Indistinguishability of Elementary Systems as a Resource for Quantum Information Processing

Generating indistinguishability within identical particle systems: spatial deformations as quantum resource activators

Identical quantum subsystems can possess a property which does not have any classical counterpart: indistinguishability. As a long-debated phenomenon, identical particles' indistinguishability has been shown to be at the heart of various fundamental physical results. When concerned with the spatial degree of freedom, identical constituents can be made indistinguishable by overlapping their spatial wave functions via appropriately defined spatial deformations. By the laws of quantum mechanics, any measurement designed to resolve a quantity which depends on the spatial degree of freedom only and performed on the regions of overlap is not able to assign the measured outcome to one specific particle within the system. The result is an entangled state where the measured property is shared between the identical constituents. In this work, we present a coherent formalization of the concept of deformation in a general [Formula: see text]-particle scenario, together with a suitable measure of the degree of indistinguishability. We highlight the basic differences with non-identical particles scenarios and discuss the inherent role of spatial deformations as entanglement activators within the spatially localized operations and classical communication operational framework. This article is part of the theme issue 'Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics'.

Entanglement and indistinguishability: facing some challenges from a new perspective

While entanglement in the case of distinguishable particles is clearly understood, in the case of indistinguishable particles, there is still a wide debate regarding basic conceptual issues. Here, I will address two such issues. First, the debate almost always rests on a differentiated treatment of the cases of distinguishability and indistinguishability, even with respect to the definition of the concept of entanglement. Second, the fact that symmetrized and antisymmetrized states of indistinguishable particles are non-factorizable leads to certain perplexities about the very nature of entanglement. In the present work, both issues will be addressed from the perspective of an ontology of properties, which finds its natural expression in the algebraic formalism of quantum mechanics. The final goal will be to show that the proposed ontology allows a unified treatment of entanglement in the distinguishability and indistinguishability cases and offers a straightforward way out to perplexities. This article is part of the theme issue 'Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics'.

Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics

In this brief survey, we discuss some of the scientific and philosophical problems and debates that underlie the notions of identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics. We critically analyse the different positions for or against the existence of indistinguishable objects in different scientific theories, notably quantum mechanics and gauge theories in physics and homotopy type theory in mathematics. We argue that the different forms of indistinguishability that occur in many areas of physics and mathematics-far from being a problem to be eradicated-exhibit a rich formal structure that plays a key role in the corresponding theories that needs to be properly understood. This article is part of the theme issue 'Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics'.

Arbitrary entanglement of three qubits via linear optics

We present a linear-optical scheme for generating an arbitrary state of three qubits. It requires only three independent particles in the input and post-selection of the coincidence type at the output. The success probability of the protocol is equal for any desired state. Furthermore, the optical design remains insensitive to particle statistics (bosons, fermions or anyons). This approach builds upon the no-touching paradigm, which demonstrates the utility of particle indistinguishability as a resource of entanglement for practical applications.

Entangling three identical particles via spatial overlap

Quantum correlations between identical particles are at the heart of quantum technologies. Several studies with two identical particles have shown that the spatial overlap and indistinguishability between the particles are necessary for generating bipartite entanglement. On the other hand, researches on the extension to more than two-particle systems are limited by the practical difficulty to control multiple identical particles in laboratories. In this work, we propose schemes to generate two fundamental classes of genuine tripartite entanglement, i.e., GHZ and W classes, which are experimentally demonstrated using linear optics with three identical photons. We also show that the tripartite entanglement class decays from the genuine entanglement to the full separability as the particles become more distinguishable from each other. Our results support the prediction that particle indistinguishability is a fundamental element for entangling identical particles.

Activation of indistinguishability-based quantum coherence for enhanced metrological applications with particle statistics imprint

Quantum coherence has a fundamentally different origin for nonidentical and identical particles since for the latter a unique contribution exists due to indistinguishability. Here we experimentally show how to exploit, in a controllable fashion, the contribution to quantum coherence stemming from spatial indistinguishability. Our experiment also directly proves, on the same footing, the different role of particle statistics (bosons or fermions) in supplying coherence-enabled advantage for quantum metrology. Ultimately, our results provide insights toward viable quantum-enhanced technologies based on tunable indistinguishability of identical building blocks.

