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Efficient transfer of quantum information between remote parties is a crucial challenge for quantum communication over atmospheric channels. Random fluctuations of the channel transmittance are a major disturbing factor for its practical implementation. We study correlations between channel transmittances at different moments of time and focus on two transmission protocols. The first is related to the robustness of both discrete- and continuous-variable entanglement between time-separated light pulses, showing a possibility to enlarge the effective dimension of the Hilbert space. The second addresses a selection of high-transmittance events by testing them with bright classical pulses followed by quantum light. Our results show a high capacity of the time-coherence resource for encoding and transferring quantum states of light in atmospheric channels., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, ancillary files include Python3 code and simulated data

The widely used experimental technique of continuous-wave detection assumes counting pulses of photocurrent from a click-type detector inside a given measurement time window. With such a procedure we miss out the photons detected after each photocurrent pulse during the detector dead time. Additionally, each pulse may initialize so-called afterpulse, which is not associated with the real photons. We derive the corresponding quantum photocounting formula and experimentally verify its validity. Statistics of photocurrent pulses appears to be nonlinear with respect to quantum state, which is explained by the memory effect of the previous measurement time windows. Expressions -- in general, nonlinear -- connecting statistics of photons and pulses are derived for different measurement scenarios. We also consider an application of the obtained results to quantum state reconstruction with unbalanced homodyne detection., Comment: 23 pages, 19 figures

We analyze nonclassical correlations between outcomes of measurements conducted on two spatial radiation modes. These correlations cannot be simulated with statistical mixtures of coherent states or, more generally, with non-negative phase-space functions of quantum states and measurements. We argue that nonclassical correlations are naturally related to Bell nonlocality, the former being a more general class of quantum correlations. Indeed, it is known that local realistic as well as noncontextual models correspond to non-negative solutions to a system of linear equations for the joint probability distributions of all observables. We demonstrate that nonclassical correlations correspond to a particular solution to this system, which may have negative values even if local realism is not violated. A modification of Bell inequalities enables us to test such correlations. At the same time, our approach leads to a formulation of Bell inequalities applicable also to continuous variables. The results are illustrated with two-mode squeezed vacuum states and with hybrid entangled states (Schr\"odinger-Cat states), one mode being analyzed by balanced and the other one by unbalanced homodyne detection., Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures

Dissimilar notions of quantum correlations have been established, each being motivated through particular applications in quantum information science and each competing for being recognized as the most relevant measure of quantumness. In this contribution, we experimentally realize a form of quantum correlation that exists even in the absence of entanglement and discord. We certify the presence of such quantum correlations via negativities in the regularized two-mode Glauber-Sudarshan function. Our data show compatibility with an incoherent mixture of orthonormal photon-number states, ruling out quantum coherence and other kinds of quantum resources. By construction, the quantumness of our state is robust against dephasing, thus requiring fewer experimental resources to ensure stability. In addition, we theoretically show how multimode entanglement can be activated based on the generated, nonentangled state. Therefore, we implement a robust kind of nonclassical photon-photon correlated state with useful applications in quantum information processing.

We study the quasiprobability representation of quantum light, as introduced by Glauber and Sudarshan, for the unified characterization of quantum phenomena. We begin with reviewing the past and current impact of this technique. Regularization and convolution methods are specifically considered since they are accessible in experiments. We further discuss more general quantum systems for which the concept of negative probabilities can be generalized, being highly relevant for quantum information science. For analyzing quantum superpositions, we apply recently developed approaches to visualize quantum coherence of states via negative quasiprobability representations, including regularized quasiprobabilities for light and more general quantum correlated systems.

The representation of quantum states via phase-space functions constitutes an intuitive technique to characterize light. However, the reconstruction of such distributions is challenging as it demands specific types of detectors and detailed models thereof to account for their particular properties and imperfections. To overcome these obstacles, we derive and implement a measurement scheme that enables a reconstruction of phase-space distributions for arbitrary states whose functionality does not depend on the knowledge of the detectors, thus defining the notion of detector-agnostic phase-space distributions. Our theory presents a generalization of well-known phase-space quasiprobability distributions, such as the Wigner function. We implement our measurement protocol, using state-of-the-art transition-edge sensors without performing a detector characterization. Based on our approach, we reveal the characteristic features of heralded single- and two-photon states in phase space and certify their nonclassicality with high statistical significance.

We study the Kimble-Braunstein continuous-variable quantum teleportation with the quantum channel physically realized in the turbulent atmosphere. In this context, we examine the applicability of different strategies preserving the Gaussian entanglement [Bohmann et al., Phys. Rev. A 94, 010302(R) (2016)] for improving the fidelity of the coherent-state teleportation. First, we demonstrate that increasing the squeezing parameter characterizing the entangled state is restricted by its optimal value, which we derive for realistic experimentally-verified examples. Further, we consider the technique of adaptive correlations of losses and show its performance for channels with large squeezing parameters. Finally, we investigate the efficiencies of postselection strategies in dependence on the stochastic properties of the channel transmittance., Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures

The establishment of quantum communication links over a global scale is enabled by satellite nodes. We examine the influence of Earth's atmosphere on the performance of quantum optical communication channels with emphasis on the downlink scenario. We derive the geometrical path length between a moving low Earth orbit satellite and an optical ground station as a function of the ground observer's zenith angle, his geographical latitude, and the meridian inclination angle of the satellite. We show that the signal distortions due to regular atmospheric refraction, atmospheric absorption, and turbulence have a strong dependence on the zenith angle. The observed saturation of transmittance fluctuations for large zenith angles is explained. The probability distribution of the transmittance for slant propagation paths is derived, which enables us to perform the security analysis of decoy state protocols implemented via satellite-mediated links., Comment: 29 pages, 13 figures

Many fundamental and applied experiments in quantum optics require transferring nonclassical states of light through large distances. In this context the free-space channels are a very promising alternative to optical fibers as they are mobile and enable to establish communications with moving objects, using satellites for global quantum links. For such channels the atmospheric turbulence is the main disturbing factor. The statistical properties of the fluctuating transmittance through the turbulent atmosphere are given by the probability distribution of transmittance (PDT). We derive the consistent PDTs for the atmospheric quantum channels by step-by-step inclusion of various atmospheric effects such as beam wandering, beam broadening and deformation of the beam into elliptic form, beam deformations into arbitrary forms. We discuss the applicability of PDT models for different propagation distances and optical turbulence strengths in the case when the receiver module has an annular aperture. We analyze the optimal detection and correction strategies which can improve the channel transmission characteristics. The obtained results are important for the design of optical experiments including postselection and adaptive strategies and for the security analysis of quantum communication protocols in free-space., Comment: Invited talk given at SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2018, San Diego, California, USA

Free-space quantum links have clear practical advantages which are unaccessible with fiber-based optical channels --- establishing satellite-mediated quantum links, communications through hardly accessible regions, and communications with moving objects. We consider the effect of the atmospheric turbulence on properties such as quadrature squeezing, entanglement, Bell nonlocality, and nonclassical statistics of photocounts, which are resources for quantum communications. Depending on the characteristics of the given channels, we study the efficiency of different techniques, which enable to preserve these quantum features---post-, pre-selection, and adaptive methods. Furthermore, we show that copropagation of nonclassically-correlated modes, which is used in some communication scenarios, has clear advantages in free-space links., Comment: Invited talk given at SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2018, San Diego, California, USA

The vibronic dynamics of a trapped ion in the resolved-sideband regime can be described by the explicitly time-dependent nonlinear Jaynes-Cummings model. It is shown that the expectation value of the interaction Hamiltonian and its non-equal-time commutator can be determined by measuring the electronic-state evolution. This yields direct insight into the time-ordering contributions to the unitary time evolution. In order to prove extraction of the quantities of interest works for possibly real data, we demonstrate the procedure by means of generated data., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We derive the full statistics of the product events in homodyne correlation measurements, involving a single mode signal, a local oscillator, a linear optical network, and two linear photodetectors. This is performed for the regime of high intensities impinging on the detectors. Our description incorporates earlier proposed homodyne correlation measurement schemes, such as the homodyne cross-correlation and homodyne intensity-correlation measurements. This analysis extends the amount of information retrieved from such types of measurements, since previously attention was paid only to the expectation value of the correlation statistics. As an example, we consider the correlation statistics of coherent, Gaussian, and Fock states. Moreover, nonclassical light is certified on the basis of the variance of the measurement outcome., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures

The atmospheric turbulence is the main factor that influences quantum properties of propagating optical signals and may sufficiently degrade the performance of quantum communication protocols. The probability distribution of transmittance (PDT) for free-space channels is the main characteristics of the atmospheric links. Applying the law of total probability, we derive the PDT by separating the contributions from turbulence-induced beam wandering and beam-spot distortions. As a result, the obtained PDT varies from log-negative Weibull to truncated log-normal distributions depending on the channel characteristics. Moreover, we show that the method allows one to consistently describe beam tracking, a procedure which is typically used in practical long-distance free-space quantum communication. We analyze the security of decoy-state quantum key exchange through the turbulent atmosphere and show that beam tracking does not always improves quantum communication., Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures

We propose a quantum optical device to experimentally realize quantum processes, which perform the regularization of the---in general highly singular---Glauber-Sudarshan $P$~functions of arbitrary quantum states before their application and/or measurement. This allows us to produce a broad class of nonclassical states with regular $P$~functions, also called nonclassicality quasiprobabilities. For this purpose, the input states are combined on highly transmissive beam splitters with specific Gaussian or non-Gaussian classical states. We study both balanced and unbalanced homodyne detections for the direct sampling of the output states of the implemented processes, which requires no further regularization or state-reconstruction. By numerical simulations we demonstrate the feasibility of our approach and we outline the generalization to multimode light., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures

The algebraic quantification of nonclassicality, which naturally arises from the quantum superposition principle, is related to properties of regular nonclassicality quasiprobabilities. The latter are obtained by non-Gaussian filtering of the Glauber-Sudarshan $P$~function. They yield lower bounds for the degree of nonclassicality. We also derive bounds for convex combinations of Gaussian states for certifying quantum non-Gaussianity directly from the experimentally accessible nonclassicality quasiprobabilities. Other quantum-state representations, such as $s$-parametrized quasiprobabilities, insufficiently indicate or even fail to directly uncover detailed information on the properties of quantum states. As an example, our approach is applied to multi-photon-added squeezed vacuum states., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures

We revisit the representation of generalized quantum observables by establishing a geometric picture in terms of their positive operator-valued measures (POVMs). This leads to a clear geometric interpretation of Born's rule by introducing the concept of contravariant operator-valued measures. Our approach is applied to the theory of array detectors, which is a challenging task as the finite dimensionality of the POVM substantially restricts the available information about quantum states. Our geometric technique allows for a direct estimation of expectation values of different observables, which are typically not accessible with such detection schemes. In addition, we also demonstrate the applicability of our method to quantum-state reconstruction with unbalanced homodyne detection., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures

We implement the direct sampling of negative phase-space functions via unbalanced homodyne measurement using click-counting detectors. The negativities significantly certify nonclassical light in the high-loss regime using a small number of detectors which cannot resolve individual photons. We apply our method to heralded single-photon states and experimentally demonstrate the most significant certification of nonclassicality for only two detection bins. By contrast, the frequently applied Wigner function fails to indicate such quantum characteristics for the quantum efficiencies present in our setup. In addition, it would require ideal photon-number resolution. Hence, we realize a robust, reliable, and resource-efficient approach to characterize nonclassical light in phase space under realistic conditions.

