We propose and analyze a nonunitary variant of the continuous time Grover search algorithm based on frequent Zeno-type measurements. We show that the algorithm scales similarly to the pure quantum version by deriving tight analytical lower bounds on its efficiency for arbitrary database sizes and measurement parameters. We also study the behavior of the algorithm subject to noise, and find that under certain oracle and operational errors our measurement-based algorithm outperforms the standard algorithm, showing robustness against these noises. Our analysis is based on deriving a non-Hermitian effective description of the algorithm, which yields a deeper insight into components responsible for the quantum and the classical operation of the protocol.

Developing schemes for efficient and broadband frequency conversion of quantum signals is an ongoing challenge in the field of modern quantum information. The coherent conversion between microwave and optical signals is an especially important milestone towards long-distance quantum communication. In this work, we propose a two-stage conversion protocol, employing a resonant interaction between magnetic and mechanical excitations as a mediator between microwave and optical photons. Based on estimates for the coupling strengths under optimized conditions for yttrium iron garnet, we predict close to unity conversion efficiency without the requirement of matching cooperativities. We predict a conversion bandwidth in the regions of largest efficiency of the order of magnitude of the coupling strengths that can be further increased at the expense of reduced conversion efficiency.

A quantum state transformation can be generally approximated by single- and two-qubit gates. This, however, does not hold with noisy intermediate-scale quantum technologies due to the errors appearing in the gate operations, where errors of two-qubit gates such as controlled-not and swap operations are dominated. In this work we present a cost efficient single-copy certification for a realization of a two-qubit gate in the presence of depolarization noise, where we aim to identify if the realization is noise free, or not. We show that entangled resources such as entangled states and a joint measurement are not necessary for the purpose, i.e., a noise-free two-qubit gate is not needed to certify an implementation of a two-qubit gate. We present a proof-of-principle demonstration with photonic qubits.

We propose an adiabatic protocol for implementing a controlled-phase gate ${\mathrm{CZ}}_{\theta }$ with continuous $\theta$ of neutral atoms through a symmetrical two-photon excitation process via the second resonance line, $6P$ in ${}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$, with a single-temporal-modulation-coupling of the ground state and intermediate state. Relying on different adiabatic paths, the phase factor $\theta$ of the ${\mathrm{CZ}}_{\theta }$ gate can be accumulated on the logic qubit state $|11⟩$ alone by calibrating the shape of the temporal pulse where strict zero amplitudes at the start and end of the pulse are not needed. For a wide range of $\theta$, we can obtain the fidelity of the ${\mathrm{CZ}}_{\theta }$ gate over 99.7% in less than $1\mu \mathrm{s}$, in the presence of spontaneous emission from intermediate and Rydberg states. And in particular for $\theta =\pi$, we benchmark the performance of the CZ gate by taking into account various experimental imperfections, such as Doppler shifts, fluctuation of Rydberg-Rydberg interaction strength, inhomogeneous Rabi frequency, and noise of driving fields, etc., and show that the predicted fidelity is able to maintain at about 98.4% after correcting the measurement error. This gate protocol provides a robustness against the fluctuation of pulse amplitude and a flexible way for adjusting the entangling phase, which may contribute to the experimental implementation of near-term noisy intermediate-scale quantum computation and algorithm with neutral-atom systems.

Precise reconstruction of unknown quantum states from measurement data, a process commonly called quantum state tomography, is a crucial component in the development of quantum information processing technologies. Many different tomography methods have been proposed over the years. Maximum-likelihood estimation is a prominent example, being the most popular method for a long period of time. Recently, more advanced neural-network methods have started to emerge. Here, we go back to basics and present a method for continuous-variable state reconstruction that is both conceptually and practically simple, based on convex optimization. Convex optimization has been used for process tomography and qubit-state tomography, but seems to have been overlooked for continuous-variable quantum-state tomography. We demonstrate high-fidelity reconstruction of an underlying state from data corrupted by thermal noise and imperfect detection, for both homodyne and heterodyne measurements. A major advantage over other methods is that convex optimization algorithms are guaranteed to converge to the optimal solution.

Hole spin qubits are frontrunner platforms for scalable quantum computers because of their large spin-orbit interaction that enables ultrafast all-electric qubit control at low power. The fastest spin qubits to date are defined in long quantum dots with two tight confinement directions, when the driving field is aligned to the smooth direction. However, in these systems the lifetime of the qubit is strongly limited by charge noise, a major issue in hole qubits. We propose here a different, scalable qubit design, compatible with planar CMOS technology, where the hole is confined in a curved germanium quantum well surrounded by silicon. This design takes full advantage of the strong spin-orbit interaction of holes, and at the same time suppresses charge noise in a wide range of configurations, enabling highly coherent, ultrafast qubit gates. While here we focus on a $\mathrm{Si}$/$\mathrm{Ge}$/$\mathrm{Si}$ curved quantum well, our design is also applicable to different semiconductors. These devices allow for ultrafast operations even in short quantum dots by a transversal electric field. This additional driving mechanism relaxes the demanding design constraints, and offers a way to reliably interface spin qubits in a single quantum dot to microwave photons. By considering state-of-the-art high-impedance resonators and realistic qubit designs, we estimate interaction strengths of a few hundreds of megahertz, largely exceeding the decay rate of spins and photons. Reaching such a strong coupling regime in hole spin qubits will be a significant step towards high-fidelity entangling operations between distant qubits, as well as fast single-shot readout, and could pave the way towards the implementation of a large-scale semiconducting quantum processor.

