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The paper suggest employing machine learning for resource-efficient classification of quantum correlations in entanglement distribution networks. Specifically, artificial neural networks (ANN) are utilized to classify quantum correlations based on collective measurements conducted in the geometry of entanglement swapping. ANNs are trained to categorize two-qubit quantum states into five mutually exclusive classes depending on the strength of quantum correlations exhibited by the states. The precision and recall of the ANN models are analyzed as functions of the quantum resources consumed, i.e. the number of collective measurements performed., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures

Entanglement potentials (EPs) enable the characterization and quantification of the nonclassicality of single-mode optical fields by measuring the entanglement generated through beam splitting. We experimentally generated single-photon states and tomographically reconstructed the corresponding two-qubit states to determine EPs defined via popular two-qubit measures of entanglement. These include the potentials for the relative entropy of entanglement (REEP), concurrence, and negativity. Among our experimental states, we found those that are very close (at least for some ranges of parameters) to the theoretical upper and lower bounds on relative EPs (or relative nonclassicality), i.e., when one EP is maximized or minimized for a given value if another EP. We experimentally confirmed the counterintuitive theoretical result of Ref. [Phys. Rev. A 92, 062314 (2015)] that the relative nonclassicality (specifically, the negativity potential for given values of the REEP) of single-photon states can be increased by dissipation., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

This paper analyzes the adverse impact of white noise on collective quantum measurements and argues that such noise poses a significant obstacle to the otherwise straightforward deployment of collective measurements in quantum communications. The paper then suggests addressing this issue by correlating the outcomes of these measurements with quantum state purity. To test the concept, a support vector machine is employed to boost the performance of several collective entanglement witnesses by incorporating state purity into the classification task of distinguishing entangled states from separable ones. Furthermore, the application of machine learning allows to optimize selectivity of entanglement detection given a target value of sensitivity. A response operating characteristic curve is reconstructed based on this optimization and the area under curve calculated to assess the efficacy of the proposed model., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures

One of the remarkable aspects of quantum steering is its ability to violate local uncertainty complementarity relations. In this vein of study, various steering witnesses employing different uncertainty relations have been developed including Reid's criteria. Here, we introduce a novel complementarity relation between system's quantum and classical uncertainties corresponding to the distillable coherence and the von-Neumann entropy, respectively. We demonstrate a superior steering detection efficiency compared to an entropic uncertainty relation. Notably, our proposed steering witness can detect ``all pure entangled states," while the entropic uncertainty relation cannot. We also experimentally validate such a property through a photonic system. Furthermore, a deeper connection to the uncertainty principle is revealed by showcasing the functionality of our proposed complementarity as a quantifier of measurement incompatibility and quantum steerability under genuine incoherent operations. Our work establishes a clear quantitative and operational link between coherence and steering, which are significant resources of quantum technologies, and underscores our efforts in bridging the uncertainty principle with quantum coherence., Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures

Entanglement potentials are popular measures of the nonclassicality of single-mode optical fields. These potentials are defined by the amount of entanglement (measured by, e.g., the negativity or concurrence) of the two-mode field generated by mixing a given single-mode field with the vacuum on a balanced beam splitter. We generalize this concept to define the potentials for Bell nonlocality and quantum steering in specific measurement scenarios, in order to quantify single-mode nonclassicality in a more refined way. Thus, we can study the hierarchy of three types of potentials in close analogy to the well-known hierarchy of the corresponding two-mode quantum correlations. For clarity of our presentation, we focus on the analysis of the nonclassicality potentials for arbitrary vacuum-one-photon superpositions (VOPSs), corresponding to a photon-number qubit. We discuss experimentally feasible implementations for the generation of single-mode VOPS states, their mixing with the vacuum on a balanced beam splitter, and their two-mode Wigner-function reconstruction using homodyne tomography to determine the potentials. We analyze the effects of imperfections, including phase damping and unbalanced beam splitting on the quality of the reconstructed two-mode states and nonclassicality potentials. Although we focus on the analysis of VOPS states, single-mode potentials can also be applied to study the nonclassicality of qudits or continuous-variable systems., Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures

Entanglement potentials are a promising way to quantify the nonclassicality of single-mode states. They are defined by the amount of entanglement (expressed by, e.g., the Wootters concurrence) obtained after mixing the examined single-mode state with a purely classical state; such as the vacuum or a coherent state. We generalize the idea of entanglement potentials to other quantum correlations: the EPR steering and Bell nonlocality, thus enabling us to study mutual hierarchies of these nonclassicality potentials. Instead of the usual vacuum and one-photon superposition states, we experimentally test this concept using specially tailored polarization-encoded single-photon states. One polarization encodes a given nonclassical single-mode state, while the other serves as the vacuum place-holder. This technique proves to be experimentally more convenient in comparison to the vacuum and a one-photon superposition as it does not require the vacuum detection., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures

In this paper, we present a supervised learning technique that utilizes artificial neural networks to design new collective entanglement witnesses for two-qubit and qubit-qutrit systems. Machine-designed collective entanglement witnesses allow for continuous tuning of their sensitivity and selectivity. These witnesses are, thus, a conceptually novel instrument allowing to study the sensitivity vs. selectivity trade-off in entanglement detection. The chosen approach is also favored due to its high generality, lower number of required measurements compared to quantum tomography, and potential for superior performance with regards to other types of entanglement witnesses. Our findings could pave the way for the development of more efficient and accurate entanglement detection methods in complex quantum systems, especially considering realistic experimental imperfections., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

A Werner state, which is the singlet Bell state affected by white noise, is a prototype example of states, which can reveal a hierarchy of quantum entanglement, steering, and Bell nonlocality by controlling the amount of noise. However, experimental demonstrations of this hierarchy in a sufficient and necessary way (i.e., by applying measures or universal witnesses of these quantum correlations) have been mainly based on full quantum state tomography, corresponding to measuring at least 15 real parameters of two-qubit states. Here we report an experimental demonstration of this hierarchy by measuring only six elements of a correlation matrix depending on linear combinations of two-qubit Stokes parameters. We show that our experimental setup can also reveal the hierarchy of these quantum correlations of generalized Werner states, which are any two-qubit pure states affected by white noise., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures

Identification, and subsequent quantification of quantum correlations, is critical for understanding, controlling, and engineering quantum devices and processes. We derive and implement a general method to quantify various forms of quantum correlations using solely the experimental intensity moments up to the fourth order. This is possible as these moments allow for an exact determination of the global and marginal impurities of two-beam Gaussian fields. This leads to the determination of steering, tight lower and upper bounds for the negativity, and the Kullback-Leibler divergence used as a quantifier of state nonseparability. The principal squeezing variances are determined as well using the intensity moments. The approach is demonstrated on the experimental twin beams with increasing intensity and the squeezed super-Gaussian beams composed of photon pairs. Our method is readily applicable to multibeam Gaussian fields to characterize their quantum correlations., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, extended version, some parts of version one moved to the Supplemental Material

In this paper, we investigate how to reduce the number of measurement configurations needed for sufficiently precise entanglement quantification. Instead of analytical formulae, we employ artificial neural networks to predict the amount of entanglement in a quantum state based on results of collective measurements (simultaneous measurements on multiple instances of the investigated state). This approach allows us to explore the precision of entanglement quantification as a function of measurement configurations. For the purpose of our research, we consider general two-qubit states and their negativity as entanglement quantifier. We outline the benefits of this approach in future quantum communication networks., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures

The scheme for building stronger multi-mode twin beams from a greater number of identical twin beams sufficiently weak so that single-photon sensitive on/off detectors suffice in their detection is studied. Statistical properties of these compound twin beams involving the non-classicality are analyzed for intensities up to hundreds of photon pairs. Their properties are compared with those of the genuine twin beams that require photon-number-resolving detectors in their experimental investigations. The use of such compound twin beams for the generation of sub-Poissonian light and measurement of absorption with sub-shot-noise precision is analyzed. A suitable theoretical model for the compound twin beams is developed to interpret the experimental data., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures

Quantum channels breaking entanglement, incompatibility, or nonlocality are defined as such because they are not useful for entanglement-based, one-sided device-independent, or device-independent quantum information processing, respectively. Here, we show that such breaking channels are related to complementary tests of macrorealism i.e., temporal separability, channel unsteerability, temporal unsteerability, and the temporal Bell inequality. To demonstrate this we first define a steerability-breaking channel, which is conceptually similar to entanglement and nonlocality-breaking channels and prove that it is identical to an incompatibility-breaking channel. A hierarchy of quantum non-breaking channels is derived, akin to the existing hierarchy relations for temporal and spatial quantum correlations. We then introduce the concept of channels that break temporal correlations, explain how they are related to the standard breaking channels, and prove the following results: (1) A robustness-based measure for non-entanglement-breaking channels can be probed by temporal nonseparability. (2) A non-steerability-breaking channel can be quantified by channel steering. (3) Temporal steerability and non-macrorealism can be used for, respectively, distinguishing unital steerability-breaking channels and nonlocality-breaking channels for a maximally entangled state. Finally, a two-dimensional depolarizing channel is experimentally implemented as a proof-of-principle example to demonstrate the hierarchy relation of non-breaking channels using temporal quantum correlations, Comment: Comments welcome

The genuine concurrence is a standard quantifier of multipartite entanglement, detection and quantification of which still remains a difficult problem from both theoretical and experimental point of view. Although many efforts have been devoted toward the detection of multipartite entanglement (e.g., using entanglement witnesses), measuring the degree of multipartite entanglement, in general, requires some knowledge about an exact shape of a density matrix of the quantum state. An experimental reconstruction of such density matrix can be done by full state tomography which amounts to having the distant parties share a common reference frame and well calibrated devices. Although this assumption is typically made implicitly in theoretical works, establishing a common reference frame, as well as aligning and calibrating measurement devices in experimental situations are never trivial tasks. It is therefore an interesting and important question whether the requirements of having a shared reference frame and calibrated devices can be relaxed. In this work we study both theoretically and experimentally the genuine concurrence for the generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states under randomly chosen measurements on a single qubits without a shared frame of reference and calibrated devices. We present the relation between genuine concurrence and so-called nonlocal volume, a recently introduced indicator of nonlocality., Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures

We demonstrate a hierarchy of various classes of quantum correlations on experimentally prepared two-qubit Werner-like states with controllable white noise. Werner states, which are white-noise-affected Bell states, are prototypal examples for studying such a hierarchy as a function of the amount of white noise. We experimentally generated Werner states and their generalizations, i.e., partially entangled pure states affected by white noise. These states enabled us to study the hierarchy of the following classes of correlations: separability, entanglement, steering in three- and two-measurement scenarios, and Bell nonlocality. We show that the generalized Werner states (GWSs) reveal fundamentally different aspects of the hierarchy compared to the Werner states. In particular, we find five different parameter regimes of the GWSs, including those steerable in a two-measurement scenario but not violating Bell inequalities. This regime cannot be observed for the usual Werner states. Furthermore, we find threshold curves separating different regimes of the quantum correlations and find the optimal states which allow for the largest amount of white noise, which does not destroy their specific quantum correlations (e.g., unsteerable entanglement). Thus, we could identify the optimal Bell-nondiagonal GWSs, which are, for this specific meaning, more robust against white noise compared to the Bell-diagonal GWSs (i.e., Werner states)., Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures

Detection of entangled states is essential in both fundamental and applied quantum physics. However, this task proves to be challenging especially for general quantum states. One can execute full state tomography but this method is time demanding especially in complex systems. Other approaches use entanglement witnesses, these methods tend to be less demanding but lack reliability. Here, we demonstrate that ANN -- artificial neural networks provide a balance between both approaches. In this paper, we make a comparison of ANN performance against witness-based methods for random general 2-qubit quantum states without any prior information on the states. Furthermore, we apply our approach to real experimental data set., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

