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We show that, in the relativistic limit, the quantum theory of neutrino oscillations can be described through the theory of weak measurements with pre and post-selection. The weak nature of neutrino detection allows simultaneous determination of flavor and energy without problems related to the collapse of the wavefunction. Together with post-selection, a non-trivial quantum interference emerges, allowing one to describe a flavor neutrino as one single particle, despite its superposition of masses. We write down the flavor equation of motion and calculate the flavor oscillation probability by showing precisely how a single neutrino interferes with itself., 21 pages, 5 figures, references added

We define rewinding operators that invert quantum measurements. Then, we define complexity classes ${\sf RwBQP}$, ${\sf CBQP}$, and ${\sf AdPostBQP}$ as sets of decision problems solvable by polynomial-size quantum circuits with a polynomial number of rewinding operators, cloning operators, and adaptive postselections, respectively. Our main result is that ${\sf BPP}^{\sf PP}\subseteq{\sf RwBQP}={\sf CBQP}={\sf AdPostBQP}\subseteq{\sf PSPACE}$. As a byproduct of this result, we show that any problem in ${\sf PostBQP}$ can be solved with only postselections of outputs whose probabilities are polynomially close to one. Under the strongly believed assumption that ${\sf BQP}\nsupseteq{\sf SZK}$, or the shortest independent vectors problem cannot be efficiently solved with quantum computers, we also show that a single rewinding operator is sufficient to achieve tasks that are intractable for quantum computation. In addition, we consider rewindable Clifford and instantaneous quantum polynomial time circuits., 29 pages, 3 figures, v2: Added Result 3 and improved Result 4

Using Bochner's theorem, we derive a necessary and sufficient hierarchy of measurable conditions in terms of the characteristic function of quasi-moments of a weakly measured observable. A quantum ...

Space-bounded computation has been a central topic in classical and quantum complexity theory. In the quantum case, every elementary gate must be unitary. This restriction makes it unclear whether the power of space-bounded computation changes by allowing intermediate measurement. In the bounded error case, Fefferman and Remscrim [STOC 2021, pp.1343--1356] and Girish, Raz and Zhan~[ICALP 2021, pp.73:1--73:20] recently provided the break-through results that the power does not change. This paper shows that a similar result holds for space-bounded quantum computation with postselection. Namely, it is proved possible to eliminate intermediate postselections and measurements in the space-bounded quantum computation in the bounded-error setting. Our result strengthens the recent result by Le Gall, Nishimura and Yakaryilmaz~[TQC 2021, pp.10:1--10:17] that logarithmic-space bounded-error quantum computation with intermediate postselections and measurements is equivalent in computational power to logarithmic-space unbounded-error probabilistic computation. As an application, it is shown that bounded-error space-bounded one-clean qubit computation (DQC1) with postselection is equivalent in computational power to unbounded-error space-bounded probabilistic computation, and the computational supremacy of the bounded-error space-bounded DQC1 is interpreted in complexity-theoretic terms., Full version of the MFCS 2022 paper. Typos fixed. Some minor clarifications and corrections

As an alternative approach for measuring the weak effects associated with the artificial preparation of rare events in quantum metrology, we propose the study of the interference pattern generated by acts of pre- and postselection of a quantum system. An example of two Mach – Zehnder interferometers connected by a cross-Kerr nonlinearity is considered. Postselection of photon states at the output of one of the interferometers and the application of a controlled phase shift in one of its arms induces interference phenomena in the photodetection statistics at the output of the second interferometer. The nonlinearity parameter determines the shift and width of the structures in the interference pattern. The main features of this pattern are studied depending on the magnitude of the Kerr nonlinearity and the number of photons at the input of the interferometers.

We consider the scenario where there is an exposure, multiple biologically defined sets of biomarkers, and an outcome. We propose a new two-step procedure that tests if any of the sets of biomarkers mediate the exposure/outcome relationship, while maintaining a prespecified familywise error rate. The first step of the proposed procedure is a screening step that removes all groups that are unlikely to be strongly associated with both the exposure and the outcome. The second step adapts recent advances in postselection inference to test if there are true mediators in each of the remaining candidate sets. We use simulation to show that this simple two-step procedure has higher statistical power to detect true mediating sets when compared with existing procedures. We then use our two-step procedure to identify a set of Lysine-related metabolites that potentially mediate the known relationship between increased body mass index and the increased risk of estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer in postmenopausal women.

