arXiv subjects

Xiangyi Meng

Publications and source records attributed to Xiangyi Meng.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Full-Rank Noise Forbids Long-Range Entanglement Swapping

Quantum repeaters extend entanglement by swapping noisy elementary links. We prove that full-rank noise forbids this at long range: for any entangled full-rank two-qubit link, there is a finite depth beyond which no end-to-end entanglement can be established regardless of the measurement outcomes on intermediate qubits, even under any adaptive postselected strategy. This limit is set by one spectral parameter of the link, giving a no-go criterion for repeater routing. In contrast, we construct link state families of rank three and rank two that admit postselected measurement outcome branches of exponentially small probability but with strictly positive concurrence at every finite depth. Swapping experiments on a superconducting processor show that links of equal initial concurrence but different rank behave differently under postselected swapping. In the language of many-body physics, the chain is a matrix-product density operator, and full-rank bonds forbid long-range localizable entanglement, while rank-deficient bonds can sustain it.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Negativity Percolation in Continuous-Variable Quantum Networks

Quantum networks (QNs) have been predominantly driven by discrete-variable (DV) architectures. Yet, optical platforms naturally generate Gaussian states--the common states of continuous-variable (CV) systems, making CV-based QNs an attractive route toward scalable, chip-integrated quantum computation and communication. To bridge the gap between well-studied DV entanglement percolation theories and their CV counterpart, we introduce a Gaussian-to-Gaussian entanglement distribution scheme that deterministically transports two-mode squeezed vacuum states across large CV networks. Analysis of the scheme's collective behavior using statistical-physics methods reveals a new form of entanglement percolation--negativity percolation theory (NegPT)--characterized by a bounded entanglement measure called the ratio negativity. We discover that NegPT exhibits a mixed-order phase transition, marked simultaneously by both an abrupt change in global entanglement and a long-range correlation between nodes. This distinctive behavior places CV-based QNs in a new universality class, fundamentally distinct from DV systems. Additionally, the abruptness of this transition introduces a critical vulnerability of CV-based QNs: conventional feedback mechanism becomes inherently unstable near the threshold, highlighting practical implications for stabilizing large-scale CV-based QNs. Our results unify statistical models for CV-based entanglement distribution and uncover previously unexplored critical phenomena unique to CV systems, providing valuable insights and guidelines essential for developing robust, feedback-stabilized QNs.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Quantum Communication Networks Enhanced by Distributed Quantum Memories

Building large-scale quantum communication networks has its unique challenges. Here, we demonstrate that a network-wide synergistic usage of quantum memories distributed in a quantum communication network offers a fundamental advantage. We first map the problem of quantum communication with local usage of memories into a classical continuum percolation model. Then, we show that this mapping can be improved through a cooperation of quantum distillation and relay protocols via remote access to distributed memories. This improved mapping, which we term $α$-percolation, can be formulated in terms of graph-merging rules, analogous to the decimation rules of the renormalization group treatment of disordered quantum magnets. These rules can be performed in any order, yielding the same optimal result that is characterized by the emergence of a ``positive feedback'' mechanism and the formation of spatially disconnected ``hopping'' communication components -- both marking significant improvements beyond the traditional point-to-point consideration of quantum communication in networked structures.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

SSR-ZSON: Zero-Shot Object Navigation via Spatial-Semantic Relations within a Hierarchical Exploration Framework

Zero-shot object navigation in unknown environments presents significant challenges, mainly due to two key limitations: insufficient semantic guidance leads to inefficient exploration, while limited spatial memory resulting from environmental structure causes entrapment in local regions. To address these issues, we propose SSR-ZSON, a spatial-semantic relative zero-shot object navigation method based on the TARE hierarchical exploration framework, integrating a viewpoint generation strategy balancing spatial coverage and semantic density with an LLM-based global guidance mechanism. The performance improvement of the proposed method is due to two key innovations. First, the viewpoint generation strategy prioritizes areas of high semantic density within traversable sub-regions to maximize spatial coverage and minimize invalid exploration. Second, coupled with an LLM-based global guidance mechanism, it assesses semantic associations to direct navigation toward high-value spaces, preventing local entrapment and ensuring efficient exploration. Deployed on hybrid Habitat-Gazebo simulations and physical platforms, SSR-ZSON achieves real-time operation and superior performance. On Matterport3D and Habitat-Matterport3D datasets, it improves the Success Rate(SR) by 18.5\% and 11.2\%, and the Success weighted by Path Length(SPL) by 0.181 and 0.140, respectively, over state-of-the-art methods.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Surface Optimisation Governs the Local Design of Physical Networks

