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Entanglement sharing across noisy channels is a vital task for quantum information processing. In this work, we introduce two-way classical communication-assisted entanglement distillation protocols that improve rates for Pauli and non-Pauli channels. We achieve these improvements by reshaping several uses of a very noisy channel into a better effective channel, and applying this channel processing in an adaptive and recurrent manner. For the amplitude damping channel, we observe that reshaping the channel into an erasure channel using the dual-rail encoding improves upon the reverse coherent information. We extend this idea to higher-weight encodings and achieve further improvements for the amplitude damping channel. For the depolarizing channel, we introduce the Greedy recurrence protocol with proven performance guarantees, and construct a combined recurrent protocol that can produce rates exceeding that of previous individual protocols., Comment: 18+11 pages, 11 figures. Comments welcome

Entanglement distillation is a fundamental information processing task whose implementation is key to quantum communication and modular quantum computing. Noise experienced by such communication and computing platforms occurs not only in the form of Pauli noise such as dephasing (sometimes called $T_2$) but also non-Pauli noise such as amplitude damping (sometimes called $T_1$). We initiate a study of practical and asymptotic distillation over what we call the joint damping-dephasing noise channel. In the practical setting, we propose a distillation scheme that completely isolates away the damping noise. In the asymptotic setting we derive lower bounds on the entanglement sharing capacities including the coherent and reverse coherent information. Like the protocol achieving the reverse coherent information, our scheme uses only backward classical communication. However, for realistic damping noise ($T_1 \neq 2T_2$) our strategy can exceed the reverse coherent strategy, which is the best known for pure damping. In the forward communication setting we numerically exceed the single-letter coherent information strategy by observing the channel displays non-additivity at the two-letter level. The work shows non-additivity can also be found in realistic noise models with magnitudes of non-additivity similar to those found in more idealized noise channels., Comment: 17 page, 8 figures, comments are welcome

Assessment of practical quantum information processing (QIP) remains partial without understanding limits imposed by noise. Unfortunately, mere description of noise grows exponentially with system size, becoming cumbersome even for modest sized systems of imminent practical interest. We fulfill the need for estimates on performing noisy quantum state preparation, verification, and observation. To do the estimation we propose fast numerical algorithms to maximize the expectation value of any $d$-dimensional observable over states of bounded purity. This bound on purity factors in noise in a measurable way. Our fastest algorithm takes $O(d)$ steps if the eigendecomposition of the observable is known, otherwise takes $O(d^3)$ steps at worst. The algorithms also solve maximum likelihood estimation for quantum state tomography with convex and even non-convex purity constraints. Numerics show performance of our key sub-routine (it finds in linear time a probability vector with bounded norm that most overlaps with a fixed vector) can be several orders of magnitude faster than a common state-of-the-art convex optimization solver. Our work fosters a practical way forward to asses limitations on QIP imposed by quantum noise. Along the way, we also give a simple but fundamental insight, noisy systems (equivalently noisy Hamiltonians) always give higher ground-state energy than their noiseless counterparts., Comment: 28 pages, 7 figures, comments are welcome

Entanglement and coherence are fundamental properties of quantum systems, promising to power near future quantum technologies, such as quantum computation, quantum communication and quantum metrology. Yet, their quantification, rather than mere detection, generally requires reconstructing the spectrum of quantum states, i.e., experimentally challenging measurement sets that increase exponentially with the system size. Here, we demonstrate quantitative bounds to operationally useful entanglement and coherence that are universally valid, analytically computable, and experimentally friendly. Specifically, our main theoretical results are lower and upper bounds to the coherent information and the relative entropy of coherence in terms of local and global purities of quantum states. To validate our proposal, we experimentally implement two purity detection methods in an optical system: shadow estimation with random measurements and collective measurements on pairs of state copies. The experiment shows that both the coherent information and the relative entropy of coherence of pure and mixed unknown quantum states can be bounded by purity functions. Our research offers an efficient means of verifying large-scale quantum information processing., Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1707.09928

Sharing entanglement across quantum interconnects is fundamental for quantum information processing. We discuss a practical setting where this interconnect, modeled by a quantum channel, is used once with the aim of sharing high fidelity entanglement. For any channel, we provide methods to easily find both this maximum fidelity and optimal inputs that achieve it. Unlike most metrics for sharing entanglement, this maximum fidelity can be shown to be multiplicative. This ensures a complete understanding in the sense that the maximum fidelity and optimal inputs found in our one-shot setting extend even when the channel is used multiple times, possibly with other channels. Optimal inputs need not be fully entangled. We find the minimum entanglement in these optimal inputs can even vary discontinuously with channel noise. Generally, noise parameters are hard to identify and remain unknown for most channels. However, for all qubit channels with qubit environments, we provide a rigorous noise parametrization which we explain in-terms of no-cloning. This noise parametrization and a channel representation we call the standard Kraus decomposition have pleasing properties that make them both useful more generally., Comment: Essentially matches published version

