Defeating Eavesdropping with Quantum Illumination

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Defeating Eavesdropping with Quantum Illumination Defeating Eavesdropping with Quantum Illumination by Wenbang Xu Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of OF TECHOLCYV Electrical Engineer MA R 20 at the 2 MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ES.RA.. ARCHIVES February 2012 @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2012. All rights reserved. A uthor ............................... Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science January 17, 2012 (2 hA ,11 IQ Certified by.... Jeffrey H. Shapiro Julius A. Stratton Professor of Electrical Engineering Thesis Supervisor Accepted by ....... Ieslie ATholodziejski Chair, Department Committee on Graduate Theses Defeating Eavesdropping with Quantum Illumination by Wenbang Xu Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science on January 15, 2012, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Electrical Engineer Abstract Quantum illumination is a paradigm for using entanglement to gain a performance advantage-in comparison with classical-state systems of the same optical power- over lossy, noisy channels that destroy entanglement. Previous work has shown how it can be used to defeat passive eavesdropping on a two-way Alice-to-Bob-to-Alice communication protocol, in which the eavesdropper, Eve, merely listens to Alice and Bob's transmissions. This thesis extends that work in several ways. First, it derives a lower bound on information advantage that Alice enjoys over Eve in the passive eavesdropping scenario. Next, it explores the performance of alternative practical receivers for Alice, as well as various high-order modulation formats for the passive eavesdropping case. Finally, this thesis extends previous analysis to consider how Alice and Bob can minimize their vulnerability to Eve's doing active eavesdropping, i.e., when she injects her own light into the channel. Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey H. Shapiro Title: Julius A. Stratton Professor of Electrical Engineering 4 Acknowledgments I truly appreciate my research advisor, Prof. Jeffrey H. Shapiro, for his patience during my research in the quantum communication group. Professor Shapiro always promotes students to explore new and interesting topics. At the same time, he helps them in great detail due to his rigorous background and abundant experience in physics and information theory. His guidance will benefit me in my professional career forever. I would like to thank Dr. Franco N.C. Wong for setting up my office, answering my questions, and teaching me about experiments. I would especially like to thank Tian Zhong and Dheera Venkatraman for answering some fundamental questions about quantum physics when I joined this group. Discussing the phase-lock experiment platform with Tian was an extremely interesting experience for me. I also thank Prof. Dennis Freeman for giving me the opportunity to teach 6.003, Signals and Systems. This teaching experience has taught me how to actively guide students. I am grateful for having a great family. My family members-including my wife, Xiuping, Zhang, my brother, Jinbang, Xu and my sisters-are always behind me. Whatever I do, they always support me. When I decided to quit an excellent job and study at MIT, all of them encouraged me to chase my dream and enjoy my life at MIT. This research was supported by an Office of Naval Research Basic Research Chal- lenge Grant. I would like to thank them for that support. 6 Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Classical Communication Theory .... .............. .. 1.2 Quantum Communication ........... ............ 1.3 Thesis Structure ....................... ....... 