The presence of a bias field, encoding some information about a target state, can enhance the performance of quantum optimization methods. Here we investigate the effect of such a bias field on the outcome of quantum annealing sampling, with the example of the exact cover problem. The sampling is carried out on a D-Wave machine, and different bias configurations are benchmarked against the unbiased sampling procedure. It is found that the biased annealing algorithm works particularly well for larger problem sizes, where the Hamming distance between bias and target configuration becomes less important. This work motivates future research efforts for finding good bias configurations, either on the quantum machine itself or in a hybrid fashion via classical algorithms.

Nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation (NHQC) is implemented by fast evolution processes in a geometric way to withstand local noises. However, recent works of implementing NHQC are sensitive to the systematic noise and error. Here, we present a path-optimized NHQC (PONHQC) scheme based on the non-Abelian geometric phase, and find that a geometric gate can be constructed by different evolution paths, which have different responses to systematic noises. Due to the flexibility of the PONHQC scheme, we can choose an optimized path that can lead to excellent gate performance. Numerical simulation shows that our optimized scheme can greatly outperform the conventional NHQC scheme, in terms of both fidelity and robustness of the gates. In addition, we propose to implement our strategy on superconducting quantum circuits with decoherence-free subspace encoding with the experiment-friendly two-body exchange interaction. Therefore, we present a flexible NHQC scheme that is promising for the future robust quantum computation.

Extending quantum sensing to time-varying parameter estimation is a potential and challenging task in practical application. To achieve this goal, we propose an adaptive method to estimate an unknown time-varying parameter through light-intensity split detection and the insertion of reference phases in the weak measurement. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation are applied to illustrate the feasibility and practical applications of our method. The results demonstrate that the method has adjustable sensitivity and linear dynamic range, and is robust to nonideal measurement conditions. Moreover, we analyze the precision of our method and show that its precision limit can surpass the standard quantum limit and approach the Heisenberg scaling when using a squeezed light of optimal Gaussian state.

Fiber-based quantum communication networks are currently limited without quantum repeaters. Satellite-based quantum links have been proposed to extend the network domain. We develop a quantum communication system, suitable for realistic satellite-to-ground communication. With this system, we execute an entanglement-based quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol developed by Bennett, Brassard, and Mermin (BBM92), achieving quantum bit-error rates (QBERs) below 2% in all bases. More importantly, we demonstrate low-QBER execution of a higher-dimensional hyperentanglement-based QKD protocol, using photons simultaneously entangled in polarization and time bin, leading to significantly higher secure key rates, at the cost of increased technical complexity and system size. We show that our protocol is suitable for a space-to-ground link, after incorporating Doppler-shift compensation, and verify its security using a rigorous finite-key analysis. Additionally, we discuss system-engineering considerations relevant to those and other quantum communication protocols and their dependence on what photonic degrees of freedom are utilized.

Superconducting circuits are a leading platform for quantum computing. However, their coherence times are still limited and exhibit temporal fluctuations. Those phenomena are often attributed to the coupling between qubits and material defects that can be well described as an ensemble of two-level systems (TLSs). Among them, charge fluctuators inside amorphous oxide layers contribute to both low-frequency $1/f$ charge noise and high-frequency dielectric loss, causing fast qubit dephasing and relaxation. Moreover, spectral diffusion from mutual TLS interactions varies the noise amplitude over time, fluctuating the qubit lifetime. Here, we propose to mitigate those harmful effects by engineering the relevant TLS noise spectral densities. Specifically, our protocols smooth the high-frequency noise spectrum and suppress the low-frequency noise amplitude via depolarizing and dephasing the TLSs, respectively. As a result, we predict a drastic stabilization in qubit lifetime and an increase in qubit pure dephasing time. Our detailed analysis of feasible experimental implementations shows that the improvement is not compromised by spurious coupling from the applied noise to the qubit.

Hamiltonians of the superconducting qubits of transmon type involve nonzero $ZZ$ interaction terms due to their finite and small anharmonicities. These terms might lead to the unwanted accumulation of spurious phases during the execution of the two-qubit gates. Exact calculation of the $ZZ$ interaction rates requires the full diagonalization of the circuit Hamiltonians, which very quickly becomes computationally demanding as the number of the modes in the coupler circuit increases. Here we propose a direct analytical method for the accurate estimation of the $ZZ$ interaction rates between low-anharmonicity qubits in the dispersive limit of the multimode circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit QED). We observe very good agreement between the predictions of our method and the measurement data collected from the multiqubit devices.

Information reconciliation (IR), which corrects the errors in the sifted keys, directly determines the secure key rate and the link distance of quantum key distribution (QKD) systems. In this paper, we propose an appending information reconciliation (AIR) scheme based on polar codes, which achieves high efficiency and ultralow failure probability simultaneously, by gradually disclosing the bit values of the polarized channels with high error probability. The experimental results show that the efficiency of the proposed AIR scheme is closer to the Shannon limit, compared with the state-of-the-art implemented polar-code-based IR schemes, with the overall failure probability around ${10}^{-8}$, especially when performed with smaller block sizes. Moreover, the efficiency of the proposed AIR scheme is 1.046, when the block size is 1 Gb and the quantum bit error rate of 0.02. Therefore, the proposed AIR scheme can further eradicate the performance gap between theory and implementation for QKD systems.

Multispin interactions can be engineered with artificial quantum spins. However, it is challenging to verify such interactions experimentally. Here, we describe two methods to characterize the $n$-local coupling of $n$ spins. First, we analyze the variation of the transition energy of the static system as a function of local spin fields. Standard measurement techniques are employed to distinguish $n$-local interactions between up to five spins from lower-order contributions in the presence of noise and spurious fields and couplings. Second, we show a detection technique that relies on time-dependent driving of the coupling term. Generalizations to larger system sizes are analyzed for both static and dynamic detection methods and we find that the dynamic method is asymptotically optimal when increasing the system size. The proposed methods enable robust exploration of multispin interactions across a broad range of both coupling strengths and qubit modalities.

Quantum adiabatic transfer is widely used in quantum computation and quantum simulation. However, the transfer speed is limited by the quantum adiabatic approximation condition, which hinders its application in quantum systems with a short decoherence time. Here we demonstrate quantum adiabatic state transfers that jump along geodesics in one-qubit and two-qubit superconducting transmons. This approach possesses the advantages of speed, robustness, and high-fidelity compared with the usual adiabatic process. Our protocol provides feasible strategies for improving state manipulation and gate operation in superconducting quantum circuits.

Microwave technology plays a central role in current wireless communications, including mobile communication and local area networks. The microwave range shows relevant advantages with respect to other frequencies in open-air transmission, such as low absorption losses and low-energy consumption, and in addition, it is the natural working frequency in superconducting quantum technologies. Entanglement distribution between separate parties is at the core of secure quantum communications. Therefore, understanding its limitations in realistic open-air settings, especially in the rather unexplored microwave regime, is crucial for transforming microwave quantum communications into a mainstream technology. Here, we investigate the feasibility of an open-air entanglement distribution scheme with microwave two-mode squeezed states. First, we study the reach of direct entanglement transmission in open air, obtaining a maximum distance of approximately 500 m with parameters feasible for state-of-the-art experiments. Subsequently, we adapt entanglement distillation and entanglement swapping protocols to microwave technology in order to reduce the environment-induced entanglement degradation. The employed entanglement distillation helps to increase quantum correlations in the short-distance low-squeezing regime by up to $46\mathrm{\%}$, and the reach of entanglement increases by $14\mathrm{\%}$ with entanglement swapping. Importantly, we compute the fidelity of a continuous-variable quantum teleportation protocol using open-air-distributed entanglement as a resource. Finally, we adapt this machinery to explore the limitations of quantum communication between satellites, where the impact of thermal noise is substantially reduced and diffraction losses are dominant.

The development and performance of quantum technologies heavily relies on the properties of the quantum states, which often require careful optimization of the driving conditions of all underlying components. In quantum key distribution (QKD), optical injection locking (OIL) of pulsed lasers has recently been shown as a promising technique to realize high-speed quantum transmitters with efficient system design. However, due to the complex underlying laser dynamics, tuning such laser system is both a challenging and time-consuming task. Here, we experimentally demonstrate an OIL-based QKD transmitter that can be automatically tuned to its optimum operating state by employing a genetic algorithm. Starting with minimal knowledge of the laser operating parameters, the phase coherence and the quantum bit error rate of the system are optimized autonomously to a level matching the state of the art.

The efficient generation of entangled photons at telecom wavelength is essential for the success of many quantum communication protocols and the development of fiber-based quantum networks. Entangled light can be generated by solid-state quantum emitters with naturally low fine-structure splitting, such as highly symmetric $\mathrm{In}\mathrm{As}$ quantum dots (QDs) grown on (111)-oriented surfaces. The incorporation of these QDs into optical cavities is crucial to achieve sufficient signal intensities for applications but has so far shown major complications. In this work, we present droplet epitaxy of telecom-wavelength $\mathrm{In}\mathrm{As}$ QDs within an optical cavity on a vicinal ($2^{\circ }$ miscut) $\mathrm{Ga}\mathrm{As}$(111)$A$ substrate. We show a remarkable enhancement of the photon extraction efficiency compared to previous reports together with a reduction of the density that facilitates the isolation of single spectral lines. Moreover, we characterize the exciton-fine-structure splitting and employ numerical simulations under the framework of the empirical-pseudopotential and configuration-interaction methods to study the impact of the miscut on the optical properties of the QDs. We demonstrate that the presence of the miscut steps influences the polarization of the neutral excitons and introduces a preferential orientation in the ${\mathrm{C}}_{3\mathrm{v}}$ symmetry of the surface.