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Quantum repeaters 1–4 are essential elements for demonstrating global-scale quantum communication. Over the past few decades, tremendous efforts have been dedicated to implementing a practical quantum repeater 5–10 . However, nested purification 1 , the backbone of a quantum repeater, remains a challenge because the capacity for successive entanglement manipulation is still absent. Here, we propose and demonstrate an architecture of nested purification using spontaneous parametric downconversion sources 11 . A heralded entangled photon pair with higher fidelity is successfully purified from two copies of low-fidelity pairs that experience entanglement swapping and noisy channels. By delicately designing the optical circuits, double-pair emission noise is eliminated automatically and the purified state can be used for scalable entanglement connections to extend the communication distance. Combined with a quantum memory, our approach can be applied immediately in the implemention of a practical quantum repeater. A nested purification protocol is developed by combining entanglement purification and swapping. It works for the spontaneous parametric downconversion sources as well as other physical systems that suffer from double-pair emission noise.

Quantum resetting protocols allow a quantum system to be sent to a state in the past by making it interact with quantum probes when neither the free evolution of the system nor the interaction is controlled. We experimentally verify the simplest non-trivial case of a quantum resetting protocol, known as the $\mathcal{W}_4$ protocol, with five superconducting qubits, testing it with different types of free evolutions and target-probe interactions. After projection, we obtained a reset state fidelity as high as $0.951$, and the process fidelity was found to be $0.792$. We also implemented 100 randomly-chosen interactions and demonstrated an average success probability of $0.323$ for $|1\rangle$ and $0.292$ for $|-\rangle$, experimentally confirmed the nonzero probability of success for unknown interactions; the numerical simulated values are about $0.3$. Our experiment shows that the simplest quantum resetting protocol can be implemented with current technologies, making such protocols a valuable tool in the eternal fight against unwanted evolution in quantum systems., 9 pages, 6 figures, 1 table + Supplementary Materials

Quantum networks illustrate the use of connected nodes of quantum systems as the backbone of distributed quantum information processing. When the network nodes are entangled in graph states, such a quantum platform is indispensable to almost all the existing distributed quantum tasks. Unfortunately, real networks unavoidably suffer from noise and technical restrictions, making nodes transit from quantum to classical at worst. Here, we introduce a figure of merit in terms of the number of classical nodes for quantum networks in arbitrary graph states. Such a network property is revealed by exploiting a novel Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steerability. Experimentally, we demonstrate photonic quantum networks of ${n}_{q}$ quantum nodes and ${n}_{c}$ classical nodes with ${n}_{q}$ up to 6 and ${n}_{c}$ up to 18 using spontaneous parametric down-conversion entanglement sources. We show that the proposed method is faithful in quantifying the classical defects in prepared multiphoton quantum networks. Our results provide novel identification of generic quantum networks and nonclassical correlations in graph states.

Using the axiomatic definition of the quantum coherence measure, such as the $$l_{1}$$ norm and the relative entropy, we study the phenomena of two-qubit system quantum coherence through quantum channels where successive uses of the channels are memory. Different types of noisy channels with memory, such as amplitude damping, phase damping, and depolarizing channels effect on quantum coherence have been discussed in detail. The results show that quantum channels with memory can efficiently protect coherence from noisy channels. Particularly, as channels with perfect memory, quantum coherence is unaffected by the phase damping as well as depolarizing channels. Besides, we also investigate the cohering and decohering power of quantum channels with memory.

Quantum simulation is of great importance in quantum information science. Here, we report an experimental quantum channel simulator imbued with an algorithm for imitating the behavior of a general class of quantum systems. The reported quantum channel simulator consists of four single-qubit gates and one controlled-NOT gate. All types of quantum channels can be decomposed by the algorithm and implemented on this device. We deploy our system to simulate various quantum channels, such as quantum-noise channels and weak quantum measurement. Our results advance experimental quantum channel simulation, which is integral to the goal of quantum information processing., Comment: This version is very closed to the published version

We report on the experimental realization of a ten-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state using thin BiB$_{3}$O$_{6}$ crystals. The observed fidelity is $0.606\pm0.029$, demonstrating a genuine entanglement with a standard deviation of 3.6 $\sigma$. This result is further verified using $p$-value calculation, obtaining an upper bound of $3.7\times10^{-3}$ under an assumed hypothesis test. Our experiment paves a new way to efficiently engineer BiB$_{3}$O$_{6}$ crystal-based multi-photon entanglement systems, which provides a promising platform for investigating advanced optical quantum information processing tasks such as boson sampling, quantum error correction and quantum-enhanced measurement., Comment: Revised for readability and clarity

Silicon single-photon detectors (SPDs) are the key devices for detecting single photons in the visible wavelength range. Here we present high detection efficiency silicon SPDs dedicated to the generation of multiphoton entanglement based on the technique of high-frequency sine wave gating. The silicon single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) components are acquired by disassembling 6 commercial single-photon counting modules (SPCMs). Using the new quenching electronics, the average detection efficiency of SPDs is increased from 68.6% to 73.1% at a wavelength of 785 nm. These sine wave gating SPDs are then applied in a four-photon entanglement experiment, and the four-fold coincidence count rate is increased by 30% without degrading its visibility compared with the original SPCMs., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Review of Scientific Instruments

Quantum entanglement among multiple spatially separated particles is of fundamental interest, and can serve as central resources for studies in quantum nonlocality, quantum-to-classical transition, quantum error correction, and quantum simulation. The ability of generating an increasing number of entangled particles is an important benchmark for quantum information processing. The largest entangled states were previously created with fourteen trapped ions, eight photons, and five superconducting qubits. Here, based on spontaneous parametric down-converted two-photon entanglement source with simultaneously a high brightness of ~12 MHz/W, a collection efficiency of ~70% and an indistinguishability of ~91% between independent photons, we demonstrate, for the first time, genuine and distillable entanglement of ten single photons under different pump power. Our work creates a state-of-the-art platform for multi-photon experiments, and provide enabling technologies for challenging optical quantum information tasks such as high-efficiency scattershot boson sampling with many photons., Comment: 65 pages, supplementary information included, with all raw data. to appear in Physical Review Letters

In this paper, we have performed a detailed investigation of the dynamics of the entropic uncertainty relation for a qutrit with and without a memory system under an amplitude damping channel at finite temperature. We focus mainly on how the temperature affects the entropic uncertainty relation. The results show that the dynamics of the entropic uncertainty exhibits a non-monotonic phenomenon. As r increases (r is usually a function of temperature), the amount of the entropic uncertainty will first increase and then subsequently decrease. Moreover, based on measurement reversal from a weak measurement, we have also investigated the reduction of the entropic uncertainty for a qutrit system under decoherence. It has been found that the measurement reversal technique can always reduce the entropic uncertainty effectively at finite temperature, while the prior weak measurement technique is valid only at a lower temperature but fails at a higher channel temperature. Finally, a phenomenological explanation of our results is also presented.