2 Background Material 21 2.1 Electromagnetic Field Modes ...... ...... 22 2.2 Operators and States ........... ...... 24 2.3 Photodetection Statistics ......... .. .... 27 2.4 Optical Amplifiers .. .... .. .... 29 2.5 Classical versus Nonclassical States ... ...... 29 2.6 Spontaneous Parametric Downconversion .. .... 31 2.7 Minimum Error-Probability Detection. ...... 32 3 Passive Eavesdropping 3.1 Passive Attack Communication Protocol ...... ....... ... 3.2 Information Disparity between Alice and Eve .......... .... 3.3 Alternative Receivers ......... ............ ...... 3.4 M-ary Modulation Technique .... ............ ...... 4 Active Eavesdropping 4.1 Active Case I: Eve Injects Light without Modifying Channel Transmit- tivities .... ....... ....... ....... ........ .. 4.2 Active Case II: Eve Modifies the Alice-to-Bob and Bob-to-Alice Channels 64 4.3 Active case III: Eve Injects Light Undetectable by Power Monitoring 67 5 Conclusions and Future Work 73 5.1 Conclusions ................................ 73 5.2 Future W ork ................................ 74 List of Figures 1-1 Schematic of basic communication system. ... .... ..... ... 12 1-2 Schematic of quantum-illumination two-way communication protocol- showing modal annihilation operators-with passive-eavesdropper Eve receiving all the light that does not reach its intended destination. The annihilation operator notation for the optical modes will be explained in Chapter 3. .. ...... ...... ..... ...... ...... 18 2-1 Schematic of idealized direct detection, q is the electron charge. .. 27 2-2 Schematic of idealized homodyne detection. ..... ...... ... 27 2-3 Schematic of idealized heterodyne detection. ..... ...... 28 3-1 Schematic of quantum-illumination two-way communication protocol- showing modal annihilation operators-with passive-eavesdropper Eve receiving all the light that does not reach its intended destination. 36 3-2 Error-probability bounds for Ns = 0.004, r, = 0.1, and GB = NB = 10'. Solid curves: Chernoff upper bounds for Alice and Eve's optimum quantum receivers. Dashed curve: error-probability lower bound for Eve's optimum quantum receiver. Dot-dashed curve: Bhattacharyya upper bound for Alice's OPA receiver. ..... ...... ...... 41 3-3 Error-probability performance of Alice's OPA receiver for Ns = 0.004, K = 0.1, and GB = NB = 104 . Solid curve: Gaussian approximation for Pr(e). Dashed curve: Bhattacharyya upper bound for Pr(e). Dot- dashed curve: Bhattacharyya lower bound for Pr(e). .... ..... 43 3-4 Alice's Shannon information and upper bound on Eve's Holevo infor- mation per channel use for Ns = 0.004, . = 0.1, and GB = NB = 104. Solid curve: Lower bound between Alice's Shannon information and Eve's Holevo information. Dashed curve: Shannon information for Alice's OPA receiver. Dot-dashed curve: upper bound on Holevo in- formation for Eve's optimum quantum receiver. ........... 45 3-5 Error Probability for Alice's OPA receiver for Ns = 0.004, r = 0.1, and GB = NB = 10 4 . Dashed curve: single-output OPA receiver. Solid curve: dual-output OPA receiver. ... ............ ..... 49 3-6 Schematic of Alice's Beam Splitter Receiver. ...... ........ 50 3-7 Error probabilities for Alice's several practical receivers assuming Ns = 0.004, , = 0.1, and GB = NB = 10 4 . Dotted curve: heterodyne re- ceiver for aR and ar. Solid curve: single-output OPA receiver. Dashed and dot dashed curves: upper and lower bounds for single-output beam splitter receiver. .... ............ ........... ... 52 3-8 Decision regions for QPSK quantum illumination with heterodyne de- tection ... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... .. 56 3-9 QPSK signal constellation ................... ..... 58 4-1 Alice and Eve's OPA Receiver Performance . ...... ....... 