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Developing quantum key distribution (QKD) systems using monolithic photonic integrated circuits (PICs) can accelerate their adoption by a wide range of markets, thanks to the potential reduction in size, complexity of the overall system, power consumption, and production cost. In this work, we design, fabricate and characterize an InP-based PIC transmitter for continuous-variable (CV) QKD applications. In a proof-of-principle experiment implementing a pulsed Gaussian-modulated coherent state (GMCS) CV-QKD protocol over an optical fiber channel of 11 km, the system showed a performance compatible with a secret key rate of 78 kbps in the asymptotic regime. These results show the potential of InP technologies to integrate CV-QKD systems onto a monolithic platform., Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures

Future quantum networks will be composed of both terrestrial links for metropolitan and continent-scale connections and space-based links for global coverage and infrastructure resilience. However, the propagation of quantum signals through the atmosphere is severely impacted by the effects of turbulence. This is even more the case for entanglement-based quantum communication protocols requiring two free-space channels to be considered simultaneously. In this work, we assess the advantage of turbulence mitigation by adaptive optics, in particular during daytime link operation, so as to increase the coupling of the received signal into an optical fiber. We show in particular that this improves the performance of entanglement-based quantum key distribution by up to a few hundred bits per second when compared with the uncorrected scenario

The exploration of the concept of nonlocality beyond standard Bell scenarios in quantum network architectures unveils fundamentally new forms of correlations that hold a strong potential for future applications of quantum communication networks. To materialize this potential, it is necessary to adapt theoretical advances to realistic configurations. Here we consider a quantum triangle network, for which is was shown in theory that, remarkably, quantum nonlocality without inputs can be demonstrated for sources with an arbitrarily small level of independence. We realize experimentally such correlated sources by carefully engineering the output state of a single AlGaAs multiplexed entangled-photon source, exploiting energy-matched channels cut in its broad spectrum. This simulated triangle network is then used to violate experimentally for the first time a Bell-like inequality that we derive to capture the effect of noise in the correlations present in our system. We also rigorously validate our findings by analysing the mutual information between the generated states. Our results allow us to deepen our understanding of network nonlocality while also pushing its practical relevance for quantum communication networks.

The certification of quantum resources is a critical tool in the development of quantum information processing. In particular, quantum state verification is a fundamental building block for communication and computation applications, determining whether the involved parties can trust the resources at hand or whether the application should be aborted. Self-testing methods have been used to tackle such verification tasks in a device-independent (DI) setting. However, these approaches commonly consider the limit of large (asymptotic), identically and independently distributed (IID) samples, which weakens the DI claim and poses serious challenges to their experimental implementation. Here we overcome these challenges by adopting a theoretical protocol enabling the certification of quantum states in the few-copies and non-IID regime and by leveraging a high-fidelity multipartite entangled photon source. This allows us to show the efficient and device-independent certification of a single copy of a four-qubit GHZ state that can readily be used for the robust and reliable implementation of quantum information tasks.

Multipartite entangled states are an essential building block for advanced quantum networking applications. Realizing such tasks in practice puts stringent requirements on the characteristics of the states in terms of fidelity and generation rate, along with a desired compatibility with telecommunication network deployment. Here, we demonstrate a photonic platform design capable of producing high-fidelity Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, at telecom wavelength and in a compact and scalable configuration. Our source relies on spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a layered Sagnac interferometer, which only requires a single nonlinear crystal. This enables the generation of highly indistinguishable photon pairs, leading by entanglement fusion to four-qubit polarization-entangled GHZ states with fidelity up to $(94.73 \pm 0.21)\%$ with respect to the ideal state, at a rate of 1.7Hz. We provide a complete characterization of our source and highlight its suitability for practical quantum network applications.