Understanding quantum channels and the strange behavior of their capacities is a key objective of quantum information theory. Here we study a remarkably simple, low-dimensional, single-parameter family of quantum channels with exotic quantum information-theoretic features. As the simplest example from this family, we focus on a qutrit-to-qutrit channel that is intuitively obtained by hybridizing together a simple degradable channel and a completely useless qubit channel. Such hybridizing makes this channel's capacities behave in a variety of interesting ways. For instance, the private and classical capacity of this channel coincide and can be explicitly calculated, even though the channel does not belong to any class for which the underlying information quantities are known to be additive. Moreover, the quantum capacity of the channel can be computed explicitly, given a clear and compelling conjecture is true. This "spin alignment conjecture," which may be of independent interest, is proved in certain special cases and additional numerical evidence for its validity is provided. Finally, we generalize the qutrit channel in two ways, and the resulting channels and their capacities display similarly rich behavior. In the companion paper [Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 200801 (2023); arXiv:2202.08377], we further show that the qutrit channel demonstrates superadditivity when transmitting quantum information jointly with a variety of assisting channels, in a manner unknown before., Comment: Comments: 42 pages, 4 figures. v2: matches published version. See also the companion paper arXiv:2202.08377

Determining capacities of quantum channels is a fundamental question in quantum information theory. Despite having rigorous coding theorems quantifying the flow of information across quantum channels, their capacities are poorly understood due to super-additivity effects. Studying these phenomena is important for deepening our understanding of quantum information, yet simple and clean examples of super-additive channels are scarce. Here we study a family of channels called platypus channels. Its simplest member, a qutrit channel, is shown to display super-additivity of coherent information when used jointly with a variety of qubit channels. Higher-dimensional family members display super-additivity of quantum capacity together with an erasure channel. Subject to the "spin-alignment conjecture" introduced in the companion paper [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 69(6), pp. 3825-3849, 2023; arXiv:2202.08380], our results on super-additivity of quantum capacity extend to lower-dimensional channels as well as larger parameter ranges. In particular, super-additivity occurs between two weakly additive channels each with large capacity on their own, in stark contrast to previous results. Remarkably, a single, novel transmission strategy achieves super-additivity in all examples. Our results show that super-additivity is much more prevalent than previously thought. It can occur across a wide variety of channels, even when both participating channels have large quantum capacity., Comment: Comments: 25 pages, 9 figures. v2: matches published version. See also the companion paper arXiv:2202.08380

Hamiltonian learning is an important procedure in quantum system identification, calibration, and successful operation of quantum computers. Through queries to the quantum system, this procedure seeks to obtain the parameters of a given Hamiltonian model and description of noise sources. Standard techniques for Hamiltonian learning require careful design of queries and $O(\epsilon^{-2})$ queries in achieving learning error $\epsilon$ due to the standard quantum limit. With the goal of efficiently and accurately estimating the Hamiltonian parameters within learning error $\epsilon$ through minimal queries, we introduce an active learner that is given an initial set of training examples and the ability to interactively query the quantum system to generate new training data. We formally specify and experimentally assess the performance of this Hamiltonian active learning (HAL) algorithm for learning the six parameters of a two-qubit cross-resonance Hamiltonian on four different superconducting IBM Quantum devices. Compared with standard techniques for the same problem and a specified learning error, HAL achieves up to a $99.8\%$ reduction in queries required, and a $99.1\%$ reduction over the comparable non-adaptive learning algorithm. Moreover, with access to prior information on a subset of Hamiltonian parameters and given the ability to select queries with linearly (or exponentially) longer system interaction times during learning, HAL can exceed the standard quantum limit and achieve Heisenberg (or super-Heisenberg) limited convergence rates during learning., Comment: 53 pages, 21 figures

Quantum assembly languages are machine-independent languages that traditionally describe quantum computation in the circuit model. Open quantum assembly language (OpenQASM 2) was proposed as an imperative programming language for quantum circuits based on earlier QASM dialects. In principle, any quantum computation could be described using OpenQASM 2, but there is a need to describe a broader set of circuits beyond the language of qubits and gates. By examining interactive use cases, we recognize two different timescales of quantum-classical interactions: real-time classical computations that must be performed within the coherence times of the qubits, and near-time computations with less stringent timing. Since the near-time domain is adequately described by existing programming frameworks, we choose in OpenQASM 3 to focus on the real-time domain, which must be more tightly coupled to the execution of quantum operations. We add support for arbitrary control flow as well as calling external classical functions. In addition, we recognize the need to describe circuits at multiple levels of specificity, and therefore we extend the language to include timing, pulse control, and gate modifiers. These new language features create a multi-level intermediate representation for circuit development and optimization, as well as control sequence implementation for calibration, characterization, and error mitigation., Comment: 60 pages, 17 figures