70 4-2 Schematic of realistic quantum-illumination two-way communication protocol with active-eavesdropper Eve using an SPDC source and an OPA receiver. .. ........ ........ ....... ...... 71 4-3 Error probability versus bit rate for Alice and Eve's OPA receivers. Lower bound on the error probability of Eve's optimum quantum re- ceiver for passive eavesdropping is also included. ........... 72 Chapter 1 Introduction Communication is the process by which information is transmitted from one location to another. It is an essential need and a fundamental practice of the world. For ex- ample, to discuss a business idea with your friend, you might talk to him face to face, which is a process of interpersonal communication. However, such interpersonal com- munications is not possible when a long distance separates the communicating parties. To solve the problem of long-distance communication, human beings have invented many communication systems to conquer distance. In ancient times, runners car- ried messages from one place to another. People lit giant fires on mountain summits or beacon towers, or rang bells to communicate impending attacks. Long-distance communication became much easier, however, with the advent of electromagnetic techniques, such as Morse's development of the telegraph early in the 19th century. Later that century, Maxwell's theory of electromagnetic waves and Hertz's experi- mental verification relieved the need for wires to carry telegraph signals, leading to Popov and Marconi's invention of the radio-telegraph technique in 1883. At roughly the same time, electromagnetic communication moved beyond the telegraph and into voice communication when Bell patented the telephone in 1876. The preceding technological advances dramatically improved long-distance com- munications, but they did not address the fundamental limits on information trans- mission. Then, in 1948, Claude Shannon published his historic paper "A Mathemati- cal Theory of Communication" [1], establishing the theoretical foundation for classical communication systems. Since then, technology and theory have advanced together, allowing ubiquitous communications-in
Recommended publications
  • Programm 5 Layout 1
    SPONSORS Pauli Center for Theoretical Studies QAP European Project PAULI CENTER for Theoretical Studies Sandia National Laboratories The Swiss National Science Foundation Institute for Quantum Computing ETH Zurich (Computer Science and Physics Department) id Quantique Quantum Science and Technology (ETH) CQT Singapore VENUE W-LAN ETH Zürich, Rämistrasse 101, CH-8092 Zürich 1. Check available WLAN’s Main building / Hauptgebäude 2. Connect to WLAN „public“ Conference Helpline 0041 (0)79 770 84 29 3. Open browser 4.Login at welcome page with Login: qip2010 Password: 2010qipconf Main entrance FLOOR E Registration/Information desk Poster session Computer room E 26.3 Main entrance Registration desk Information Computer room E 26.3 Poster session 1 FLOOR E. 0 Poster session FLOOR F Auditorium F 5: Tutorial (January 15 – 17, 2010) Auditorium maximum F 30: Scientific programme (January 18 – 22, 2010) F 33.1: Congress-Office, F 33.2: Cloak room Foyer and “Uhrenhalle”: Coffee breaks, Poster session Auditorium Maximum F 30 Scientific programmme January 18 – 22, 2010 F 33.1: Congress-Office Foyer: F 33.2 Cloak room Coffee breaks Poster session Auditorium F 5 Tutorial January 15 – 17, 2010 Uhrenhalle: Coffee breaks 2 RUMP SESSION StuZ, ETH Zürich, Universitätsstrasse 6, CH-8092 Zürich CAB Building room No. CAB F21 to CAB F27 18.30 – 23.00 h (January 20, 2010) Entry ETH CAB Building ETH Main Building 3 CONFERENCE DINNER Thursday, January 21, 2010, 19.00h Restaurant Lake Side Bellerivestrasse 170 CH-8008 Zürich Phone: +41 (0) 44 385 86 00 Directions from ETH main building • (Tram No. 9 to “Bellevue” (direction “Triemli”).