In this work, we study a recently proposed operational measure of nonlocality by Fonseca and Parisio~[Phys. Rev. A 92, 030101(R) (2015)] which describes the probability of violation of local realism under randomly sampled observables, and the strength of such violation as described by resistance to white noise admixture. While our knowledge concerning these quantities is well established from a theoretical point of view, the experimental counterpart is a considerably harder task and very little has been done in this field. It is caused by the lack of complete knowledge about the facets of the local polytope required for the analysis. In this paper, we propose a simple procedure towards experimentally determining both quantities for $N$-qubit pure states, based on the incomplete set of tight Bell inequalities. We show that the imprecision arising from this approach is of similar magnitude as the potential measurement errors. We also show that even with both a randomly chosen $N$-qubit pure state and randomly chosen measurement bases, a violation of local realism can be detected experimentally almost $100\%$ of the time. Among other applications, our work provides a feasible alternative for the witnessing of genuine multipartite entanglement without aligned reference frames., Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures

The paper reports on experimental diagnostics of entanglement swapping protocol by means of collective entanglement witness. Our approach is suitable to detect disturbances occurring in the preparation of quantum states, quantum communication channel and imperfect Bell-state projection. More specifically we demonstrate that our method can distinguish disturbances such as depolarization, phase-damping, amplitude-damping and imperfect Bell-state measurement by observing four probabilities and estimating collective entanglement witness. Since entanglement swapping is a key procedure for quantum repeaters, quantum relays, device-independent quantum communications or entanglement assisted error correction, this can aid in faster and practical resolution of quality-of-transmission related problems as our approach requires less measurements then other means of diagnostics., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We report on experimental measurement of the Hilbert-Schmidt distance between two two-qubit states by many-particle interference. We demonstrate that our three-step method for measuring distances in Hilbert space is far less complex than reconstructing density matrices and that it can be applied in quantum-enhanced machine learning to reduce the complexity of calculating Euclidean distances between multidimensional points, which can be especially interesting for near term quantum technologies and quantum artificial intelligence research. Our results are also a novel example of applying mixed states in quantum information processing. Usually working with mixed states is undesired, but here it gives the possibility of encoding extra information as coherence between given two dimensions of the density matrix., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures (extended bibliography)

We report on experimental implementation of a machine-learned quantum gate driven by a classical control. The gate learns optimal phase-covariant cloning in a reinforcement learning scenario having fidelity of the clones as reward. In our experiment, the gate learns to achieve nearly optimal cloning fidelity allowed for this particular class of states. This makes it a proof of present-day feasibility and practical applicability of the hybrid machine learning approach combining quantum information processing with classical control. Moreover, our experiment can be directly generalized to larger interferometers where the computational cost of classical computer is much lower than the cost of boson sampling., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

We implement an all-optical setup demonstrating kernel-based quantum machine learning for two-dimensional classification problems. In this hybrid approach, kernel evaluations are outsourced to projective measurements on suitably designed quantum states encoding the training data, while the model training is processed on a classical computer. Our two-photon proposal encodes data points in a discrete, eight-dimensional feature Hilbert space. In order to maximize the application range of the deployable kernels, we optimize feature maps towards the resulting kernels' ability to separate points, i.e., their resolution, under the constraint of finite, fixed Hilbert space dimension. Implementing these kernels, our setup delivers viable decision boundaries for standard nonlinear supervised classification tasks in feature space. We demonstrate such kernel-based quantum machine learning using specialized multiphoton quantum optical circuits. The deployed kernel exhibits exponentially better scaling in the required number of qubits than a direct generalization of kernels described in the literature., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We report an experimental implementation of tripartite controlled quantum teleportation on the quantum optical devices. The protocol is performed through bi- and tripartite entangled channels of discrete variables and qubits encoded in polarization of individual photons. The experimental results demonstrate successful controlled quantum teleportation with a fidelity around $83\%$, well above the classical limit. By realizing the controlled quantum teleportation through biseparable state, we show that tripartite entangled is not a necessary resource for controlled quantum teleportation and the controller's capability to allow or prohibit the teleportation cannot be considered to be a manifestation of tripartite entanglement. These results open new possibilities for further application of controlled quantum teleportation by lowering teleportation channel's requirements., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures

In this paper, we investigate the genuine three-way nonlocality which is recognized as the strongest form of tripartite correlations. We consider theoretically and experimentally a series of suitable Bell-type inequalities a violation of which is sufficient for the detection of three-way nonlocality. For the generalized GHZ (gGHZ) states, it is demonstrated that they do violate tripartite Bell-type inequalities for any degree of tripartite entanglement even if they do not violate Svetlichny inequality. It implies that three-way entangled gGHZ can always exhibit genuine three-way nonlocality under the requirement of time-order-dependent principle. Furthermore, we have determined the maximal amount of noise admissible for the gGHZ states to still remain genuine three-way nonlocal., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures

Weak values are traditionally obtained using a weak interaction between the measured system and a pointer state. It has, however, been pointed out that weak coupling can be replaced by a carefully tailored strong interaction. This paper provides a direct comparison of two strong interaction-based approaches (strong interaction accompanied by either a suitably prepared pointer state or quantum erasure) and the traditional weak interaction-based method. Presented theoretical derivations explicitly prove analytical equivalence of these approaches which was subsequently certified by an experiment implemented on the platform of linear optics. We find that strong-interaction-based measurements are experimentally less demanding on this platform., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures

The concept of quantum money (QM) was proposed by Wiesner in the 1970s. Its main advantage is that every attempt to copy QM unavoidably leads to imperfect counterfeits. In the Wiesner's protocol, quantum banknotes need to be delivered to the issuing bank for verification. Thus, QM requires quantum communication which range is limited by noise and losses. Recently, Bozzio et al. (2018) have demonstrated experimentally how to replace challenging quantum verification with a classical channel and a quantum retrieval game (QRG). This brings QM significantly closer to practical realisation, but still thorough analysis of the revised scheme QM is required before it can be considered secure. We address this problem by presenting a proof-of-concept attack on QRG-based QM schemes, where we show that even imperfect quantum cloning can, under some circumstances, provide enough information to break a QRG-based QM scheme., Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures

The paper discusses technical aspects of constructing a highly versatile multi-photon source. The source is able to generate up to four photons which is sufficient for a large number of quantum communications protocols. It can be set to generate separable, partially-entangled or maximally-entangled photon pairs with tunable amount of purity. Furthermore, the two generated pairs can be prepared in different quantum states. In this paper, we provide all the necessary information needed for construction and alignment of the source. To prove the working principle, we also provide results of thorough testing., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures

We demonstrate that non-linear entanglement witnesses can be made particularly useful for entanglement detection in hyper-entangled or multilevel states. We test this idea experimentally on the platform of linear optics using a hyper-entangled state of two photons. Instead of several simultaneous copies of two-photon entangled states, one can directly measure the witness on single copy of a hyper-entangled state. Our results indicate that hyper-entanglement can be used for quick entanglement detection and it provides a practical testbed for experiments with non-linear entanglement witnesses., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

In this paper, we report on experimental implementation of a linear-optical quantum router. Our device allows single-photon polarization-encoded qubits to be routed coherently into two spatial output modes depending on the state of two identical control qubits. The polarization qubit state of the routed photon is maintained during the routing operation. The success probability of our scheme can be increased up to 25% making it the most efficient linear-optical quantum router known to this date., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures + supplement

We experimentally demonstrate the migration of coherence between composite quantum systems and their subsystems. The quantum systems are implemented using polarization states of photons in two experimental setups. The first setup is based on linear optical controlled-phase quantum gate and the second scheme is utilizing effects of nonlinear optics. Our experiment allows to verify the relation between correlations of the subsystems and the coherence of the composite system, which was given in terms of a conservation law for maximal accessible coherence by Svozil\'ik \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 115}, 220501 (2015)]. We observe that the maximal accessible coherence is conserved for the implemented class of global evolutions of the composite system., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

