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Boson Sampling is the problem of sampling from the same distribution as indistinguishable single photons at the output of a linear optical interferometer. It is an example of a non-universal quantum computation which is believed to be feasible in the near term and cannot be simulated on a classical machine. Like all purported demonstrations of "quantum supremacy", this motivates optimizing classical simulation schemes for a realistic model of the problem, in this case Boson Sampling when the implementations experience lost or distinguishable photons. Although current simulation schemes for sufficiently imperfect boson sampling are classically efficient, in principle the polynomial runtime can be infeasibly large. In this work, we develop a scheme for classical simulation of Boson Sampling under uniform distinguishability and loss, based on the idea of sampling from distributions where at most k photons are indistinguishable. We show that asymptotically this scheme can provide a polynomial improvement in the runtime compared to classically simulating idealised Boson Sampling. More significantly, we show that in the regime considered experimentally relevant, our approach gives an substantial improvement in runtime over other classical simulation approaches., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, comments welcome

Boson Sampling is the problem of sampling from the same output probability distribution as a collection of indistinguishable single photons input into a linear interferometer. It has been shown that, subject to certain computational complexity conjectures, in general the problem is difficult to solve classically, motivating optical experiments aimed at demonstrating quantum computational "supremacy". There are a number of challenges faced by such experiments, including the generation of indistinguishable single photons. We provide a quantum circuit that simulates bosonic sampling with arbitrarily distinguishable particles. This makes clear how distinguishabililty leads to decoherence in the standard quantum circuit model, allowing insight to be gained. At the heart of the circuit is the quantum Schur transform, which follows from a representation theoretic approach to the physics of distinguishable particles in first quantisation. The techniques are quite general and have application beyond boson sampling., Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures, 2 algorithms, comments welcome

Particle distinguishability is a significant challenge for quantum technologies, in particular photonics where the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect clearly demonstrates it is detrimental to quantum interference. We take a representation theoretic approach in first quantisation, separating particles' Hilbert spaces into degrees of freedom that we control and those we do not, yielding a quantum information inspired bipartite model where distinguishability can arise as correlation with an environment carried by the particles themselves. This makes clear that the HOM experiment is an instance of a (mixed) state discrimination protocol, which can be generalised to interferometers that discriminate unambiguously between ideal indistinguishable states and interesting distinguishable states, leading to bounds on the success probability of an arbitrary HOM generalisation for multiple particles and modes. After setting out the first quantised formalism in detail, we consider several scenarios and provide a combination of analytical and numerical results for up to nine photons in nine modes. Although the Quantum Fourier Transform features prominently, we see that it is suboptimal for discriminating completely distinguishable states., 17 pages, 2 Tables, 2 figures

Entanglement is the basic building block of linear optical quantum computation, and as such understanding how to generate it in detail is of great importance for optical architectures. We prove that Bell states cannot be generated using only 3 photons in the dual-rail encoding, and give strong numerical evidence for the optimality of the existing 4 photon schemes. In a setup with a single photon in each input mode, we find a fundamental limit on the possible entanglement between a single mode Alice and arbitrary Bob. We investigate and compare other setups aimed at characterizing entanglement in settings more general than dual-rail encoding. The results draw attention to the trade-off between the entanglement a state has and the probability of postselecting that state, which can give surprising constant bounds on entanglement even with increasing numbers of photons., Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, comments welcome

Randomized benchmarking is routinely used as an efficient method for characterizing the performance of sets of elementary logic gates in small quantum devices. In the measurement-based model of quantum computation, logic gates are implemented via single-site measurements on a fixed universal resource state. Here we adapt the randomized benchmarking protocol for a single qubit to a linear cluster state computation, which provides partial, yet efficient characterization of the noise associated with the target gate set. Applying randomized benchmarking to measurement-based quantum computation exhibits an interesting interplay between the inherent randomness associated with logic gates in the measurement-based model and the random gate sequences used in benchmarking. We consider two different approaches: the first makes use of the standard single-qubit Clifford group, while the second uses recently introduced (non-Clifford) measurement-based 2-designs, which harness inherent randomness to implement gate sequences., 10 pages, 4 figures, comments welcome; v2 published version

Entangled multipartite states are resources for universal quantum computation, but they can also give rise to ensembles of unitary transformations, a topic usually studied in the context of random quantum circuits. Using several graph state techniques, we show that these resources can `derandomize' circuit results by sampling the same kinds of ensembles quantum mechanically, (analogously to a quantum random number generator). Furthermore, we find simple examples that give rise to new ensembles whose statistical moments exactly match those of the uniformly random distribution over all unitaries up to order $t$, while foregoing adaptive feed-forward entirely. Such ensembles -- known as $t$-designs -- often cannot be distinguished from the `truly' random ensemble, and so they find use in many applications that require this implied notion of pseudorandomness.