    [Show full text]
  • Quantum Communication, Sensing and Measurement in Space
    Quantum Communication, Sensing and Measurement in Space Study start date: June 25, 2012 Study end date: December 14, 2012 Final Report submission date: December 14, 2012 Team Leads: Baris I. Erkmen Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology [email protected] Jeffrey H. Shapiro Massachusetts Institute of Technology [email protected] Keith Schwab California Institute of Technology [email protected] © 2012. All rights reserved. 2 Core Participants of Study Program and Co-authors Name Affiliation E-mail 1 Adhikari, Rana California Institute of [email protected] Technology 2 Aspelmeyer, University of Vienna [email protected] Markus 3 Baumgartel, University of Southern [email protected] Lukas California 4 Birnbaum, Kevin Jet Propulsion [email protected] Laboratory 5 Boroson, Don MIT Lincoln Laboratory [email protected] 6 Caves, Carlton University of New [email protected] Mexico 7 Chen, Yanbei California Institute of [email protected] Technology 8 Combes, Joshua University of New [email protected] Mexico 9 Dixon, Ben Massachusetts [email protected] Institute of Technology 10 Dolinar, Sam Jet Propulsion [email protected] Laboratory 11 Durkin, Gabriel NASA Ames Research [email protected] Center 12 Erkmen, Baris Jet Propulsion [email protected] Laboratory 13 Giovannetti, Scuola Normale [email protected] Vittorio Superiore 14 Guha, Saikat Raytheon BBN [email protected] Technologies 15 Hindi, Munther NASA SCaN/ASRC [email protected] 16 Hughes, Richard Los Alamos
    [Show full text]
  • Receiver Operating Characteristics for a Prototype Quantum Two-Mode Squeezing Radar David Luong, C
    IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AEROSPACE AND ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS 1 Receiver Operating Characteristics for a Prototype Quantum Two-Mode Squeezing Radar David Luong, C. W. Sandbo Chang, A. M. Vadiraj, Anthony Damini, Senior Member, IEEE, C. M. Wilson, and Bhashyam Balaji, Senior Member, IEEE Abstract—We have built and evaluated a prototype quantum shows improved parameter estimation at high SNR compared radar, which we call a quantum two-mode squeezing radar to conventional radars, but perform worse at low SNR. The lat- (QTMS radar), in the laboratory. It operates solely at microwave ter is one of the most promising approaches because quantum frequencies; there is no downconversion from optical frequencies. Because the signal generation process relies on quantum mechan- information theory suggests that such a radar would outper- ical principles, the system is considered to contain a quantum- form an “optimum” classical radar in the low-SNR regime. enhanced radar transmitter. This transmitter generates a pair of Quantum illumination makes use of a phenomenon called entangled microwave signals and transmits one of them through entanglement, which is in effect a strong type of correlation, free space, where the signal is measured using a simple and to distinguish between signal and noise. The standard quantum rudimentary receiver. At the heart of the transmitter is a device called a Josephson illumination protocol can be summarized as follows: generate parametric amplifier (JPA), which generates a pair of entangled two entangled pulses of light, send one of them toward a target, signals called two-mode squeezed vacuum (TMSV) at 6.1445 and perform a simultaneous measurement on the echo and the GHz and 7.5376 GHz.
    [Show full text]
  • Secure Communication Via Quantum Illumination
    Secure communication via quantum illumination The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Shapiro, Jeffrey H., Zheshen Zhang, and Franco N. C. Wong. “Secure Communication via Quantum Illumination.” Quantum Information Processing 13.10 (2014): 2171–2193. As Published http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11128-013-0662-1 Publisher Springer US Version Author's final manuscript Citable link http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/103793 Terms of Use Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike Detailed Terms http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Quantum Information Processing manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Secure Communication via Quantum Illumination Jeffrey H. Shapiro · Zheshen Zhang · Franco N. C. Wong Received: date / Accepted: date Abstract In the quantum illumination (QI) protocol for secure communication, Alice prepares entangled signal and idler beams via spontaneous parametric down- conversion. She sends the signal beam to Bob, while retaining the idler. Bob im- poses message modulation on the beam he receives from Alice, amplifies it, and sends it back to her. Alice then decodes Bob’s information by making a joint quan- tum measurement on the light she has retained and the light she has received from him. The basic performance analysis for this protocol—which demonstrates its im- munity to passive eavesdropping, in which Eve can only listen to Alice and Bob’s transmissions—is reviewed, along with the results of its first proof-of-principle ex- periment. Further analysis is then presented, showing that secure data rates in excess of 1 Gbps may be possible over 20-km-long fiber links with technology that is available or under development.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report for 2016
    annual report 2016 People Governing Board 10 Introduction Scientific Advisory Board 11 Group Listings 12–27 Letter from the Director 4–5 Other Staff 28–29 CQT at a glance 6–7 Alumni 30–31 Introducing our new Chairman 32–33 Projects in focus Are quantum machines better than 46–49 classical ones? News When QCMC came to town 50–53 Security in the age of quantum 54–56 CONTENTS News in brief 36–39 computing Science updates 40–43 What do the data tell us? 57–59 University arts festival takes 60–61 quantum flavour Listings Industry collaboration Education Papers 76–81 From research to the real world 64–65 Earn a PhD at CQT 70–71 Events 82–83 Future-ready cybersecurity 66–67 What comes next? 72–73 Outreach 84–85 On the cover for Singtel On the front, CQT student Nguyen Chi Huan peers into an Visitors 86–87 apparatus that can isolate and trap a single atom between A quantum random number 67 Money Matters 88–89 two mirrors. The goal is to make single photons interact generator with the atom. Such atom-photon interfaces could be a Supporters 90 building block for quantum computers, with the trapped atoms doing logic on information-carrying photons. The back photo shows a CQT lab in perspective. drafting policies for our new centre. I shall LETTER FROM not tell you any anecdotes about them, for they are very serious people today, but they stayed in touch, showing a genuine interest THE DIRECTOR in our work. The two of them redefined for me the meaning of civil service.
