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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 jointly to Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science. The present article provides a brief overview on the significance of their contributions and practical quantum information applications of Bell inequalities and entanglement.

A quantum state transformation can be generally approximated by single- and two-qubit gates. This, however, does not hold with noisy intermediate-scale quantum technologies due to the errors appearing in the gate operations, where errors of two-qubit gates such as controlled-NOT and SWAP operations are dominated. In this work, we present a cost efficient single-copy certification for a realization of a two-qubit gate in the presence of depolarization noise, where it is aimed to identify if the realization is noise-free, or not. It is shown that entangled resources such as entangled states and a joint measurement are not necessary for the purpose, i.e., a noise-free two-qubit gate is not needed to certify an implementation of a two-qubit gate. A proof-of-principle demonstration is presented with photonic qubits., 9 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1812.02087

When noisy intermediate scalable quantum (NISQ) devices are applied in information processing, all of the stages through preparation, manipulation, and measurement of multipartite qubit states contain various types of noise that are generally hard to be verified in practice. In this article, we present a scheme to deal with unknown quantum noise and show that it can be used to mitigate errors in measurement readout with NISQ devices. Quantum detector tomography that identifies a type of noise in a measurement can be circumvented. The scheme applies single-qubit operations only, that are with relatively higher precision than measurement readout or two-qubit gates. A classical post-processing is then performed with measurement outcomes. The scheme is implemented in quantum algorithms with NISQ devices: the Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm and a quantum amplitude estimation algorithm in $\mathrm{IBMQ\_yorktown}$ IBMQ _ yorktown and $\mathrm{IBMQ\_essex}$ IBMQ _ essex . The enhancement in the statistics of the measurement outcomes is presented for both of the algorithms with NISQ devices.

In this work, we consider the preservation of a measurement for quantum systems interacting with an environment. Namely, a method of preserving an optimal measurement over a channel is devised, what we call channel coding of a quantum measurement in that operations are applied before and after a channel in order to protect a measurement. A protocol that preserves a quantum measurement over an arbitrary channel is shown only with local operations and classical communication without the use of a larger Hilbert space. Therefore, the protocol is readily feasible with present day's technologies. Channel coding of qubit measurements is presented, and it is shown that a measurement can be preserved for an arbitrary channel for both i) pairs of qubit states and ii) ensembles of equally probable states. The protocol of preserving a quantum measurement is demonstrated with IBM quantum computers., 9pages, 3 figures

We compare the power of quantum and classical physics in terms of randomness certification from devices which are only partially characterised. We study randomness certification based on state discrimination and take noncontextuality as the notion of classicality. A contextual advantage was recently shown to exist for state discrimination. Here, we develop quantum and noncontextual semi-device independent protocols for random-number generation based on maximum-confidence discrimination, which generalises unambiguous and minimum-error state discrimination. We show that, for quantum eavesdropppers, quantum devices can certify more randomness than noncontextual ones whenever none of the input states are unambiguously identified. That is, a quantum-over-classicaladvantage exists., This work is done in parallel with the paper "Contextual advantages and certification for maximum confidence discrimination", by Flatt et al. 6 pages main text, 10 pages of supplemental material, 5 figures

In quantum state discrimination, one aims to identify unknown states from a given ensemble by performing measurements. Different strategies such as minimum-error discrimination or unambiguous state identification find different optimal measurements. Maximum-confidence measurements (MCMs) maximise the confidence with which inputs can be identified given the measurement outcomes. This unifies a range of discrimination strategies including minimum-error and unambiguous state identification, which can be understood as limiting cases of MCM. In this work, we investigate MCMs for general ensembles of qubit states. We present a method for finding MCMs for qubit-state ensembles by exploiting their geometry and apply it to several interesting cases, including ensembles two and four mixed states and ensembles of an arbitrary number of pure states. We also compare MCMs to minimum-error and unambiguous discrimination for qubits. Our results provide interpretations of various qubit measurements in terms of MCM and can be used to devise qubit protocols., Comment: 10 pages