A model of a second-order shape phase transition is investigated in the Bohr collective model. The model contains two variable parameters, a mass parameter M and a control parameter α , and is such that when α = 0 the Hamiltonian is that of a harmonic spherical vibrator and when α is large it approaches that of an adiabatically decoupled rotor-vibrator. The results obtained by diagonalization of this Hamiltonian show that the range of α , in which the low-energy states of the model are in a transition region between that of a harmonic spherical vibrator phase (for small α ) and that of an adiabatic rotor-vibrator phase (for large α ), shrinks as M increases and as M → ∞ a critical point develops at α = 0.5 . The dynamical symmetries associated with the limiting phases of this model, which appear to persist in the small and large α domains, are interpreted as quasidynamical symmetries. For finite values of M , the results closely parallel those of the corresponding phase transition of an interacting boson model, studied in paper I of this series, when the mass M of the collective model is set equal to twice the boson number N of the IBM. The various solvable submodels of the Bohr model are related to corresponding limits of the IBM by contraction maps. Such contraction maps imply a correspondence between subsets of states in the domains of the two models for which a given contraction map applies. Thus, by considering the contraction limit of an IBM Hamiltonian in the Bohr model, one can interpret and even anticipate what the results of an IBM calculation would be in its macroscopic N → ∞ limit. The asymptotic scaling of the spectrum at the critical point and Iachello's critical point symmetry in the Bohr model and IBM are considered from this perspective.

A recently proposed computationally tractable version of the Bohr collective model is developed to the extent that we are now justified in describing it as an algebraic collective model. The model has an SU ( 1 , 1 ) × SO ( 5 ) algebraic structure and a continuous set of exactly solvable limits. Moreover, it provides bases for mixed symmetry collective model calculations. However, unlike the standard realization of SU ( 1 , 1 ) , used for computing beta wave functions and their matrix elements in a spherical basis, the algebraic collective model makes use of an SU ( 1 , 1 ) algebra that generates wave functions appropriate for deformed nuclei with intrinsic quadrupole moments ranging from zero to any large value. A previous paper focused on the SO ( 5 ) wave functions, as SO ( 5 ) (hyper-)spherical harmonics, and computation of their matrix elements. This paper gives analytical expressions for the beta matrix elements needed in applications of the model and illustrative results to show the remarkable gain in efficiency that is achieved by using such a basis in collective model calculations for deformed nuclei.

An easily programmable algorithm is given for the computation of SO(5) spherical harmonics needed to complement the radial (beta) wave functions to form an orthonormal basis of wave functions for the five-dimensional harmonic oscillator. It is shown how these functions can be used to compute the (Clebsch–Gordan a.k.a. Wigner) coupling coefficients for combining pairs of irreps in this space to other irreps. This is of particular value for the construction of the matrices of Hamiltonians and transition operators that arise in applications of nuclear collective models. Tables of the most useful coupling coefficients are given in the Appendix.

Generating and characterizing randomness is fundamentally important in both classical and quantum information science. Here we report the experimental demonstration of ensembles of pseudorandom optical processes comprising what are known as $t$-designs. We show that in practical scenarios, certain finite ensembles of two-mode transformations---1- and 2-designs---are indistinguishable from truly random operations for 1- and 2-photon quantum interference, but they fail to mimic randomness for 2- and 3-photon cases, respectively. We make use of the fact that $t$-photon behavior is governed by degree-$2t$ polynomials (in the parameters of the optical process), to experimentally verify the ensembles' behavior for complete bases of polynomials, ensuring that average outputs will be uniform for arbitrary configurations. It is in this sense that a $t$-design is deemed to be a potentially useful pseudorandom resource.

