment, photons are sufficiently narrowed by fiber-based Bragg gratings with the central wavelengths of 1541~nm and 1580~nm, and detected by superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors with low timing jitters. Observed fidelities are 0.84 \pm 0.04 and 0.70 \pm 0.05 for the entanglement swapping and generation of the GHZ state, respectively., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We experimentally determined various thermodynamic quantities of interacting two-component fermions at the zero-temperature limit from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) region to the unitarity limit. The obtained results are very accurate in the sense that the systematic error is within 4% around the unitarity limit. Using this advantage, we can compare our data with various many-body theories. We found that an extended ${\it T}$-matrix approximation, which is a strong-coupling theory involving fluctuations in the Cooper channel, well reproduces our experimental results. We also found that the superfluid order parameter ${\it \Delta}$ calculated by solving the ordinary BCS gap equation with the chemical potential of interacting fermions is close to the binding energy of the paired fermions directly observed in a spectroscopic experiment and that obtained using a quantum Monte Carlo method. Since understanding the strong-coupling properties of a superfluid Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC (Bose-Einstein condensation) crossover region is a crucial issue in condensed matter physics and nuclear physics, the results of the present study are expected to be useful in the further development of these fields.

We provide new constructions of unitary $t$-designs for general $t$ on one qudit and $N$ qubits, and propose a design Hamiltonian, a random Hamiltonian of which dynamics always forms a unitary design after a threshold time, as a basic framework to investigate randomising time evolution in quantum many-body systems. The new constructions are based on recently proposed schemes of repeating random unitaires diagonal in mutually unbiased bases. We first show that, if a pair of the bases satisfies a certain condition, the process on one qudit approximately forms a unitary $t$-design after $O(t)$ repetitions. We then construct quantum circuits on $N$ qubits that achieve unitary $t$-designs for $t = o(N^{1/2})$ using $O(t N^2)$ gates, improving the previous result using $O(t^{10}N^2)$ gates in terms of $t$. Based on these results, we present a design Hamiltonian with periodically changing two-local spin-glass-type interactions, leading to fast and relatively natural realisations of unitary designs in complex many-body systems., Comment: 25 pages, 1 figure, and 1 table. Ver 2: 27 pages, 4 figures, and 2 tables. Presentation is improved and references are added. Ver 3: 22 pages + 5 pages of appendices, 4 figures, and 2 tables

One of the readily accessible observables in trapped cold-atom experiments is the column density, which is determined from optical depth (OD) obtained from absorption imaging and the absorption cross-section ($\sigma_{\rm abs}$). Here we report on simple and accurate determination of OD for dense gases of light atoms such as lithium-6. We investigate theoretically and experimentally an appropriate condition for the probe intensity and duration to achieve good signal-to-noise ratio by considering the influences of photon recoils and photon shot noises. As a result, we have succeeded in measuring OD which reached 2.5 with a signal-to-noise ratio of 10 under spatial resolution of 1.7 $\mu$m., Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures

We report on the observation of a high visibility Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of two heralded photons emitted from a spontaneous parametric down conversion~(SPDC) pumped by continuous-wave~(cw) light. A non-degenerate photon pair at 1541~nm and 1580~nm is generated by cw-pumped SPDC through a periodically poled lithium niobate waveguide. The heralded single photon at 1541~nm is prepared by the detection of the photon at 1580~nm. We performed the experiment of the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between heralded single photons in separated time bins and observed a high visibility interference. All detectors we used are superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors and an overall temporal resolution of the photon detection is estimated as 85 ps, which is sufficiently shorter than the coherence time of the heralded photons., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

We experimentally demonstrate a proposal [Phys. Rev. A 87, 052325 (2013)] of a scheme for robust distribution of polarization entangled photon pairs over collective noisy channels having the reciprocity. Although the scheme employs the robustness of two qubit decoherence-free subspace, by utilizing the forward propagation of one half of the entangled photons and the backward propagation of a classical reference light, it achieves an entanglement-sharing rate proportional to the transmittance of the quantum channel for the signal photon. We experimentally observed the efficient sharing rate while keeping a highly entangled state after the transmission. We also show that the protection method is applicable to transmission of arbitrary polarization state of a single photon., Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures

Telecom photonic quantum networks with matter quantum systems enable a rich variety of applications, such as a long distance quantum cryptography and one-way quantum computing. Preparation of a heralded single excitation (HSE) in an atomic ensemble by detecting a telecom wavelength photon having a correlation with the atomic excitation is an important step. Such a system has been demonstrated with a quantum frequency conversion (QFC) to telecom wavelength employing a Rb atomic cloud. However the limited wavelength selection prevents the next step. Here we for the first time demonstrate HSE with a solid-state-based QFC and a detector for a telecom wavelength that will have a great advantage of the utility of mature telecom technologies. We unambiguously show that the demonstrated HSE indicates a non-classical statistics by the direct measurement of the autocorrelation function., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