The brain's connectome and the vascular system are examples of physical networks whose tangible nature influences their structure, layout, and ultimately their function. The material resources required to build and maintain these networks have inspired decades of research into wiring economy, offering testable predictions about their expected architecture and organisation. Here we empirically explore the local branching geometry of a wide range of physical networks, uncovering systematic violations of the long-standing predictions of length and volume minimisation. This leads to the hypothesis that predicting the true material cost of physical networks requires us to account for their full three-dimensional geometry, resulting in a largely intractable optimisation problem. We discover, however, an exact mapping of surface minimisation onto high-dimensional Feynman diagrams in string theory, predicting that with increasing link thickness, a locally tree-like network undergoes a transition into configurations that can no longer be explained by length minimisation. Specifically, surface minimisation predicts the emergence of trifurcations and branching angles in excellent agreement with the local tree organisation of physical networks across a wide range of application domains. Finally, we predict the existence of stable orthogonal sprouts, which not only are prevalent in real networks but also play a key functional role, improving synapse formation in the brain and nutrient access in plants and fungi.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2025

A nonconvex entanglement monotone determining the characteristic length of entanglement distribution in continuous-variable quantum networks

Quantum networks (QNs) promise to enhance the performance of various quantum technologies in the near future by distributing entangled states over long distances. The first step towards this is to develop novel entanglement measures that are both informative and computationally tractable at large scales. While numerous such entanglement measures exist for discrete-variable (DV) systems, a comprehensive exploration for experimentally preferred continuous-variable (CV) systems is lacking. Here, we introduce a class of CV entanglement measures, among which we identify a nonconvex entanglement monotone -- the ratio negativity, which possesses a simple, scalable form that determines the exponential decay of optimal entanglement swapping on a chain of pure Gaussian states. This characterization opens avenues for leveraging statistical physics tools to analyze swapping-protocol-based CV QNs.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Unveiling the Importance of Nonshortest Paths in Quantum Networks

Quantum networks (QNs) exhibit stronger connectivity than predicted by classical percolation, yet the origin of this phenomenon remains unexplored. We apply a statistical physics model -- concurrence percolation -- to uncover the origin of stronger connectivity on hierarchical scale-free networks, the ($U,V$) flowers. These networks allow full analytical control over path connectivity through two adjustable path-length parameters, $U \leq V$. This precise control enables us to determine critical exponents well beyond current simulation limits, revealing that classical and concurrence percolations, while both satisfying the hyperscaling relation, fall into distinct universality classes. This distinction arises from how they "superpose" parallel, non-shortest path contributions into overall connectivity. Concurrence percolation, unlike its classical counterpart, is sensitive to non-shortest paths and shows higher resilience to detours as these paths lengthen. This enhanced resilience is also observed in real-world hierarchical, scale-free Internet networks. Our findings highlight a crucial principle for QN design: when non-shortest paths are abundant, they notably enhance QN connectivity beyond what is achievable with classical percolation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Multipartite Entanglement Routing as a Hypergraph Immersion Problem

Multipartite entanglement, linking multiple nodes simultaneously, is a higher-order correlation that offers advantages over pairwise connections in quantum networks (QNs). Creating reliable, large-scale multipartite entanglement requires entanglement routing, a process that combines local, short-distance connections into a long-distance connection, which can be considered as a transformation of network topology. Here, we address the question of whether a QN can be topologically transformed into another via entanglement routing. Our key result is an exact mapping from multipartite entanglement routing to Nash-Williams's graph immersion problem, extended to hypergraphs. This generalized hypergraph immersion problem introduces a partial order between QN topologies, permitting certain topological transformations while precluding others, offering discerning insights into the design and manipulation of higher-order network topologies in QNs.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Finding hypergraph immersion is fixed-parameter tractable

Immersion minor is an important variant of graph minor, defined through an injective mapping from vertices in a smaller graph $H$ to vertices in a larger graph $G$ where adjacent elements of the former are connected in the latter by edge-disjoint paths. Here, we consider the immersion problem in the emerging field of hypergraphs. We first define hypergraph immersion by extending the injective mapping to hypergraphs. We then prove that finding a hypergraph immersion is fixed-parameter tractable, namely, there exists an $O(N^6)$ polynomial-time algorithm to determine whether a fixed hypergraph $H$ can be immersed in a hypergraph $G$ with $N$ vertices. Additionally, we present the dual hypergraph immersion problem and provide further characteristics of the algorithmic complexity.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2024