Quantum coherence, an essential feature of quantum mechanics allowing quantum superposition of states, is a resource for quantum information processing. Coherence emerges in a fundamentally different way for nonidentical and identical particles. For the latter, a unique contribution exists linked to indistinguishability that cannot occur for nonidentical particles. Here we experimentally demonstrate this additional contribution to quantum coherence with an optical setup, showing that its amount directly depends on the degree of indistinguishability and exploiting it in a quantum phase discrimination protocol. Furthermore, the designed setup allows for simulating fermionic particles with photons, thus assessing the role of exchange statistics in coherence generation and utilization. Our experiment proves that independent indistinguishable particles can offer a controllable resource of coherence and entanglement for quantum-enhanced metrology.

A Planck Radiation and Quantization Scheme for Human Cognition and Language

As a result of the identification of "identity" and "indistinguishability" and strong experimental evidence for the presence of the associated Bose-Einstein statistics in human cognition and language, we argued in previous work for an extension of the research domain of quantum cognition. In addition to quantum complex vector spaces and quantum probability models, we showed that quantization itself, with words as quanta, is relevant and potentially important to human cognition. In the present work, we build on this result, and introduce a powerful radiation quantization scheme for human cognition. We show that the lack of independence of the Bose-Einstein statistics compared to the Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics can be explained by the presence of a 'meaning dynamics," which causes words to be attracted to the same words. And so words clump together in the same states, a phenomenon well known for photons in the early years of quantum mechanics, leading to fierce disagreements between Planck and Einstein. Using a simple example, we introduce all the elements to get a better and detailed view of this "meaning dynamics," such as micro and macro states, and Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac numbers and weights, and compare this example and its graphs, with the radiation quantization scheme of a Winnie the Pooh story, also with its graphs. By connecting a concept directly to human experience, we show that entanglement is a necessity for preserving the "meaning dynamics" we identified, and it becomes clear in what way Fermi-Dirac addresses human memory. Within the human mind, as a crucial aspect of memory, in spaces with internal parameters, identical words can nevertheless be assigned different states and hence realize locally and contextually the necessary distinctiveness, structured by a Pauli exclusion principle, for human thought to thrive.

Catalytic Quantum Teleportation

In this work, we address fundamental limitations of quantum teleportation-the process of transferring quantum information using classical communication and preshared entanglement. We develop a new teleportation protocol based upon the idea of using ancillary entanglement catalytically, i.e., without depleting it. This protocol is then used to show that catalytic entanglement allows for a noiseless quantum channel to be simulated with a quality that could never be achieved using only entanglement from the shared state, even for catalysts with a small dimension. On the one hand, this allows for a more faithful transmission of quantum information using generic states and fixed amount of consumed entanglement. On the other hand, this shows, for the first time, that entanglement catalysis provides a genuine advantage in a generic quantum-information processing task. Finally, we show that similar ideas can be directly applied to study quantum catalysis for more general problems in quantum mechanics. As an application, we show that catalysts can activate so-called passive states, a concept that finds widespread application, e.g., in quantum thermodynamics.

Towards the Quantum Internet: Satellite Control Plane Architectures and Protocol Design

The creation of the future quantum Internet requires the development of new systems, architectures, and communications protocols. As a matter of fact, the optical fiber technology is affected by extremely high losses; thus, the deployment of a quantum satellite network (QSN) composed of quantum satellite repeaters (QSRs) in low Earth orbit would make it possible to overcome these attenuation problems. For these reasons, we consider the design of an ad hoc quantum satellite backbone based on the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm with a modular two-tier Control Plane (CP). The first tier of the CP is embedded into a Master Control Station (MCS) on the ground, which coordinates the entire constellation and performs the management of the CP integrated into the constellation itself. This second tier is responsible for entanglement generation and management on the selected path. In addition to defining the SDN architecture in all its components, we present a possible protocol to generate entanglement on the end-to-end (E2E) path. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance of the developed protocol in terms of the latency required to establish entanglement between two ground stations connected via the quantum satellite backbone.