    [Show full text]
  • Complexity Theory and Its Applications in Linear Quantum
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2016 Complexity Theory and its Applications in Linear Quantum Optics Jonathan Olson Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons Recommended Citation Olson, Jonathan, "Complexity Theory and its Applications in Linear Quantum Optics" (2016). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2302. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2302 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. COMPLEXITY THEORY AND ITS APPLICATIONS IN LINEAR QUANTUM OPTICS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Physics and Astronomy by Jonathan P. Olson M.S., University of Idaho, 2012 August 2016 Acknowledgments My advisor, Jonathan Dowling, is apt to say, \those who take my take my advice do well, and those who don't do less well." I always took his advice (sometimes even against my own judgement) and I find myself doing well. He talked me out of a high-paying, boring career, and for that I owe him a debt I will never be able to adequately repay. My mentor, Mark Wilde, inspired me to work hard without saying a word about what I \should" be doing, and instead leading by example.
    [Show full text]
  • Quantum Computation Beyond the Unitary Circuit Model
    Quantum Computation Beyond the Unitary Circuit Model Na¨ıri Usher A thesis submitted to University College London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Physics and Astronomy University College London September 2016 I, Na¨ıri Usher, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Signed: Date: 1 Publications The majority of the work presented in this thesis contains materials from the following publications: N. Usher, and D.E. Browne, Noise in Measurement-Based Quantum Computing, arXiv:1704.07298. N. Usher, M.J. Hoban, and D.E. Browne, Constructing Local Hamiltonians from Non-unitary Quan- tum Computation, arXiv:1703:08118. M.J. Hoban, J.J. Wallman, H. Anwar, N. Usher, R. Raussendorf, and D.E. Browne, Measurement- Based Classical Computation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 140505 (2014). 2 Acknowledgements I am thankful for my time at UCL which has brought to me more than words can convey. First and foremost, I am thankful to Dan for having supported and guided me throughout my PhD with endless patience and kindness. I am truly grateful for his encouragement to explore and investigate questions I found interesting as well as for everything I had the chance to learn from him. I wish to thank my examiners Shashank and Sougato for having taken the time to read this thesis as well as for offering valuable feedback for its improvement. I was fortunate to collaborate with Matty, with whom I shared many both interesting and entertaining discussions, and I am thankful for his invaluable insights and encouragement.
