arXiv subjects

Zhi-Bo Hou

Publications and source records attributed to Zhi-Bo Hou.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2020

Classical Communication Enhanced Quantum State Verification

Quantum state verification provides an efficient approach to characterize the reliability of quantum devices for generating certain target states. The figure of merit of a specific strategy is the estimated infidelity $ε$ of the tested state to the target state, given a certain number of performed measurements n. Entangled measurements constitute the globally optimal strategy and achieve the scaling that εis inversely proportional to n. Recent advances show that it is possible to achieve the same scaling simply with non-adaptive local measurements, however, the performance is still worse than the globally optimal bound up to a constant factor. In this work, by introducing classical communication, we experimentally implement an adaptive quantum state verification. The constant-factor is minimized from ~2.5 to 1.5 in this experiment, which means that only 60% measurements are required to achieve a certain value of εcompared to optimal non-adaptive local strategy. Our results indicate that classical communication significantly enhances the performance of quantum state verification, and leads to an efficiency that further approaches the globally optimal bound.

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arXiv2020

Experimental transmission of quantum information using a superposition of causal orders

Communication in a network generally takes place through a sequence of intermediate nodes connected by communication channels. In the standard theory of communication, it is assumed that the communication network is embedded in a classical spacetime, where the relative order of different nodes is well-defined. In principle, a quantum theory of spacetime could allow the order of the intermediate points between sender and receiver to be in a coherent superposition. Here we experimentally realise a table-top simulation of this exotic possibility on a photonic system, demonstrating high-fidelity transmission of quantum information over two noisy channels arranged in a superposition of two alternative causal orders.

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arXiv2018

Direct Measurement of the Two-dimensional Spatial Quantum Wavefunction via Strong Measurements

Wavefunction is the foundation of quantum theory, which is assumed to give a complete description of a quantum system. For a long time, wavefunction is introduced as an abstract element of the theory and there lacks effective ways to measure it directly. The situation, however, is somewhat changed when Lundeen et al. reported the direct measurement of the quantum wavefunction via weak measurements, which gives the wavefunction a clearly operational definition [Nature 474, 188 (2011)]. The weak measurement method requires sequential measurements of conjugate observables position and momentum with the position measurement is weak enough. Surprisingly, the recent research by Vallone and Dequal shows that performing sequential strong measurements realizes the same target, in which case no approximation has to be made compared to the case of weak measurements[Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 040502 (2016)]. Here we experimentally report the direct measurement of the two-dimensional transverse wavefunction of photons via strong measurements for the first time, which implies that an accurate and clear operational definition can be given to wavefunction. We have measured the Gaussian and Laguerre-Gaussian of l = 1 spatial wavefunctions of photons with R-square are 0.97 and 0.93 respectively. As a potentially important application, we show that the direct measurement of two-dimensional wavefunction provides an alternative way to realize digital holography of three-dimensional objects. The results presented here will not only deepen our understanding of abstract wavefunction but also have significant applications in quantum information processing and quantum imaging.

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arXiv2018

Experimentally Robust Self-testing for Bipartite and Tripartite Entangled States

Self-testing refers to a method with which a classical user can certify the state and measurements of quantum systems in a device-independent way. Especially, the self-testing of entangled states is of great importance in quantum information process. A comprehensible example is that violating the CHSH inequality maximally necessarily implies the bipartite shares a singlet. One essential question in self-testing is that, when one observes a non-maximum violation, how close is the tested state to the target state (which maximally violates certain Bell inequality)? The answer to this question describes the robustness of the used self-testing criterion, which is highly important in a practical sense. Recently, J. Kaniewski predicts two analytic self-testing bounds for bipartite and tripartite systems. In this work, we experimentally investigate these two bounds with high quality two-qubit and three-qubit entanglement sources. The results show that these bounds are valid for various of entangled states we prepared, and thus, we implement robust self-testing processes which improve the previous results significantly.

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arXiv2018

Experimental self-testing of entangled states

Quantum entanglement is the key resource for quantum information processing. Device-independent certification of entangled states is a long standing open question, which arouses the concept of self-testing. The central aim of self-testing is to certify the state and measurements of quantum systems without any knowledge of their inner workings, even when the used devices cannot be trusted. Specifically, utilizing Bell's theorem, it is possible to place a boundary on the singlet fidelity of entangled qubits. Here, beyond this rough estimation, we experimentally demonstrate a complete self-testing process for various pure bipartite entangled states up to four dimensions, by simply inspecting the correlations of the measurement outcomes. We show that this self-testing process can certify the exact form of entangled states with fidelities higher than 99.9% for all the investigated scenarios, which indicates the superior completeness and robustness of this method. Our work promotes self-testing as a practical tool for developing quantum techniques.

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arXiv2017

Detecting metrologically useful asymmetry and entanglement by a few local measurements

Important properties of a quantum system are not directly measurable, but they can be disclosed by how fast the system changes under controlled perturbations. In particular, asymmetry and entanglement can be verified by reconstructing the state of a quantum system. Yet, this usually requires experimental and computational resources which increase exponentially with the system size. Here we show how to detect metrologically useful asymmetry and entanglement by a limited number of measurements. This is achieved by studying how they affect the speed of evolution of a system under a unitary transformation. We show that the speed of multiqubit systems can be evaluated by measuring a set of local observables, providing exponential advantage with respect to state tomography. Indeed, the presented method requires neither the knowledge of the state and the parameter-encoding Hamiltonian nor global measurements performed on all the constituent subsystems. We implement the detection scheme in an all-optical experiment.

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arXiv2014

Nonlocal memory assisted entanglement distribution in optical fibers

Successful implementation of several quantum information and communication protocols require distributing entangled pairs of quantum bits in reliable manner. While there exists a substantial amount of recent theoretical and experimental activities dealing with non-Markovian quantum dynamics, experimental application and verification of the usefulness of memory-effects for quantum information tasks is still missing. We combine these two aspects and show experimentally that a recently introduced concept of nonlocal memory effects allows to protect and distribute polarization entangled pairs of photons in efficient manner within polarization-maintaining (PM) optical fibers. The introduced scheme is based on correlating the environments, i.e. frequencies of the polarization entangled photons, before their physical distribution. When comparing to the case without nonlocal memory effects, we demonstrate at least 12-fold improvement in the channel, or fiber length, for preserving the highly-entangled initial polarization states of photons against dephasing.

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