To achieve secure quantum key distribution, all imperfections in the source unit must be incorporated in a security proof and measured in the lab. Here we perform a proof-of-principle demonstration of the experimental techniques for characterizing the source phase and intensity fluctuation in commercial quantum key distribution systems. When we apply the measured phase-fluctuation intervals to the security proof that takes into account fluctuations in the state preparation, it predicts a key distribution distance of over $100\mathrm{km}$ of fiber. The measured intensity fluctuation intervals are, however, so large that the proof predicts zero key, indicating a source improvement may be needed. Our characterization methods pave the way for a future certification standard.

Orbital-angular-momentum- (OAM) based photonic nonlinear interfaces, such as the nonlinear manipulation of a single-photon OAM state between the communication wavelength for entanglement distribution and the near-visible wavelength for quantum memories. Here, we experimentally demonstrate this kind of quantum state transformation for simultaneously adjusting the weight of the spatial OAM modes and operating the wavelength of single photons by effectively cascading the frequency conversion and electro-optical (EO) polarization coupling in a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal. The fidelity of the OAM state is measured to be higher than 95% before and after the frequency conversion. The results show that the OAM state of single photons can be modulated on demand by applying a transverse electric field across the nonlinear crystal. Our work demonstrates the integration and high performance of our proposed transformation interface, and paves a route toward connecting different remote nodes based on quantum memories in a large-scale OAM-encoded quantum network.

We present a flexible method to study the optical properties of an ${\mathrm{Er}}^{3+}$ ensemble in $\mathrm{Si}$ accessed via resonant excitation and in situ single-photon detection. The technique allows an efficient resonant photoluminescence detection of optically active centers with weak oscillator strength in transparent crystals without the need for nanofabrication on the sample. We observe 70 ${\mathrm{Er}}^{3+}$ resonances in $\mathrm{Si}$, of which 62 resonances have not been observed in the literature, with optical lifetimes ranging from 0.5 to 1.5 ms. We observe inhomogeneous broadening of less than 400 MHz and an upper bound on the homogeneous linewidth of 0.75 and 1.4 MHz for two separate resonances. These narrow, stable resonances confirm ${\mathrm{Er}}^{3+}$ in $\mathrm{Si}$ as a promising quantum information candidate. We discuss the use of this technique for rapid characterization of future samples, with the aim of enhancing the prevalence of sites which are favorable for quantum information applications.

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) can directly transmit secrete messages through a quantum channel. Device-independent (DI) QSDC can guarantee the communication security relying only on the observation of the Bell-inequality violation, but not on any detailed description or trust of the inner workings of users’ devices. In the paper, we propose a DI-QSDC protocol with practical highly efficient single-photon sources. The communication parties construct the entanglement channel from single photons by adopting the heralded architecture, which makes the message-leakage rate independent of the photon-transmission loss. The secure communication distance and the practical communication efficiency of the current DI-QSDC protocol are about 6 times and 600 times of those in the original DI-QSDC protocol. Combining with the entanglement purification, the parties can construct the nearly perfect entanglement channel and completely eliminate the message leakage. This DI-QSDC protocol may have useful applications in the future quantum communication field.

In the design optimization of ion-cavity interfaces for quantum networking applications, difficulties occur due to the many competing figures of merit and highly interdependent design constraints, many of which present “soft limits,” which are amenable to improvement at the cost of engineering time. In this work, we present a systematic approach to this problem that offers a means to identify efficient and robust operating regimes and to elucidate the trade-offs involved in the design process, allowing engineering efforts to be focused on the most sensitive and critical parameters. We show that in many relevant cases it is possible to approximately separate the geometric aspects of the cooperativity from those associated with the atomic system and the mirror surfaces themselves, greatly simplifying the optimization procedure. Although our approach to optimization can be applied to most operating regimes, here we consider cavities suitable for typical ion-trapping experiments and with substantial transverse misalignment of the mirrors. We find that cavities with mirror misalignments of many micrometers can still offer very high photon extraction efficiencies, offering an appealing route to the scalable production of ion-cavity interfaces for large-scale quantum networks.