In a network, a channel introduces correlations to the parties that aim to establish a communication protocol. In this work, we present a framework of non-local network coding by exploiting a Bell scenario and show the usefulness of non-local and quantum resources in network coding. Two-sender and two-receiver interference channels are considered, for which network coding is characterized by two-input and four-outcome Bell scenarios. It is shown that non-signaling (quantum) correlations lead to strictly higher channel capacities in general than quantum (local) correlations. It is also shown that, however, more non-locality does not necessarily imply a higher channel capacity. The framework can be generally applied to network communication protocols., 11 pages, 3 figures

From a practical perspective it is advantageous to develop methods that verify entanglement in quantum states with as few measurements as possible. In this paper we investigate the minimal number of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) needed to detect bound entanglement in bipartite $(d\times d)$-dimensional states, i.e. entangled states that are positive under partial transposition. In particular, we show that a class of entanglement witnesses composed of mutually unbiased bases can detect bound entanglement if the number of measurements is greater than $d/2+1$. This is a substantial improvement over other detection methods, requiring significantly fewer resources than either full quantum state tomography or measuring a complete set of $d+1$ MUBs. Our approach is based on a partial characterisation of the (non-)decomposability of entanglement witnesses. We show that non-decomposability is a universal property of MUBs, which holds regardless of the choice of complementary observables, and we find that both the number of measurements and the structure of the witness play an important role in the detection of bound entanglement., Comment: 11 pages, identical to published version

One of the most fundamental results in quantum information theory is that no measurement can perfectly discriminate between nonorthogonal quantum states. In this work, we investigate quantum advantages for discrimination tasks over noncontextual theories by considering a maximum-confidence measurement that unifies different strategies of quantum state discrimination, including minimum-error and unambiguous discrimination. We first show that maximum-confidence discrimination, as well as unambiguous discrimination, contains contextual advantages. We then consider a semi-device-independent scenario of certifying maximum-confidence measurement. The scenario naturally contains undetected events, making it a natural setting to explore maximum-confidence measurements. We show that the certified maximum confidence in quantum theory also contains contextual advantages. Our results establish how the advantages of quantum theory over a classical model may appear in a realistic scenario of a discrimination task.

Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) provide a standard tool in the verification of quantum states, especially when harnessing a complete set for optimal quantum state tomography. In this work, we investigate the detection of entanglement via inequivalent sets of MUBs, with a particular focus on unextendible MUBs. These are bases for which an additional unbiased basis cannot be constructed and, consequently, are unsuitable for quantum state verification. Here, we show that unextendible MUBs, as well as other inequivalent sets in higher dimensions, can be more effective in the verification of entanglement. Furthermore, we provide an efficient and systematic method to search for inequivalent MUBs and show that such sets occur regularly within the Heisenberg-Weyl MUBs, as the dimension increases. Our findings are particularly useful for experimentalists since adding optimal MUBs to an experimental setup enables a step-by-step approach to detect a larger class of entangled states., 6 pages, 1 figure; added details to d=9

In the distribution of quantum states over a long distance, not only are quantum states corrupted by interactions with an environment but also a measurement setting should be re-aligned such that detection events can be ensured for the resulting states. We here present a method of protecting a measurement in quantum key distribution against the interactions quantum states experience during the transmission, without the verification of a channel. As a result, a receiver does not have to revise the measurement that has been prepared in a noiseless scenario since it would remain ever optimal. The measurement protection is achieved by applications of local unitary transformations before and after the transmission, that leads to a supermap transforming an arbitrary channel to a depolarization one. An experimental demonstration is presented with the polarization encoding on photonic qubits. It is shown that the security bounds for prepare-and-measure protocols can be improved.

Entanglement detection, which signifies the task of distinguishing entangled states from separable states, can be generally performed by realizing entanglement witnesses via local measurements on a single-copy level and classical communication, and are known to be experimenter friendly. We introduce a framework of constructing mirrored entanglement witnesses by showing that an experimental observable is twice as effective since it generally provides bounds from above and below for separable states. Differently stated, a pair of witnesses, mirrored witnesses, exists for the characterization of the bounds, which are two faces of one observable. We show how to generally construct those witnesses and provide examples for bipartite and multipartite systems. We also show that both mirrored witnesses can be improved by introducing nonlinearities, by which a larger set of entangled states can be certified.