The verification of quantum entanglement under the influence of realistic noise and decoherence is crucial for the development of quantum technologies. Unfortunately, a full entanglement characterization is generally not possible with most entanglement criteria such as entanglement witnesses or the partial transposition criterion. In particular, so called bound entanglement cannot be certified via the partial transposition criterion. Here we present the full entanglement verification of dephased qubit and qutrit Werner states via entanglement quasiprobabilities. Remarkably, we are able to reveal bound entanglement for noisy-mixed states in the qutrit case. This example demonstrates the strength of the entanglement quasiprobabilities for verifying the full entanglement of quantum states suffering from noise.

Free-space optical communication links are promising channels for establishing secure quantum communication. Here we study the transmission of nonclassical light through a turbulent atmospheric link under diverse weather conditions, including rain or haze. To include these effects, the theory of light transmission through atmospheric links in the elliptic-beam approximation presented by Vasylyev et al. [D. Vasylyev et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 090501 (2016); arXiv:1604.01373] is further generalized.It is demonstrated, with good agreement between theory and experiment, that low-intensity rain merely contributes additional deterministic losses, whereas haze also introduces additional beam deformations of the transmitted light. Based on these results, we study theoretically the transmission of quadrature squeezing and Gaussian entanglement under these weather conditions., Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures

Based on correlations of coherently displaced photon-numbers, we derive entanglement criteria for the purpose to verify non-Gaussian entanglement. Our construction method enables us to verify bipartite and multipartite entanglement of complex states of light. An important advantage of our technique is that the certified entanglement even persists in the presence of arbitrarily high, constant losses. We exploit experimental correlation schemes for the two-mode and multimode scenarios, which allow us to directly measure the desired observables. To detect entanglement of a given state, a genetic algorithm is applied to optimize over the infinite set of our constructed witnesses. In particular, we provide suitable witnesses for several distinct two-mode states. Moreover, a mixed non-Gaussian four-mode state is shown to be entangled in all possible non-trivial partitions., Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures

We study emerging notions of quantum correlations in compound systems. Based on different definitions of quantumness in individual subsystems, we investigate how they extend to the joint description of a composite system. Especially, we study the bipartite case and the connection of two typically applied and distinctively different concepts of nonclassicality in quantum optics and quantum information. Our investigation includes the representation of correlated states in terms of quasiprobability matrices, a comparative study of joint and conditional quantum correlations, and an entanglement characterization. It is, for example, shown that our composition approach always includes entanglement as one form of quantum correlations. Yet, other forms of quantum correlations can also occur without entanglement. Finally, we give an outlook towards multimode systems and temporal correlations.

We derive and implement a general method to characterize the nonclassicality in compound discrete- and continuous-variable systems. For this purpose, we introduce the operational notion of conditional hybrid nonclassicality which relates to the ability to produce a nonclassical continuous-variable state by projecting onto a general superposition of discrete-variable subsystem. We discuss the importance of this form of quantumness in connection with interfaces for quantum communication. To verify the conditional hybrid nonclassicality, a matrix version of a nonclassicality quasiprobability is derived and its sampling approach is formulated. We experimentally generate an entangled, hybrid Schr\"odinger cat state, using a coherent photon-addition process acting on two temporal modes, and we directly sample its nonclassicality quasiprobability matrix. The introduced conditional quantum effects are certified with high statistical significance., Comment: Closer to published version

In this paper, we use the characteristic function, i.e., the Fourier transform of the Glauber-Sudarshan phase-space distribution, to find the degree of nonclassicality of a given state. This degree of nonclassicality quantifies the nonclassicality in terms of quantum superpositions. We demonstrate two ways to determine or to estimate the degree of nonclassicality by studying the properties of the characteristic functions. The developed criteria are applied to two examples of squeezed states undergoing a classical mixing or a nonclassical superposition with vacuum., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures

Three different noise moments of field strength, intensity, and their correlations are simultaneously measured. For this purpose a homodyne cross-correlation measurement [W. Vogel, Phys. Rev. A 51, 4160 (1995)] is implemented by superimposing the signal field and a weak local oscillator on an unbalanced beam splitter. The relevant information is obtained via the intensity noise correlation of the output modes. Detection details like quantum efficiencies or uncorrelated dark noise are meaningless for our technique. Yet unknown insight in the quantumness of a squeezed signal field is retrieved from the anomalous moment, correlating field strength with intensity noise. A classical inequality including this moment is violated for almost all signal phases. Precognition on quantum theory is superfluous, as our analysis is solely based on classical physics., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures

In a recent contribution, we introduced and applied a detector-independent method to uncover nonclassicality. Here, we extend those techniques and give more details on the performed analysis. We derive a general theory of the positive-operator-valued measure that describes multiplexing layouts with arbitrary detectors. From the resulting quantum version of a multinomial statistics, we infer nonclassicality probes based on a matrix of normally ordered moments. We discuss these criteria and apply the theory to our data which are measured with superconducting transition-edge sensors. Our experiment produces heralded multi-photon states from a parametric down-conversion light source. We show that the known notions of sub-Poisson and sub-binomial light can be deduced from our general approach, and we establish the concept of sub-multinomial light, which is shown to outperform the former two concepts of nonclassicality for our data., Comment: close to published version

We introduce a method for the verification of nonclassical light which is independent of the complex interaction between the generated light and the material of the detectors. This is accomplished by means of a multiplexing arrangement. Its theoretical description yields that the coincidence statistics of this measurement layout is a mixture of multinomial distributions for any classical light field and any type of detector. This allows us to formulate bounds on the statistical properties of classical states. We apply our directly accessible method to heralded multiphoton states which are detected with a single multiplexing step only and two detectors, which are in our work superconducting transition-edge sensors. The nonclassicality of the generated light is verified and characterized through the violation of the classical bounds without the need for characterizing the used detectors., Comment: close to published version

We study the evolution of higher-order nonclassicality and entanglement criteria in atmospheric fluctuating-loss channels. By formulating input-output relations for the matrix of moments, we investigate the influence of such channels on the corresponding quantumness criteria. This generalization of our previous work on Gaussian entanglement [M. Bohmann et al., Phys. Rev. A 94, 010302(R) (2016)] not only exploits second-order-based scenarios, but it also provides a detailed investigation of nonclassicality and entanglement in non-Gaussian and multimode radiation fields undergoing a fluctuating attenuation. That is, various examples of criteria and states are studied in detail, unexpected effects, e.g., the dependency of the squeezing transfer on the coherent displacement, are discovered, and it is demonstrated that non-Gaussian entanglement can be more robust against atmospheric losses than Gaussian one. Additionally, we propose a detection scheme for measuring the considered moments after propagation through the atmosphere. Therefore, our results may help to develop, improve, and optimize non-Gaussian sources of quantum light for applications in free-space quantum communication.

Violations of Bell inequalities are better preserved by turbulent atmospheric channels than by comparable optical fibers in the scenario of copropagating entangled photons [A.A. Semenov and W. Vogel, Phys. Rev. A 81, 023835 (2010); arXiv:0909.2492]. Here we reexamine this result for the case of counterpropagation also considering the fact that each receiver registers so-called double-click events, which are caused by dark counts, stray light, and multi-photon entangled pairs. We show that advantages of the atmospheric links are feasible only for the copropagation scenario in the case of strong fluctuations of losses. For counterpropagation, the violations of Bell inequalities can be improved with an additional postselection procedure testing the channel transmittance., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures

Quantum features of correlated optical modes define a major aspect of the nonclassicality in quantized radiation fields. However, the phase-sensitive detection of a two-mode light field is restricted to interferometric setups and local intensity measurements. Even the full reconstruction of the quantum state of a single radiation mode relies on such detection layouts and the preparation of a well-defined reference light field. In this work, we establish the notion of the essential quantum correlations of two-mode light fields. It refers to those quantum correlations which are measurable by a given device, i.e., the accessible part of a nonclassical Glauber-Sudarshan phase-space distribution, which does not depend on a global phase. Assuming a simple four-port interferometer and photon-number-resolving detectors, we derive the reconstruction method and nonclassicality criteria based on the Laplace-transformed moment-generating function of the essential quasiprobability. With this technique, we demonstrate that the essential quantum correlations of a polarization tomography scheme are observable even if the detectors are imperfect and cannot truly resolve the photon statistics.