Data compression is a ubiquitous aspect of modern information technology, and the advent of quantum information raises the question of what types of compression are feasible for quantum data, where it is especially relevant given the extreme difficulty involved in creating reliable quantum memories. We present a protocol in which an ensemble of quantum bits (qubits) can in principle be perfectly compressed into exponentially fewer qubits. We then experimentally implement our algorithm, compressing three photonic qubits into two. This protocol sheds light on the subtle differences between quantum and classical information. Furthermore, since data compression stores all of the available information about the quantum state in fewer physical qubits, it could allow for a vast reduction in the amount of quantum memory required to store a quantum ensemble, making even today's limited quantum memories far more powerful than previously recognized.

We introduce a multiparty quantum computation task over a network in a situation where the capacities of both the quantum and classical communication channels of the network are limited and a bottleneck occurs. Using a resource setting introduced by Hayashi [1], we present an efficient protocol for performing controlled-unitary operations between two input nodes and two output nodes over the butterfly network, one of the most fundamental networks exhibiting the bottleneck problem. This result opens the possibility of developing a theory of quantum network coding for multiparty quantum computation, whereas the conventional network coding only treats multiparty quantum communication.

For classical and quantum estimation with finite data sets, the estimation error can deviate significantly from its asymptotic (large data set) behavior. In quantum state tomography, a major reason for this is the existence of a boundary in the parameter space imposed by constraints, such as the positive semidefiniteness of density matrices. Intuitively, we should be able to reduce the estimation error by using our knowledge of these constraints. This intuition is correct for maximumlikelihood estimators, but the size of the reduction has not been evaluated quantitatively. In this proceeding, we evaluate the improvement in one qubit state tomography by using mathematical tools in classical statistical estimation theory. In particular, we show that the effect of the reduction decreases exponentially with respect to the number of data sets when the true state is mixed, and it remains at arbitrarily large data set when the true state is pure.

We demonstrate pseudorandom optical processes known as t-designs, showing that for t=1(2) they are statistically indistinguishable from random operations for 1(2)-photon quantum interference, and that they fail to mimic randomness for 2(3)-photon interference.

In order to study generic properties of time-evolving states by time-independent Hamiltonian dynamics, we introduce phase-random states, an ensemble of pure states with fixed amplitudes and uniformly distributed phases in a fixed basis. We compute the average amount of entanglement of phase-random states analytically, and show that the average can be extremely large when the amplitudes are equal and the basis is separable. We also study implications on Hamiltonian dynamics, in particular the realization of the canonical state in a subsystem.

We present experimental results implementing the Quantum Schur-Weyl Transform QSWT for three qubits, allowing us to compress three quantum bits into two. In our implementation the three qubits are encoded in two photons. The first photon encodes a path and a polarization qubit, while the second photon encodes a single polarization qubit. We use the QSWT to map all of the information from the 3 qubits onto the path and polarization qubits encoded in the first photon, allowing us to discard the second photon. We characterize our compression by performing measurements on the remaining two qubits and show that they obey the statistics of a three qubit system. We expect our technique to become extremely useful in the near future, for all quantum information architectures, as few qubit quantum memories become available.

Quantum state tomography is the standard tool in current experiments for verifying that a state prepared in the lab is close to an ideal target state, but up to now there were no rigorous methods for evaluating the precision of the state preparation in tomographic experiments. We propose a new estimator for quantum state tomography, and prove that the (always physical) estimates will be close to the true prepared state with high probability. We derive an explicit formula for evaluating how high the probability is for an arbitrary finite-dimensional system and explicitly give the one- and two-qubit cases as examples. This formula applies for any informationally complete sets of measurements, arbitrary finite number of data sets, and general loss functions including the infidelity, the Hilbert-Schmidt, and the trace distances. Using the formula, we can evaluate not only the difference between the estimated and prepared states, but also the difference between the prepared and target states. This is the first result directly applicable to the problem of evaluating the precision of estimation and preparation in quantum tomographic experiments., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, (v2) An analysis of a constrained least squares estimator is added. (v3) A typo in Lemma 3 is modified