In this work we extend a multi-qubit benchmarking technique known as the Binned Output Generation (BOG) in order to discriminate between coherent and incoherent noise sources in the multi-qubit regime. While methods exist to discriminate coherent from incoherent noise at the single and few-qubit level, these methods scale poorly beyond a few qubits or must make assumptions about the form of the noise. On the other end of the spectrum, system-level benchmarking techniques exist, but fail to discriminate between coherent and incoherent noise sources. We experimentally verify the BOG against Randomized Benchmarking (RB) (the industry standard benchmarking technique) in the two-qubit regime, then apply this technique to a six qubit linear chain, a regime currently inaccessible to RB. In this experiment we inject an instantaneous coherent Z-type noise on each qubit and demonstrate that the measured coherent noise scales correctly with the magnitude of the injected noise, while the measured incoherent noise remains unchanged as expected. This demonstrates a robust technique to measure coherent errors in a variety of hardware.

Learning an unknown $n$-qubit quantum state $\rho$ is a fundamental challenge in quantum computing. Information-theoretically, it is known that tomography requires exponential in $n$ many copies of $\rho$ to estimate it up to trace distance. Motivated by computational learning theory, Aaronson et al. introduced many (weaker) learning models: the PAC model of learning states (Proceedings of Royal Society A'07), shadow tomography (STOC'18) for learning "shadows" of a state, a model that also requires learners to be differentially private (STOC'19) and the online model of learning states (NeurIPS'18). In these models it was shown that an unknown state can be learned "approximately" using linear-in-$n$ many copies of rho. But is there any relationship between these models? In this paper we prove a sequence of (information-theoretic) implications from differentially-private PAC learning, to communication complexity, to online learning and then to quantum stability. Our main result generalizes the recent work of Bun, Livni and Moran (Journal of the ACM'21) who showed that finite Littlestone dimension (of Boolean-valued concept classes) implies PAC learnability in the (approximate) differentially private (DP) setting. We first consider their work in the real-valued setting and further extend their techniques to the setting of learning quantum states. Key to our results is our generic quantum online learner, Robust Standard Optimal Algorithm (RSOA), which is robust to adversarial imprecision. We then show information-theoretic implications between DP learning quantum states in the PAC model, learnability of quantum states in the one-way communication model, online learning of quantum states, quantum stability (which is our conceptual contribution), various combinatorial parameters and give further applications to gentle shadow tomography and noisy quantum state learning., Comment: 48 pages, 3 figures

We implement a Quantum Autoencoder (QAE) as a quantum circuit capable of correcting Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states subject to various noisy quantum channels : the bit-flip channel and the more general quantum depolarizing channel. The QAE shows particularly interesting results, as it enables to perform an almost perfect reconstruction of noisy states, but can also, more surprisingly, act as a generative model to create noise-free GHZ states. Finally, we detail a useful application of QAEs : Quantum Secret Sharing (QSS). We analyze how noise corrupts QSS, causing it to fail, and show how the QAE allows the QSS protocol to succeed even in the presence of noise., Comment: 13 pages

As superconducting quantum circuits scale to larger sizes, the problem of frequency crowding proves a formidable task. Here we present a solution for this problem in fixed-frequency qubit architectures. By systematically adjusting qubit frequencies post-fabrication, we show a nearly ten-fold improvement in the precision of setting qubit frequencies. To assess scalability, we identify the types of 'frequency collisions' that will impair a transmon qubit and cross-resonance gate architecture. Using statistical modeling, we compute the probability of evading all such conditions, as a function of qubit frequency precision. We find that without post-fabrication tuning, the probability of finding a workable lattice quickly approaches 0. However with the demonstrated precisions it is possible to find collision-free lattices with favorable yield. These techniques and models are currently employed in available quantum systems and will be indispensable as systems continue to scale to larger sizes., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, Supplementary Information. Update to correct typo in author name and in text. Updated acknowledgements and corrected typo in acknowledgements

We show how to approximately represent a quantum state using the square root of the usual amount of classical memory. The classical representation of an $n$-qubit state $\psi$ consists of its inner products with $O(\sqrt{2^n})$ stabilizer states. A quantum state initially specified by its $2^n$ entries in the computational basis can be compressed to this form in time $O(2^n \mathrm{poly}(n))$, and, subsequently, the compressed description can be used to additively approximate the expectation value of an arbitrary observable. Our compression scheme directly gives a new protocol for the vector in subspace problem with randomized one-way communication complexity that matches (up to polylogarithmic factors) the optimal upper bound, due to Raz. We obtain an exponential improvement over Raz's protocol in terms of computational efficiency., Comment: v2 is very close to proceedings version; includes a matching lower bound

As quantum circuits increase in size, it is critical to establish scalable multiqubit fidelity metrics. Here we investigate three-qubit randomized benchmarking (RB) with fixed-frequency transmon qubits coupled to a common bus with pairwise microwave-activated interactions (cross-resonance). We measure, for the first time, a three-qubit error per Clifford of 0.106 for all-to-all gate connectivity and 0.207 for linear gate connectivity. Furthermore, by introducing mixed dimensionality simultaneous RB --- simultaneous one- and two-qubit RB --- we show that the three-qubit errors can be predicted from the one- and two-qubit errors. However, by introducing certain coherent errors to the gates we can increase the three-qubit error to 0.302, an increase that is not predicted by a proportionate increase in the one- and two-qubit errors from simultaneous RB. This demonstrates three-qubit RB as a unique multiqubit metric., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures V2: Fixed an error in Eqn. 1 of V1 and added supplementary information

Universal fault-tolerant quantum computers will require error-free execution of long sequences of quantum gate operations, which is expected to involve millions of physical qubits. Before the full power of such machines will be available, near-term quantum devices will provide several hundred qubits and limited error correction. Still, there is a realistic prospect to run useful algorithms within the limited circuit depth of such devices. Particularly promising are optimization algorithms that follow a hybrid approach: the aim is to steer a highly entangled state on a quantum system to a target state that minimizes a cost function via variation of some gate parameters. This variational approach can be used both for classical optimization problems as well as for problems in quantum chemistry. The challenge is to converge to the target state given the limited coherence time and connectivity of the qubits. In this context, the quantum volume as a metric to compare the power of near-term quantum devices is discussed. With focus on chemistry applications, a general description of variational algorithms is provided and the mapping from fermions to qubits is explained. Coupled-cluster and heuristic trial wave-functions are considered for efficiently finding molecular ground states. Furthermore, simple error-mitigation schemes are introduced that could improve the accuracy of determining ground-state energies. Advancing these techniques may lead to near-term demonstrations of useful quantum computation with systems containing several hundred qubits., Comment: Contribution to the special issue of Quantum Science & Technology on "What would you do with 1000 qubits"

Coherence and entanglement are fundamental properties of quantum systems, promising to power the near future quantum computers, sensors and simulators. Yet, their experimental detection is challenging, usually requiring full reconstruction of the system state. We show that one can extract quantitative bounds to the relative entropy of coherence and the coherent information, coherence and entanglement quantifiers respectively, by a limited number of purity measurements. The scheme is readily implementable with current technology to verify quantum computations in large scale registers, without carrying out expensive state tomography., Comment: 5 pages plus appendix

This document describes a quantum assembly language (QASM) called OpenQASM that is used to implement experiments with low depth quantum circuits. OpenQASM represents universal physical circuits over the CNOT plus SU(2) basis with straight-line code that includes measurement, reset, fast feedback, and gate subroutines. The simple text language can be written by hand or by higher level tools and may be executed on the IBM Q Experience., Comment: 24 pages, for additional examples and updates, see https://github.com/IBM/qiskit-openqasm

The main promise of quantum computing is to efficiently solve certain problems that are prohibitively expensive for a classical computer. Most problems with a proven quantum advantage involve the repeated use of a black box, or oracle, whose structure encodes the solution. One measure of the algorithmic performance is the query complexity, i.e., the scaling of the number of oracle calls needed to find the solution with a given probability. Few-qubit demonstrations of quantum algorithms, such as Deutsch-Jozsa and Grover, have been implemented across diverse physical systems such as nuclear magnetic resonance, trapped ions, optical systems, and superconducting circuits. However, at the small scale, these problems can already be solved classically with a few oracle queries, and the attainable quantum advantage is modest. Here we solve an oracle-based problem, known as learning parity with noise, using a five-qubit superconducting processor. Running classical and quantum algorithms on the same oracle, we observe a large gap in query count in favor of quantum processing. We find that this gap grows by orders of magnitude as a function of the error rates and the problem size. This result demonstrates that, while complex fault-tolerant architectures will be required for universal quantum computing, a quantum advantage already emerges in existing noisy systems, Comment: 8 pages, including 4 figures and methods. 7 supplementary figures, 1 supplementary table

Randomized benchmarking is a widely used experimental technique to characterize the average error of quantum operations. Benchmarking procedures that scale to enable characterization of $n$-qubit circuits rely on efficient procedures for manipulating those circuits and, as such, have been limited to subgroups of the Clifford group. However, universal quantum computers require additional, non-Clifford gates to approximate arbitrary unitary transformations. We define a scalable randomized benchmarking procedure over $n$-qubit unitary matrices that correspond to protected non-Clifford gates for a class of stabilizer codes. We present efficient methods for representing and composing group elements, sampling them uniformly, and synthesizing corresponding $\mathrm{poly}(n)$-sized circuits. The procedure provides experimental access to two independent parameters that together characterize the average gate fidelity of a group element., Comment: 5+4 pages, 1 figure

Of course not, but if one believes that information cannot be destroyed in a theory of quantum gravity, then we run into apparent contradictions with quantum theory when we consider evaporating black holes. Namely that the no-cloning theorem or the principle of entanglement monogamy is violated. Here, we show that neither violation need hold, since, in arguing that black holes lead to cloning or non-monogamy, one needs to assume a tensor product structure between two points in space-time that could instead be viewed as causally connected. In the latter case, one is violating the semi-classical causal structure of space, which is a strictly weaker implication than cloning or non-monogamy. We show that the lack of monogamy that can emerge in evaporating space times is one that is allowed in quantum mechanics, and is very naturally related to a lack of monogamy of correlations of outputs of measurements performed at subsequent instances of time of a single system. A particular example of this is the Horowitz-Maldacena proposal, and we argue that it needn't lead to cloning or violations of entanglement monogamy. For measurements on systems which appear to be leaving a black hole, we introduce the notion of the temporal product, and argue that it is just as natural a choice for measurements as the tensor product. For black holes, the tensor and temporal products have the same measurement statistics, but result in different type of non-monogamy of correlations, with the former being forbidden in quantum theory while the latter is allowed. In the case of the AMPS firewall experiment we find that the entanglement structure is modified, and one must have entanglement between the infalling Hawking partners and early time outgoing Hawking radiation which surprisingly tame violation of entanglement monogamy., Comment: 20 pages, comments welcome, grants added to acknowledgements

We propose examples of a hybrid quantum-classical simulation where a classical computer assisted by a small quantum processor can efficiently simulate a larger quantum system. First we consider sparse quantum circuits such that each qubit participates in O(1) two-qubit gates. It is shown that any sparse circuit on n+k qubits can be simulated by sparse circuits on n qubits and a classical processing that takes time $2^{O(k)} poly(n)$. Secondly, we study Pauli-based computation (PBC) where allowed operations are non-destructive eigenvalue measurements of n-qubit Pauli operators. The computation begins by initializing each qubit in the so-called magic state. This model is known to be equivalent to the universal quantum computer. We show that any PBC on n+k qubits can be simulated by PBCs on n qubits and a classical processing that takes time $2^{O(k)} poly(n)$. Finally, we propose a purely classical algorithm that can simulate a PBC on n qubits in a time $2^{c n} poly(n)$ where $c\approx 0.94$. This improves upon the brute-force simulation method which takes time $2^n poly(n)$. Our algorithm exploits the fact that n-fold tensor products of magic states admit a low-rank decomposition into n-qubit stabilizer states., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures

Noise is often regarded as anathema to quantum computation, but in some settings it can be an unlikely ally. We consider the problem of learning the class of $n$-bit parity functions by making queries to a quantum example oracle. In the absence of noise, quantum and classical parity learning are easy and almost equally powerful, both information-theoretically and computationally. We show that in the presence of noise this story changes dramatically. Indeed, the classical learning problem is believed to be intractable, while the quantum version remains efficient. Depolarizing the qubits at the oracle's output at any constant nonzero rate does not increase the computational (or query) complexity of quantum learning more than logarithmically. However, the problem of learning from corresponding classical examples is the Learning Parity with Noise (LPN) problem, for which the best known algorithms have superpolynomial complexity. This creates the possibility of observing a quantum advantage with a few hundred noisy qubits. The presence of noise is essential for creating this quantum-classical separation., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure

We give an algorithm which produces a unique element of the Clifford group $\mathcal{C}_n$ on $n$ qubits from an integer $0\le i < |\mathcal{C}_n|$ (the number of elements in the group). The algorithm involves $O(n^3)$ operations. It is a variant of the subgroup algorithm by Diaconis and Shahshahani which is commonly applied to compact Lie groups. We provide an adaption for the symplectic group $Sp(2n,\mathbb{F}_2)$ which provides, in addition to a canonical mapping from the integers to group elements $g$, a factorization of $g$ into a sequence of at most $4n$ symplectic transvections. The algorithm can be used to efficiently select random elements of $\mathcal{C}_n$ which is often useful in quantum information theory and quantum computation. We also give an algorithm for the inverse map, indexing a group element in time $O(n^3)$., Comment: 7 pages plus 4 1/2 pages of python code

The SSSV model is a simple classical model that achieves excellent correlation with published experimental data on the D-Wave machine's behavior on random instances of its native problem, thus raising questions about how "quantum" the D-Wave machine is at large scales. In response, a recent preprint by Vinci et al. proposes a particular set of instances on which the D-Wave machine behaves differently from the SSSV model. In this short note, we explain how a simple modeling of systematic errors in the machine allows the SSSV model to reproduce the behavior reported in the experiments of Vinci et al., Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Revised version. Corrected a typo in the Hamiltonian equation on page 3