    [Show full text]
  • Quantum Techniques in Machine Learning Dipartimento Di
    Quantum Techniques in Machine Learning Dipartimento di Informatica Universit`adi Verona, Italy November 6{8, 2017 Contents Abstracts 9 Marco Loog | Surrogate Losses in Classical Machine Learning (Invited Talk) . 11 Minh Ha Quang | Covariance matrices and covariance operators in machine learning and pattern recognition: A geometrical framework (Invited Talk) . 12 Jonathan Romero, Jonathan Olson, Alan Aspuru-Guzik | Quantum au- toencoders for efficient compression of quantum data . 13 Iris Agresti, Niko Viggianiello, Fulvio Flamini, Nicol`oSpagnolo, Andrea Crespi, Roberto Osellame, Nathan Wiebe, and Fabio Sciarrino | Pattern recognition techniques for Boson Sampling Validation . 15 J. Wang, S. Paesani, R. Santagati, S. Knauer, A. A. Gentile, N. Wiebe, M. Petruzzella, A. Laing, J. G. Rarity, J. L. O'Brien, and M. G. Thompson | Quantum Hamiltonian learning using Bayesian inference on a quantum photonic simulator . 18 Luca Innocenti, Leonardo Banchi, Alessandro Ferraro, Sougato Bose and Mauro Paternostro | Supervised learning of time independent Hamiltonians for gate design . 20 Davide Venturelli | Challenges to Practical End-to-end Implementation of Quan- tum Optimization Approaches for Combinatorial problems (Invited Talk) . 22 K. Imafuku, M. Hioki, T. Katashita, S. Kawabata, H. Koike, M. Maezawa, T. Nakagawa, Y. Oiwa, and T. Sekigawa | Annealing Computation with Adaptor Mechanism and its Application to Property-Verification of Neural Network Systems . 23 Simon E. Nigg, Niels Niels L¨orch, Rakesh P. Tiwari | Robust quantum optimizer with full connectivity . 25 William Cruz-Santos, Salvador E. Venegas-Andraca and Marco Lanzagorta | Adiabatic quantum optimization applied to the stereo matching problem . 26 Alejandro Perdomo Ortiz | Opportunities and Challenges for Quantum-Assisted Machine Learning in Near-Term Quantum Computers .
    [Show full text]
  • Defeating Passive Eavesdropping with Quantum Illumination
    Defeating passive eavesdropping with quantum illumination The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Shapiro, Jeffrey H. “Defeating passive eavesdropping with quantum illumination.” Physical Review A 80.2 (2009): 022320. (C) 2010 The American Physical Society. As Published http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.80.022320 Publisher American Physical Society Version Final published version Citable link http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/51048 Terms of Use Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. PHYSICAL REVIEW A 80, 022320 ͑2009͒ Defeating passive eavesdropping with quantum illumination Jeffrey H. Shapiro* Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA ͑Received 18 March 2009; published 17 August 2009͒ A two-way protocol for defeating passive eavesdropping is proposed. For each information bit, Alice sends Bob T sec of signal-beam output from a spontaneous parametric down-converter over a pure-loss channel while retaining the idler beam with which it is maximally entangled. Bob imposes a single information bit on the light he receives from Alice via binary phase-shift keying. He then amplifies the modulated beam and sends the resulting light back to Alice over the same pure-loss channel. Even though the loss and amplifier noise destroy any entanglement between the light that Alice receives from Bob and the idler she has retained, she can decode Bob’s bit with an error probability that can be orders of magnitude lower than what is achieved by a passive eavesdropper who receives all the photons that are lost en route from Alice to Bob and from Bob to Alice.