We consider 1-qubit mixed quantum state estimation by adaptively updating measurements according to previously obtained outcomes and measurement settings. Updates are determined by the average-variance-optimality (A-optimality) criterion, known in the classical theory of experimental design and applied here to quantum state estimation. In general, A-optimization is a nonlinear minimization problem; however, we find an analytic solution for 1-qubit state estimation using projective measurements, reducing computational effort. We compare numerically two adaptive and two nonadaptive schemes for finite data sets and show that the A-optimality criterion gives more precise estimates than standard quantum tomography., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures

We analyze the behavior of estimation errors evaluated by two loss functions, the Hilbert-Schmidt distance and infidelity, in one-qubit state tomography with finite data. We show numerically that there can be a large gap between the estimation errors and those predicted by an asymptotic analysis. The origin of this discrepancy is the existence of the boundary in the state space imposed by the requirement that density matrices be nonnegative (positive semidefinite). We derive an explicit form of a function reproducing the behavior of the estimation errors with high accuracy by introducing two approximations: a Gaussian approximation of the multinomial distributions of outcomes, and linearizing the boundary. This function gives us an intuition for the behavior of the expected losses for finite data sets. We show that this function can be used to determine the amount of data necessary for the estimation to be treated reliably with the asymptotic theory. We give an explicit expression for this amount, which exhibits strong sensitivity to the true quantum state as well as the choice of measurement., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, One figure (FIG. 1) is added to the previous version, and some typos are corrected

We investigate the minimum entanglement cost of the deterministic implementation of two-qubit controlled-unitary operations using local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We show that any such operation can be implemented by a three-turn LOCC protocol, which requires at least 1 ebit of entanglement when the resource is given by a bipartite entangled state with Schmidt number 2. Our result implies that there is a gap between the minimum entanglement cost and the entangling power of controlled-unitary operations. This gap arises due to the requirement of implementing the operations while oblivious to the identity of the inputs., Comment: 5 pages + 13 pages of appendix, comments welcome (published version)

2-designs -- ensembles of quantum pure states whose 2nd moments equal those of the uniform Haar ensemble -- are optimal solutions for several tasks in quantum information science, especially state and process tomography. We show that Gaussian states cannot form a 2-design for the continuous-variable (quantum optical) Hilbert space L2(R). This is surprising because the affine symplectic group HWSp (the natural symmetry group of Gaussian states) is irreducible on the symmetric subspace of two copies. In finite dimensional Hilbert spaces, irreducibility guarantees that HWSp-covariant ensembles (such as mutually unbiased bases in prime dimensions) are always 2-designs. This property is violated by continuous variables, for a subtle reason: the (well-defined) HWSp-invariant ensemble of Gaussian states does not have an average state because the averaging integral does not converge. In fact, no Gaussian ensemble is even close (in a precise sense) to being a 2-design. This surprising difference between discrete and continuous quantum mechanics has important implications for optical state and process tomography., 9 pages, no pretty figures (sorry!)

In order to investigate distributed quantum computation under restricted network resources, we introduce a quantum computation task over the butterfly network where both quantum and classical communications are limited. We consider deterministically performing a two-qubit global unitary operation on two unknown inputs given at different nodes, with outputs at two distinct nodes. By using a particular resource setting introduced by M. Hayashi [Phys. Rev. A \textbf{76}, 040301(R) (2007)], which is capable of performing a swap operation by adding two maximally entangled qubits (ebits) between the two input nodes, we show that unitary operations can be performed without adding any entanglement resource, if and only if the unitary operations are locally unitary equivalent to controlled unitary operations. Our protocol is optimal in the sense that the unitary operations cannot be implemented if we relax the specifications of any of the channels. We also construct protocols for performing controlled traceless unitary operations with a 1-ebit resource and for performing global Clifford operations with a 2-ebit resource., Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, the second version has been significantly expanded, and author ordering changed and the third version is a minor revision of the previous version