Detecting a signal at an unknown frequency is a common task, arising in settings from dark-matter detection to magnetometry. For any detection protocol, the precision achieved depends on the frequency of the signal and can be quantified by the quantum Fisher information (QFI). To study limitations in broadband sensing, we introduce the integrated quantum Fisher information and derive inequality bounds that embody fundamental trade-offs in any sensing protocol. Our inequalities show that sensitivity in one frequency range must come at the cost of reduced sensitivity elsewhere. For many protocols, including those with small phase accumulation and those consisting of $\pi$ pulses, we find that the integrated quantum Fisher information scales linearly with $T$. We also find protocols with substantial phase accumulation that can have integrated QFI that grows quadratically with $T$ and prove that this scaling is asymptotically optimal. These protocols may allow the very rapid detection of a signal with unknown frequency over a very wide bandwidth. We discuss the implications of these results for a wide variety of contexts, including dark-matter searches and dynamical decoupling. Thus we establish fundamental limitations on the broadband detection of signals and highlight their consequences.

We present a continuous monitoring system for intermediate-scale quantum processors that allows extracting estimates of noisy native gate and read-out measurements based on the set of executed quantum circuits and resulting measurement outcomes. In contrast to standard approaches for calibration and benchmarking quantum processors, the executed circuits, which are input to the monitoring system, are assumed to be out of any control. We provide the results of applying our system to the synthetically generated data obtained from a quantum emulator, as well as to the experimental data collected from a publicly accessible cloud-based quantum processor. In both cases, we demonstrate that the developed approach provides valuable results about inherent noises of emulators and processors. Considering that our approach uses only already accessible data from implemented circuits without the need to run additional algorithms, the monitoring system can complement existing approaches. We expect that our monitoring system can become a useful tool for various quantum computers in the near-term horizon, including publicly accessible cloud-based platforms, and reduce resources that are required for their benchmarking and calibration.

Continuous-variable measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (CV-MDI QKD) can fundamentally defend all attacks on the measurement devices. Consequently, higher requirements are put forward for the source of a CV-MDI QKD system. However, the imperfections of the actual source brings practical security risks to the CV-MDI QKD system. Therefore, the characteristics of the realistic source must be controlled in real time to guarantee the practical security of the CV-MDI QKD system. Here we propose a countermeasure for negative impact introduced by the actual source in the CV-MDI QKD system based on the one-time-calibration method, not only eliminating the loophole induced from the relative intensity noise (RIN), which is part of the source noise, but also modeling the source noise thus improves the performance. In particular, three cases in terms of whether the preparation noise of the practical sources are defined or not, where only one of the users or both of the two users operate monitoring on their respective source outputs, are investigated. The simulation results show that the estimated secret key rate without our proposed scheme is about 10.7 times higher than the realistic rate at 18 km transmission distance when the variance of RIN is only 0.4. What is worse, the difference becomes greater and greater with the increase of the variance of RIN. Thus, our proposed scheme makes sense in further completing the practical security of the CV-MDI QKD system. In other words, our work enables the CV-MDI QKD system not only to resist all attacks against detectors, but also to close the vulnerability caused by the actual source, thus making the scheme closer to practical security.

High-fidelity two-qubit gates in quantum computers are often hampered by fluctuating experimental parameters. The effects of time-varying parameter fluctuations lead to coherent noise on the qubits, which can be suppressed by designing control signals with appropriate filter functions. Here, we develop filter functions for Mølmer-Sørensen gates of trapped-ion quantum computers that accurately predict the change in gate error due to small parameter fluctuations at any frequency. We then design the filter functions of frequency-modulated laser pulses, and compare this method with pulses that are robust to static offsets of the motional-mode frequencies. Experimentally, we measure the noise spectrum of the motional modes and use it for designing the filter functions, which improves the gate fidelity from 99.23(7)% to 99.55(7)% in a five-ion chain.

We propose a method to perform the quantum state tomography (QST) of an $n$-partite qudit state embedded in single photons based on the Hong-Ou-Mandel interference between the target photon and ancillary probe light. Our method requires only passive beam splitters in the target modes by shifting all of the active devices used in conventional QST methods to the probe preparation system. This feature is useful when the active optical devices for QST have large optical losses. Moreover, even when the probe is prepared by a laser light having a mode mismatch with the target photon, the method offers an accurate estimation of the target state. As a proof-of-principle, we perform the experimental demonstration using a polarization qubit. Regardless of the photon statistics of the probe light, the estimated results of state reconstruction are as accurate as those verified by the conventional QST.

Cavity photons and ferromagnetic spin excitations can exchange information coherently in hybrid architectures, at speeds set by their mutual coupling strength. Speed enhancement is usually achieved by optimizing the geometry of the electromagnetic cavity. Here we show that the geometry of the ferromagnet also plays a role, by setting the fundamental frequency of the magnonic resonator. Using focused ion-beam patterning, we vary the aspect ratio of different Permalloy samples reaching operation frequencies above 10 GHz while working at low external magnetic fields. Additionally, we perform broadband ferromagnetic resonance measurements and cavity experiments that demonstrate that the light-matter coupling strength can be estimated using either open transmission lines or resonant cavities, yielding very good agreement. Finally, we describe a simple theoretical framework based on electromagnetic and micromagnetic simulations that successfully accounts for the experimental results. This approach can be used to design hybrid quantum systems exploiting magnetostatic mode excited in ferromagnets of arbitrary size and shape and to tune their operation conditions.

Fault-tolerant quantum information processing with flawed qubits and gates requires highly efficient, quantum nondemolition qubit readout. In superconducting circuits, qubit readout using coherent light with fidelity above 99% has been achieved by using quantum limited parametric amplifiers such as the Josephson parametric converter (JPC). However, further improvement of such measurement faces many challenges, including the vacuum fluctuation of the coherent light that limits measurement fidelity. In this work we demonstrate dispersive qubit readout with a two-mode squeezed light interferometer formed by two JPCs. The first JPC generates two-mode squeezed vacuum at its output, which is coherently recombined by the second JPC after one branch is phase shifted and displaced by its interaction with the qubit-cavity system on that arm of the interferometer. We observe a 31% improvement in the power signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of projective readout after replacing vacuum fluctuation in the readout cavity with two-mode squeezed vacuum containing on average one photon. This demonstrates a more efficient way of improving SNR than by increasing readout power. Furthermore, we investigate the quantum properties of the two-mode squeezed light in the system through weak measurement. Surprisingly, we find that tuning the interferometer to be less projective increases the measurement efficiency relative to the optimum setting for projective measurement. These enhancements may enable remote entanglement with lower efficiency components in a system with qubits in both arms of the interferometer.

Semiconductor spin qubits may be coupled through a superconducting cavity to generate an entangling two-qubit gate. However, the fidelity of such an operation will be reduced by a variety of error mechanisms such as charge and magnetic noise, phonons, cavity loss, transitions to nonqubit states, and, for electrons in silicon, excitation into other valley eigenstates. Here, we model the effects of these error sources and the valley degree of freedom on the performance of a cavity-mediated two-qubit $\mathrm{i}$swap gate. For valley splittings inadequately large relative to the interdot tunnel coupling within each qubit, we find that valley excitation may be a limiter to the fidelity of this two-qubit gate. In addition, we show trade-offs between gating times and exposure to various error sources, identifying optimal operating regimes and device improvements that would have the greatest impact on the fidelity of the cavity-mediated spin $\mathrm{i}$swap gate. Importantly, we find that, while the impact of charge noise and phonon relaxation favor operation in the regime where the qubits are most spinlike to reduce sensitivity to these sources of noise, the combination of hyperfine noise and valley physics shifts the optimal regime to chargelike qubits with stronger effective spin-photon coupling so that gate times can be made as short as possible. In this regime, the primary limitation is the need to avoid Landau-Zener transitions as the gate is implemented.

Machine learning finds application in the quantum control and readout of qubits. In this work we apply artificial neural networks to assist the manipulation and the readout of a prototypical molecular spin qubit-an oxovanadium(IV) moiety-in two experiments designed to test the amplitude and the phase recognition, respectively. We first successfully use an artificial network to analyze the output of a storage-retrieval protocol with four input pulses to recognize the echo positions and, with further post selection on the results, to infer the initial input pulse sequence. We then apply an artificial neural network to ascertain the phase of the experimentally measured Hahn echo, showing that it is possible to correctly detect its phase and to recognize additional single-pulse phase shifts added during manipulation.

Superconducting flux qubits are promising candidates for the physical realization of a scalable quantum processor. Indeed, these circuits may have both a small decoherence rate and a large anharmonicity. These properties enable the application of fast quantum gates with high fidelity and reduce scaling limitations due to frequency crowding. The major difficulty of flux qubits’ design consists of controlling precisely their transition energy—the so-called qubit gap—while keeping long and reproducible relaxation times. Solving this problem is challenging and requires extremely good control of e-beam lithography, oxidation parameters of the junctions, and sample surface. Here we present measurements of a large batch of flux qubits and demonstrate a high level of reproducibility and control of qubit gaps ($\pm 0.6\mathrm{GHz}$), relaxation times ($15$–$20\text{μ}\mathrm{s}$), and pure echo dephasing times ($15$–$30\text{μ}\mathrm{s}$). These results open the way for potential applications in the fields of quantum hybrid circuits and quantum computation.

We propose a general approach to implement ultrafast nonadiabatic geometric single- and two-qubit gates by employing counter-rotating effects. This protocol is compatible with most optimal control methods used in previous rotating-wave approximation (RWA) protocols; thus, it is as robust as (or even more robust than) the RWA protocols. Using counter-rotating effects allows us to apply strong drives. Therefore, we can improve the gate speed by 5–10 times compared to the RWA counterpart for implementing high-fidelity ($\ge 99.99\mathrm{\%}$) gates. Such an ultrafast evolution (nanoseconds, even picoseconds) significantly reduces the influence of decoherence (e.g., the qubit dissipation and dephasing). Moreover, because the counter-rotating effects no longer induce a gate infidelity (in both the weak and strong driving regimes), we can achieve a higher fidelity compared to the RWA protocols. Therefore, in the presence of decoherence, one can implement ultrafast geometric quantum gates with $\ge 99\mathrm{\%}$ fidelities.

As progress is made towards the first generation of error-corrected quantum computers, robust characterization and validation protocols are required to assess the noise environments of physical quantum processors. While standard coherence metrics and characterization protocols such as $T_1$ and $T_2$, process tomography, and randomized benchmarking are now ubiquitous, these techniques provide only partial information about the dynamic multiqubit loss channels responsible for processor errors, which can be described more fully by a Lindblad operator in the master equation formalism. Here, we introduce and experimentally demonstrate Lindblad tomography, a hardware-agnostic characterization protocol for tomographically reconstructing the Hamiltonian and Lindblad operators of a quantum noise environment from an ensemble of time-domain measurements. Performing Lindblad tomography on a small superconducting quantum processor, we show that this technique naturally builds on standard process tomography and $T_1/T_2$ measurement protocols, characterizes and accounts for state-preparation and measurement errors, and allows one to place bounds on the fit to a Markovian model. Comparing the results of single- and two-qubit measurements on a superconducting quantum processor, we demonstrate that Lindblad tomography can also be used to identify and quantify sources of crosstalk on quantum processors, such as the presence of always-on qubit-qubit interactions.

Current quantum computers are limited in the number of qubits and coherence time, constraining the algorithms executable with sufficient fidelity. The variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) is an algorithm to find an approximate ground state of a quantum system and is expected to work on even such a device. The deep VQE [K. Fujii, et al., arXiv:2007.10917] is an extension of the original VQE algorithm, which takes a divide-and-conquer approach to relax the hardware requirement. While the deep VQE is successfully applied for spin models and periodic material, its validity on a molecule, where the Hamiltonian is highly nonlocal in the qubit basis, is still unexplored. Here, we discuss the performance of the deep VQE algorithm applied to quantum chemistry problems. Specifically, we examine different subspace-forming methods and compare their accuracy and complexity on a 10 $\mathrm{H}$-atom treelike molecule as well as a 13 $\mathrm{H}$-atom version. Additionally, we examine the performance on the natural occurring molecule retinal. This work also proposes multiple methods to lower the number of qubits required to calculate the ground state of a molecule. We find that the deep VQE can simulate the electron-correlation energy of the ground state to an error of below 1%, thus helping us to reach chemical accuracy in some cases. The accuracy differences and qubits’ reduction highlights the basis creation method’s impact on the deep VQE.