Entanglement Robustness via Spatial Deformation of Identical Particle Wave Functions

We address the problem of entanglement protection against surrounding noise by a procedure suitably exploiting spatial indistinguishability of identical subsystems. To this purpose, we take two initially separated and entangled identical qubits interacting with two independent noisy environments. Three typical models of environments are considered: amplitude damping channel, phase damping channel and depolarizing channel. After the interaction, we deform the wave functions of the two qubits to make them spatially overlap before performing spatially localized operations and classical communication (sLOCC) and eventually computing the entanglement of the resulting state. This way, we show that spatial indistinguishability of identical qubits can be utilized within the sLOCC operational framework to partially recover the quantum correlations spoiled by the environment. A general behavior emerges: the higher the spatial indistinguishability achieved via deformation, the larger the amount of recovered entanglement.

Entangling bosons through particle indistinguishability and spatial overlap

Particle identity and entanglement are two fundamental quantum properties that work as major resources for various quantum information tasks. However, it is still a challenging problem to understand the correlation of the two properties in the same system. While recent theoretical studies have shown that the spatial overlap between identical particles is necessary for nontrivial entanglement, the exact role of particle indistinguishability in the entanglement of identical particles has never been analyzed quantitatively before. Here, we theoretically and experimentally investigate the behavior of entanglement between two bosons as spatial overlap and indistinguishability simultaneously vary. The theoretical computation of entanglement for generic two bosons with pseudospins is verified experimentally in a photonic system. Our results show that the amount of entanglement is a monotonically increasing function of both quantities. We expect that our work provides an insight into deciphering the role of the entanglement in quantum networks that consist of identical particles.

Experimental quantum entanglement and teleportation by tuning remote spatial indistinguishability of independent photons

Quantitative control of spatial indistinguishability of identical subsystems as a direct quantum resource at distant sites has not yet been experimentally proven. We design a setup capable of tuning remote spatial indistinguishability of two independent photons by individually adjusting their spatial distribution in two distant regions, leading to polarization entanglement from uncorrelated photons. This is achieved by spatially localized operations and classical communication on photons that meet only at the detectors. The amount of entanglement depends uniquely on the degree of spatial indistinguishability, quantified by an entropic measure I, which enables teleportation with fidelities above the classical threshold. The results open the way to viable indistinguishability-enhanced quantum information processing.

Measurement of Identical Particle Entanglement and the Influence of Antisymmetrization

We explore the relationship between symmetrization and entanglement through measurements on few-particle systems in a multiwell potential. In particular, considering two or three trapped atoms, we measure and distinguish correlations arising from two different physical origins: antisymmetrization of the fermionic wave function and interaction between particles. We quantify this through the entanglement negativity of states, and the introduction of an antisymmetric negativity, which allows us to understand the role that symmetrization plays in the measured entanglement properties. We apply this concept both to pure theoretical states and to experimentally reconstructed density matrices of two or three mobile particles in an array of optical tweezers.

Nonlinear Dynamics of a Cavity Containing a Two-Mode Coherent Field Interacting with Two-Level Atomic Systems

This study analytically explored two coupled two-level atomic systems (TLAS) as two qubits interacting with two modes of an electromagnetic field (EMF) cavity via two-photon transitions in the presence of dipole–dipole interactions between the atoms and intrinsic damping. Using special unitary su(1,1) Lie algebra, the general solution of an intrinsic noise model is obtained when an EMF is initially in a generalized coherent state. We investigated the population inversion of two TLAS and the generated quantum coherence of some partitions (including the EMF, two TLAS, and TLAS–EMF). It is possible to generate quantum coherence (mixedness and entanglement) from the initial pure state. The robustness of the quantum coherence produced and the sudden appearance and disappearance of coherence depended not only on dipole–dipole coupling but also on the intrinsic noise rate. The growth of mixedness and entanglement may be enhanced by increasing dipole–dipole coupling, leading to more robustness against intrinsic noise.