We report the first all-optical production of a superfluid Bose-Fermi mixture with two spin states of $^6$Li (fermion) and one spin state of $^7$Li (boson) under the resonant magnetic field of the s-wave Feshbach resonance of the fermions. Fermions are cooled efficiently by evaporative cooling and they serve as coolant for bosons. As a result, a superfluid mixture can be achieved by using a simple experimental apparatus and procedures, as in the case of the all-optical production of a single Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We show that the all-optical method enables us to realize variety of ultracold Bose-Fermi mixtures., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, submitted to J. Phys. B

Many quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols require random choice of measurement basis for each pulse or each train of pulses. In some QKD protocols, such as the Round-Robin Differential Phase Shift (RRDPS) QKD protocol, this requirement is a bit challenging as randomly choosing hundreds of settings for every, say, 100 pulses may be too fast with current technologies. In this paper, we solve this issue by proving the security of QKD protocols with slow basis choice without compromising the secret key rate. We also show that the random choice of the bases for the state preparation can be made slow if the signals do not leak any information on the basis. Examples of QKD protocols that our technique can apply include the RRDPS protocol and BB84-type protocols, and our technique relaxes demands for the implementation of QKD systems., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference unveils a distinct behavior of identical particles which cannot be distinguished from each other. Especially for bosons, two separated identical particles passing through a beamsplitter always go together into one of the output ports, but that is not the case with other particles including fermions or classical ones. So far many elemental properties of quantum physics and information have been discovered through the concatenated HOM effects, which has been demonstrated in photons and recently in plasmons, atoms and phonons. However, all demonstrations in optical region employed two particles in different spatial modes. Here we first report the HOM interference between two photons in a single spatial mode with different frequencies (energies) by using a partial frequency conversion. The demonstrated frequency-domain interferometer allows us to replace spatial optical paths by optical frequency multiplexing, which opens up a distinct architecture of the quantum interferometry., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures

One of the simplest methods for implementing quantum key distribution over fiber-optic communication is the Bennett-Brassard 1984 protocol with phase encoding (PE-BB84 protocol), in which the sender uses phase modulation over double pulses from a laser and the receiver uses a passive delayed interferometer. Using essentially the same setup and by regarding a train of many pulses as a single block, one can carry out the so-called differential quadrature phase shift (DQPS) protocol, which is a variant of differential phase shift (DPS) protocols. Here we prove the security of the DQPS protocol based on an adaptation of proof techniques for the BB84 protocol, which inherits the advantages arising from the simplicity of the protocol, such as accommodating the use of threshold detectors and simple off-line calibration methods for the light source. We show that the secure key rate of the DQPS protocol in the proof is eight thirds as high as the rate of the PE-BB84 protocol., Comment: Citation of the Fig.1 in the text corrected

Since the invention of Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) protocol, many quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols have been proposed and some protocols are operated even in field environments. One of the striking features of QKD is that QKD protocols are provably secure unlike cryptography based on computational complexity assumptions. It has been believed that, to guarantee the security of QKD, Alice and Bob have to monitor the statistics of the measurement outcomes which are used to determine the amount of the privacy amplification to generate a key. Recently a new type of QKD protocol, called round robin differential phase shift (RRDPS) protocol, was proposed, and remarkably this protocol can generate a key without monitoring any statistics of the measurement outcomes. Here we report an experimental realization of the RRDPS protocol. We used a setup in which Bob randomly chooses one from four interferometers with different pulse delays so that he could implement phase difference measurements for all possible combinations with five-pulse time-bin states. Using the setup, we successfully distributed keys over 30 km of fiber, making this the first QKD experiment that does not rely on signal disturbance monitoring., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

We experimentally demonstrated entanglement extraction scheme by using photons at the telecommunication band for optical-fiber-based quantum communications. We generated two pairs of non-degenerate polarization entangled photons at 780~nm and 1551~nm by spontaneous parametric down-conversion and distributed the two photons at 1551~nm through a collective phase damping channel which gives the same amount of random phase shift on the two photons. Through local operation and classical communication, we extracted an entangled photon pair from two phase-disturbed photon pairs. An observed fidelity of the extracted photon pair to a maximally entangled photon pair was 0.73 $\pm$ 0.07 which clearly shows the recovery of entanglement., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

We present an error analysis of various tomographic protocols based on the linear inversion for the reconstruction of an unknown two-qubit state. We solve the problem of finding a tomographic protocol which is the most robust against errors in terms of the lowest value (i.e., equal to 1) of a condition number, as required by the Gastinel-Kahan theorem. In contrast, standard tomographic protocols, including those based on mutually unbiased bases, are nonoptimal for determining all 16 elements of an unknown two-qubit density matrix. Our method is based on the measurements of the 16 generalized Pauli operators, where twelve of them can be locally measured, and the other four require nonlocal Bell measurements. Our method corresponds to selectively measuring, one by one, all of the real and imaginary elements of an unknown two-qubit density matrix. We describe two experimentally feasible setups of this protocol for the optimal reconstruction of two photons in an unknown polarization state using conventional detectors and linear-optical elements. Moreover, we define the operators for the optimal reconstruction of the states of multiqubit or multilevel (qudit) systems., Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables

We demonstrate a low-noise frequency down-conversion of photons at 637 nm to the telecommunication band at 1587 nm by the difference frequency generation in a periodically-poled lithium niobate. An internal conversion efficiency of the converter is estimated to be 0.44 at the maximum which is achieved by a pump power of 430 mW, whereas a rate of internal background photons caused by the strong cw pump laser is estimated to be 9 kHz/mW within a bandwidth of about 1 nm. By using the experimental values related to the intrinsic property of the converter, and using the intensity correlation and the average photon number of a 637-nm input light pulse, we derive the intensity correlation of a converted telecom light pulse. Then we discuss feasibility of a single-photon frequency conversion to the telecommunication band for a long-distance quantum communication based on NV centers in diamond., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures

We investigate protocols for generating a state $t$-design by using a fixed separable initial state and a diagonal-unitary $t$-design in the computational basis, which is a $t$-design of an ensemble of diagonal unitary matrices with random phases as their eigenvalues. We first show that a diagonal-unitary $t$-design generates a $O(1/2^N)$-approximate state $t$-design, where $N$ is the number of qubits. We then discuss a way of improving the degree of approximation by exploiting non-diagonal gates after applying a diagonal-unitary $t$-design. We also show that it is necessary and sufficient to use $O(\log_2 t)$-qubit gates with random phases to generate a diagonal-unitary $t$-design by diagonal quantum circuits, and that each multi-qubit diagonal gate can be replaced by a sequence of multi-qubit controlled-phase-type gates with discrete-valued random phases. Finally, we analyze the number of gates for implementing a diagonal-unitary $t$-design by {\it non-diagonal} two- and one-qubit gates. Our results provide a concrete application of diagonal quantum circuits in quantum informational tasks., Comment: ver. 1: 15 pages, 1 figures. ver.2: 16 pages, 2 figures, major changes, we corrected a mistake, which slightly changes a main conclusion, added a new result, and improved a presentation. ver.3: 11 pages, 2 figures, published version

We experimentally demonstrate that both a converted and an unconverted light pulses after wavelength conversion with various conversion efficiencies preserve phase information of an input light at a single-photon level. In our experiment, we converted temporally-separated two coherent light pulses with average photon numbers of $\sim$ 0.1 at 780 nm to light pulses at 1522 nm by using difference-frequency generation in a periodically-poled lithium niobate waveguide. We observed a single-photon interference between temporally-separated two modes for both the converted and the unconverted light pulses at various values of the conversion efficiency. We observed interference visibilities greater than 0.88 without suppressing the background noises for any value of the conversion efficiency the wavelength converter achieves. At a conversion efficiency of $\sim$ 0.5, the observed visibilities are 0.98 for the unconverted light and 0.99 for the converted light., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

We study distribution schemes for a polarization entangled photon pair based on a decoherence-free subspace over lossy quantum channels and propose an efficient scheme that is robust against not only collective phase noises but also general collective noises for two qubits. While the proposed scheme employs two photons to build the decoherence-free subspace, the success probability is proportional to the channel transmittance of a single photon with the aid of a counter-propagating weak coherent light pulse. The key ingredient in the scheme is found to be the reciprocity of the channel. The proposed scheme shares the rest of the properties with the previously proposed schemes, i.e., it can be realized by linear optical elements and it is robust against the fluctuations in the optical circuits used by the two parties., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures

We determine the minimal number of qubits that it is necessary to have access to in order to transform Dicke states into other Dicke states. In general, the number of qubits in Dicke states cannot be increased via transformation gates by accessing only a single qubit, in direct contrast to other multipartite entangled states such as GHZ, W and cluster states. We construct a universal optimal gate which adds spin-up qubits or spin-down qubits to any Dicke state by minimal access. We also show the existence of a universal gate which transforms any size of Dicke state as long as it has access to at least the required number of qubits. Our results have important consequences for the generation of Dicke states in physical systems such as ion traps, all-optical setups and cavity-QED settings where they can be used for a variety of quantum information processing tasks., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures

We experimentally demonstrated the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference between two photons after visible-to-telecommunication wavelength conversion. In the experiment, we prepared a heralded single photon by using spontaneous parametric down-conversion and the other photon from a weak laser source at 780 nm. We converted the wavelength of both photons to the telecommunication wavelength of 1522 nm by using difference-frequency generation in a periodically-poled lithium niobate, and then observed the HOM interference between the photons. The observed visibility is $0.76\pm 0.12$ which clearly shows the non-classical interference of the two photons. The high-visibility interference is an important step for fiber-based quantum communications of photons generated from visible photon emitters., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

Quantum separable operations are defined as those that cannot produce entanglement from separable states, and it is known that they strictly surpass local operations and classical communication (LOCC) in a number of tasks, which is sometimes referred to as "quantum nonlocality without entanglement." Here we consider a task with such a gap regarding the trade-off between state discrimination and preservation of entanglement. We show that this task along with the gap has an analogue in a purely classical setup, indicating that the quantum properties are not essential in the existence of a nonzero gap between the separable operations and LOCC., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures