arXiv subjects

E. S. Gómez

Publications and source records attributed to E. S. Gómez.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

High-Dimensional Quantum Key Distribution via full Core-mode Encoding over Deployed Multicore Fibers

Quantum key distribution (QKD) provides information-theoretic security rooted in quantum physics, while high-dimensional (HD) encoding increases both noise tolerance and secret-key yield. Multicore fibers (MCFs), a leading platform for next-generation telecom networks, are a natural substrate for HD-QKD. Field demonstrations over deployed MCFs have so far relied on a hybrid qudit encoding strategy that combines two path (core modes) with the time-bin photonic degree of freedom, rather than exploiting the full set of available core modes. Although practical, this approach incurs intrinsic efficiency penalties that grow with dimension. Here we implement a four-dimensional ($d=4$) QKD protocol that directly exploits the full set of core modes of a four-core MCF, operating over an installed MCF network across the Universidad de Concepción campus under continuous environmental perturbations. We further benchmark the scheme using superconducting nanowire detectors at $10\,$dB channel loss, achieving a composable finite-key rate of $R = 6.19\times 10^{-3}\,$bits/pulse, the highest per-pulse rate reported to date for HD-QKD at comparable loss. This result establishes core-mode encoding as a viable architecture for realistic, high-rate quantum-secure communications.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Sub-picosecond inter-core skew characterization in multicore fibers via Hong--Ou--Mandel interference

Inter-core skew (ICS), the differential group delay between cores of a multicore fiber (MCF), is a critical parameter for both classical space-division multiplexed communications and quantum photonic networks. We present a high-precision measurement of ICS in a commercially available four-core fiber using two-photon Hong--Ou--Mandel (HOM) interference in a fiber-integrated $4\times4$ multiport beam splitter. By extracting the center position of HOM interference dips and peaks across all twelve core-pair combinations, we obtain individual ICS values with a demonstrated precision of $\pm0.11\,$ps, limited by the delay-stage positioning uncertainty. The root-mean-square ICS grows as $σ_τ(L) = κ\sqrt{L}+c$ with $κ= 48.7 \pm 2.5\,\mathrm{ps}/\!\sqrt{\mathrm{km}}$ and $c = 9.76 \pm 1.2\,$ps, over fiber lengths from $7.7\,$m to $1300\,$m. This first direct validation of the stochastic random-walk scaling across a length range spanning laboratory to field-deployed scales was made possible by HOM's immunity to first-order path fluctuations, which renders classical interferometric methods impractical for long installed fibers. The demonstrated $\pm0.11\,$ps precision represents a $\sim\!180$-fold improvement over correlation optical time-domain reflectometry (C-OTDR), the standard method for long-fiber ICS characterization. Fisher information analysis establishes a fundamental Cramér--Rao precision limit in the femtosecond range, indicating further improvement is achievable with better delay control. These results establish a practical platform for characterising timing uniformity in MCF-based networks for both quantum and classical space-division multiplexed applications.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Second-order moment equivalence of twisted Gaussian Schell model beams and orbital angular momentum eigenmodes

We show that the covariance matrix of any cylindrically symmetric coherent orbital angular momentum (OAM) eigenmode with quantum number $\ell$ takes a universal form depending only on $\langle r^2\rangle$, $\langle k_r^2\rangle$, and $\ell$, independently of the radial profile, and that this form is identical to the covariance matrix of a twisted Gaussian Schell-model (TGSM) beam.} More specifically, both matrices share the same pattern of zero and nonzero entries, with the off-diagonal blocks proportional to $\ell$ and the TGSM twist parameter $u$, respectively. This result holds for an arbitrary radial profile and provides direct term-by-term identification of parameters between the two sets of beams. We work out the correspondence in detail for three important families: Laguerre--Gaussian (LG), Bessel--Gaussian, and perfect vortex beams (PVBs), and derive the conditions under which each coherent OAM mode maps onto a physically realizable TGSM beam. {Because the covariance matrix governs second-moment evolution under arbitrary ABCD (symplectic) transformations, any two beams sharing the same covariance matrix are second-order indistinguishable at every propagation plane. In particular, the matched TGSM and coherent OAM beams share identical beam-width evolution, far-field divergence, and $M^2$ beam-quality factor.} In particular, the well-developed TGSM propagation toolbox applies directly to the second-order moment evolution of the three coherent families. We further show that within each beam family the covariance matrix uniquely determines the beam parameters, with exact uniqueness established for LG modes. Additional results include cross-family second-moment equivalence conditions and a proof that PVB modes form a complete orthonormal basis in the limit $w\to 0$.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

Efficient Experimental Qudit State Estimation via Point Tomography

Point tomography is a new approach to the problem of state estimation, which is arguably the most efficient and simple method for modern high-precision quantum information experiments. In this scenario, the experimenter knows the target state that their device should prepare, except that intrinsic systematic errors will create small discrepancies in the state actually produced. By introducing a new kind of informationally complete measurement, dubbed Fisher-symmetric measurements, point tomography determines deviations from the expected state with optimal efficiency. In this method, the number of outcomes of a measurement saturating the Gill-Massar limit for reconstructing a $d$-dimensional quantum states can be reduced from $\sim 4d-3$ to only $2d-1$ outcomes. Thus, providing better scalability as the dimension increases. Here we demonstrate the experimental viability of point tomography. Using a modern photonic platform constructed with state-of-the-art multicore optical fiber technology, we generate 4-dimensional quantum states and implement seven-outcome Fisher-symmetric measurements. Our experimental results exhibit the main feature of point tomography, namely a precision close to the Gill-Massar limit with a single few-outcome measurement. Specifically, we achieved a precision of $3.8/N$ while the Gill-Massar limit for $d=4$ is $3/N$ ($N$ being the ensemble size).

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Noise-Resilient Quantum Random Access Codes

A $n^d \xrightarrow{p} 1$ Quantum Random Access Code (QRAC) is a communication task where Alice encodes $n$ classical bits into quantum states of dimension $d$ and transmits them to Bob, who performs appropriate measurements to recover the required bit with probability $p$. In the presence of a noisy environment, the performance of a QRAC is degraded, losing the advantage over classical strategies. We propose a practical technique that enables noise tolerance in such scenarios, recovering the quantum advantage in retrieving the required bit. We perform a photonic implementation of a $2^2 \xrightarrow {\text{p}} 1$ QRAC using polarization-encoded qubits under an amplitude-damping channel, where simple operations allow for noise robustness showing the revival of the quantum advantage when the noisy channel degrades the performance of the QRAC. This revival can be observed by violating a suitable dimension witness, which is closely related to the average success probability of the QRAC. This technique can be extended to other applications in the so-called prepare-and-measure scenario, enhancing the semi-device-independent protocol implementations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Optimal high-dimensional entanglement concentration in the bipartite scenario

Considering pure quantum states, entanglement concentration is the procedure where from $N$ copies of a partially entangled state, a single state with higher entanglement can be obtained. Getting a maximally entangled state is possible for $N=1$. However, the associated success probability can be extremely low while increasing the system's dimensionality. In this work, we study two methods to achieve a probabilistic entanglement concentration for bipartite quantum systems with a large dimensionality for $N=1$, regarding a reasonably good probability of success at the expense of having a non-maximal entanglement. Firstly, we define an efficiency function $\mathcal{Q}$ considering a tradeoff between the amount of entanglement (quantified by the I-Concurrence) of the final state after the concentration procedure and its success probability, which leads to solving a quadratic optimization problem. We found an analytical solution, ensuring that an optimal scheme for entanglement concentration can always be found in terms of $\mathcal{Q}$. Finally, a second method was explored, which is based on fixing the success probability and searching for the maximum amount of entanglement attainable. Both ways resemble the Procrustean method applied to a subset of the most significant Schmidt coefficients but obtaining non-maximally entangled states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Engineering entangled photons for transmission in ring-core optical fibers

The capacity of optical communication channels can be increased by space division multiplexing in structured optical fibers. Radial core optical fibers allows for the propagation of twisted light--eigenmodes of orbital angular momentum, which have attracted considerable attention for high-dimensional quantum information. Here we study the generation of entangled photons that are tailor-made for coupling into ring core optical fibers. We show that the coupling of photon pairs produced by parametric down-conversion can be increased by close to a factor of three by pumping the non-linear crystal with a perfect vortex mode with orbital angular momentum $\ell$, rather than a gaussian mode. Moreover, the two-photon orbital angular momentum spectrum has a nearly constant shape. This provides an interesting scenario for quantum state engineering, as pumping the crystal with a superposition of perfect vortex modes can be used in conjunction with the mode filtering properties of the ring core fiber to produce simple and interesting quantum states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Optimal strategy to certify quantum nonlocality

Certification of quantum nonlocality plays a central role in practical applications like device-independent quantum cryptography and random number generation protocols. These applications entail the challenging problem of certifying quantum nonlocality, something that is hard to achieve when the target quantum state is weakly entangled, or when the source of errors is high, e.g. when photons propagate through the atmosphere or a long optical fiber. Here, we introduce a technique to find a Bell inequality with the largest possible gap between the quantum prediction and the classical local hidden variable limit for a given set of measurement frequencies. Our method represents an efficient strategy to certify quantum nonlocal correlations from experimental data without requiring extra measurements, in the sense that there is no Bell inequality with a larger gap than the one provided. Furthermore, we also reduce the photodetector efficiency required to close the detection loophole. We illustrate our technique by improving the detection of quantum nonlocality from experimental data obtained with weakly entangled photons.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

High-accuracy adaptive quantum tomography for high-dimensional quantum systems

The accuracy of estimating $d$-dimensional quantum states is limited by the Gill-Massar bound. It can be saturated in the qubit ($d=2$) scenario using adaptive standard quantum tomography. In higher dimensions, however, this is not the case and the accuracy achievable with adaptive quantum tomography quickly deteriorates with increasing $d$. Moreover, it is not known whether or not the Gill-Massar bound can be reached for an arbitrary $d$. To overcome this limitation, we introduce an adaptive tomographic method that is characterized by a precision that is better than half that of the Gill-Massar bound for any finite dimension. This provides a new achievable accuracy limit for quantum state estimation. We demonstrate the high-accuracy of our method by estimating the state of 10-dimensional quantum systems. With the advent of new technologies capable of high-dimensional quantum information processing, our results become critically relevant as state reconstruction is an essential tool for certifying the proper operation of quantum devices.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Multi-dimensional entanglement generation with multi-core optical fibers

Trends in photonic quantum information follow closely the technical progress in classical optics and telecommunications. In this regard, advances in multiplexing optical communications channels have also been pursued for the generation of multi-dimensional quantum states (qudits), since their use is advantageous for several quantum information tasks. One current path leading in this direction is through the use of space-division multiplexing multi-core optical fibers, which provides a new platform for efficiently controlling path-encoded qudit states. Here we report on a parametric down-conversion source of entangled qudits that is fully based on (and therefore compatible with) state-of-the-art multi-core fiber technology. The source design uses modern multi-core fiber beam splitters to prepare the pump laser beam as well as measure the generated entangled state, achieving high spectral brightness while providing a stable architecture. In addition, it can be readily used with any core geometry, which is crucial since widespread standards for multi-core fibers in telecommunications have yet to be established. Our source represents an important step towards the compatibility of quantum communications with the next-generation optical networks.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Experimental investigation of partially entangled states for device-independent randomness generation and self-testing protocols

Previous theoretical works showed that all pure two-qubit entangled states can generate one bit of local randomness and can be self-tested through the violation of proper Bell inequalities. We report an experiment in which nearly pure partially entangled states of photonic qubits are produced to investigate these tasks in a practical scenario. We show that small deviations from the ideal situation make low entangled states impractical to self-testing and randomness generation using the available techniques. Our results show that in practice lower entanglement implies lower randomness generation, recovering the intuition that maximally entangled states are better candidates for deviceindependent quantum information processing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Challenging local realism with human choices

A Bell test is a randomized trial that compares experimental observations against the philosophical worldview of local realism. A Bell test requires spatially distributed entanglement, fast and high-efficiency detection and unpredictable measurement settings. Although technology can satisfy the first two of these requirements, the use of physical devices to choose settings in a Bell test involves making assumptions about the physics that one aims to test. Bell himself noted this weakness in using physical setting choices and argued that human `free will' could be used rigorously to ensure unpredictability in Bell tests. Here we report a set of local-realism tests using human choices, which avoids assumptions about predictability in physics. We recruited about 100,000 human participants to play an online video game that incentivizes fast, sustained input of unpredictable selections and illustrates Bell-test methodology. The participants generated 97,347,490 binary choices, which were directed via a scalable web platform to 12 laboratories on five continents, where 13 experiments tested local realism using photons, single atoms, atomic ensembles, and superconducting devices. Over a 12-hour period on 30 November 2016, participants worldwide provided a sustained data flow of over 1,000 bits per second to the experiments, which used different human-generated data to choose each measurement setting. The observed correlations strongly contradict local realism and other realistic positions in bipartite and tripartite scenarios. Project outcomes include closing the `freedom-of-choice loophole' (the possibility that the setting choices are influenced by `hidden variables' to correlate with the particle properties), the utilization of video-game methods for rapid collection of human generated randomness, and the use of networking techniques for global participation in experimental science.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Tunable entanglement distillation of spatially correlated down-converted photons