Correlation dynamics of nitrogen vacancy centers located in crystal cavities

In this contribution, we investigate the bipartite non-classical correlations (NCCs) of a system formed by two nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) centers placed in two spatially separated single-mode nanocavities inside a planar photonic crystal (PC). The physical system is mathematically modeled by time-dependent Schrödinger equation and analytically solved. The bipartite correlations of the two N-V centers and the two-mode cavity have been analyzed by skew information, log-negativity, and Bell function quantifiers. We explore the effects of the coupling strength between the N-V-centers and the cavity fields as well as the cavity-cavity hopping constant and the decay rate on the generated correlation dynamics. Under some specific parameter values, a large amount of quantum correlations is obtained. This shows the possibility to control the dynamics of the correlations for the NV-centers and the cavity fields.

Indistinguishability and Negative Probabilities

In this paper, we examined the connection between quantum systems' indistinguishability and signed (or negative) probabilities. We do so by first introducing a measure-theoretic definition of signed probabilities inspired by research in quantum contextuality. We then argue that ontological indistinguishability leads to the no-signaling condition and negative probabilities.

Effects of partial measurements on quantum resources and quantum Fisher information of a teleported state in a relativistic scenario

We address the teleportation of single- and two-qubit quantum states, parametrized by weight θ and phase ϕ parameters, in the presence of the Unruh effect experienced by a mode of a free Dirac field. We investigate the effects of the partial measurement (PM) and partial measurement reversal (PMR) on the quantum resources and quantum Fisher information (QFI) of the teleported states. In particular, we discuss the optimal behaviour of the QFI, quantum coherence (QC) as well as fidelity with respect to the PM and PMR strength and examine the effect of the Unruh noise on optimal estimation. It is found that, in the single-qubit scenario, the PM (PMR) strength at which the optimal estimation of the phase parameter occurs is the same as the PM (PMR) strength with which the teleportation fidelity and the QC of the teleported single-qubit state reaches its maximum value. On the other hand, generalizing the results to two-qubit teleportation, we find that the encoded information in the weight parameter is better protected against the Unruh noise in two-qubit teleportation than in the one-qubit scenario. However, extraction of information encoded in the phase parameter is more efficient in single-qubit teleportation than in the two-qubit version.

Multipartite Entanglement Generation in a Structured Environment

In this paper, we investigate the entanglement generation of n-qubit states in a model consisting of n independent qubits, each coupled to a harmonic oscillator which is in turn coupled to a bath of N additional harmonic oscillators with nearest-neighbor coupling. With analysis, we can find that the steady multipartite entanglement with different values can be generated after a long-time evolution for different sizes of the quantum system. Under weak coupling between the system and the harmonic oscillator, multipartite entanglement can monotonically increase from zero to a stable value. Under strong coupling, multipartite entanglement generation shows a speed-up increase accompanied by some oscillations as non-Markovian behavior. Our results imply that the strong coupling between the harmonic oscillator and the N additional harmonic oscillators, and the large size of the additional oscillators will enhance non-Markovian dynamics and make it take a very long time for the entanglement to reach a stable value. Meanwhile, the couplings between the additional harmonic oscillators and the decay rate of additional harmonic oscillators have almost no effect on the multipartite entanglement generation. Finally, the entanglement generation of the additional harmonic oscillators is also discussed.