One of the central problems in quantum theory is to characterize, detect, and quantify quantumness in terms of classical strategies. Dephasing processes, caused by non-dissipative information exchange between quantum systems and environments, provides a natural platform for this purpose, as they control the quantum-to-classical transition. Recently, it has been shown that dephasing dynamics itself can exhibit (non)classical traits, depending on the nature of the system-environment correlations and the related (im)possibility to simulate these dynamics with Hamiltonian ensembles---the classical strategy. Here we establish the framework of detecting and quantifying the nonclassicality for pure dephasing dynamics. The uniqueness of the canonical representation of Hamiltonian ensembles is shown, and a constructive method to determine the latter is presented. We illustrate our method for qubit, qutrit, and qubit-pair pure dephasing and describe how to implement our approach with quantum process tomography experiments. Our work is readily applicable to present-day quantum experiments., 23 pages, 5 figures

In this work, we consider optimal state discrimination for a quantum system that interacts with an environment, i.e., states evolve under a quantum channel. We show the conditions on a quantum channel and an ensemble of states such that a measurement for optimal state discrimination is preserved. In particular, we show that when an ensemble of states with equal {\it a priori} probabilities is given, an optimal measurement can be preserved over any quantum channel by applying local operations and classical communication, that is, by manipulating the quantum states before and after the channel application. Examples are provided for illustration. Our results can be readily applied to quantum communication protocols over various types of noise., 7 pages, 3 figures

Entanglement detection is one of the most fundamental and practical tasks for quantum information processing. The framework of entanglement witnesses provides an experimentally feasible method detecting entangled states. Although It is clear that no entanglement witness per se can detect all entangled states, little is known about how useful a single entanglement witness is. In this work, we show that an entanglement witness can construct another entanglement witness. This means that the same measurement outcomes can be repeatedly applied to constructing different entanglement witnesses.

We show that every entangled state provides an advantage in ancilla-assisted bi- and multichannel discrimination that singles out its degree of entanglement, quantified in terms of the Schmidt number. The Schmidt-number robustness provides a compelling quantification of such an advantage, and, remarkably, the well-known robustness of entanglement exactly provides the largest multiplicative advantage an entangled state can provide compared to the case where no ancilla is used in a channel discrimination task.

The advantages of quantum information processing are in many cases obtained as consequences of quantum interactions, especially for computational tasks where two-qubit interactions are essential. In this work, we establish the framework of analyzing and quantifying loss or gain of information on a quantum system when the system interacts with its environment. We show that the information flow, the theoretical method of characterizing (non-)Markovianity of quantum dynamics, corresponds to the rate of the minimum uncertainty about the system given quantum side information. Thereafter, we analyze the information exchange among subsystems that are under the performance of quantum algorithms, in particular, the amplitude amplification algorithms where the computational process relies fully on quantum evolution. Different realizations of the algorithm are considered, such as i)quantum circuits, ii) analog computation, and iii) adiabatic computation. It is shown that, in all the cases, our formalism provides insights about the process of amplifying the amplitude from the information flow or leakage on the subsystems., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, close to the published version

In this work, we show that measurement in quantum 2-design, such as mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) or symmetric, informationally complete states (SICs), improves the capability of detecting entangled states both theoretically and experimentally. On the theoretical side, we show that measurement in quantum 2-design can detect entangled states twice compared to entanglement witnesses. On the implementation side, we present the scheme of entanglement detection with two detectors only of a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer. The experimental scheme applies single-copy level measurement followed by post-processing of measurement outcomes, which is feasible with current technologies.