Knill, Laflamme, and Milburn showed that linear optics techniques could be used to implement a nonlinear sign gate. They also showed that two of their nonlinear sign gates could be combined to implement a controlled-phase gate, which has a number of practical applications. Here we describe an alternative implementation of a controlled-phase gate for a single-rail target qubit that only requires the use of a single nonlinear sign gate. This gives a much higher average probability of success when the required ancilla photons are generated using heralding techniques. This implementation of a controlled-phase gate destroys the control qubit, which is acceptable in a number of applications where the control qubit would have been destroyed in any event, such as in a postselection process.

Quantum technologies require pure states, which are often generated by extreme refrigeration. Heat-bath algorithmic cooling is the theoretically optimal refrigeration technique: it shuttles entropy from a multiparticle system to a thermal bath, thereby generating a quantum state with a high degree of purity. Here, we show how to surpass this hitherto-optimal technique by taking advantage of a single binary-outcome measurement. Our protocols can create arbitrary numbers of pure quantum states without any residual mixedness by using a recently discovered device known as a quantum switch to put two operations in superposition, with postselection certifying the complete purification., 11 pages, 3 figures, 1 appendix; updated references; close to published version

The technique of weak value amplification, proposed by Aharonov et al. in 1988, has been applied for various fields of physics for the purpose of precision measurement, which is made possible by exploiting the freedom of ``postselection'' specifying actively the final state in the physical process. Here we report the feasibility of utilizing the technique of weak value amplification in high-energy particle physics, especially in measuring the $CP$-violating parameters in $B$ meson decays, where the effective lifetime of the decay mode is expected to be prolonged statistically due to the postselection. Our analysis shows that, when adopted in the Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB collider, the effective lifetime may be prolonged up to 2.6 times, and that the measurement precision of the $CP$-violating parameters will also be improved by its effect.

Quantum repeaters are a promising platform for realizing long-distance quantum communication and thus could form the backbone of a secure quantum internet, a scalable quantum network, or a distributed quantum computer. Repeater protocols that encode information in single- or multi-photon states are limited by transmission losses and the cost of implementing entangling gates or Bell measurements. In this work, we consider implementing a quantum repeater protocol using Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) qubits. These qubits are natural elements for quantum repeater protocols, because they allow for deterministic Gaussian entangling operations and Bell measurements, which can be implemented at room temperature. The GKP encoding is also capable of correcting small displacement errors. At the cost of additional Gaussian noise, photon loss can be converted into a random displacement error channel by applying a phase-insensitive amplifier. Here we show that a similar conversion can be achieved in two-way repeater protocols by using phase-sensitive amplification applied in the post-processing of the measurement data, resulting in less overall Gaussian noise per (sufficiently short) repeater segment. We also investigate concatenating the GKP code with higher level qubit codes while leveraging analog syndrome data, post-selection, and path-selection techniques to boost the rate of communication. We compute the secure key rates and find that GKP repeaters can achieve a comparative performance relative to methods based on photonic qubits while using orders-of-magnitude fewer qubits., Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures. See also the related work by Rozpedek et al., npj Quantum Information 7 (1), 1-12 (2021)

We analyse the benefit, in terms of extracting work, of having a single use of a quantum channel or measurement in quantum thermodynamics. This highlights a connection between unital and catalytic channels, and some subtleties concerning the conditional work cost of implementing a measurement given that a certain result was obtained. We also consider post-selected measurements, and show that any non-trivial post-selection leads to an unbounded work benefit., 18 Pages

Entanglement verification and measurement is essential for experimental tests of quantum mechanics and also for quantum communication and information science. Standard methods of verifying entanglement in a bipartite mixed state require detection of both particles and involve coincidence measurement. We present a method that enables us to verify and measure entanglement in a two-photon mixed state without detecting one of the photons, i.e., without performing any coincidence measurement or postselection. We consider two identical sources, each of which can generate the same two-photon mixed state but they never emit simultaneously. We show that one can produce a set of single-photon interference patterns, which contain information about entanglement in the two-photon mixed state. We prove that it is possible to retrieve the information about entanglement from the visibility of the interference patterns. Our method reveals a distinct avenue for verifying and measuring entanglement in mixed states., 10 pages, 3 figures

