Quantum optical communication in the presence of strong attenuation noise

Francesco Anna Mele, Ludovico Lami, and Vittorio Giovannetti
Phys. Rev. A 106, 042437 – Published 24 October 2022

Abstract

Is quantum communication possible over an optical fiber with transmissivity λ1/2? The answer is well known to be negative if the environment with which the incoming signal interacts is initialized in a thermal state. However, Lami et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 110504 (2020)] found the quantum capacity to be always bounded away from zero for all λ>0, a phenomenon dubbed “die-hard quantum communication” (D-HQCOM), provided that the initial environment state can be chosen appropriately, depending on λ. Here we show an even stronger version of D-HQCOM in the context of entanglement-assisted classical communication: entanglement assistance and control of the environment enable communication with performance at least equal to that of the ideal case of absence of noise, even if λ>0 is arbitrarily small. These two phenomena of D-HQCOM have technological potential provided that we are able to control the environment. How can we achieve this? Our second main result answers this question. Here we provide a fully consistent protocol to activate the phenomena of D-HQCOM without directly accessing the environment state. This is done by sending over the channel “trigger signals,” i.e., signals which do not encode information, prior to the actual communication, with the goal of modifying the environment in an advantageous way. This is possible due to the memory effects which arise when the sender feeds signals separated by a sufficiently short temporal interval. Our results may offer a concrete scheme to communicate across arbitrarily long optical fibers, without using quantum repeaters. As a by-product of our analysis, we derive a simple Kraus representation of the thermal attenuator exploiting the associated Lindblad master equation.

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  • Received 4 May 2022
  • Accepted 20 September 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.106.042437

©2022 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Quantum Information, Science & Technology

Authors & Affiliations

Francesco Anna Mele1,*, Ludovico Lami2,†, and Vittorio Giovannetti1,‡

  • 1NEST, Scuola Normale Superiore and Istituto Nanoscienze, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, IT-56126 Pisa, Italy
  • 2Institut für Theoretische Physik und IQST, Universität Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, D-89069 Ulm, Germany

  • *francesco.mele@sns.it
  • ludovico.lami@gmail.com
  • vittorio.giovannetti@sns.it

See Also

Restoring Quantum Communication Efficiency over High Loss Optical Fibers

Francesco Anna Mele, Ludovico Lami, and Vittorio Giovannetti
Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 180501 (2022)

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Vol. 106, Iss. 4 — October 2022

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