Quantum state discrimination underlies various applications in quantum information processing tasks. It essentially describes the distinguishability of quantum systems in different states, and the general process of extracting classical information from quantum systems. It is also useful in quantum information applications, such as the characterisation of mutual information in cryptographic protocols, or as a technique to derive fundamental theorems in quantum foundations. It has deep connections to physical principles such as relativistic causality. Quantum state discrimination traces a long history of several decades, starting with the early attempts to formalise information processing of physical systems such as optical communication with photons. Nevertheless, in most cases, optimal strategies of quantum state discrimination remain unsolved, and related applications are valid in some limited cases only. The present review aims to provide an overview on quantum state discrimination, covering some recent progress, and addressing applications in some selected topics. This review serves to strengthen the link between results in quantum state discrimination and quantum information applications, by showing the ways in which the fundamental results are exploited in applications and vice versa., 42 pages, a review article, a preprint in Institute of Mathematical Sciences (2015), thanks to M. Wilde for encouraging, though being late, to submit to arXiv

We consider optimal state discrimination in a general convex operational framework, so-called generalized probabilistic theories (GPTs), and present a general method of optimal discrimination by applying the complementarity problem from convex optimization. The method exploits the convex geometry of states but not other detailed conditions or relations of states and effects. We also show that properties in optimal quantum state discrimination are shared in GPTs in general: i) no measurement sometimes gives optimal discrimination, and ii) optimal measurement is not unique., 13 pages

We propose an improved bound for the difference between phase and bit error rate in measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution with uncharacterized qubits. We show by simulations that the bound considerably increases the final key rates., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

We outline a straightforward approach for obtaining a secret key rate using only no-signaling constraints and linear programming. Assuming an individual attack, we consider all possible joint probabilities. Initially, we study only the case where Eve has binary outcomes, and we impose constraints due to the no-signaling principle and given measurement outcomes. Within the remaining space of joint probabilities, by using linear programming, we get bound on the probability of Eve correctly guessing Bob's bit. We then make use of an inequality that relates this guessing probability to the mutual information between Bob and a more general Eve, who is not binary-restricted. Putting our computed bound together with the Csisz\'ar-K\"orner formula, we obtain a positive key generation rate. The optimal value of this rate agrees with known results, but was calculated in a more straightforward way, offering the potential of generalization to different scenarios., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, derivation much simplifed

We study N-dimensional measurement-device-independent quantum-key-distribution protocol where one checking state is used. Only assuming that the checking state is a superposition of other N sources, we show that the protocol is secure in zero quantum-bit-error-rate case, suggesting possibility of the protocol. The method may be applied in other quantum information processing.

Distinguishability is a fundamental and operational task generally connected to information applications. In quantum information theory, from the postulates of quantum mechanics it often has an intrinsic limitation, which then dictates and also characterises capabilities of related information tasks. In this work, we consider discrimination between bipartite two-qubit unitary transformations by local operations and classical communication (LOCC) and its relations to entangling capabilities of given unitaries. We show that a pair of entangling unitaries which do not contain local parts, if they are perfectly distinguishable by global operations, can also be perfectly distinguishable by LOCC. There also exist non-entangling unitaries, e.g. local unitaries, that are perfectly discriminated by global operations but not by LOCC. The results show that capabilities of LOCC are strictly restricted than global operations in distinguishing bipartite unitaries for a finite number of repetitions, contrast to discrimination of a pair of bipartite states and also to asymptotic discrimination of unitaries., 9pages, 3 figures

In this paper, we consider the three-party quantum teleportation using non-symmetric states. Considering all possible teleportation scenarios in the three-party quantum teleportation, we show that the asymmetric teleportation would carry more information than symmetrical ones. We also discuss the relation between teleportation protocols and quantum states classficition.

We consider the running time of the generalized quantum search Hamiltonian. We provide the surprising result that the maximum speedup of quantum search in the generalized Hamiltonian is an O(1) running time regardless of the number of total states. This seems to violate the proof of Zalka that the quadratic speedup is optimal in quantum search. However the argument of Giovannetti et al. that a quantum speedup comes from the interaction between subsystems (or, equivalently entanglement) (and is concerned with the Margolus and Levitin theorem) supports our result.

In general, a quantum algorithm wants to avoid decoherence or perturbation, since such factors may cause errors in the algorithm. We show that some perturbations to the generalized quantum search Hamiltonian can reduce the running time and enhance the success probability. We also provide the narrow bound to the perturbation which can be beneficial to quantum search. In addition, we show that the error induced by a perturbation on the Farhi and Gutmann Hamiltonian can be corrected by another perturbation.