Twin-field quantum key distribution (TF-QKD) can overcome the fundamental rate-loss limit without quantum repeaters, which has stimulated intense research interests both in theory and experiment. Recently, TF-QKD protocols with discrete-phase-randomized sources have been widely studied. However, all these protocols require the phase postselection step in the test mode. To bypass this step, we propose a discrete-phase-randomized TF-QKD protocol without phase postselection in the test mode, which reduces the amount of information transmitted in the classical post-processing stage and thus reduces the consumption of secret keys in the authentication of classical information. Moreover, the numerical simulation of our protocol can be easily solved by linear programming. Simulation results show that, with only a few number of discrete phases, our protocol can beat the rate-loss bound and approximate the case of continuous phases, which is very practical in some real-life implementations of TF-QKD.

Direct state measurement (DSM) is a tomography method that allows for retrieving quantum states' wave functions directly. However, a shortcoming of current studies on the DSM is that it does not provide access to noisy quantum systems. Here, we attempt to fill the gap by investigating the DSM measurement precision that undergoes the state-preparation-and-measurement (SPAM) errors. We manipulate a quantum controlled measurement framework with various configurations and compare the efficiency between them. Under such SPAM errors, the state to be measured lightly deviates from the true state, and the measurement error in the postselection process results in less accurate in the tomography. Our study could provide a reliable tool for SPAM errors tomography and contribute to understanding and resolving an urgent demand for current quantum technologies., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures

We study the possibility of varying the measured lifetime of a decaying particle based on the technique of weak value amplification in which an additional filtering process called postselection is performed. Our analysis made in a direct measurement scheme presented here shows that, for simple two-level systems, the lifetime may be prolonged more than three times compared to the original one, while it can also be shortened arbitrarily by a proper choice of postselection. This result is consistent with our previous analysis on the possible prolongation of the lifetime of B mesons that may be observed in laboratories, and suggests room for novel applications of weak value amplification beyond precision measurement conventionally considered., 11 pages, 4 figures

Is it possible that a measurement of a spin component of a spin-1/2 particle yields the value 100? In 1988 Aharonov, Albert and Vaidman argued that upon pre- and postselection of particular spin states, weakening the coupling of a standard measurement procedure ensures this paradoxical result. This theoretical prediction, called weak value, was realized in numerous experiments, but its meaning remains very controversial, since its "anomalous" nature, i.e. the possibility to exceed the eigenvalues range, as well as its "quantumness" are debated. We address these questions by presenting the first experiment measuring anomalous weak values with just a single click, without any statistics. The measurement uncertainty is significantly smaller than the gap between the measured weak value and the nearest eigenvalue. Beyond clarifying the meaning of weak values, this result represents a breakthrough in understanding quantum measurement foundations, paving the way to further applications of weak values to quantum photonics., Revised version to appear in Light: Science & Applications

A quantum system subject to continuous measurement and post-selection evolves according to a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. We show that, as one increases the rate of post-selection, this non-Hermitian Hamiltonian undergoes a spectral phase transition. On one side of this phase transition (for weak post-selection) an initially mixed density matrix remains mixed at all times, and an initially unentangled state develops volume-law entanglement; on the other side, an arbitrary initial state approaches a unique pure state with low entanglement. We identify this transition with an exceptional point in the spectrum of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, at which PT symmetry is spontaneously broken. We characterize the transition as well as the nontrivial steady state that emerges at late times in the mixed phase using exact diagonalization and an approximate, analytically tractable mean-field theory; these methods yield consistent conclusions., 8 pages, 6 figures

In a quantum-noise limited system, weak-value amplification using post-selection normally does not produce more sensitive measurements than standard methods for ideal detectors: the increased weak value is compensated by the reduced power due to the small post-selection probability. Here we experimentally demonstrate recycled weak-value measurements using a pulsed light source and optical switch to enable nearly deterministic weak-value amplification of a mirror tilt. Using photon counting detectors, we demonstrate a signal improvement by a factor of $4.4 \pm 0.2$ and a signal-to-noise ratio improvement of $2.10 \pm 0.06$, compared to a single-pass weak-value experiment, and also compared to a conventional direct measurement of the tilt. The signal-to-noise ratio improvement could reach around 6 for the parameters of this experiment, assuming lower loss elements., 6 pages, 3 figures

The generation and verification of genuine multipartite nonlocality (GMN) is of central interest for both fundamental research and quantum technological applications, such as quantum privacy. To demonstrate GMN in measurement data, the statistics are commonly postselected by neglecting undesired data. Until now, valid postselection strategies have been restricted to local postselection. A general postselection that is decided after communication between parties can mimic nonlocality, even though the complete data are local. Here, we establish conditions under which GMN is demonstrable even if observations are postselected collectively. Intriguingly, certain postselection strategies that require communication among several parties still offer a demonstration of GMN shared between all parties. The results are derived using the causal structure of the experiment and the no-signalling condition imposed by relativity. Finally, we apply our results to show that genuine three-partite nonlocality can be created with independent particle sources.

The deterministic quantum computation with one qubit (DQC1) model is a restricted model of quantum computing able to calculate efficiently the normalized trace of a unitary matrix. In this work, we analyze the quantum correlations called entanglement, Bell's nonlocality, quantum discord, and coherence generated by the DQC1 circuit considering only two qubits (auxiliary and control). For the standard DQC1 model, only quantum discord and coherence appear. By introducing a filter in the circuit we purify the auxiliary qubit, taking it out from the totally mixed state and consequently promoting other quantum correlations between the qubits, such as entanglement and Bell's nonlocality. Through the optimization of the purification process, we conclude that even a small purification is enough to generate entanglement and Bell's nonlocality. We obtain, that by applying the purification process repeatedly an average of 12 times, the auxiliary qubit becomes $99%$ pure. In this situation, almost maximally entangled states are achieved, which almost maximally violate Bell's inequality. This result suggests that with a simple modification, the DQC1 model can be promoted to a universal model of quantum computing.

Most studies for postselected weak measurement in optomechanical system focus on using a single photon as a measured system. However, we find that using weak coherent light instead of a single photon can also amplify the mirror's position displacement of one photon. In the WVA regime (Weak Value Amplification regime), the weak value of one photon can lie outside the eigenvalue spectrum, proportional to the difference of the mirror's position displacement between the successful and failed postselection and its successful postselection probability is dependent of the mean photon number of the coherent light and improved by adjusting it accordingly. Outside the WVA regime, the amplification limit can reach the level of the vacuum fluctuations, and when the mean photon number and the optomechanical coupling parameter are selected appropriately, its successful postselection probability becomes higher, which is beneficial to observe the maximum amplification value under the current experimental conditions. This result breaks the constraint that it is difficult to detect outside the WVA regime. This opens up a new regime for the study of a single photon nonlinearity in optomechanical system., 9 pages

Weak measurement as a nonperturbative theory has been shown to be powerful in the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and high-precision metrology, in which the pointer is of great importance to parameter estimation and experimental design. In this work, we find that under the conditions of weak coupling and Gaussian meter, the probability distribution after the postselection follows a bimodal function and the peak contrast ratio (PCR) can be applied as a special pointer, which is different from the shift of mean value. To obtain the PCR, only two values corresponding to the two peaks in the distribution function are required. We theoretically present the relation of the PCR and parameters to be estimated, and then demonstrate it in an experiment. Weak measurement with the PCR pointer has the advantages of reducing the requirements of the apparatus and suppressing noise, which also provides a heuristic approach for studying weak measurement when the weak value is very large.

Accurate quantum chemistry simulations remain challenging on classical computers for problems of industrially relevant sizes and there is reason for hope that quantum computing may help push the boundaries of what is technically feasible. While variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithms may already turn noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) devices into useful machines, one has to make all efforts to use the scarce quantum resources as efficiently as possible. We combine the so-called seniority-zero, or paired-electron, approximation of computational quantum chemistry with techniques for simulating molecular chemistry on gate-based quantum computers and obtain a very resource efficient quantum simulation algorithm. While some accuracy is lost through the paired-electron approximation, we show that using the freed-up quantum resources for increasing the basis set can lead to more accurate results and reductions in the necessary number of quantum computing runs by several orders of magnitude, already for a simple system like lithium hydride. We also discuss an error mitigation scheme based on post-selection which shows an attractive scaling when the given Hamiltonian format is considered, increasing the viability of its NISQ implementation., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures

A natural choice for quantum communication is to use the relative phase between two paths of a single-photon for information encoding. This method was nevertheless quickly identified as impractical over long distances and thus a modification based on single-photon time-bins has then become widely adopted. It however, introduces a fundamental loss, which increases with the dimension and that limits its application over long distances. Here, we are able to solve this long-standing hurdle by employing a few-mode fiber space-division multiplexing platform working with orbital angular momentum modes. In our scheme, we maintain the practicability provided by the time-bin scheme, while the quantum states are transmitted through a few-mode fiber in a configuration that does not introduce post-selection losses. We experimentally demonstrate our proposal by successfully transmitting phase-encoded single-photon states for quantum cryptography over 500 m of few-mode fiber, showing the feasibility of our scheme., 8 pages, 6 figures. There was a mistake in Fig. 4 in v2. This is now corrected in this version and also in the published version

Quantum computing potentially offers exponential speed-ups over classical computing for certain tasks. A central, outstanding challenge to making quantum computing practical is to achieve fault tolerance, meaning that computations of any length or size can be realised in the presence of noise. The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill code is a promising approach towards fault-tolerant quantum computing, encoding logical qubits into grid states of harmonic oscillators. However, for the code to be fault tolerant, the quality of the grid states has to be extremely high. Approximate grid states have recently been realized experimentally, but their quality is still insufficient for fault tolerance. Current implementable protocols for generating grid states rely on measurements of ancillary qubits combined with either postselection or feed forward. Implementing such measurements take up significant time during which the states decohere, thus limiting their quality. Here we propose a measurement-free preparation protocol which deterministically prepares arbitrary logical grid states with a rectangular or hexagonal lattice. The protocol can be readily implemented in trapped-ion or superconducting-circuit platforms to generate high-quality grid states using only a few interactions, even with the noise levels found in current systems., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures

Free-space channels provide the possibility of establishing continuous-variable quantum key distribution in global communication networks. However, the fluctuating nature of transmissivity in these channels introduces an extra noise which reduces the achievable secret key rate. We consider two classical postprocessing strategies, postselection of high-transmissivity data and data clusterization, to reduce the fluctuation-induced noise of the channel. We undertake the investigation of such strategies utilizing a composable security proof in a realistic finite-size regime against both collective and individual attacks. We also present an efficient parameter estimation approach to estimate the effective Gaussian parameters over the postselected data or the clustered data. Although the composable finite-size effects become more significant with the postselection and clusterization both reducing the size of the data, our results show that these strategies are still able to enhance the finite-size key rate against both individual and collective attacks with a remarkable improvement against collective attacks, even moving the protocol from an insecure regime to a secure regime under certain conditions.

We introduce a new quantity, called pseudo-entropy, as a generalization of entanglement entropy via postselection. We expect this quantity to provide a new class of order parameters in quantum many-body systems. In the anti–de Sitter space (AdS)/conformal field theory (CFT) correspondence, this quantity is dual to areas of minimal area surfaces in time-dependent Euclidean spaces which are asymptotically AdS. We call this geometric computation of pseudo-entropy via the AdS/CFT the holographic pseudo-entropy. We study its basic properties and classifications in qubit systems. In specific examples, we provide a quantum information theoretic meaning of this new quantity as an averaged number of Bell pairs when the post-selection is performed. We also present properties of the pseudo-entropy for random states. We then calculate the pseudo-entropy in the presence of local operator excitations for both the two dimensional free massless scalar CFT and two dimensional holographic CFTs. We find a general property in CFTs that the pseudo-entropy is highly reduced when the local operators get closer to the boundary of the subsystem. We also compute the holographic pseudo-entropy for a Janus solution, dual to an exactly marginal perturbation of a two dimensional CFT and find its agreement with a perturbative calculation in the dual CFT. We show the linearity property holds for holographic states, where the holographic pseudo-entropy coincides with a weak value of the area operator. Finally, we propose a mixed state generalization of pseudo-entropy and give its gravity dual.

Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment was conceived to illustrate the paradoxical nature of wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics. In the experiment, quantum light can exhibit either wave-like interference patterns or particle-like anti-correlations, depending upon the (possibly delayed) choice of the experimenter. A variant known as the quantum eraser uses entangled light to recover the lost interference in a seemingly nonlocal and retrocausal manner. Although it is believed that this behavior is incompatible with classical physics, here we show that the observed quantum phenomena can be reproduced by adopting a simple deterministic detector model and supposing the existence of a random zero-point electromagnetic field., 12 pages, 12 figures

Two twin beams with a shared signal beam and separated idler beams are used together with the photon-number-resolving postselection in the signal beam to arrive at two coupled beams with anticorrelations in photon-number fluctuations. Moreover, the beams exhibit the sub-Poissonian photon-number statistics in their marginal distributions under suitable conditions. The postselected fields with the increasing mean photon numbers are reconstructed from the experimental photocount histograms by the maximum likelihood approach. Also a suitable Gaussian fit of both original twin beams and simulation of the postselection process are applied to arrive at the corresponding photon-number distributions. Their nonclassical properties are analyzed by suitable nonclassicality criteria and quantified by the corresponding nonclassicality depths. Determining the appropriate quasi-distributions of integrated intensities with negative values, the performance of different nonclassicality criteria is judged. Properties of the postselected fields reached both by the used and ideal photon-number-resolved detectors are mutually compared., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

Quantum entanglement is at the heart of quantum information sciences and quantum technologies. In the optical domain, the most common type of quantum entanglement is polarization entanglement, which is usually created in a postselection manner involving destructive photon detection and thus hindering further applications which require readily available entanglement resources. In this work, we propose a scheme to prepare multipartite entangled states of polarized photons in a heralded manner, i.e., without postselection. We exploit the quantum scissors technique to truncate a given continuous-variable entanglement into the target entangled states which are of hybrid discrete-continuous or solely discrete types. We consider two implementations of the quantum scissors: one modified from the original quantum scissors [Pegg et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1604 (1998)] using single photons and linear optics and the other designed here using a type-II two-mode squeezer. We clarify the pros and cons of these two implementations as well as discussing practical aspects of the entanglement preparation. Our work illustrates an interface between various types of optical entanglement and the proposed quantum scissors techniques could serve as alternative methods for heralded generation of polarization entanglement., Comment: Close to the published version

We describe a quantum-assisted machine learning (QAML) method in which multivariate data is encoded into quantum states in a Hilbert space whose dimension is exponentially large in the length of the data vector. Learning in this space occurs through applying a low-depth quantum circuit with a tree tensor network (TTN) topology, which acts as an unsupervised feature extractor to identify the most relevant quantum states in a data-driven fashion. This unsupervised feature extractor then feeds a supervised linear classifier and encodes the output in a small-dimensional quantum register. In contrast to previous work on \emph{quantum-inspired} TTN classifiers, in which the embedding map and class decision weights did not map the data to well-defined quantum states, we present an approach that can be implemented on gate-based quantum computing devices. In particular, we identify an embedding map with accuracy similar to exponential machines (Novikov \emph{et al.}, arXiv:1605.03795), but which produces valid quantum states from classical data vectors, and utilize manifold-based gradient optimization schemes to produce isometric operations mapping quantum states to a register of qubits defining a class decision. We detail methods for efficiently obtaining one- and two-point correlation functions of the decision boundary vectors of the quantum model, which can be used for model interpretability, as well as methods for obtaining classifications from partial data vectors. Further, we show that the use of isometric tensors can significantly aid in the human interpretability of the correlation functions extracted from the decision weights, and may produce models that are less susceptible to adversarial perturbations. We demonstrate our methodologies in applications utilizing the MNIST handwritten digit dataset and a multivariate timeseries dataset of human activity recognition., Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures. Abstract slightly shortened to fit arXiv requirements

Counterfactual communication protocols are analysed using three approaches: a classical argument, the weak trace criterion, and the Fisher information criterion. It is argued that the classical analysis leads to contradiction and should therefore be abandoned. The weak trace and Fisher information criteria are shown to agree about the degree of counterfactuality of communication protocols involving postselection. It is argued that postselection is a necessary ingredient of counterfactual communication protocols. Coherent interaction experiments, as well as a recently introduced modification of counterfactual communication setups which eliminates the weak trace, are discussed., Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, accepted to Phys. Rev. A