Identical Quantum Particles, Entanglement, and Individuality

Particles in classical physics are distinguishable objects, which can be picked out individually on the basis of their unique physical properties. By contrast, in the philosophy of physics, the standard view is that particles of the same kind (“identical particles”) are completely indistinguishable from each other and lack identity. This standard view is problematic: Particle indistinguishability is irreconcilable not only with the very meaning of “particle” in ordinary language and in classical physical theory, but also with how this term is actually used in the practice of present-day physics. Moreover, the indistinguishability doctrine prevents a smooth transition from quantum particles to what we normally understand by “particles” in the classical limit of quantum mechanics. Elaborating on earlier work, we here analyze the premises of the standard view and discuss an alternative that avoids these and similar problems. As it turns out, this alternative approach connects to recent discussions in quantum information theory.

Entangling three qubits without ever touching

All identical particles are inherently correlated from the outset, regardless of how far apart their creation took place. In this paper, this fact is used for extraction of entanglement from independent particles unaffected by any interactions. Specifically, we are concerned with operational schemes for generation of all tripartite entangled states, essentially the GHZ state and the W state, which prevent the particles from touching one another over the entire evolution. The protocols discussed in the paper require only three particles in linear optical setups with equal efficiency for boson, fermion or anyon statistics. Within this framework indistinguishability of particles presents itself as a useful resource of entanglement accessible for practical applications.

Experimental Realization of Robust Self-Testing of Bell State Measurements

Bell state measurements, of which the eigenvectors are in an entangled form, are crucial resources in the construction of quantum networks. Therefore, device-independent certification of a Bell state measurement has significance in the quantum information process because it satisfies the exact demand on security. In this study, we implement a proof-of-concept experiment to certify a Bell state measurement device independently in an entanglement swapping process, namely, self-testing. Instead of preparing a tensor product of two singlets with four photons, multiplex encoding in polarization and spatial modes is utilized to produce two pairs of entangled qubits. As a result, we implement a full Bell state measurement and achieve a high degree of Bell violation on the remaining two qubits, which are required for nontrivial self-testing of a Bell state measurement. Furthermore, our results combine the correlations before and after the swapping; thus, the quality of the performed Bell state measurement can be precisely inferred.

Improving the Robustness of Entangled States by Basis Transformation

In the practical application of quantum entanglement, entangled particles usually need to be distributed to many distant parties or stored in different quantum memories. In these processes, entangled particles unavoidably interact with their surrounding environments, respectively. We here systematically investigate the entanglement-decay laws of cat-like states under independent Pauli noises with unbalanced probability distribution of three kinds of errors. We show that the robustness of cat-like entangled states is not only related to the overall noise strength and error distribution parameters, but also to the basis of qubits. Moreover, we find that whether a multi-qubit state is more robust in the computational basis or transversal basis depends on the initial entanglement and number of qubits of the state as well as the overall noise strength and error distribution parameters of the environment. However, which qubit basis is conductive to enhancing the robustness of two-qubit states is only dependent on the error distribution parameters. These results imply that one could improve the intrinsic robustness of entangled states by simply transforming the qubit basis at the right moment. This robustness-improving method does not introduce extra particles and works in a deterministic manner.

Protecting quantum resources via frequency modulation of qubits in leaky cavities

Finding strategies to preserve quantum resources in open systems is nowadays a main requirement for reliable quantum-enhanced technologies. We address this issue by considering structured cavities embedding qubits driven by a control technique known as frequency modulation. We first study a single qubit in a lossy cavity to determine optimal modulation parameters and qubit-cavity coupling regime allowing a gain of four orders of magnitude concerning coherence lifetimes. We relate this behavior to the inhibition of the qubit effective decay rate rather than to stronger memory effects (non-Markovianity) of the system. We then exploit these findings in a system of noninteracting qubits embedded in separated cavities to gain basic information about scalability of the procedure. We show that the determined modulation parameters enable lifetimes of quantum resources, such as entanglement, discord and coherence, three orders of magnitude longer than their natural (uncontrolled) decay times. We discuss the feasibility of the system within the circuit-QED scenario, typically employed in the current quantum computer prototypes. These results provide new insights towards efficient experimental strategies against decoherence.