We report on a new technique for entanglement distillation of the bipartite continuous variable state of spatially correlated photons generated in the spontaneous parametric down-conversion process (SPDC), where tunable non-Gaussian operations are implemented and the post-processed entanglement is certified in real-time using a single-photon sensitive electron multiplying CCD (EMCCD) camera. The local operations are performed using non-Gaussian filters modulated into a programmable spatial light modulator and, by using the EMCCD camera for actively recording the probability distributions of the twin-photons, one has fine control of the Schmidt number of the distilled state. We show that even simple non-Gaussian filters can be finely tuned to a ~67% net gain of the initial entanglement generated in the SPDC process.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Experimental nonlocality-based randomness generation with non-projective measurements

We report on an optical setup generating more than one bit of randomness from one entangled bit (i.e. a maximally entangled state of two-qubits). The amount of randomness is certified through the observation of Bell non-local correlations. To attain this result we implemented a high-purity entanglement source and a non-projective three-outcome measurement. Our implementation achieves a gain of 27$\%$ of randomness as compared with the standard methods using projective measurements. Additionally we estimate the amount of randomness certified in a one-sided device independent scenario, through the observation of EPR steering. Our results prove that non-projective quantum measurements allows extending the limits for nonlocality-based certified randomness generation using current technology.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2016

High-dimensional decoy-state quantum key distribution over 0.3 km of multicore telecommunication optical fibers

Multiplexing is a strategy to augment the transmission capacity of a communication system. It consists of combining multiple signals over the same data channel and it has been very successful in classical communications. However, the use of enhanced channels has only reached limited practicality in quantum communications (QC) as it requires the complex manipulation of quantum systems of higher dimensions. Considerable effort is being made towards QC using high-dimensional quantum systems encoded into the transverse momentum of single photons but, so far, no approach has been proven to be fully compatible with the existing telecommunication infrastructure. Here, we overcome such a technological challenge and demonstrate a stable and secure high-dimensional decoy-state quantum key distribution session over a 0.3 km long multicore optical fiber. The high-dimensional quantum states are defined in terms of the multiple core modes available for the photon transmission over the fiber, and the decoy-state analysis demonstrates that our technique enables a positive secret key generation rate up to 25 km of fiber propagation. Finally, we show how our results build up towards a high-dimensional quantum network composed of free-space and fiber based links

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Five measurement bases determine pure quantum states on any dimension

A long standing problem in quantum mechanics is the minimum number of observables required for the characterisation of unknown pure quantum states. The solution to this problem is specially important for the developing field of high-dimensional quantum information processing. In this work we demonstrate that any pure d-dimensional state is unambiguously reconstructed by measuring 5 observables, that is, via projective measurements onto the states of 5 orthonormal bases. Thus, in our method the total number of different measurement outcomes (5d) scales linearly with d. The state reconstruction is robust against experimental errors and requires simple post-processing, regardless of d. We experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of our scheme through the reconstruction of 8-dimensional quantum states, encoded in the momentum of single photons.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Non-Gaussian state generation certified using the EPR-steering inequality

Due to practical reasons, experimental and theoretical continuous-variable (CV) quantum information (QI) has been heavily based on Gaussian states. Nevertheless, many CV-QI protocols require the use of non-Gaussian states and operations. Here, we show that the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering inequality can be used to obtain a practical witness for the generation of pure bipartite non-Gaussian states. While the scenario require pure states, we show its broad relevance by reporting the experimental observation of the non-Gaussianity of the CV two-photon state generated in the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). The observed non-Gaussianity is due only to the intrinsic phase-matching conditions of SPDC

quant-ph↗

arXiv2013

Bell scenarios in which nonlocality and entanglement are inversely related

We show that for two-qubit chained Bell inequalities with an arbitrary number of measurement settings, nonlocality and entanglement are not only different properties but are inversely related. Specifically, we analytically prove that in absence of noise, robustness of nonlocality, defined as the maximum fraction of detection events that can be lost such that the remaining ones still do not admit a local model, and concurrence are inversely related for any chained Bell inequality with an arbitrary number of settings. The closer quantum states are to product states, the harder it is to reproduce quantum correlations with local models. We also show that, in presence of noise, nonlocality and entanglement are simultaneously maximized only when the noise level is equal to the maximum level tolerated by the inequality; in any other case, a more nonlocal state is always obtained by reducing the entanglement. In addition, we observed that robustness of nonlocality and concurrence are also inversely related for the Bell scenarios defined by the tight two-qubit three-setting $I_{3322}$ inequality, and the tight two-qutrit inequality $I_3$.

quant-ph↗