Recently there has been intense interest in claims about the performance of the D-Wave machine. In this paper, we outline a simple classical model, and show that it achieves excellent correlation with published input-output behavior of the D-Wave One machine on 108 qubits. While raising questions about "how quantum" the D-Wave machine is, the new model also provides additional algorithmic insights into the nature of the native computational problem solved by the D-Wave machine., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures. Uses figures from arXiv:1304.4595. Revised version. Enhanced presentation

Privacy lies at the fundament of quantum mechanics. A coherently transmitted quantum state is inherently private. Remarkably, coherent quantum communication is not a prerequisite for privacy: there are quantum channels that are too noisy to transmit any quantum information reliably that can nevertheless send private classical information. Here, we ask how much private classical information a channel can transmit if it has little quantum capacity. We present a class of channels N_d with input dimension d^2, quantum capacity Q(N_d) <= 1, and private capacity P(N_d) = log d. These channels asymptotically saturate an interesting inequality P(N) <= (log d_A + Q(N))/2 for any channel N with input dimension d_A, and capture the essence of privacy stripped of the confounding influence of coherence., Comment: 6 pages. Proof of Eq.(13) slightly revised

We present new constructions of codes for asymmetric channels for both binary and nonbinary alphabets, based on methods of generalized code concatenation. For the binary asymmetric channel, our methods construct nonlinear single-error-correcting codes from ternary outer codes. We show that some of the Varshamov-Tenengol'ts-Constantin-Rao codes, a class of binary nonlinear codes for this channel, have a nice structure when viewed as ternary codes. In many cases, our ternary construction yields even better codes. For the nonbinary asymmetric channel, our methods construct linear codes for many lengths and distances which are superior to the linear codes of the same length capable of correcting the same number of symmetric errors. In the binary case, Varshamov has shown that almost all good linear codes for the asymmetric channel are also good for the symmetric channel. Our results indicate that Varshamov's argument does not extend to the nonbinary case, i.e., one can find better linear codes for asymmetric channels than for symmetric ones., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables

A pair of recent articles concluded that the D-Wave One machine actually operates in the quantum regime, rather than performing some classical evolution. Here we give a classical model that leads to the same behaviors used in those works to infer quantum effects. Thus, the evidence presented does not demonstrate the presence of quantum effects., Comment: 8 pages, 3 pdf figures

Entanglement is a fundamental resource for quantum information processing. In its pure form, it allows quantum teleportation and sharing classical secrets. Realistic quantum states are noisy and their usefulness is only partially understood. Bound-entangled states are central to this question---they have no distillable entanglement, yet sometimes still have a private classical key. We present a construction of bound-entangled states with private key based on classical probability distributions. From this emerge states possessing a new classical analogue of bound entanglement, distinct from the long-sought bound information. We also find states of smaller dimensions and higher key rates than previously known. Our construction has implications for classical cryptography: we show that existing protocols are insufficient for extracting private key from our distributions due to their "bound-entangled" nature. We propose a simple extension of existing protocols that can extract key from them., Comment: This version matches with the published version and includes changes suggested by referees. We added a new appendix on distillation with remanent devices and also discuss the 4x5 example in more detail. A Mathematica notebook with source code is included

Shor's algorithm for factoring in polynomial time on a quantum computer\cite{Shor} gives an enormous advantage over all known classical factoring algorithm. We demonstrate how to factor products of large prime numbers using a compiled version of Shor's quantum factoring algorithm. Our technique can factor all products of $p,q$ such that $p,q$ are unequal primes greater than two, runs in constant time, and requires only two coherent qubits. This illustrates that the correct measure of difficulty when implementing Shor's algorithm is not the size of number factored, but the length of the period found., Comment: 15 pages including 3 figures and supplementary material

Information theory establishes the ultimate limits on performance for noisy communication systems [Shannon48]. An accurate model of a physical communication device must include quantum effects, but typically including these makes the theory intractable. As a result communication capacities are not known, even for transmission between two users connected by an electromagnetic waveguide subject to gaussian noise. Here we present an exactly solvable model of communications with a fully quantum electromagnetic field. This allows us to find explicit expressions for all the point-to-point capacities of a noisy quantum channel, with implications for quantum key distribution, and fiber optical communications. We also develop a theory of quantum communication networks by solving some rudimentary quantum networks for broadcasting and multiple access. When possible, we compare the predictions of our new model with those of the orthodox quantum gaussian model and in all cases we find capacities in agreement to within a constant number of bits. Thus, in the limit of high signal to noise ratios our simple model captures the relevant physics of gaussian models while remaining amenable to detailed analysis, Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures

Quantum process tomography is a necessary tool for verifying quantum gates and diagnosing faults in architectures and gate design. We show that the standard approach of process tomography is grossly inaccurate in the case where the states and measurement operators used to interrogate the system are generated by gates that have some systematic error, a situation all but unavoidable in any practical setting. These errors in tomography can not be fully corrected through oversampling or by performing a larger set of experiments. We present an alternative method for tomography to reconstruct an entire library of gates in a self-consistent manner. The essential ingredient is to define a likelihood function that assumes nothing about the gates used for preparation and measurement. In order to make the resulting optimization tractable we linearize about the target, a reasonable approximation when benchmarking a quantum computer as opposed to probing a black-box function., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

We implement a complete randomized benchmarking protocol on a system of two superconducting qubits. The protocol consists of randomizing over gates in the Clifford group, which experimentally are generated via an improved two-qubit cross-resonance gate implementation and single-qubit unitaries. From this we extract an optimal average error per Clifford of 0.0936. We also perform an interleaved experiment, alternating our optimal two-qubit gate with random two-qubit Clifford gates, to obtain a two-qubit gate error of 0.0653. We compare these values with a two-qubit gate error of ~0.12 obtained from quantum process tomography, which is likely limited by state preparation and measurement errors., Comment: 4 figures plus supplementary material

We report a system where fixed interactions between non-computational levels make bright the otherwise forbidden two-photon 00 --> 11 transition. The system is formed by hand selection and assembly of two discrete component transmon-style superconducting qubits inside a rectangular microwave cavity. The application of a monochromatic drive tuned to this transition induces two-photon Rabi-like oscillations between the ground and doubly-excited states via the Bell basis. The system therefore allows all-microwave two-qubit universal control with the same techniques and hardware required for single qubit control. We report Ramsey-like and spin echo sequences with the generated Bell states, and measure a two-qubit gate fidelity of 90% (unconstrained) and 86% (maximum likelihood estimator)., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. V2: add supplemental material about the Schrieffer-Wolff transformation

The control and handling of errors arising from cross-talk and unwanted interactions in multi-qubit systems is an important issue in quantum information processing architectures. We introduce a benchmarking protocol that provides information about the amount of addressability present in the system and implement it on coupled superconducting qubits. The protocol consists of randomized benchmarking each qubit individually and then simultaneously, and the amount of addressability is related to the difference of the average gate fidelities of those experiments. We present the results on two similar samples with different amounts of cross-talk and unwanted interactions, which agree with predictions based on simple models for the amount of residual coupling., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We report a superconducting artificial atom with an observed quantum coherence time of T2*=95us and energy relaxation time T1=70us. The system consists of a single Josephson junction transmon qubit embedded in an otherwise empty copper waveguide cavity whose lowest eigenmode is dispersively coupled to the qubit transition. We attribute the factor of four increase in the coherence quality factor relative to previous reports to device modifications aimed at reducing qubit dephasing from residual cavity photons. This simple device holds great promise as a robust and easily produced artificial quantum system whose intrinsic coherence properties are sufficient to allow tests of quantum error correction.

We use quantum process tomography to characterize a full universal set of all-microwave gates on two superconducting single-frequency single-junction transmon qubits. All extracted gate fidelities, including those for Clifford group generators, single-qubit pi/4 and pi/8 rotations, and a two-qubit controlled-NOT, exceed 95% (98%), without (with) accounting for state preparation and measurement errors. Furthermore, we introduce a process map representation in the Pauli basis which is visually efficient and informative. This high-fidelity gate set serves as another critical building block towards scalable architectures of superconducting qubits for error correction schemes., Comment: 4 figures, 2 tables plus supplementary material

We formulate a model for the steady state response of a nonlinear quantum oscillator structure, such as those used in a variety of superconducting qubit experiments, when excited by a steady, but not necessarily small, ac tone. We show that this model can be derived directly from a circuit description of some recent qubit experiments in which the state of the qubit is read out directly, without a SQUID magnetometer. The excitation profile has a rich structure depending on the detuning of the tone from the small-signal resonant frequency, on the degree of damping, and on the excitation amplitude. We explore two regions in detail: First, at high damping there is a trough in the excitation response as a function of detuning, near where the classical Duffing bifurcation occurs. This trough has been understood as a classical interference between two metastable responses with opposite phase. We use Wigner function studies to show that while this picture is roughly correct, there are also more quantum mechanical aspects to this feature. Second, at low damping we study the emergence of sharp, discrete spectral features from a continuum response. We show that these the structures, associated with discrete transitions between different excited-state eigenstates of the oscillator, provide an interesting example of a quantum Fano resonance. The trough in the Fano response evolves continuously from the "classical" trough at high damping.