Graph states are an elegant and powerful quantum resource for measurement based quantum computation (MBQC). They are also used for many quantum protocols (error correction, secret sharing, etc.). The main focus of this paper is to provide a structural characterisation of the graph states that can be used for quantum information processing. The existence of a gflow (generalized flow) is known to be a requirement for open graphs (graph, input set and output set) to perform uniformly and strongly deterministic computations. We weaken the gflow conditions to define two new more general kinds of MBQC: uniform equiprobability and constant probability. These classes can be useful from a cryptographic and information point of view because even though we cannot do a deterministic computation in general we can preserve the information and transfer it perfectly from the inputs to the outputs. We derive simple graph characterisations for these classes and prove that the deterministic and uniform equiprobability classes collapse when the cardinalities of inputs and outputs are the same. We also prove the reversibility of gflow in that case. The new graphical characterisations allow us to go from open graphs to graphs in general and to consider this question: given a graph with no inputs or outputs fixed, which vertices can be chosen as input and output for quantum information processing? We present a characterisation of the sets of possible inputs and ouputs for the equiprobability class, which is also valid for deterministic computations with inputs and ouputs of the same cardinality., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures

We expand the scope of the statistical notion of error probability, i.e., how often large deviations are observed in an experiment, in order to make it directly applicable to quantum tomography. We verify that the error probability can decrease at most exponentially in the number of trials, derive the explicit rate that bounds this decrease, and show that a maximum likelihood estimator achieves this bound. We also show that the statistical notion of identifiability coincides with the tomographic notion of informational completeness. Our result implies that two quantum tomographic apparatuses that have the same risk function, (e.g. variance), can have different error probability, and we give an example in one qubit state tomography. Thus by combining these two approaches we can evaluate, in a reconstruction independent way, the performance of such experiments more discerningly., 14pages, 2 figures (an analysis of an example is added, and the proof of Lemma 2 is corrected)

Motivated by studies of typical properties of quantum states in statistical mechanics, we introduce phase-random states, an ensemble of pure states with fixed amplitudes and uniformly distributed phases in a fixed basis. We first show that canonical states typically appear in subsystems of phase-random states. We then investigate the simulatability of phase-random states, which is directly related to that of time evolution in closed systems, by studying their entanglement properties. We find that starting from a separable state, time evolutions under Hamiltonians composed of only separable eigenstates generate extremely high entanglement and are difficult to simulate with matrix product states. We also show that random quantum circuits consisting of only two-qubit diagonal unitaries can generate an ensemble with the same average entanglement as phase-random states., Comment: Revised, 12 pages, 4 figure

Typical quantum communication schemes are such that to achieve perfect decoding the receiver must share a reference frame with the sender. Indeed, if the receiver only possesses a bounded-size quantum token of the sender's reference frame, then the decoding is imperfect, and we can describe this effect as a noisy quantum channel. We seek here to characterize the performance of such schemes, or equivalently, to determine the effective decoherence induced by having a bounded-size reference frame. We assume that the token is prepared in a special state that has particularly nice group-theoretic properties and that is near-optimal for transmitting information about the sender's frame. We present a decoding operation, which can be proven to be near-optimal in this case, and we demonstrate that there are two distinct ways of implementing it (corresponding to two distinct Kraus decompositions). In one, the receiver measures the orientation of the reference frame token and reorients the system appropriately. In the other, the receiver extracts the encoded information from the virtual subsystems that describe the relational degrees of freedom of the system and token. Finally, we provide explicit characterizations of these decoding schemes when the system is a single qubit and for three standard kinds of reference frame: a phase reference, a Cartesian frame (representing an orthogonal triad of spatial directions), and a reference direction (representing a single spatial direction)., 17 pages, 1 figure, comments welcome; v2 published version

We present a method for describing and characterizing the state of N particles that may be distinguishable in principle but not in practice due to experimental limitations. The technique relies upon a careful treatment of the exchange symmetry of the state among experimentally accessible and experimentally inaccessible degrees of freedom. The approach we present allows a new formalisation of the notion of indistinguishability and can be implemented easily using currently available experimental techniques. Our work is of direct relevance to current experiments in quantum optics, for which we provide a specific implementation., 8 pages, 1 figure

We show that a class of multimode optical transformations that employ linear optics plus two-mode squeezing can be expressed as SU(1,1) operators. These operations are relevant to state-of-the-art continuous variable quantum information experiments including quantum state sharing, quantum teleportation, and multipartite entangled states. Using this SU(1,1) description of these transformations, we obtain a new basis for such transformations that lies in a useful representation of this group and lies outside the often-used restriction to Gaussian states. We analyze this basis, show its application to a class of transformations, and discuss its extension to more general quantum optical networks.