Path Percolation in Quantum Communication Networks

In a quantum communication network, links represent entanglement between qubits located at different nodes. Even if two nodes are not directly linked by shared entanglement, communication channels can be established between them via quantum routing protocols. However, in contrast to classical communication networks, each communication event removes all participating links along the communication path, disrupting the quantum network. Here, we propose a simple model, where randomly selected pairs of nodes communicate through shortest paths. Each time such a path is used, all participating links are eliminated, leading to a correlated percolation process that we call ``path percolation.'' We study path percolation both numerically and analytically and present the phase diagram of the steady states as a function of the rate at which new links are being added to the quantum communication network. As a key result, the steady state is found to be independent from the initial network topology when new link are added randomly between disconnected components. We close by discussing extensions of path percolation and their potential applications.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Hidden Citations Obscure True Impact in Science

References, the mechanism scientists rely on to signal previous knowledge, lately have turned into widely used and misused measures of scientific impact. Yet, when a discovery becomes common knowledge, citations suffer from obliteration by incorporation. This leads to the concept of hidden citation, representing a clear textual credit to a discovery without a reference to the publication embodying it. Here, we rely on unsupervised interpretable machine learning applied to the full text of each paper to systematically identify hidden citations. We find that for influential discoveries hidden citations outnumber citation counts, emerging regardless of publishing venue and discipline. We show that the prevalence of hidden citations is not driven by citation counts, but rather by the degree of the discourse on the topic within the text of the manuscripts, indicating that the more discussed is a discovery, the less visible it is to standard bibliometric analysis. Hidden citations indicate that bibliometric measures offer a limited perspective on quantifying the true impact of a discovery, raising the need to extract knowledge from the full text of the scientific corpus.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2023

Percolation Theories for Quantum Networks

Quantum networks have experienced rapid advancements in both theoretical and experimental domains over the last decade, making it increasingly important to understand their large-scale features from the viewpoint of statistical physics. This review paper discusses a fundamental question: how can entanglement be effectively and indirectly (e.g., through intermediate nodes) distributed between distant nodes in an imperfect quantum network, where the connections are only partially entangled and subject to quantum noise? We survey recent studies addressing this issue by drawing exact or approximate mappings to percolation theory, a branch of statistical physics centered on network connectivity. Notably, we show that the classical percolation frameworks do not uniquely define the network's indirect connectivity. This realization leads to the emergence of an alternative theory called ``concurrence percolation,'' which uncovers a previously unrecognized quantum advantage that emerges at large scales, suggesting that quantum networks are more resilient than initially assumed within classical percolation contexts, offering refreshing insights into future quantum network design.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

The nature and nurture of network evolution

Although the origin of the fat-tail characteristic of the degree distribution in complex networks has been extensively researched, the underlying cause of the degree distribution characteristic across the complete range of degrees remains obscure. Here, we propose an evolution model that incorporates only two factors: the node's weight, reflecting its innate attractiveness (nature), and the node's degree, reflecting the external influences (nurture). The proposed model provides a good fit for degree distributions and degree ratio distributions of numerous real-world networks and reproduces their evolution processes. Our results indicate that the nurture factor plays a dominant role in the evolution of social networks. In contrast, the nature factor plays a dominant role in the evolution of non-social networks, suggesting that whether nodes are people determines the dominant factor influencing the evolution of real-world networks.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2023

Scale-Free Networks beyond Power-Law Degree Distribution

Complex networks across various fields are often considered to be scale free -- a statistical property usually solely characterized by a power-law distribution of the nodes' degree $k$. However, this characterization is incomplete. In real-world networks, the distribution of the degree-degree distance $η$, a simple link-based metric of network connectivity similar to $k$, appears to exhibit a stronger power-law distribution than $k$. While offering an alternative characterization of scale-freeness, the discovery of $η$ raises a fundamental question: do the power laws of $k$ and $η$ represent the same scale-freeness? To address this question, here we investigate the exact asymptotic {relationship} between the distributions of $k$ and $η$, proving that every network with a power-law distribution of $k$ also has a power-law distribution of $η$, but \emph{not} vice versa. This prompts us to introduce two network models as counterexamples that have a power-law distribution of $η$ but not $k$, constructed using the preferential attachment and fitness mechanisms, respectively. Both models show promising accuracy by fitting only one model parameter each when modeling real-world networks. Our findings suggest that $η$ is a more suitable indicator of scale-freeness and can provide a deeper understanding of the universality and underlying mechanisms of scale-free networks.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2023

