量子信息科学在中国科学技术大学的兴起和发展

文章介绍了中国科学技术大学的量子信息科学研究是如何兴起和发展的;着重介绍了在量子信息的基础理论、量子密码、量子纠缠、量子隐形传态、量子处理器和量子信息的应用等方面所取得的研究成果.     

量子通信研究进展与应用

量子通信利用量子信道进行信息的编码、传输和处理,具有安全性高和信道容量高等特点。量子保密通信以信息安全为主要目的,包括量子密钥分发、量子安全直接通信和量子秘密共享等模式。利用量子纠缠,量子隐形传态根据事先已经分发的纠缠粒子对实现不传输实物粒子而传输未知粒子的状态,量子密集编码通过传输一个粒子而实现两个粒子信息的传输,这些是经典通信无法实现的任务。文章简单介绍量子通信的内容和进展情况。     

Entanglement of Formation of an Arbitrary State of Two Rebits

We consider entanglement for quantum states defined in vector spaces over the real numbers. Such real entanglement is different from entanglement in standard quantum mechanics over the complex numbers. The differences provide insight into the nature of entanglement in standard quantum theory. Wootters [Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 2245 (1998)] has given an explicit formula for the entanglement of formation of two qubits in terms of what he calls the concurrence of the joint density operator. We give a contrasting formula for the entanglement of formation of an arbitrary state of two rebits, a rebit being a system whose Hilbert space is a 2-dimensional real vector space.     

Robust Quantum Search with Uncertain Number of Target States

The quantum search algorithm is one of the milestones of quantum algorithms. Compared with classical algorithms, it shows quadratic speed-up when searching marked states in an unsorted database. However, the success rates of quantum search algorithms are sensitive to the number of marked states. In this paper, we study the relation between the success rate and the number of iterations in a quantum search algorithm of given λ=M/N, where M is the number of marked state and N is the number of items in the dataset. We develop a robust quantum search algorithm based on Grover–Long algorithm with some uncertainty in the number of marked states. The proposed algorithm has the same query complexity ON as the Grover’s algorithm, and shows high tolerance of the uncertainty in the ratio M/N. In particular, for a database with an uncertainty in the ratio M±MN, our algorithm will find the target states with a success rate no less than 96%.     

Decomposition Properties of Quantum Discord

The quantum discord was introduced by Ollivier,Zurek,Henderson,and Vedral as an indicator of the degree of quantumness of mixed states.In this paper,we provide a decomposition condition for quantum discord.Moreover,we show that under the condition,the quantum correlations between the quantum systems can be captured completely by the entanglement measure.Finally,we present examples of our conclusions.     

Security proof of counterfactual quantum cryptography against general intercept-resend attacks and its vulnerability

Counterfactual quantum cryptography,recently proposed by Noh,is featured with no transmission of signal particles.This exhibits evident security advantages,such as its immunity to the well-known photon-number-splitting attack.In this paper,the theoretical security of counterfactual quantum cryptography protocol against the general interceptresend attacks is proved by bounding the information of an eavesdropper Eve more tightly than in Yin’s proposal [Phys.Rev.A 82 042335(2010)].It is also shown that practical counterfactual quantum cryptography implementations may be vulnerable when equipped with imperfect apparatuses,by proving that a negative key rate can be achieved when Eve launches a time-shift attack based on imperfect detector efficiency.     

量子图像存储

量子通讯的实现离不开量子存储器。量子存储器是一个能够按照需要存储和读出量子态的系统,而被存储的是非经典的量子态,如单光子、纠缠、压缩态等。多模存储能力是衡量量子存储器工作性能的一个重要指标。空间域的多模存储可以极大地减小对存储器存储时间的要求,因此空间多模存储引起了国内外学者的广泛关注,并在近几年取得了许多重要进展。文章简述了量子存储器的主要性质与评价指标,回顾了近年来量子存储的研究进程,特别介绍了量子图像存储方面的最新实验进展。     

Information Complexity of Quantum Gates

This paper considers the realizability of quantum gates from the perspective of information complexity. Since the gate is a physical device that must be controlled classically, it is subject to random error. We define the complexity of gate operation in terms of the difference between the entropy of the variables associated with initial and final states of the computation. We argue that the gate operations are irreversible if there is a difference in the accuracy associated with input and output variables. It is shown that under some conditions the gate operation may be associated with unbounded entropy, implying impossibility of implementation. PACS number: 03.65     

Effects of Spatial Nonlocality versus Nonlocal Causality for Bound Electrons in External Fields

Using numerically exact solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation together with time-dependent quantum Monte Carlo (TDQMC) calculations, here we compare the effects of spatial nonlocality versus nonlocal causality for the ground state and for real-time evolution of two entangled electrons in parabolic potential in one spatial dimension. It was found that the spatial entanglement quantified by the linear quantum entropy is predicted with good accuracy using the spatial nonlocality, parameterized naturally within the TDQMC approach. At the same time, the nonlocal causality predicted by the exact solution leads to only small oscillations in the quantum trajectories which belong to the idler electron as the driven electron is subjected to a strong high frequency electric field, without interaction between the electrons.     

Implementation of Quantum Fourier Transform and Its Applications via Quantum-Dot Spins and Microcavity

A scheme for implementing discrete quantum Fourier transform is proposed via quantum dots embedded in a microcavity, and then some of its applications are investigated, i.e., Deutsch 3ozsa. algorithm and Shor＇s quantum factoring. In particular, the detailed process of implementing one~qubit Deutsch Jozsa algorithm and the factorization of N = 15 are given. The microcavity mode is only virtually excited in the whole interaction, so the effective decoherent has slight effect on the current scheme. These schemes would be an important step to fabricate a solid quantum computer.     

Many-Agent Controlled Teleportation of Multi-qubit Quantum Information via Quantum Entanglement Swapping

We present a method to teleport multi-qubit quantum information in an easy way from a sender to a receiver via the control of many agents in a network. Only when all the agents collaborate with the quantum information receiver can the unknown states in the sender＇s qubits be fully reconstructed in the receiver＇s qubits. In our method, agents＇s control parameters are obtained via quantum entanglement swapping. As the realization of the many-agent controlled teleportation is concerned, compared to the recent method [G.P. Yang, et al., Phys. Rev. A 70 （2004） 022329], our present method considerably reduces the preparation difficulty of initial states and the identification difficulty of entangled states, moreover, it does not need local Hadamard operations and it is more feasible in technology.     

Many-Agent Controlled Teleportation of Multi-qubit Quantum Information via Quantum Entanglement Swapping

We present a method to teleport multi-qubit quantum information in an easy way from a sender to a receiver via the control of many agents in a network. Only when all the agents collaborate with the quantum information receiver can the unknown states in the sender‘s qubits be fully reconstructed in the receiver‘s qubits. In our method,agents‘s control parameters are obtained via quantum entanglement swapping. As the realization of the many-agent controlled teleportation is concerned, compared to the recent method [C.P. Yang, et al., Phys. Rev. A 70 (2004) 022329],our present method considerably reduces the preparation difficulty of initial states and the identification difficulty of entangled states, moreover, it does not need local Hadamard operations and it is more feasible in technology.     

Reconstruction of Superoperators from Incomplete Measurements

We present strategies how to reconstruct (estimate) properties of a quantum channel described by the map E based on incomplete measurements. In a particular case of a qubit channel a complete reconstruction of the map E can be performed via complete tomography of four output states E[ρ_j] that originate from a set of four linearly independent “test” states ρ_j (j = 1,2,3,4) at the input of the channel. We study the situation when less than four linearly independent states are transmitted via the channel and measured at the output. We present strategies how to reconstruct the channel when just one, two or three states are transmitted via the channel. In particular, we show that if just one state is transmitted via the channel then the best reconstruction can be achieved when this state is a total mixture described by the density operator ρ = I/2. To improve the reconstruction procedure one has to send via the channel more states. The best strategy is to complement the total mixture with pure states that are mutually orthogonal in the sense of the Bloch-sphere representation. We show that unitary transformations (channels) can be uniquely reconstructed (determined) based on the information of how three properly chosen input states are transformed under the action of the channel.We have originally dedicated this paper to Asher Peres on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Unfortunately, since the submission of the paper for publication Asher Peres passed away so we dedicate this paper to his memory.     

Cryptanalysis and improvement of controlled secure direct communication

This paper points out that, due to a flaw in the sender＇s encoding, the receiver in Gao et al.＇s controlled quantum secret direct communication （CQSDC） protocol [Chin. Phys. 14 （2005）, No. 5, p. 893] can reveal the whole secret message without permission from the controller. An improvement is proposed to avoid this flaw.     

Discrete Spectra of Charged Black Holes

Bekenstein proposed that the spectrum of horizon area of quantized black holes must be discrete and uniformly spaced. We examine this proposal in the context of spherically symmetric charged black holes in a general class of gravity theories. By imposing suitable boundary conditions on the reduced phase space of the theory to incorporate the thermodynamic properties of these black holes and then performing a simplifying canonical transformation, we are able to quantize the system exactly. The resulting spectra of horizon area, as well as that of charge are indeed discrete. Within this quantization scheme, near-extremal black holes (of any mass) turn out to be highly quantum objects, whereas extremal black holes do not appear in the spectrum, a result that is consistent with the postulated third law of black hole thermodynamics.     

An overview of quantum error mitigation formulas

Minimizing the effect of noise is essential for quantum computers. The conventional method to protect qubits against noise is through quantum error correction. However, for current quantum hardware in the so-called noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era, noise presents in these systems and is too high for error correction to be beneficial. Quantum error mitigation is a set of alternative methods for minimizing errors, including error extrapolation, probabilistic error cancellation, measurement error mitigation, subspace expansion, symmetry verification, virtual distillation, etc. The requirement for these methods is usually less demanding than error correction. Quantum error mitigation is a promising way of reducing errors on NISQ quantum computers. This paper gives a comprehensive introduction to quantum error mitigation. The state-of-art error mitigation methods are covered and formulated in a general form, which provides a basis for comparing, combining and optimizing different methods in future work.