We present a new simulation-secure quantum oblivious transfer (QOT) protocol based on one-way functions in the plain model. With a focus on practical implementation, our protocol surpasses prior works in efficiency, promising feasible experimental realization. We address potential experimental errors and their correction, offering analytical expressions to facilitate the analysis of the required quantum resources. Technically, we achieve simulation security for QOT through an equivocal and relaxed-extractable quantum bit commitment., Comment: 29 pages

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) enables secret key exchange between two remote parties with information-theoretic security rooted in the laws of quantum physics. Encoding key information in continuous variables (CV), such as the values of quadrature components of coherent states of light, brings implementations much closer to standard optical communication systems, but this comes at the price of significant complexity in the digital signal processing techniques required for operation at low signal-to-noise ratios. In this work, we wish to lower the barriers to entry for CV-QKD experiments associated to this difficulty by providing a highly modular, open source software that is in principle hardware agnostic and can be used in multiple configurations. We benchmarked this software, called QOSST, using an experimental setup with a locally generated local oscillator, frequency multiplexed pilots and RF-heterodyne detection, and obtained state-of-the-art secret key rates of the order of Mbit/s over metropolitan distances at the asymptotic limit. We hope that QOSST can be used to stimulate further experimental advances in CV-QKD and be improved and extended by the community to achieve high performance in a wide variety of configurations., Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures; Corrected names in metadata and file

Nonlocal games play a crucial role in quantum information theory and have numerous applications in certification and cryptographic protocols. Kalai et al. (STOC 2023) introduced a procedure to compile a nonlocal game into a single-prover interactive proof, using a quantum homomorphic encryption scheme, and showed that their compilation method preserves the classical bound of the game. Natarajan and Zhang (FOCS 2023) then showed that the quantum bound is preserved for the specific case of the CHSH game. Extending the proof techniques of Natarajan and Zhang, we show that the compilation procedure of Kalai et al. preserves the quantum bound for two classes of games: XOR games and d-outcome CHSH games. We also establish that, for any pair of qubit measurements, there exists an XOR game such that its optimal winning probability serves as a self-test for that particular pair of measurements., Comment: 22 pages, new result added and corrected typos

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is a prominent application in the field of quantum cryptography providing information-theoretic security for secret key exchange. The implementation of QKD systems on photonic integrated circuits (PICs) can reduce the size and cost of such systems and facilitate their deployment in practical infrastructures. To this end, continuous-variable (CV) QKD systems are particularly well-suited as they do not require single-photon detectors, whose integration is presently challenging. Here we present a CV-QKD receiver based on a silicon PIC capable of performing balanced detection. We characterize its performance in a laboratory QKD setup using a frequency multiplexed pilot scheme with specifically designed data processing allowing for high modulation and secret key rates. The obtained excess noise values are compatible with asymptotic secret key rates of 2.4 Mbit/s and 220 kbit/s at an emulated distance of 10 km and 23 km, respectively. These results demonstrate the potential of this technology towards fully integrated devices suitable for high-speed, metropolitan-distance secure communication., Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures; Changed figure 8, acknowledgments updated

We present and analyse an architecture for a European-scale quantum network using satellite links to connect Quantum Cities, which are metropolitan quantum networks with minimal hardware requirements for the end users. Using NetSquid, a quantum network simulation tool based on discrete events, we assess and benchmark the performance of such a network linking distant locations in Europe in terms of quantum key distribution rates, considering realistic parameters for currently available or near-term technology. Our results highlight the key parameters and the limits of current satellite quantum communication links and can be used to assist the design of future missions. We also discuss the possibility of using high-altitude balloons as an alternative to satellites.

Continuous variable encoding of quantum information requires the deterministic generation of highly correlated quantum states of light in the form of quantum networks, which, in turn, necessitates the controlled generation of a large number of squeezed modes. In this work, we present an experimental source of multimode squeezed states of light at telecommunication wavelengths. Generation at such wavelengths is especially important as it can enable quantum information processing, communication, and sensing beyond the laboratory scale. We use a single-pass spontaneous parametric down-conversion process in a non-linear waveguide pumped with the second harmonic of a femtosecond laser. Our measurements reveal significant squeezing in more than 21 frequency modes, with a maximum squeezing value exceeding 2.5 dB. We demonstrate multiparty entanglement by measuring the state's covariance matrix. Finally, we show the source reconfigurability by preparing few-node cluster states and measure their nullifier squeezing level. These results pave the way for a scalable implementation of continuous variable quantum information protocols at telecommunication wavelengths, particularly for multiparty, entanglement-based quantum communications. Moreover, the source is compatible with additional pulse-by-pulse multiplexing, which can be utilized to construct the necessary three-dimensional entangled structures for quantum computing protocols.

Quantum transmission links are central elements in essentially all protocols involving the exchange of quantum messages. Emerging progress in quantum technologies involving such links needs to be accompanied by appropriate certification tools. In adversarial scenarios, a certification method can be vulnerable to attacks if too much trust is placed on the underlying system. Here, we propose a protocol in a device independent framework, which allows for the certification of practical quantum transmission links in scenarios where minimal assumptions are made about the functioning of the certification setup. In particular, we take unavoidable transmission losses into account by modeling the link as a completely-positive trace-decreasing map. We also, crucially, remove the assumption of independent and identically distributed samples, which is known to be incompatible with adversarial settings. Finally, in view of the use of the certified transmitted states for follow-up applications, our protocol moves beyond certification of the channel to allow us to estimate the quality of the transmitted quantum message itself. To illustrate the practical relevance and the feasibility of our protocol with currently available technology we provide an experimental implementation based on a state-of-the-art polarization entangled photon pair source in a Sagnac configuration and analyze its robustness for realistic losses and errors., Comment: 35 pages, 14 figures

As in modern communication networks, the security of quantum networks will rely on complex cryptographic tasks that are based on a handful of fundamental primitives. Weak coin flipping (WCF) is a significant such primitive which allows two mistrustful parties to agree on a random bit while they favor opposite outcomes. Remarkably, perfect information-theoretic security can be achieved in principle for quantum WCF. Here, we overcome conceptual and practical issues that have prevented the experimental demonstration of this primitive to date, and demonstrate how quantum resources can provide cheat sensitivity, whereby each party can detect a cheating opponent, and an honest party is never sanctioned. Such a property is not known to be classically achievable with information-theoretic security. Our experiment implements a refined, loss-tolerant version of a recently proposed theoretical protocol and exploits heralded single photons generated by spontaneous parametric down conversion, a carefully optimized linear optical interferometer including beam splitters with variable reflectivities and a fast optical switch for the verification step. High values of our protocol benchmarks are maintained for attenuation corresponding to several kilometers of telecom optical fiber., Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures

We present the architecture and analyze the applications of a metropolitan-scale quantum network that requires only limited hardware resources for end users. Using NetSquid, a quantum network simulation tool based on discrete events, we assess the performance of several quantum network protocols involving two or more users in various configurations in terms of topology, hardware and trust choices. Our analysis takes losses and errors into account and considers realistic parameters corresponding to present or near-term technology. Our results show that practical quantum-enhanced network functionalities are within reach today and can prepare the ground for further applications when more advanced technology becomes available.

A recently published patent (https://www.ipo.gov.uk/p-ipsum/Case/PublicationNumber/GB2590064) has claimed the development of a novel quantum key distribution protocol purporting to achieve long-range quantum security without trusted nodes and without use of quantum repeaters. Here we present a straightforward analysis of this claim, and reach the conclusion that it is largely unfounded., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures and 1 table

Quantum key distribution (QKD) enables the establishment of secret keys between users connected via a channel vulnerable to eavesdropping, with information-theoretic security, that is, independently of the power of a malevolent party. QKD systems based on the encoding of the key information on continuous variables (CV), such as the values of the quadrature components of coherent states, present the major advantage that they only require standard telecommunication technology. However, the most general security proofs for CV-QKD required until now the use of Gaussian modulation by the transmitter, complicating practical implementations. Here, we experimentally implement a protocol that allows for arbitrary, Gaussian-like, discrete modulations, whose security is based on a theoretical proof that applies very generally to such situations. These modulation formats are compatible with the use of powerful tools of coherent optical telecommunication, allowing our system to reach a performance of tens of megabit per second secret key rates over 25 km., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

Quantum Information Networks (QINs) attract increasing interest, as they enable connecting quantum devices over long distances, thus greatly enhancing their intrinsic computing, sensing, and security capabilities. The core mechanism of a QIN is quantum state teleportation, consuming quantum entanglement, which can be seen in this context as a new kind of network resource. Here we identify use cases per activity sector, including key performance targets, as a reference for the network requirements. We then define a high-level architecture of a generic QIN, before focusing on the architecture of the Space segment, with the aim of identifying the main design drivers and critical elements. A survey of the state-of-the-art of these critical elements is presented, as are issues related to standardisation. Finally, we explain our roadmap to developing the first QINs and detail the already concluded first step, the design and numerical simulation of a Space-to-ground entanglement distribution demonstrator., Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables

We designed a CV-QKD system with off-the-shelf components and established the feasibility of distributing 67.6 and 66.8 Mb/s secret key rates on average over a 9.5 km SMF link, using respectively probabilistically shaped 64 and 256 QAM, and relying on a novel analytical security proof., Comment: This work has been presented at the conference ECOC 2021 Bordeaux on the 09/16/2021, and published in the Proceedings of this conference

We demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, continuous-variable quantum key distribution using probabilistically-shaped 1024-QAM and true local oscillator, achieving 38.3Mb/s secret key rate over 9.5km, averaged over the transmission time of 100 blocks., Comment: This work has been presented at the conference OFC 2021 San Francisco on the 06/11/2021, and published in the Proceedings of this conference

Future quantum communication infrastructures will rely on both terrestrial and space-based links integrating high-performance optical systems engineered for this purpose. In space-based downlinks in particular, the loss budget and the variations in the signal propagation due to atmospheric turbulence effects impose a careful optimization of the coupling of light in single-mode fibers required for interfacing with the receiving stations and the ground networks. In this work, we perform a comprehensive study of the role of adaptive optics (AO) in this optimization, focusing on realistic baseline configurations of prepare-and-measure quantum key distribution (QKD), with both discrete and continuous-variable encoding, and including finite-size effects. Our analysis uses existing experimental turbulence datasets at both day and night time to model the coupled signal statistics following a wavefront distortion correction with AO, and allows us to estimate the secret key rate for a range of critical parameters, such as turbulence strength, satellite altitude and ground telescope diameter. The results we derive illustrate the interest of adopting advanced AO techniques in several practical configurations.

Electronic voting is a very useful but challenging internet-based protocol that despite many theoretical approaches and various implementations with different degrees of success, remains a contentious topic due to issues in reliability and security. Here we present a quantum protocol that exploits an untrusted source of multipartite entanglement to carry out an election without relying on election authorities, simultaneous broadcasting or computational assumptions, and whose result is publicly verifiable. The level of security depends directly on the fidelity of the shared multipartite entangled quantum state, and the protocol can be readily implemented for a few voters with state-of-the-art photonic technology.

Recently, the European Commission supported by many European countries has announced large investments towards the commercialization of quantum technology (QT) to address and mitigate some of the biggest challenges facing today's digital era - e.g. secure communication and computing power. For more than two decades the QT community has been working on the development of QTs, which promise landmark breakthroughs leading to commercialization in various areas. The ambitious goals of the QT community and expectations of EU authorities cannot be met solely by individual initiatives of single countries, and therefore, require a combined European effort of large and unprecedented dimensions comparable only to the Galileo or Copernicus programs. Strong international competition calls for a coordinated European effort towards the development of QT in and for space, including research and development of technology in the areas of communication and sensing. Here, we aim at summarizing the state of the art in the development of quantum technologies which have an impact in the field of space applications. Our goal is to outline a complete framework for the design, development, implementation, and exploitation of quantum technology in space., Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure

Mistrustful cryptography includes important tasks like bit commitment, oblivious transfer, coin flipping, secure computations, position authentication, digital signatures and secure unforgeable tokens. Practical quantum implementations presently use photonic setups. In many such implementations, Alice sends photon pulses encoding quantum states and Bob chooses measurements on these states. In practice, Bob generally uses single photon threshold detectors, which cannot distinguish the number of photons in detected pulses. Also, losses and other imperfections require Bob to report the detected pulses. Thus, malicious Alice can send and track multiphoton pulses and thereby gain information about Bob's measurement choices, violating the protocols' security. Here, we provide a theoretical framework for analysing such multiphoton attacks, and present known and new attacks. We illustrate the power of these attacks with an experiment, and study their application to earlier experimental demonstrations of mistrustful quantum cryptography. We analyse countermeasures based on selective reporting and prove them inadequate. We also discuss side-channel attacks where Alice controls further degrees of freedom or sends other physical systems., Comment: Section VII and clarifications added. Accepted version

Integrated photonics is at the heart of many classical technologies, from optical communications to biosensors, LIDAR, and data center fiber interconnects. There is strong evidence that these integrated technologies will play a key role in quantum systems as they grow from few-qubit prototypes to tens of thousands of qubits. The underlying laser and optical quantum technologies, with the required functionality and performance, can only be realized through the integration of these components onto quantum photonic integrated circuits (QPICs) with accompanying electronics. In the last decade, remarkable advances in quantum photonic integration and a dramatic reduction in optical losses have enabled benchtop experiments to be scaled down to prototype chips with improvements in efficiency, robustness, and key performance metrics. The reduction in size, weight, power, and improvement in stability that will be enabled by QPICs will play a key role in increasing the degree of complexity and scale in quantum demonstrations. In the next decade, with sustained research, development, and investment in the quantum photonic ecosystem (i.e. PIC-based platforms, devices and circuits, fabrication and integration processes, packaging, and testing and benchmarking), we will witness the transition from single- and few-function prototypes to the large-scale integration of multi-functional and reconfigurable QPICs that will define how information is processed, stored, transmitted, and utilized for quantum computing, communications, metrology, and sensing. This roadmap highlights the current progress in the field of integrated quantum photonics, future challenges, and advances in science and technology needed to meet these challenges., Comment: Submitted to the Journal of Physics: Photonics

Research on quantum technology spans multiple disciplines: physics, computer science, engineering, and mathematics. The objective of this manuscript is to provide an accessible introduction to this emerging field for economists that is centered around quantum computing and quantum money. We proceed in three steps. First, we discuss basic concepts in quantum computing and quantum communication, assuming knowledge of linear algebra and statistics, but not of computer science or physics. This covers fundamental topics, such as qubits, superposition, entanglement, quantum circuits, oracles, and the no-cloning theorem. Second, we provide an overview of quantum money, an early invention of the quantum communication literature that has recently been partially implemented in an experimental setting. One form of quantum money offers the privacy and anonymity of physical cash, the option to transact without the involvement of a third party, and the efficiency and convenience of a debit card payment. Such features cannot be achieved in combination with any other form of money. Finally, we review all existing quantum speedups that have been identified for algorithms used to solve and estimate economic models. This includes function approximation, linear systems analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, matrix inversion, principal component analysis, linear regression, interpolation, numerical differentiation, and true random number generation. We also discuss the difficulty of achieving quantum speedups and comment on common misconceptions about what is achievable with quantum computing., Comment: 106 pages, 13 figures

We propose a method to experimentally demonstrate contextuality with a family of tests for qudits. The experiment we propose uses a qudit encoded in the path of a single photon and its temporal degrees of freedom. We consider the impact of noise on the effectiveness of these tests, taking the approach of ontologically faithful non-contextuality. In this approach, imperfections in the experimental set up must be taken into account in any faithful ontological (classical) model, which limits how much the statistics can deviate within different contexts. In this way we bound the precision of the experimental setup under which ontologically faithful non-contextual models can be refuted. We further consider the noise tolerance through different types of decoherence models on different types of encodings of qudits. We quantify the effect of the decoherence on the required precision for the experimental setup in order to demonstrate contextuality in this broader sense.

We consider a device which can be programmed using coherent states of light to approximate a given projective measurement on an input coherent state. We provide and discuss three practical implementations of this programmable projective measurement device with linear optics, involving only balanced beam splitters and single photon threshold detectors. The three schemes optimally approximate any projective measurement onto a program coherent state in a non-destructive fashion. We further extend these to the case where there are no assumptions on the input state. In this setting, we show that our scheme enables an efficient verification of an unbounded untrusted source with only local coherent states, balanced beam splitters, and threshold detectors. Exploiting the link between programmable measurements and generalised swap test, we show as a direct application that our schemes provide an asymptotically quadratic improvement in existing quantum fingerprinting protocol to approximate the Euclidean distance between two unit vectors., Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures

In recent years, many computational tasks have been proposed as candidates for showing a quantum computational advantage, that is an advantage in the time needed to perform the task using a quantum instead of a classical machine. Nevertheless, practical demonstrations of such an advantage remain particularly challenging because of the difficulty in bringing together all necessary theoretical and experimental ingredients. Here, we show an experimental demonstration of a quantum computational advantage in a prover-verifier interactive setting, where the computational task consists in the verification of an NP-complete problem by a verifier who only gets limited information about the proof sent by an untrusted prover in the form of a series of unentangled quantum states. We provide a simple linear optical implementation that can perform this verification task efficiently (within a few seconds), while we also provide strong evidence that, fixing the size of the proof, a classical computer would take much longer time (assuming only that it takes exponential time to solve an NP-complete problem). While our computational advantage concerns a specific task in a scenario of mostly theoretical interest, it brings us a step closer to potential useful applications, such as server-client quantum computing.

We present a composably secure protocol allowing $n$ parties to test an entanglement generation resource controlled by a possibly dishonest party. The test consists only in local quantum operations and authenticated classical communication once a state is shared among them and provides composable security, namely it can be used as a secure subroutine by $n$ honest parties within larger communication protocols to test if a source is sharing quantum states that are at least $\epsilon$-close to the GHZ state. This claim comes on top of previous results on multipartite entanglement verification where the security was studied in the usual game-based model. Here, we improve the protocol to make it more suitable for practical use in a quantum network and we study its security in the Abstract Cryptography framework to highlight composability issues and avoid hidden assumptions. This framework is a top-to-bottom theory that makes explicit any piece of information that each component (party or resource) gets at every time-step of the protocol. Moreover any security proof, which amounts to showing indistinguishability between an ideal resource having the desired security properties (up to local simulation) and the concrete resource representing the protocol, is composable for free in this setting. This allows us to readily compose our basic protocol in order to create a composably secure multi-round protocol enabling honest parties to obtain a state close to a GHZ state or an abort signal, even in the presence of a noisy or malicious source. Our protocol can typically be used as a subroutine in a Quantum Internet, to securely share a GHZ state among the network before performing a communication or computation protocol.

Weak coin flipping is among the fundamental cryptographic primitives which ensure the security of modern communication networks. It allows two mistrustful parties to remotely agree on a random bit when they favor opposite outcomes. Unlike other two-party computations, one can achieve information-theoretic security using quantum mechanics only: both parties are prevented from biasing the flip with probability higher than $1/2+\epsilon$, where $\epsilon$ is arbitrarily low. Classically, the dishonest party can always cheat with probability $1$ unless computational assumptions are used. Despite its importance, no physical implementation has been proposed for quantum weak coin flipping. Here, we present a practical protocol that requires a single photon and linear optics only. We show that it is fair and balanced even when threshold single-photon detectors are used, and reaches a bias as low as $\epsilon=1/\sqrt{2}-1/2\approx 0.207$. We further show that the protocol may display quantum advantage over a few hundred meters with state-of-the-art technology., Comment: 23 pages, 14 figures

Establishing secure communication links at a global scale is a major potential application of quantum information science but also extremely challenging for the underlying technology. While milestone experiments using satellite-to-ground links and exploiting singe-photon encoding for implementing quantum key distribution have shown recently that this goal is achievable, it is still necessary to further investigate practical solutions compatible with classical optical communication systems. Here we examine the feasibility of establishing secret keys in a satellite-to-ground downlink configuration using continuous-variable encoding, which can be implemented using standard telecommunication components certified for space environment and able to operate at high symbol rates. Considering a realistic channel model and state-of-the-art technology, and exploiting an orbit subdivision technique for mitigating fluctuations in the transmission efficiency, we find positive secret key rates for a low-Earth-orbit scenario, while finite-size effects can be a limiting factor for higher orbits. Our analysis determines regions of values for important experimental parameters where secret key exchange is possible and can be used as a guideline for experimental efforts in this direction., Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures

We establish a lower bound on the asymptotic secret key rate of continuous-variable quantum key distribution with a discrete modulation of coherent states. The bound is valid against collective attacks and is obtained by formulating the problem as a semidefinite program. We illustrate our general approach with the quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) modulation scheme and show that distances over 100 km are achievable for realistic values of noise. We also discuss the application to more complex quadrature amplitude modulations (QAM) schemes. This work is a major step towards establishing the full security of continuous-variable protocols with a discrete modulation in the finite-size regime and opens the way to large-scale deployment of these protocols for quantum key distribution., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures; v2: added discussion of more general quadrature amplitude modulation schemes, v3: close to published version

The no-cloning property of quantum mechanics allows unforgeability of quantum banknotes and credit cards. Quantum credit card protocols involve a bank, a client and a payment terminal, and their practical implementation typically relies on encoding information on weak coherent states of light. Here, we provide a security proof in this practical setting for semi-device-independent quantum money with classical verification, involving an honest bank, a dishonest client and a potentially untrusted terminal. Our analysis uses semidefinite programming in the coherent state framework and aims at simultaneously optimizing over the noise and losses introduced by a dishonest party. We discuss secure regimes of operation in both fixed and randomized phase settings, taking into account experimental imperfections. Finally, we study the evolution of protocol security in the presence of a decohering optical quantum memory and identify secure credit card lifetimes for a specific configuration., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures

The goal of demonstrating a quantum advantage with currently available experimental systems is of utmost importance in quantum information science. While this remains elusive for quantum computation, the field of communication complexity offers the possibility to already explore and showcase this advantage for useful tasks. Here, we define such a task, the Sampling Matching problem, which is inspired by the Hidden Matching problem and features an exponential gap between quantum and classical protocols in the one-way communication model. Our problem allows by its conception a photonic implementation based on encoding in the phase of coherent states of light, the use of a fixed size linear optic circuit, and single-photon detection. This enables us to demonstrate experimentally an advantage in the transmitted information resource beyond a threshold input size, which would have been impossible to reach for the original Hidden Matching problem. Our demonstration has implications in various communication and cryptographic settings, for example for quantum retrieval games and quantum money., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables

Quantum communication networks have the potential to revolutionise information and communication technologies. Here we are interested in a fundamental property and formidable challenge for any communication network, that of guaranteeing the anonymity of a sender and a receiver when a message is transmitted through the network, even in the presence of malicious parties. We provide the first practical protocol for anonymous communication in realistic quantum networks., Comment: 5 pages, published version

We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally a high level of control of the four-wave mixing process in an inert gas filled inhibited-coupling guiding hollow-core photonic crystal fiber in order to generate photon pairs. The specific multiple-branch dispersion profile in such fibers allows both entangled and separable bi-photon states to be produced. By controlling the choice of gas, its pressure and the fiber length, we experimentally generate various joint spectral intensity profiles in a stimulated regime that is transferable to the spontaneous regime. The generated profiles cover both spectrally separable and entangled bi-photons and feature frequency tuning over 17 THz, demonstrating the large dynamic control offered by such a photon pair source.

We present a general framework encompassing a number of continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocols, including standard one-way protocols, measurement-device-independent protocols as well as some two-way protocols, or any other continuous-variable protocol involving only a Gaussian modulation of coherent states and heterodyne detection. The main interest of this framework is that the corresponding protocols are all covariant with respect to the action of the unitary group $U(n)$, implying that their security can be established thanks to a Gaussian de Finetti reduction. In particular, we give a composable security proof of two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution against general attacks. We also prove that no active symmetrization procedure is required for these protocols, which would otherwise make them prohibitively costly to implement., Comment: 14 pages

We have theoretically investigated the possibility of using any of several continuous-variable Bell-type inequalities - for which the dichotomic measurements are achieved with coarse-grained quadrature (homodyne) measurements - in a multi-party configuration where each participant is given a section, in the frequency domain, of the output of an optical parametric oscillator which has been synchronously-pumped with a frequency comb. Such light sources are undergoing intense study due to their novel properties, including the potential for production of light entangled in many hundreds of physical modes - a critical component for many proposals in optical or hybrid-optical quantum computation proposals. The situation we study notably uses only highly-efficient optical homodyne detection, meaning that in such systems the fair-sampling loophole would be relatively easy to avoid., Comment: 11 Pages, 5 Figures, Link to computer code to be added later

We present a scheme for a universal device which can be programmed by quantum states to approximate a chosen projective measurement to a given precision. Our scheme can be viewed as an extension of the swap test to the instance where one state is supplied many times. As such, it has many potential applications given the variety of quantum information tasks which make use of the swap test. In particular, we show that our scheme is optimal for state discrimination under the one-sided error requirement, and optimally approximates any projective measurement. Furthermore, we propose a practical implementation of our scheme with passive linear optics, which involves a simple interferometer composed only of balanced beam splitters., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures

Demonstrating quantum superiority for some computational task will be a milestone for quantum technologies and would show that computational advantages are possible not only with a universal quantum computer but with simpler physical devices. Linear optics is such a simpler but powerful platform where classically-hard information processing tasks, such as Boson Sampling, can be in principle implemented. In this work, we study a fundamentally different type of computational task to achieve quantum superiority using linear optics, namely the task of verifying NP-complete problems. We focus on a protocol by Aaronson et al. (2008) that uses quantum proofs for verification. We show that the proof states can be implemented in terms of a single photon in an equal superposition over many optical modes. Similarly, the tests can be performed using linear-optical transformations consisting of a few operations: a global permutation of all modes, simple interferometers acting on at most four modes, and measurement using single-photon detectors. We also show that the protocol can tolerate experimental imperfections., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, minor corrections, results unchanged

Steering, a quantum property stronger than entanglement but weaker than non-locality in the quantum correlation hierarchy, is a key resource for one-sided device-independent quantum key distribution applications, in which only one of the communicating parties is trusted. A fine-grained steering inequality was introduced in [PRA 90 050305(R) (2014)], enabling for the first time the detection of steering in all steerable two-qubit Werner states using only two measurement settings. Here we numerically and experimentally investigate this inequality for generalized Werner states and successfully detect steerability in a wide range of two-photon polarization-entangled Bell local states generated by a parametric down-conversion source., Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures (including Appendix)

Wiesner's unforgeable quantum money scheme is widely celebrated as the first quantum information application. Based on the no-cloning property of quantum mechanics, this scheme allows for the creation of credit cards used in authenticated transactions offering security guarantees impossible to achieve by classical means. However, despite its central role in quantum cryptography, its experimental implementation has remained elusive because of the lack of quantum memories and of practical verification techniques. Here, we experimentally implement a quantum money protocol relying on classical verification that rigorously satisfies the security condition for unforgeability. Our system exploits polarization encoding of weak coherent states of light and operates under conditions that ensure compatibility with state-of-the-art quantum memories. We derive working regimes for our system using a security analysis taking into account all practical imperfections. Our results constitute a major step towards a real-world realization of this milestone protocol., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures

We propose a scheme for authentication of physical keys that are materialized by optical multiple-scattering media. The authentication relies on the optical response of the key when probed by randomly selected coherent states of light, and the use of standard wavefront-shaping techniques that direct the scattered photons coherently to a specific target mode at the output. The quadratures of the electromagnetic field of the scattered light at the target mode are analysed using a homodyne detection scheme, and the acceptance or rejection of the key is decided upon the outcomes of the measurements. The proposed scheme can be implemented with current technology and offers collision resistance and robustness against key cloning., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures