In communication complexity, a number of distant parties have the task of calculating a distributed function of their inputs, while minimizing the amount of communication between them. It is known that with quantum resources, such as entanglement and quantum channels, one can obtain significant reductions in the communication complexity of some tasks. In this work, we study the role of the quantum superposition of the direction of communication as a resource for communication complexity. We present a tripartite communication task for which such a superposition allows for an exponential saving in communication, compared to one-way quantum (or classical) communication; the advantage also holds when we allow for protocols with bounded error probability.

We use a reservoir engineering technique based on two-tone driving to generate and stabilize a quantum squeezed state of a micron-scale mechanical oscillator in a microwave optomechanical system. Using an independent backaction-evading measurement to directly quantify the squeezing, we observe $4.7\pm 0.9\mathrm{dB}$ of squeezing below the zero-point level surpassing the 3 dB limit of standard parametric squeezing techniques. Our measurements also reveal evidence for an additional mechanical parametric effect. The interplay between this effect and the optomechanical interaction enhances the amount of squeezing obtained in the experiment.

We establish the ultimate limits to the compression of sequences of identically prepared qubits. The limits are determined by Holevo’s information quantity and are attained through use of the optimal universal cloning machine, which finds here a novel application to quantum Shannon theory.

Pikovski et al. [Nat. Phys. 11, 668 (2015)] show that a composite particle prepared in a pure initial quantum state and propagated in a uniform gravitational field undergoes a decoherence process at a rate determined by the gravitational acceleration. By assuming Einstein’s equivalence principle to be valid, we analyze a physical realization of the $(1+1)\mathrm{D}$ thought experiment of Pikovski et al. to demonstrate that the dephasing between the different internal states arises not from gravity but rather from differences in their rest mass, and the mass dependence of the de Broglie wave’s dispersion relation. We provide an alternative view to the situation considered by Pikovski et al., where we propose that gravity plays a kinematic role by providing a relative velocity to the detector frame with respect to the particle; visibility can be easily recovered by giving the screen an appropriate uniform velocity. We then apply this insight to their thought experiment in $(1+1)\mathrm{D}$ to draw a direct correspondence, and obtain the same mathematical result for dephasing. We finally propose that dephasing due to gravity may in fact take place for certain modifications to the gravitational potential where the equivalence principle is violated.

The free-space transfer of high-fidelity optical signals between remote locations has many applications, including both classical and quantum communication, precision navigation, clock synchronization, etc. The physical processes that contribute to signal fading and loss need to be carefully analyzed in the theory of light propagation through the atmospheric turbulence. Here we derive the probability distribution for the atmospheric transmittance including beam wandering, beam shape deformation, and beam-broadening effects. Our model, referred to as the elliptic beam approximation, applies to weak, weak-to-moderate, and strong turbulence and hence to the most important regimes in atmospheric communication scenarios.

We use the class of commuting quantum computations known as IQP (instantaneous quantum polynomial time) to strengthen the conjecture that quantum computers are hard to simulate classically. We show that, if either of two plausible average-case hardness conjectures holds, then IQP computations are hard to simulate classically up to constant additive error. One conjecture relates to the hardness of estimating the complex-temperature partition function for random instances of the Ising model; the other concerns approximating the number of zeroes of random low-degree polynomials. We observe that both conjectures can be shown to be valid in the setting of worst-case complexity. We arrive at these conjectures by deriving spin-based generalizations of the boson sampling problem that avoid the so-called permanent anticoncentration conjecture.

A fundamental and open question is whether cross-Kerr nonlinearities can be used to construct a controlled-phase (cphase) gate. Here we propose a gate constructed from a discrete set of atom-mediated cross-Kerr interaction sites with counterpropagating photons. We show that the average gate fidelity $F$ between a cphase and our proposed gate increases as the number of interaction sites increases and the spectral width of the photon decreases; e.g., with 12 sites we find $F>99\%$.

We show that a thermally isolated system driven across a quantum phase transition by a noisy control field exhibits anti-Kibble-Zurek behavior, whereby slower driving results in higher excitations. We characterize the density of excitations as a function of the ramping rate and the noise strength. The optimal driving time to minimize excitations is shown to scale as a universal power law of the noise strength. Our findings reveal the limitations of adiabatic protocols such as quantum annealing and demonstrate the universality of the optimal ramping rate.

Quantum discord expresses a fundamental nonclassicality of correlations that is more general than entanglement, but that, in its standard definition, is not easily evaluated. We derive a hierarchy of computationally efficient lower bounds to the standard quantum discord. Every nontrivial element of the hierarchy constitutes by itself a valid discordlike measure, based on a fundamental feature of quantum correlations: their lack of shareability. Our approach emphasizes how the difference between entanglement and discord depends on whether shareability is intended as a static property or as a dynamical process.

We study the correlations between the maxima $m$ and $M$ of a Brownian motion (BM) on the time intervals $[0,t_1]$ and $[0,t_2]$, with $t_2>t_1$. We determine the exact forms of the distribution functions $P(m,M)$ and $P(G=M-m)$, and calculate the moments $\mathbb{E}\{{(M-m)}^k\}$ and the cross-moments $\mathbb{E}\{m^l{M}^k\}$ with arbitrary integers $l$ and $k$. We show that correlations between $m$ and $M$ decay as $\sqrt{t_1/t_2}$ when $t_2/t_1\to \infty$, revealing strong memory effects in the statistics of the BM maxima. We also compute the Pearson correlation coefficient $\rho (m,M)$ and the power spectrum of $M_t$, and we discuss a possibility of extracting the ensemble-averaged diffusion coefficient in single-trajectory experiments using a single realization of the maximum process.

We demonstrate the violation of an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering inequality developed for single-photon path entanglement with displacement-based detection. We use a high-rate source of heralded single-photon path-entangled states, combined with high-efficiency superconducting-based detectors, in a scheme that is free of any postselection and thus immune to the detection loophole. This result conclusively demonstrates single-photon entanglement in a one-sided device-independent scenario, and opens the way towards implementations of device-independent quantum technologies within the paradigm of path entanglement.

Self-testing refers to the phenomenon that certain extremal quantum correlations (almost) uniquely identify the quantum system under consideration. For instance, observing the maximal violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality certifies that the two parties share a singlet. While self-testing results are known for several classes of states, in many cases they are only applicable if the observed statistics are almost perfect, which makes them unsuitable for practical applications. Practically relevant self-testing bounds are much less common and moreover they all result from a single numerical method (with one exception which we discuss in detail). In this work we present a new technique for proving analytic self-testing bounds of practically relevant robustness. We obtain improved bounds for the case of self-testing the singlet using the CHSH inequality (in particular we show that nontrivial fidelity with the singlet can be achieved as long as the violation exceeds ${\beta }^{*}=(16+14\sqrt{2})/17\approx 2.11$). In the case of self-testing the tripartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state using the Mermin inequality, we derive a bound which not only improves on previously known results but turns out to be tight. We discuss other scenarios to which our technique can be immediately applied.

We consider the early time regime of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation in $1+1$ dimensions in curved (or droplet) geometry. We show that for short time $t$, the probability distribution $P(H,t)$ of the height $H$ at a given point $x$ takes the scaling form $P(H,t)\sim \exp [-{\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\text{drop}}(H)/\sqrt{t}]$ where the rate function ${\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\text{drop}}(H)$ is computed exactly for all $H$. While it is Gaussian in the center, i.e., for small $H$, the probability distribution function has highly asymmetric non-Gaussian tails that we characterize in detail. This function ${\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\text{drop}}(H)$ is surprisingly reminiscent of the large deviation function describing the stationary fluctuations of finite-size models belonging to the KPZ universality class. Thanks to a recently discovered connection between the KPZ equation and free fermions, our results have interesting implications for the fluctuations of the rightmost fermion in a harmonic trap at high temperature and the full counting statistics at the edge.

The accuracy in determining the quantum state of a system depends on the type of measurement performed. Homodyne and heterodyne detection are the two main schemes in continuous-variable quantum information. The former leads to a direct reconstruction of the Wigner function of the state, whereas the latter samples its Husimi $Q$ function. We experimentally demonstrate that heterodyne detection outperforms homodyne detection for almost all Gaussian states, the details of which depend on the squeezing strength and thermal noise.

We show how to construct a large class of quantum error-correcting codes, known as Calderbank-Steane-Shor codes, from highly entangled cluster states. This becomes a primitive in a protocol that foliates a series of such cluster states into a much larger cluster state, implementing foliated quantum error correction. We exemplify this construction with several familiar quantum error-correction codes and propose a generic method for decoding foliated codes. We numerically evaluate the error-correction performance of a family of finite-rate Calderbank-Steane-Shor codes known as turbo codes, finding that they perform well over moderate depth foliations. Foliated codes have applications for quantum repeaters and fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computation.

Energy flows in biomolecular motors and machines are vital to their function. Yet experimental observations are often limited to a small subset of variables that participate in energy transport and dissipation. Here we show, through a solvable Langevin model, that the seemingly hidden entropy production is measurable through the violation spectrum of the fluctuation-response relation of a slow observable. For general Markov systems with time scale separation, we prove that the violation spectrum exhibits a characteristic plateau in the intermediate frequency region. Despite its vanishing height, the plateau can account for energy dissipation over a broad time scale. Our findings suggest a general possibility to probe hidden entropy production in nanosystems without direct observation of fast variables.

Using shortcuts to adiabaticity, we solve the time-dependent Schrödinger equation that is reduced to a classical nonlinear integrable equation. For a given time-dependent Hamiltonian, the counterdiabatic term is introduced to prevent nonadiabatic transitions. Using the fact that the equation for the dynamical invariant is equivalent to the Lax equation in nonlinear integrable systems, we obtain the counterdiabatic term exactly. The counterdiabatic term is available when the corresponding Lax pair exists and the solvable systems are classified in a unified and systematic way. Multisoliton potentials obtained from the Korteweg–de Vries equation and isotropic $XY$ spin chains from the Toda equations are studied in detail.

We propose a protocol for creating a fully entangled Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-type state of neutral atoms in spatially separated optical atomic clocks. In our scheme, local operations make use of the strong dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg excitations, which give rise to fast and reliable quantum operations involving all atoms in the ensemble. The necessary entanglement between distant ensembles is mediated by single-photon quantum channels and collectively enhanced light-matter couplings. These techniques can be used to create the recently proposed quantum clock network based on neutral atom optical clocks. We specifically analyze a possible realization of this scheme using neutral Yb ensembles.