The free-space transfer of high-fidelity optical signals between remote locations has many applications, including both classical and quantum communication, precision navigation, clock synchronization, etc. The physical processes that contribute to signal fading and loss need to be carefully analyzed in the theory of light propagation through the atmospheric turbulence. Here we derive the probability distribution for the atmospheric transmittance including beam wandering, beam shape deformation, and beam-broadening effects. Our model, referred to as the elliptic-beam approximation, applies to weak, weak-to-moderate, and strong turbulence and hence to the most important regimes in atmospheric communication scenarios., Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures

A general method is introduced for verifying multitime quantum correlations through the characteristic function of the time-dependent P functional that generalizes the Glauber-Sudarshan P function. Quantum correlation criteria are derived which identify quantum effects for an arbitrary number of points in time. The Magnus expansion is used to visualize the impact of the required time ordering, which becomes crucial in situations when the interaction problem is explicitly time dependent. We show that the latter affects the multi-time-characteristic function and, therefore, the temporal evolution of the nonclassicality. As an example, we apply our technique to an optical parametric process with a frequency mismatch. The resulting two-time-characteristic function yields full insight into the two-time quantum correlation properties of such a system., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

The existence of non-local quantum correlations is certainly the most important specific property of the quantum world. However, it is a challenging task to distinguish correlations of classical origin from genuine quantum correlations, especially when the system involves more than two parties, for which different partitions must be simultaneously considered. In the case of mixed states, intermediate levels of correlations must be introduced, coined by the name inseparability. In this work, we revisit in more detail such a concept in the context of continuous-variable quantum optics. We consider a six-partite quantum state that we have effectively generated by the parametric downconversion of a femtosecond frequency comb, the full 12 x 12 covariance matrix of which has been experimentally determined. We show that, though this state does not exhibit "genuine entanglement", it is undoubtedly multipartite-entangled. The consideration of not only the entanglement of individual mode-decompositions but also of combinations of those solves the puzzle and exemplifies the importance of studying different categories of multipartite entanglement.

We provide a rigorous treatment of the entanglement properties of two-mode Gaussian states in atmospheric channels by deriving and analyzing the input-output relations for the corresponding entanglement test. A key feature of such turbulent channels is a non-trivial dependence of the transmitted continuous-variable entanglement on coherent displacements of the quantum state of the input field. Remarkably, this allows one to optimize the entanglement certification by modifying local coherent amplitudes using a finite, but optimal amount of squeezing. In addition, we propose a protocol which, in principle, renders it possible to transfer the Gaussian entanglement through any turbulent channel over arbitrary distances. Therefore, our approach provides the theoretical foundation for advanced applications of Gaussian entanglement in free-space quantum communication.

We study, in theory and experiment, the quantum properties of correlated light fields measured with click-counting detectors providing incomplete information on the photon statistics. We establish a correlation parameter for the conditional statistics, and we derive the corresponding nonclassicality criteria for detecting conditional quantum correlations. Classical bounds for Pearson's correlation parameter are formulated that allow us, once they are violated, to determine nonclassical correlations via the joint statistics. On the one hand, we demonstrate nonclassical correlations in terms of the joint click statistics of light produced by a parametric down conversion source. On the other hand, we verify quantum correlations of a heralded, split single-photon state via the conditional click statistics together with a generalization to higher-order moments. We discuss the performance of the presented nonclassicality criteria to successfully discern joint and conditional quantum correlations. Remarkably, our results are obtained without making any assumptions on the response function, quantum efficiency, and dark-count rate of the photodetectors.