The distribution of entangled states across the nodes of a future quantum internet will unlock fundamentally new technologies. Here we report on the experimental realization of a three-node entanglement-based quantum network. We combine remote quantum nodes based on diamond communication qubits into a scalable phase-stabilized architecture, supplemented with a robust memory qubit and local quantum logic. In addition, we achieve real-time communication and feed-forward gate operations across the network. We capitalize on the novel capabilities of this network to realize two canonical protocols without post-selection: the distribution of genuine multipartite entangled states across the three nodes and entanglement swapping through an intermediary node. Our work establishes a key platform for exploring, testing and developing multi-node quantum network protocols and a quantum network control stack., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, supplementary materials

We propose a post-selection technique, based on quantum error detection, for quantum key distribution (QKD) systems that run over quantum repeaters with encoding. In such repeaters, quantum error correction techniques are used for entanglement distillation. By developing an analytical approach to study such quantum repeaters, we show that, in the context of QKD, it is often more efficient to use the error detection, rather than the error correction, capability of the underlying code to sift out cases where an error has been detected. We implement our technique for three-qubit repetition codes by modelling different sources of error in crucial components of the system. We then investigate in detail the impact of such imperfections on the secret key generation rate of the QKD system, and how one can use the information obtained during entanglement swapping and decoding stages to maximize the rate. For benchmarking purposes, we specify the maximum allowed error rates in different components of the setup below which positive key rates can be obtained., 14 pages, 7 figures

The dynamics of entanglement in `hybrid' non-unitary circuits (for example, involving both unitary gates and quantum measurements) has recently become an object of intense study. A major hurdle toward experimentally realizing this physics is the need to apply \emph{postselection} on random measurement outcomes in order to repeatedly prepare a given output state, resulting in an exponential overhead. We propose a method to sidestep this issue in a wide class of non-unitary circuits by taking advantage of \emph{spacetime duality}. This method maps the purification dynamics of a mixed state under non-unitary evolution onto a particular correlation function in an associated unitary circuit. This translates to an operational protocol which could be straightforwardly implemented on a digital quantum simulator. We discuss the signatures of different entanglement phases, and demonstrate examples via numerical simulations. With minor modifications, the proposed protocol allows measurement of the purity of arbitrary subsystems, which could shed light on the properties of the quantum error correcting code formed by the mixed phase in this class of hybrid dynamics., 4 pages main text + 9 page supplemental material. v2: added references, expanded supplement, minor modifications to text

We quantify the disturbance of a quantum state undergoing a sequence of observations, and particularly focus on a weak measurement followed by post-selection and compare these results to the projective counterpart. Taking into account the distinguishability of both, the system and the device, we obtain the exact trade-off between the system state disturbance and the change of the device pointer state. We show that for particular post-selection procedures the coupling strength between the system and the device can be significantly reduced without loosing measurement sensitivity, which is directly transferred to a reduced state disturbance of the system. We observe that a weak measurement alone does not provide this advantage but only in combination with post-selection a significant improvement in terms of increased measurement sensitivity and reduced state disturbance is found. We further show that under realistic experimental conditions this state disturbance is small, whereas the exact post-selection probability is considerably larger than the approximate value given by the overlap of the initial and final state when neglecting the system state disturbance.

The weak-value (WV) measurement proposed by Aharonov, Albert, and Vaidman (AAV) has attracted a great deal of interest in connection with quantum metrology. In this paper, we extend the analysis beyond the AAV limit and obtain a few main results. (i) We obtain a nonperturbative result for the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In contrast to the AAV prediction, we find that the SNR asymptotically gets worse when the AAV WV ${A}_{w}$ becomes large, i.e., in the case $g|{A}_{w}{|}^{2}\ensuremath{\gg}1$, where $g$ is the measurement strength. (ii) With the increase of $g$ (but also small), we find that the SNR is comparable to the result under the AAV limit, while both can reach---actually the former can slightly exceed---the SNR of the standard measurement. However, with a further increase of $g$, the WV technique will become less efficient than the standard measurement, despite the fact that the postselection probability is increased. (iii) We find that the Fisher information can characterize the estimate precision qualitatively well as the SNR, yet the difference will become more prominent with the increase of $g$. (iv) We carry out analytic expressions of the SNR in the presence of technical noises and illustrate the particular advantage of the imaginary WV measurement. The nonperturbative result of the SNR manifests a favorable range of the noise strength and allows an optimal determination.