Three-mode (tripartite) squeezed light is important for continuous variable quantum information tasks such as quantum teleportation, state sharing, and generating tripartite continuous variable entangled states, and furthermore is the first nontrivial step towards multipartite squeezed states. In such cases just one two-mode squeezer is used, and the squeezed light is distributed across multiple channels by passive optical elements. Here we show that these three-mode squeezed states are produced by optical networks that can be described as SU(1, 1) transformations, which enables relatively straightforward and elegant calculations of any output state from such squeezing networks for any input state.

We investigate if the degradation of a quantum directional reference frame through repeated use can be modeled as a classical direction undergoing a random walk on a sphere. We demonstrate that the behaviour of the fidelity for a degrading quantum directional reference frame, defined as the average probability of correctly determining the orientation of a test system, can be fit precisely using such a model. Physically, the mechanism for the random walk is the uncontrollable back-action on the reference frame due to its use in a measurement of the direction of another system. However, we find that the magnitude of the step size of this random walk is not given by our classical model and must be determined from the full quantum description., Comment: 5 pages, no figures. Comments are welcome. v2: several changes to clarify the key results. v3: journal reference added, acknowledgements and references updated

Model studies have contributed enormously to understanding phase transitions and critical phenomena. This Letter reports an attempt to develop a strategy for inferring the large-N behavior of a finite N-particle model of a phase transition. Because of the enormous impact of scaling laws on the theory of critical phenomena [1], we seek to determine if the spectral properties of a model have well-defined asymptotic limits with N-dependent scale factors. We focus on structural phase transitions in the zero temperature thermodynamic limit [2] of algebraic models with Hamiltonians

We present the conditions under which probabilistic error-free discrimination of mixed states is possible, and provide upper and lower bounds on the maximum probability of success for the case of two mixed states. We solve certain special cases exactly, and demonstrate how the problems of state filtering and state comparison can be recast as problems of mixed state unambiguous discrimination., Comment: 4.1 pages, crucial typos fixed. Final version, to be published in Phys. Rev. A (Rapid Comm)

We show that appropriate superpositions of motional states are a reference frame resource that enables breaking of time -reversal superselection so that two parties lacking knowledge about the other's direction of time can still communicate. We identify the time-reversal reference frame resource states and determine the corresponding frameness monotone, which connects time-reversal frameness to entanglement. In contradistinction to other studies of reference frame quantum resources, this is the first analysis that involves an antiunitary rather than unitary representation., 10 pp

We investigate the degradation of reference frames, treated as dynamical quantum systems, and quantify their longevity as a resource for performing tasks in quantum information processing. We adopt an operational measure of a reference frame's longevity, namely, the number of measurements that can be made against it with a certain error tolerance. We investigate two distinct types of reference frame: a reference direction, realized by a spin-j system, and a phase reference, realized by an oscillator mode with bounded energy. For both cases, we show that our measure of longevity increases quadratically with the size of the reference system and is therefore non-additive. For instance, the number of measurements that a directional reference frame consisting of N parallel spins can be put to use scales as N^2. Our results quantify the extent to which microscopic or mesoscopic reference frames may be used for repeated, high-precision measurements, without needing to be reset - a question that is important for some implementations of quantum computing. We illustrate our results using the proposed single-spin measurement scheme of magnetic resonance force microscopy., Comment: 9 pages plus appendices, 4 figures, published version

For applications of group theory in quantum mechanics, one generally needs explicit matrix representations of the spectrum generating algebras that arise in bases that reduce the symmetry group of some Hamiltonian of interest. Here we use vector coherent state techniques to develop an algorithm for constructing the matrices for arbitrary finite-dimensional irreps of the SO(5) Lie algebra in an SO(3) basis. The SO(3) subgroup of SO(5) is defined by regarding SO(5) as linear transformations of the five-dimensional space of an SO(3) irrep of angular momentum two. A need for such irreps arises in the nuclear collective model of quadrupole vibrations and rotations. The algorithm has been implemented in MAPLE, and some tables of results are presented., 20 pages, uses multirow.sty, submitted to J. Math. Phys