Using unreliable or noisy components for reliable communication requires error correction. But which noise processes can support information transmission, and which are too destructive? For classical systems any channel whose output depends on its input has the capacity for communication, but the situation is substantially more complicated in the quantum setting. We find a generic test for incapacity based on any suitable forbidden transformation---a protocol for communication with a channel passing our test would also allow us to implement the associated forbidden transformation. Our approach includes both known quantum incapacity tests---positive partial transposition (PPT) and antidegradability (no cloning)---as special cases, putting them both on the same footing. We also find a physical principle explaining the nondistillability of PPT states: Any protocol for distilling entanglement from such a state would also give a protocol for implementing the forbidden time-reversal operation., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures

We provide an efficient method for computing the maximum likelihood mixed quantum state (with density matrix $\rho$) given a set of measurement outcome in a complete orthonormal operator basis subject to Gaussian noise. Our method works by first changing basis yielding a candidate density matrix $\mu$ which may have nonphysical (negative) eigenvalues, and then finding the nearest physical state under the 2-norm. Our algorithm takes at worst $O(d^4)$ for the basis change plus $O(d^3)$ for finding $\rho$ where $d$ is the dimension of the quantum state. In the special case where the measurement basis is strings of Pauli operators, the basis change takes only $O(d^3)$ as well. The workhorse of the algorithm is a new linear-time method for finding the closest probability distribution (in Euclidean distance) to a set of real numbers summing to one., Comment: 4 pages, 5 pdf figures. Replaced with corrections and expanded figures

We demonstrate an all-microwave two-qubit gate on superconducting qubits which are fixed in frequency at optimal bias points. The gate requires no additional subcircuitry and is tunable via the amplitude of microwave irradiation on one qubit at the transition frequency of the other. We use the gate to generate entangled states with a maximal extracted concurrence of 0.88 and quantum process tomography reveals a gate fidelity of 81%.

As with classical information, error-correcting codes enable reliable transmission of quantum information through noisy or lossy channels. In contrast to the classical theory, imperfect quantum channels exhibit a strong kind of synergy: there exist pairs of discrete memoryless quantum channels, each of zero quantum capacity, which acquire positive quantum capacity when used together. Here we show that this "superactivation" phenomenon also occurs in the more realistic setting of optical channels with attenuation and Gaussian noise. This paves the way for its experimental realization and application in real-world communications systems., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, one appendix

We introduce the notion of the unextendible maximally entangled basis (UMEB), a set of orthonormal maximally entangled states in d \times d consisting of fewer that d^2 vectors which have no additional maximally entangled vectors orthogonal to all of them. We prove that UMEBs don't not exist for d=2 and give an explicit constructions for a 6-member UMEB with d=3 and a 12-member UMEB with d=4., Comment: 3 pages, latex

We study the power of closed timelike curves (CTCs) and other nonlinear extensions of quantum mechanics for distinguishing nonorthogonal states and speeding up hard computations. If a CTC-assisted computer is presented with a labeled mixture of states to be distinguished--the most natural formulation--we show that the CTC is of no use. The apparent contradiction with recent claims that CTC-assisted computers can perfectly distinguish nonorthogonal states is resolved by noting that CTC-assisted evolution is nonlinear, so the output of such a computer on a mixture of inputs is not a convex combination of its output on the mixture's pure components. Similarly, it is not clear that CTC assistance or nonlinear evolution help solve hard problems if computation is defined as we recommend, as correctly evaluating a function on a labeled mixture of orthogonal inputs., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Final version. Added several references, updated discussion and introduction. Figure 1(b) very much enhanced

We construct families of high performance quantum amplitude damping codes. All of our codes are nonadditive and most modestly outperform the best possible additive codes in terms of encoded dimension. One family is built from nonlinear error-correcting codes for classical asymmetric channels, with which we systematically construct quantum amplitude damping codes with parameters better than any prior construction known for any block length n > 7 except n=2^r-1. We generalize this construction to employ classical codes over GF(3) with which we numerically obtain better performing codes up to length 14. Because the resulting codes are of the codeword stabilized (CWS) type, easy encoding and decoding circuits are available.

Quantum information theory establishes the ultimate limits on communication and cryptography in terms of channel capacities for various types of information. The private capacity is particularly important because it quantifies achievable rates of quantum key distribution. We study the power of quantum channels with limited private capacity, focusing on channels that dephase in random bases. These display extensive nonadditivity of private capacity: a channel with 2 log d input qubits has a private capacity less than 2, but when used together with a second channel with zero private capacity the joint capacity jumps to (1/2)log d. In contrast to earlier work which found nonadditivity vanishing as a fraction of input size or conditional on unproven mathematical assumptions, this provides a natural setting manifesting nonadditivity of privacy of the strongest possible sort., Comment: 4 pages, two figures. Final version