Deterministic Entanglement Distribution on Series-Parallel Quantum Networks

The performance of distributing entanglement between two distant nodes in a large-scale quantum network (QN) of partially entangled bipartite pure states is generally benchmarked against the classical entanglement percolation (CEP) scheme. Improvements beyond CEP were only achieved by nonscalable strategies for restricted QN topologies. This paper explores and amplifies a new and more effective mapping of a QN, referred to as concurrence percolation theory (ConPT), that suggests using deterministic rather than probabilistic protocols for scalably improving on CEP across arbitrary QN topologies. More precisely, we implement ConPT via a deterministic entanglement transmission (DET) scheme that is fully analogous to resistor network analysis, with the corresponding series and parallel rules represented by deterministic entanglement swapping and concentration protocols, respectively. The main contribution of this paper is to establish a powerful mathematical framework, which is applicable to arbitrary d-dimensional information carriers (qudits), that provides different natural optimality metrics in terms of generalized k-concurrences (a family of fundamental entanglement measures) for different QN topology. In particular, we conclude that the introduced DET scheme (a) is optimal over the well-known nested repeater protocol for distilling entanglement from partially entangled qubits and (b) leads to higher success probabilities of obtaining a maximally entangled state than using CEP. The implementation of the DET scheme is experimentally feasible as tested on IBM's quantum computation platform.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Peak fraction of infected in epidemic spreading for multi-community networks

One of the most effective strategies to mitigate the global spreading of a pandemic (e.g., COVID-19) is to shut down international airports. From a network theory perspective, this is since international airports and flights, essentially playing the roles of bridge nodes and bridge links between countries as individual communities, dominate the epidemic spreading characteristics in the whole multi-community system. Among all epidemic characteristics, the peak fraction of infected, $I_{\max}$, is a decisive factor in evaluating an epidemic strategy given limited capacity of medical resources, but is seldom considered in multi-community models. In this paper, we study a general two-community system interconnected by a fraction $r$ of bridge nodes and its dynamic properties, especially $I_{\max}$, under the evolution of the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model. Comparing the characteristic time scales of different parts of the system allows us to analytically derive the asymptotic behavior of $I_{\max}$ with $r$, as $r\rightarrow 0$, which follows different power-law relations in each regime of the phase diagram. We also detect crossovers when $I_{\max}$ changes from one power law to another, crossing different power-law regimes as driven by $r$. Our results enable a better prediction of the effectiveness of strategies acting on bridge nodes, denoted by the power-law exponent $ε_I$ as in $I_{\max}\propto r^{1/ε_I}$.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Evolution Time Limit: a General Non-Markovian Bound

We derive a sharp bound as the quantum speed limit (QSL) for the minimal evolution time of quantum open systems in the non-Markovian strong-coupling regime with initial mixed states by considering the effects of both renormalized Hamiltonian and dissipator. For a non-Markovian quantum open system, the possible evolution time between two arbitrary states is not unique, among the set of which we find that the minimal one and its QSL can decrease more steeply by adjusting the coupling strength of the dissipator, which thus provides potential improvements of efficiency in many quantum physics and quantum information areas.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Multiple-scale integro-differential perturbation method for generic non-Markovian environments

Non-Markovianity may significantly speed up quantum dynamics when the system interacts strongly with an infinite large reservoir, of which the coupling spectrum should be fine-tuned. The potential benefits are evident in many dynamics schemes, especially the continuous-time quantum walk. Difficulty exists, however, in producing closed-form solutions with controllable accuracy against the complexity of memory kernels. Here, we introduce a new multiple-scale perturbation method that works on integro-differential equations for general study of memory effects in dynamical systems. We propose an open-system model in which a continuous-time quantum walk is enclosed in a non-Markovian reservoir, that naturally corresponds to an error correction algorithm scheme. By applying the multiple-scale method we show how emergence of different time scales is related to transition of system dynamics into the non-Markovian regime. We find that up to two long-term modes and two short-term modes exist in regular networks, limited by their intrinsic symmetries. In addition to the effective approximation by our perturbation method on general forms of reservoirs, the speed-up of quantum walks assisted by non-Markovianity is also confirmed, revealing the advantage of reservoir engineering in designing time-sensitive quantum algorithms.

quant-ph↗