In this paper, we develop a simple model describing inherent photon-number noise in Rarity-Tapster type interferometers. This noise is caused by generating photon pairs in the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion and adding a third photon by attenuating fundamental laser mode to single-photon level. We experimentally verify our model and present resulting signal to noise ratios as well as obtained three-photon generation rates as functions of various setup parameters. Subsequently we evaluate impact of this particular source of noise on quantum teleportation which is a key quantum information protocol using this interferometric configuration., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

We demonstrate an efficient experimental procedure based on entanglement swapping to determine the Bell nonlocality measure of Horodecki et al. [Phys. Lett. A 200, 340 (1995)] and the fully-entangled fraction of Bennett et al. [Phys. Rev. A 54, 3824 (1996)] of an arbitrary two-qubit polarization-encoded state. The nonlocality measure corresponds to the amount of the violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) optimized over all measurement settings. By using simultaneously two copies of a given state, we measure directly only six parameters. Our method requires neither full quantum state tomography of 15 parameters nor continuous scanning of the measurement bases used by two parties in the usual CHSH inequality tests with four measurements in each optimization step. We analyze how well the measured degrees of Bell nonlocality and other entanglement witnesses (including the fully-entangled fraction and a nonlinear entropic witness) of an arbitrary two-qubit state can estimate its entanglement. In particular, we measured these witnesses and estimated the negativity of various two-qubit Werner states. Our approach could especially be useful for quantum communication protocols based on entanglement swapping., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

In the year 2013, Danan et al. published a paper [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 240402 (2013)] demonstrating a counterintuitive behavior of photons in nested Mach-Zehnder interferometers. The authors then proposed an explanation based on the two-state vector formalism. This experiment and the authors' explanation raised a vivid debate within the scientific community. In this paper, we contribute to the ongoing debate by presenting an alternative experimental implementation of the Danan et al. scheme. We show that no counterintuitive behavior is observed when performing direct spectrally-resolved detection., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

Unknown quantum information cannot be perfectly copied (cloned). This statement is the bedrock of quantum technologies and quantum cryptography, including the seminal scheme of Wiesner's quantum money, which was the first quantum-cryptographic proposal. Surprisingly, to our knowledge, quantum money has not been tested experimentally yet. Here, we experimentally revisit the Wiesner idea, assuming a banknote to be an image encoded in the polarization states of single photons. We demonstrate that it is possible to use quantum states to prepare a banknote that cannot be ideally copied without making the owner aware of only unauthorized actions. We provide the security conditions for quantum money by investigating the physically-achievable limits on the fidelity of 1-to-2 copying of arbitrary sequences of qubits. These results can be applied as a security measure in quantum digital right management., Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures

Temporal steering is a form of temporal correlation between the initial and final state of a quantum system. It is a temporal analogue of the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (spatial) steering. We demonstrate, by measuring the photon polarization, that temporal steering allows two parties to verify if they have been interacting with the same particle, even if they have no information about what happened with the particle in between the measurements. This is the first experimental study of temporal steering. We also performed experimental tests, based on the violation of temporal steering inequalities, of the security of two quantum key distribution protocols against individual attacks. Thus, these results can lead to applications for secure quantum communications and quantum engineering., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. Our article arXiv:1503.00612v3 was extended and split into arXiv:1503.00612v4 and this article

We present a proof-of-principle experiment demonstrating measurement of the collectibility, a nonlinear entanglement witness proposed by Rudnicki et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 150502 (2011)]. This entanglement witness works for both mixed and pure two-qubit states. In the later case it can be used to measure entanglement in terms of the negativity. We measured the collectibility for three distinct classes of photonic polarization-encoded two-qubit states, i.e., maximally entangled, separable and maximally mixed states. We demonstrate that the measurement procedure is feasible and robust against typical experimental shortcomings such as imperfect two-photon indistinguishability., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