    [Show full text]
  • Arxiv:1811.01969V1 [Quant-Ph] 5 Nov 2018 Npooi Unu Esn.W Ee H Edrt De- to Reader Al
    Advances in Photonic Quantum Sensing Stefano Pirandola,1, 2 Bhaskar Roy Bardhan,3 Tobias Gehring,4 Christian Weedbrook,5 and Seth Lloyd2, 6 1Computer Science and York Centre for Quantum Technologies, University of York, York YO10 5GH, UK 2Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge MA 02139, USA 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, State University of New York at Geneseo, Geneseo NY 14454, USA 4Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark, Fysikvej, 2800 Kongens, Lyngby, Denmark 5Xanadu, 372 Richmond St W, Toronto, M5V 2L7, Canada 6Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Cambridge MA 02139, USA Quantum sensing has become a mature and broad field. It is generally related with the idea of using quantum resources to boost the performance of a number of practical tasks, including the radar-like detection of faint objects, the readout of information from optical memories or fragile physical systems, and the optical resolution of extremely close point-like sources. Here we first focus on the basic tools behind quantum sensing, discussing the most recent and general formulations for the problems of quantum parameter estimation and hypothesis testing. With this basic background in our hands, we then review emerging applications of quantum sensing in the photonic regime both from a theoretical and experimental point of view. Besides the state-of-the-art, we also discuss open problems and potential next steps. Quantum technologies are today developing at un- cuss both theoretically and experimentally. precedented pace. As a matter of fact, the technologi- Quantum hypothesis testing is at the very basis of cal applications of the field of quantum information1–5 quantum reading35–49, where the information stored in are many and promising.
    [Show full text]
  • Quantum State Discrimination with Bosonic Channels and Gaussian States by Si Hui Tan
    Quantum State Discrimination with Bosonic ARCHNE~S Channels and Gaussian States ASSAQHUSETTS INSTITUTE by Si Hui Tan LBRAR S Submitted to the Department of Physics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctoral of Philosophy in Physics at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2010 @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2010. All rights reserved. A uthor ....... ......................................... Department of Physics September 3, 2010 Certified by.... .. ........... .............. .1 Seth Lloyd 2so I/Mechanical Engineering Thesis Supervisor Certified by.... .. .... ............ ........ Edward Farhi Cecil a d Ida Green Professor of Physics Thesis Supervisor A ccepted by...... .......................... Krishna Rajagopal Associate Head for Education, Physics 2 Quantum State Discrimination with Bosonic Channels and Gaussian States by Si Hui Tan Submitted to the Department of Physics on September 10, 2010, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctoral of Philosophy in Physics Abstract Discriminating between quantum states is an indispensable part of quantum infor- mation theory. This thesis investigates state discrimination of continuous quantum variables, focusing on bosonic communication channels and Gaussian states. The specific state discrimination problems studied are (a) quantum illumination and (b) optimal measurements for decoding bosonic channels. Quantum illumination is a technique for detection and imaging which uses entanglement between a probe and an ancilla to enhance sensitivity. I shall show how entanglement can help with the discrimination between two noisy and lossy bosonic channels, one in which a target re- flects back a small part of the probe light, and the other in which all probe light is lost. This enhancement is obtained even though the channels are entanglement-breaking.
    [Show full text]
  • The Quantum Frontier
    The Quantum Frontier Joseph F. Fitzsimons Eleanor G. Rieffel Centre for Quantum Technologies NASA Ames Research Center National University of Singapore Valerio Scarani Centre for Quantum Technologies National University of Singapore June 18, 2013 1 Summary The success of the abstract model of computation, in terms of bits, logical operations, programming language constructs, and the like, makes it easy to forget that computation is a physical process. Our cherished notions of computation and information are grounded in classical mechanics, but the physics underlying our world is quantum. In the early 80s researchers began to ask how computation would change if we adopted a quantum mechanical, instead of a classical mechanical, view of computation. Slowly, a new picture of computation arose, one that gave rise to a variety of faster algorithms, novel cryptographic mechanisms, and alternative methods of communication. Small quantum information processing devices have been built, and efforts are underway to build larger ones. Even apart from the existence of these devices, the quantum view on information processing has provided significant insight into the nature of computation and information, and a deeper understanding of the physics of our universe and its connections with computation. We start by describing aspects of quantum mechanics that are at the heart of a quantum view of infor- mation processing. We give our own idiosyncratic view of a number of these topics in the hopes of correcting common misconceptions and highlighting aspects that are often overlooked. A number of the phenomena described were initially viewed as oddities of quantum mechanics, whose meaning was best left to philoso- phers, topics that respectable physicists would avoid or, at best, talk about only over a late night beer.
    [Show full text]