In standard optical tomographic methods, the off-diagonal elements of a density matrix $\rho$ are measured indirectly. Thus, the reconstruction of $\rho$, even if it is based on linear inversion, typically magnifies small errors in the experimental data. Recently, an optimal tomography [Phys. Rev. A 90, 062123 (2014)] has been proposed theoretically to measure one-by-one all the elements of $\rho$. Thus, the relative errors in the reconstructed state can be the same as those in the experimental data. We implemented this method for two-qubit polarization states performing both local and global measurements. For comparison, we also experimentally implemented other well-known tomographic protocols based solely on local measurements (of, e.g., the Pauli operators and James-Kwiat-Munro-White projectors) and those with mutually unbiased bases requiring both local and global measurements. We reconstructed seventeen of two-qubit polarization states including separable, partially and maximally entangled. Our experiments show the highest stability against errors of our method in comparison to the other quantum tomographies. In particular, we demonstrate that each optimally-reconstructed state} is embedded in the uncertainty circle of the smallest radius, both in terms of the trace distance and disturbance. We explain how to estimate experimentally the uncertainty radii for all the implemented tomographies and show that, for each reconstructed state, the relevant uncertainty circles intersect indicating the approximate location of the corresponding physical density matrix., Comment: 24 (6+18) pages, 4 figures

We present a linear-optical scheme for a controlled-phase gate with tunable phase shift programmed by a qubit state. In contrast to all previous tunable controlled-phase gates, the phase shift is not hard-coded into the optical setup, but can be tuned to any value from 0 to pi by the state of a so-called program qubit. Our setup is feasible with current level of technology using only linear-optical components. We provide an experimental feasibility study to assess the gate's implementability. We also discuss options for increasing the success probability up to 1/12 which approaches the success probability of a optimal non-programmable tunable controlled-phase gate., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures

Temporal steering, which is a temporal analogue of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering, refers to temporal quantum correlations between the initial and final state of a quantum system. Our analysis of temporal steering inequalities in relation to the average quantum bit error rates reveals the interplay between temporal steering and quantum cloning, which guarantees the security of quantum key-distribution based on mutually-unbiased bases against individual attacks. The key distributions analyzed here include the Bennett-Brassard 1984 protocol (BB84) and the six-state 1998 protocol by Bruss (B98). Moreover, we define a temporal steerable weight, which enables us to identify a kind of monogamy of temporal correlations that is essential to quantum cryptography and useful for analyzing various scenarios of quantum causality., Comment: 8 pages

Linear-optical interferometers play a key role in designing circuits for quantum information processing and quantum communications. Even though nested Mach-Zehnder interferometers appear easy to describe, there are occasions when they provide unintuitive results. This paper explains the results of a highly discussed experiment performed by Danan et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 240402 (2013)] using a standard approach. We provide a simple and intuitive one-state vector formalism capable of interpreting their experiment. Additionally, we cross-checked our model with a classical-physics based approach and found that both models are in complete agreement. We argue that the quantity used in the mentioned experiment is not a suitable which-path witness producing seemingly contra-intuitive results. To circumvent this issue, we establish a more reliable which-path witness and show that it yields well expected outcomes of the experiment., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure

We show that it is possible to reduce the number of two-qubit gates needed for the construction of an arbitrary controlled-unitary transformation by up to two times using a tunable controlled-phase gate. On the platform of linear optics, where two-qubit gates can only be achieved probabilistically, our method significantly reduces the amount of components and increases success probability of a two-qubit gate. The experimental implementation of our technique presented in this paper for a controlled single-qubit unitary gate demonstrates that only one tunable controlled-phase gate is needed instead of two standard controlled-NOT gates. Thus, not only do we increase success probability by about one order of magnitude (with the same resources), but also avoid the need for conducting quantum non-demolition measurement otherwise required to join two probabilistic gates. Subsequently, we generalize our method to a higher order, showing that n-times controlled gates can be optimized by replacing blocks of controlled-NOT gates with tunable controlled-phase gates., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

In this paper we investigate the capability of quantum routing (quantum state fusion) to implement two useful quantum communications protocols. The analyzed protocols include quantum authentication of quantum messages and non-destructive linear-optical Bell state manipulation. We also present the concept of quantum decoupler -- a device implementing an inverse operation to quantum routing. We demonstrate that both quantum router and decoupler can work as specialized disentangling gates., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures

We demonstrate that a phase-independent quantum amplifier of a polarization qubit is a complementary amplifier of the heralded qubit amplifier [N. Gisin, S. Pironio and N. Sangouard, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 070501 (2010)]. It employs the multi-functional cloner in 1 to 2 copying regime, capable of providing approximate copies of qubits given by various probability distributions, and is optimized for distributions with axial symmetry. Direct applications of the proposed solution are possible in quantum technologies, doubling the range where quantum information is coherently broadcast. It also outperforms natural nonlinear amplifiers that use stimulated emission in bulk nonlinear materials. We consider the amplifier to be an important tool for amplifying quantum information sent via quantum channels with phase-independent damping., Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures (Fig.1 fixed)

We propose a linear-optical setup for heralded qubit amplification with tunable output qubit fidelity. We study its success probability as a function of output qubit fidelity showing that at the expense of lower fidelity, the setup can considerably increase probability of successful operation. These results are subsequently applied in a proposal for state dependent qubit amplification. Similarly to state-dependent quantum cloning, the a priori information about the input state allows to optimize the qubit amplification procedure to obtain better fidelity versus success probability trade-off., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures

We propose a linear-optical scheme for an efficient amplification of a photonic qubit based on interaction of the signal mode with a pair of entangled ancillae. In contrast to a previous proposal for qubit amplifier by Gisin et al., [Phys Rev. Lett. 105, 070501 (2010)] the success probability of our device does not decrease asymptotically to zero with increasing gain. Moreover we show how the device can be used to restore entanglement deteriorated by transmission over a lossy channel and calculate the secure key rate for device-independent quantum key distribution., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures

All-linear-optical scheme for fully featured quantum router is presented. This device directs the signal photonic qubit according to the state of one control photonic qubit. In the introduction we formulate the list of requirements imposed on a fully quantum router. Then we describe our proposal showing the exact principle of operation on a linear-optical scheme. Subsequently we provide generalization of the scheme in order to optimize the success probability by means of a tunable controlled-phase gate. At the end, we show how one can modify the device to route multiple signal qubits using the same control qubit., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

The threshold between classical and nonclassical two-qubit states is drawn at the place when these states can no longer be described by classical correlations, i.e., quantum discord or entanglement appear. However, to check if the correlations are classical (in terms of quantum discord and entanglement) it is sufficient to witness the lack of quantum discord because its zero value implies the lack of entanglement. We explain how the indicator of quantum discord introduced by Girolami and Adesso [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 150403 (2012)] can be practically measured in linear-optical systems using standard beam splitters and photon detectors. We study the efficiency of the setup assuming both ideal and real components and show that the efficiency of the proposed implementation is better than the full two-photon quantum tomography. Thus, we demonstrate that a class of experiments previously available on NMR platform can be implemented in optical systems., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, additional figures and explanations added, to appear in Phys. Rev. A

In this paper, we propose a resources-optimal linear-optical scheme for quantum nondemolition detection of single-photon presence. By measuring the state of ancillary photons, the presence of a photon in signal mode is revealed with a success probability of 1/2 without any disturbance to its state. We also show how to tune the setup to perform quantum nondemolition measurement of the signal photon state, and we provide tradeoff between the extracted information and the signal state disturbance. Moreover, the optimality of resources and methods by which to increase the success probability are discussed., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

This paper presents a scheme for linear-optical implementation of a programmable quantum router. Polarization encoded photon qubit is coherently routed to various spatial modes according to the state of several control qubits. In our implementation, the polarization state of the signal photon does not change under the routing operation. We also discuss generalization of the scheme that would allow to obtain signal dependent routing., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

We propose a new measure of non-classicality of quantum gates which is particularly suitable for probabilistic devices. This measure enables to compare, e.g., deterministic devices which prepare entangled states with low amount of entanglement with probabilistic devices which generate highly entangled states but which fail sometimes. We provide examples demonstrating advantages of this new measure over the so far employed entangling power., Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures