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Introduction to Optical Quantum

Information Processing

Quantum information processing offers fundamental improvements over classical infor-

mation processing, such as computing power, secure communication, and high-precision
measurements. However, the best way to create practical devices is not yet known. This
textbook describes the techniques that are likely to be used in implementing optical quantum
information processors.
After developing the fundamental concepts in quantum optics and quantum information
theory, this book shows how optical systems can be used to build quantum computers
according to the most recent ideas. It discusses implementations based on single photons
and linear optics, optically controlled atoms and solid-state systems, atomic ensembles, and
optical continuous variables.
This book is ideal for graduate students beginning research in optical quantum information
processing. It presents the most important techniques of the field using worked examples
and over 120 exercises.

Pieter Kok is a Lecturer in Theoretical Physics in the Department of Physics andAstronomy,

the University of Sheffield. He is a member of the Institute of Physics and the American
Physical Society, and his Ph.D. thesis won the Institute of Physics Quantum Electronics
and Photonics thesis award in 2001.

Brendon W. Lovett is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of

Materials and a Fellow of St. Anne’s College at the University of Oxford. He is a member of
the Institute of Physics and the Materials Research Society. He has been a visiting Fellow
at the University of Queensland, Australia, and is an Academic Visitor at the National
University of Singapore.
 Introduction to
Optical Quantum
Information Processing

Pieter Kok
University of Sheffield

Brendon W. Lovett
University of Oxford
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© P. Kok and B. W. Lovett 2010

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provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part
may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2010

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and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
To Rose, Xander and Janet
 Contents

Preface page xi

Part I Quantum optics and quantum information

1 The quantum theory of light 3

1.1 The classical electromagnetic field 3
1.2 Quantization of the electromagnetic field 6
1.3 Mode functions and polarization 16
1.4 Evolution of the field operators 25
1.5 Quantum states of the electromagnetic field 37
1.6 References and further reading 46

2 Quantum information processing 48

2.1 Quantum information 48
2.2 Quantum communication 57
2.3 Quantum computation with qubits 62
2.4 Quantum computation with continuous variables 80
2.5 References and further reading 89

3 Figures of merit 90
3.1 Density operators and superoperators 90
3.2 The fidelity 100
3.3 Entropy, information, and entanglement measures 101
3.4 Correlation functions and interference of light 105
3.5 Photon correlation measurements 108
3.6 References and further reading 110

Part II Quantum information in photons and atoms

4 Photon sources and detectors 113

4.1 A mathematical model of photodetectors 113
4.2 Physical implementations of photodetectors 121
4.3 Single-photon sources 129
4.4 Entangled photon sources 139
4.5 Quantum non-demolition photon detectors 142
4.6 References and further reading 144
viii Contents

5 Quantum communication with single photons 145

5.1 Photons as information carriers 145
5.2 Quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping 162
5.3 Decoherence-free subspaces for communication 170
5.4 Quantum cryptography 172
5.5 References and further reading 177

6 Quantum computation with single photons 179

6.1 Optical N -port interferometers and scalability 179
6.2 Post-selection and feed-forward gates 181
6.3 Building quantum computers with probabilistic gates 192
6.4 Photon counting and quantum memories 202
6.5 Threshold theorem for linear-optical quantum computing 207
6.6 References and further reading 209

7 Atomic quantum information carriers 210

7.1 Atomic systems as qubits 210
7.2 The Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian 222
7.3 The optical master equation and quantum jumps 227
7.4 Entangling operations via path erasure 236
7.5 Other entangling gates 245
7.6 References and further reading 251

Part III Quantum information in many-body systems

8 Quantum communication with continuous variables 255

8.1 Phase space in quantum optics 255
8.2 Continuous-variable entanglement 267
8.3 Teleportation and entanglement swapping 272
8.4 Entanglement distillation 280
8.5 Quantum cryptography 281
8.6 References and further reading 293

9 Quantum computation with continuous variables 294

9.1 Single-mode optical qunat gates 294
9.2 Two-mode Gaussian qunat operations 299
9.3 The Gottesman–Knill theorem for qunats 303
9.4 Nonlinear optical qunat gates 307
9.5 The one-way model for qunats 309
9.6 Quantum error correction for qunats 318
9.7 References and further reading 326

10 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing 327

10.1 An ensemble of identical two-level atoms 327
10.2 Electromagnetically induced transparency 337
ix Contents

10.3 Quantum memories and quantum repeaters 344

10.4 The atomic ensemble as a single qubit 352
10.5 Photon–photon interactions via atomic ensembles 355
10.6 References and further reading 360

11 Solid-state quantum information carriers 361

11.1 Basic concepts of solid-state systems 361
11.2 Definition and optical manipulation of solid-state qubits 375
11.3 Interactions in solid-state qubit systems 381
11.4 Entangling two-qubit operations 384
11.5 Scalability of solid-state devices 393
11.6 References and further reading 395

12 Decoherence of solid-state qubits 397

12.1 Phonons 397
12.2 Electron–phonon coupling 400
12.3 The master equation for electrons and phonons 403
12.4 Overcoming decoherence 406
12.5 Strong coupling effects 412
12.6 References and further reading 419

13 Quantum metrology 421

13.1 Parameter estimation and Fisher information 421
13.2 The statistical distance 425
13.3 The dynamical evolution of states 433
13.4 Entanglement-assisted parameter estimation 437
13.5 Optical quantum metrology 440
13.6 References and further reading 452

Appendix A Baker–Campbell–Haussdorff relations 454

Appendix B The Knill–Laflamme–Milburn protocol 457

Appendix C Cross–Kerr nonlinearities for single photons 462

References 465
Index 477
 Preface

The field of quantum information processing has reached a level of maturity, and spans
such a wide variety of topics, that it merits further specialization. In this book, we consider
quantum information processing with optical systems, including quantum communication,
quantum computation, and quantum metrology. Optical systems are the obvious choice
for quantum communication, since photons are excellent carriers of quantum information
due to their relatively slow decoherence. Indeed, many aspects of quantum communication
have been demonstrated to the extent that commercial products are now available. The
importance of optical systems for quantum communication leads us to ask whether we can
construct integrated systems for communication and computation in which all processing
takes place in optical systems. Recent developments indicate that while full-scale quantum
computing is still extremely challenging, optical systems are one of the most promising
approaches to a fully functional quantum computer.
This book is aimed at beginning graduate students who are starting their research career
in optical quantum information processing, and it can be used as a textbook for an advanced
master’s course. The reader is assumed to have a background knowledge in classical elec-
trodynamics and quantum mechanics at the level of an undergraduate physics course. The
nature of the topic requires familiarity with quantized fields, and since this is not always a
core topic in undergraduate physics, we derive the quantum mechanical formulation of the
free electromagnetic field from first principles. Similarly, we aim to present the topics in
quantum information theory in a self-contained manner.
The book is organized as follows: in Part I, we develop the quantum theory of light,
give an introduction to quantum communication and computation, and we present a num-
ber of advanced quantum mechanical techniques that are essential for the understanding
of optical quantum information processing. In Part II, we consider quantum information
processing using single photons and atoms. We first develop the theory of photodetec-
tion and explore what we mean by photon sources, followed by an exposition of quantum
communication with single photons, quantum computation with single photons and linear
optics, and quantum computing where the information carriers, the qubits, are encoded in
atoms. In Part III, we explore quantum information processing in many-body systems. We
revisit linear optical quantum communication and computation, but now in the context of
quantum continuous variables, rather than qubits. We discuss how atomic ensembles can
be used as quantum memories and repeaters, and we study in detail how to define robust
qubits in solid-state systems such as quantum dots and crystal defects. The last chapter of
the book deals with quantum metrology, where we explore how quantum states of light can
be exploited to attain a measurement precision that outperforms classical metrology. As is
inevitable in a book of this nature, a number of important topics have been omitted due
xii Preface

to length restrictions. We have not included quantum information processing in ion traps,
photonic band-gap materials, optical lattices, and Bose–Einstein condensates. We have also
omitted the topic of quantum imaging.
We wish to thank a number of colleagues who have made valuable comments, and
suggested many improvements: Charles Adams, Simon Benjamin, Samuel Braunstein, Earl
Campbell, Jim Franson, Erik Gauger, Dominic Hosler, Nick Lambert, Peter van Loock, Janet
Lovett, Ahsan Nazir, Todd Pittman, Nusrat Rafiq, Andrew Ramsay, Marshall Stoneham,
Joachim Wabnig, David Whittaker, and Marcin Zwierz. We thank Joost Kok for suggesting
the artist Victor Vasarely for the cover image. BWL thanks the Royal Society for financial
support. Finally, we would like to thank Andrew Briggs and the Quantum Information
Processing Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (QIP IRC) for continued support.
 PART I

QUANTUM OPTICS AND

QUANTUM INFORMATION
1 The quantum theory of light

Classically, light is an electromagnetic phenomenon, described by Maxwell’s equations.

However, under certain conditions, such as low intensity or in the presence of certain
nonlinear optical materials, light starts to behave differently, and we have to construct a
‘quantum theory of light’. We can exploit this quantum behaviour of light for quantum
information processing, which is the subject of this book. In this chapter, we develop
the quantum theory of the free electromagnetic quantum field. This means that we do
not yet consider the interaction between light and matter; we postpone that to Chapter 7.
We start from first principles, using the canonical quantization procedure in the Coulomb
gauge: we derive the field equations of motion from the classical Lagrangian density for
the vector potential, and promote the field and its canonical momentum to operators and
impose the canonical commutation relations. This will lead to the well-known creation and
annihilation operators, and ultimately to the concept of the photon. After quantization of the
free electromagnetic field we consider transformations of the mode functions of the field.
We will demonstrate the intimate relation between these linear mode transformations and
the effect of beam splitters, phase shifters, and polarization rotations, and show how they
naturally give rise to the concept of squeezing. Finally, we introduce coherent and squeezed
states.
The first two sections of this chapter are quite formal, and a number of subtleties arise
when we quantize the electromagnetic field, such as the continuum of modes, the gauge
freedom, and the definition of the creation and annihilation operators with respect to the
classical modes. Readers who have not encountered field quantization procedures before
may find these sections somewhat daunting, but most of the subtleties encountered here
have very little bearing on the later chapters. We mainly include the full derivation from
first principles to give the field of optical quantum information processing a proper physical
foundation, and derive the annihilation and creation operators of the discrete optical modes
from the continuum of modes that is the electromagnetic field.

1.1 The classical electromagnetic field

Classical electrodynamics is the theory of the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields in
the presence of charge and current distributions. It was shown by James Clerk Maxwell
(1831–1879) that the equations of motion for electric and magnetic fields, the Maxwell
equations, allow for electromagnetic waves. In vacuum, these waves propagate with a
velocity c = 299 792 458 ms−1 , and Maxwell therefore identified these waves in a certain
4 The quantum theory of light

frequency range with light. In this section, we define the electric and magnetic fields in
terms of the scalar and vector potentials, and construct the field Lagrangian density in
the presence of charge and current distributions. Variation of the Lagrangian density with
respect to the potentials then leads to Maxwell’s equations. Subsequently, we consider
the Maxwell equations for the vacuum, and derive the wave equation and its plane-wave
solutions. The source-free Lagrangian density is then used to define the canonical momenta
to the potentials, which in turn allow us to give the Hamiltonian density for the free field.
These are the ingredients we need for the canonical quantization procedure in Section 1.2.
The electric and magnetic fields E(r, t) and B(r, t) are related to a scalar and a vector
potential (r, t) and A(r, t):
∂A(r, t)
E(r, t) = −∇(r, t) − and B(r, t) = ∇×A(r, t) . (1.1)
∂t
The most elegant way to construct a classical field theory is via the Lagrangian density. We
can use the potentials as the dynamical variables of our classical field theory, which means
that we can write the Lagrangian density L as a function of the potentials and their time
derivatives
L = L (, ; ˙ A, Ȧ) . (1.2)
The equations of motion for the potentials  and A are then given by the Euler–Lagrange
equations
d δL δL
− =0 (1.3)
dt δ ˙ δ
and
d δL δL
− = 0. (1.4)
dt δ Ȧj δAj
Here δ denotes the functional derivative, since the potentials are themselves functions of
space and time, and each component of A, denoted by Aj , obeys a separate Euler–Lagrange
equation.
In the presence of a charge density ρ(r, t) and a current density J(r, t) the general
Lagrangian density of classical electrodynamics can be written as
ε0 2 1 2
L = J(r, t) · A(r, t) − ρ(r, t)(r, t) + E (r, t) − B (r, t) , (1.5)
2 2μ0

where E 2 ≡ |E|2 and B2 ≡ |B|2 depend on  and A according to Eq. (1.1). When the
Lagrangian density is varied with respect to  we obtain the Euler–Lagrange equation in
Eq. (1.3), which can be written as Gauss’ law

−ε0 ∇ · E(r, t) + ρ(r, t) = 0 . (1.6)

When we vary the Lagrangian density with respect to the components of A, we find the
Euler–Lagrange equations in Eq. (1.4). These can be reformulated as the Maxwell–Ampère
law
∂E 1
J(r, t) + ε0 (r, t) − ∇×B(r, t) = 0 . (1.7)
∂t μ0
5 1.1 The classical electromagnetic field

The relations in Eq. (1.1) and Eqs. (1.6) and (1.7) are equivalent to Maxwell’s equations,
as can be seen by taking the curl of E in Eq. (1.1):

∂B
∇×E = − . (1.8)
∂t

The last Maxwell equation, ∇ · B = 0, is implicit in B = ∇×A since the divergence of any
curl vanishes.
It is well known that we have a gauge freedom in defining the potentials  and A that
constitute the fields E and B. Since we are interested in radiation, it is convenient to adopt
the Coulomb, or radiation, gauge

∇ ·A =0 and  = 0 . (1.9)

In addition to the gauge choice, in this chapter we consider only the vacuum solutions of
the electromagnetic fields:

ρ=0 and J = 0. (1.10)

When we now write Eq. (1.7) in terms of the potentials, we obtain the homogeneous wave
equation for A

∂ 2A
∇ 2 A − ε0 μ0 = 0. (1.11)
∂t 2

The classical solutions to this equation can be written as

  dk Aλ (k)ǫ λ (k)eik·r−iωk t
A(r, t) = √  + c.c., (1.12)
λ
ε0 (2π )3 2ωk

where Aλ (k) denotes the amplitude of the mode with wave vector k and polarization λ, and
c.c. denotes the complex conjugate. The vector ǫ λ gives the direction of the polarization,
which we will discuss in Section 1.3. The dispersion relation for the free field is given by

ωk2
|k|2 − ε0 μ0 ωk2 ≡ k 2 − = 0, (1.13)
c2

where c is the phase velocity of the wave with frequency ωk . Any well-behaved potential
A(r, t) that can be expressed as a superposition of Fourier components is a solution to the
wave equation. This is exemplified by the fact that we can see different shapes, colours,
etc., rather than just uniform plane waves.
Finally, the Lagrangian density can be used to find the Hamiltonian density of the field.
To this end, we define the canonical momenta of  and A as

δL δL
 ≡ and A ≡ . (1.14)
˙
δ δ Ȧ
6 The quantum theory of light

We can now take the Legendre transform of the Lagrangian density with respect to the
˙ and Ȧ to obtain the Hamiltonian density of the free electromagnetic
dynamical variables 
field
H(,  ; A, A ) =   ˙ + A · Ȧ − L . (1.15)
In the Coulomb gauge, the canonical momenta are

 =0 and A = ε0 Ȧ . (1.16)

This leads to the Hamiltonian density for the free field

ε0 2 1 2
H= A · Ȧ − L |ρ=J=0 = E + B . (1.17)
2 2μ0

We now have all the necessary ingredients to proceed with the quantization of the
electromagnetic field.

Exercise 1.1: Derive the homogeneous wave equation in Eq. (1.11) and show that the
solutions are given by Eq. (1.12).

1.2 Quantization of the electromagnetic field

We are now ready to quantize the classical electromagnetic field. First, we have to decide
which of the fields A, E (or B) we wish to quantize. In later chapters, we discuss the coupling
between light and matter, and it is most convenient to express that coupling in terms of the
vector potential A. We therefore apply the quantization procedure to A, rather than to E.
In the quantization procedure we have to ensure that the quantum fields obey Maxwell’s
equations in the classical limit, and this leads to the introduction of a modified Dirac delta
function. After the formal quantization, we explore the properties of the mode functions and
the mode operators that result from the quantization procedure, and establish a fundamental
relationship between them. We then construct eigenstates of the Hamiltonian, and define
the discrete, physical modes. This leads to the concept of the photon. The final part of
this section is devoted to the construction of the quantum mechanical field observables
associated with single modes.

1.2.1 Field quantization

We denote the difference between classical and quantum mechanical observables by writing
the latter with a hat. In the quantum theory of light, A and A then become operators
satisfying the equal-time commutation relations. In index notation these are written as
   
j
Âj (r, t), Âk (r′ , t) = ˆ A (r, t), ˆ kA (r′ , t) = 0 . (1.18)
7 1.2 Quantization of the electromagnetic field

The field consists of four variables: three from A and one from . We again work in the
Coulomb gauge, where  = 0 and ∇ · A = 0 ensures that we end up with only two
dynamical variables.
Standard canonical quantization prescribes that, in addition to Eq. (1.18), we impose the
following commutation relation:
 
j
Âi (r, t), ˆ A (r′ , t) = iδij δ 3 (r − r′ ) , (1.19)

where we must remember the difference between upper and lower indices, Aj = −Aj ,
because electrodynamics is, at heart, a relativistic theory. Unfortunately, given that in the
Coulomb gauge kA ∝ E k , this commutation relation is not compatible with Gauss’ law in
vacuum: ∇ · E = 0. If we take the divergence with respect to the variable r′ on both sides
of Eq. (1.19), the left-hand side will be zero, but the divergence of the delta function does
not vanish. We therefore have to modify the delta function such that its divergence does
vanish. For the ordinary Dirac delta function we use the following definition:

3 ′ dk ′
δij δ (r − r ) ≡ δij eik·(r−r ) . (1.20)
(2π )3

We have included the Kronecker delta δij , because after the redefinition of the delta function
the internal degree of freedom j and the external degree of freedom r may no longer be
independent (in fact, they will not be). Taking the divergence of Eq. (1.20) with respect to
r yields
 
dk ′
∂ i δij δ 3 (r − r′ ) = i 3
kj eik·(r−r ) . (1.21)
(2π )
i

Therefore, we have to subtract something like this from the redefined delta function. We
write
 
′ dk ik·(r−r′ ) dk ′
ij (r − r ) = 3
δ ij e − i 3
αi kj eik·(r−r ) , (1.22)
(2π) (2π )

and we want to find αi such that ∂ i ij (r − r′ ) = 0:

  
′ dk ik·(r−r′ )  
∂i ij (r − r ) = ∂i 3
e δij − ikj αi
(2π )
i i
 dk ik·(r−r′ )
= e iki δij − (ikj )(iki )αi
(2π )3
i

= 0. (1.23)

We therefore have that

  ki
iki δij + ki kj αi = 0 , or αi = −i , (1.24)
|k|2
i
8 The quantum theory of light

and the ‘transverse’ delta function ij (r − r′ ) becomes


′ dk ik·(r−r′ ) ki kj
ij (r −r)= 3
e δij − . (1.25)
(2π ) |k|2
Using this modified delta function, we can complete the quantization procedure by imposing
the equal-time canonical commutation relation
 
j
Âi (r, t), ˆ A (r′ , t) = i ij (r − r′ ) . (1.26)

That this leads to the correct covariant Hamiltonian and momentum is shown, for example,
in Bjorken and Drell (1965). We can now write the three space components of the quantum
field as
2 
   ∗ †

Âj (r, t) = dk ǫλj (k)âλ (k)u(k; r, t) + ǫλj (k)âλ (k)u∗ (k; r, t) , (1.27)
ε0
λ=1

where the u(k; r, t) are mode functions that are themselves solutions to the wave equation in
Eq. (1.11), and λ again indicates the polarization of the electromagnetic field. The classical
amplitudes Aλ (k) are replaced by the operators âλ (k), and  is now a quantum field. Note
that  is now an operator, and unlike its classical counterpart does not directly represent a
particular vector potential. Specific quantum mechanical vector potentials are represented
by quantum states.
The equal-time commutation relation in Eq. (1.26) determines the commutation relation
†
for âλ (k) and âλ (k), given the mode functions u(k; r, t) and u∗ (k, r, t). From Eq. (1.12) we
can read off the plane-wave solutions with continuum normalization:

eik·r−iωk t
u(k; r, t) =  , (1.28)
(2π )3 2ωk
where k is the wave vector of a wave with frequency ωk . Plane waves are of constant
intensity throughout space and time, and are therefore unphysical. However, they are
mathematically very convenient. When the mode functions are the plane waves defined
in Eq. (1.28), we find explicitly that
 
†
âλ (k), âλ′ (k ′ ) = δλλ′ δ 3 (k − k ′ ) , (1.29)

and  
† †
âλ (k), âλ′ (k ′ ) = âλ (k), âλ′ (k ′ ) = 0 . (1.30)
The operator âλ (k) and its Hermitian conjugate are the ‘mode operators’ of the quantized
electromagnetic field. In the next section we will see that any operators that obey these
commutation relations are good mode operators.
We are now done with the quantization of the classical electromagnetic field, and the
remainder of this section is devoted to the exploration of the direct consequences of this
procedure.

Exercise 1.2: Derive the commutation relations in Eqs. (1.29) and (1.30).
9 1.2 Quantization of the electromagnetic field

1.2.2 Mode functions and mode operators

We will now discuss some of the fundamental properties of the mode functions u(k; r, t) and
†
u∗ (k; r, t), and the mode operators âλ (k) and âλ (k). In order to study the mode functions of
the field (its ‘shape’, if you like), we must first define a scalar product that allows us to talk
about orthogonal mode functions. This is given by the ‘time-independent scalar product’
 ↔

(φ, ψ) ≡ i dr φ ∂ t ψ = i dr φ ∗ (∂ t ψ) − (∂ t φ ∗ )ψ .
∗
(1.31)

From the general structure of the scalar product in Eq. (1.31) we see that

(φ, ψ)∗ = (ψ, φ) and (φ ∗ , ψ ∗ ) = −(ψ, φ) . (1.32)

This scalar product finds its origin in the continuity equation of the field, which determines
the conserved currents (see Bjorken and Drell, 1965). It is therefore time-independent. The
completeness relation of the mode functions u(k; r, t) is then derived as follows: consider
a function f (r, t) that is a superposition of different mode functions

f = dk α(k)u(k) + β(k)u∗ (k) , (1.33)

where we have suppressed the dependence on r and t in f (r, t) and u(k; r, t) for notational
brevity. Using the orthogonality of the mode functions defined by the scalar product, we
can write the coefficients α(k) and β(k) as

α(k) = (u(k), f ) and β(k) = −(u∗ (k), f ) . (1.34)

This leads to an expression for f


f = dk (u(k), f ) u(k) − (u∗ (k), f ) u∗ (k) . (1.35)

For a second superposition of mode functions g the scalar product (g, f ) can be written as

(g, f ) = dk (g, u(k))(u(k), f ) − (g, u∗ (k))(u∗ (k), f ) . (1.36)

This constitutes the ‘completeness relation’ for the mode functions u(k; r, t), and it holds
only if the mode functions are, in fact, complete.
Using the definition of the time-independent scalar product, we can show that plane-wave
solutions are orthonormal:
 ′
e−ik·r+iωk t ↔ eik ·r−iωk′ t
(uk , uk′ ) ≡ i dr  ∂t
(2π )3 2ωk (2π )3 2ωk′
 ′
dr (ωk + ωk′ )e−i(k−k )·r+i(ωk −ωk′ )t
= √
(2π )3 2 ωk ωk′
= δ 3 (k − k ′ ) . (1.37)
10 The quantum theory of light

We also find by direct evaluation that (uk , uk∗ ′ ) = 0. This can be understood physically as
the orthogonality of waves moving forward in time, and waves moving backwards in time
and in opposite directions. The plane waves therefore form a complete orthonormal set of
mode functions.
We can define a new set of mode functions v(κ; r, t), which are a linear combination of
plane waves
 
eik·r−iωk t
v(κ; r, t) = dk V (κ, k)u(k; r, t) = dk V (κ, k)  . (1.38)
(2π )3 2ωk
Two symbols are needed for wave vectors here, namely k and κ. We emphasize that we will
normally reserve k for describing wave vectors. When V (κ, k) is unitary, the new mode
functions v(κ; r, t) are also orthonormal. When we express  in terms of the new mode
functions, we should also change the operators âλ (k) to b̂λ′ (κ), since the mode operators
depend on k and will generally change due to the transformation V (κ, k). The field operator
then becomes
2 
   †

Âj (r, t) = dκ ǫλ′ j (κ) b̂λ′ (κ)v(κ; r, t) + ǫλ∗′ j (κ) b̂λ′ (κ)v ∗ (κ; r, t) . (1.39)
ε0
λ′ =1

Note that here we have also included a possible change in the polarizarion degree of freedom
λ′ , which can be incorporated straightforwardly in the time-independent scalar product.

Exercise 1.3: Prove the orthonormality of v(κ; r, t) if V is unitary.

We next explore the precise relationship between mode functions and mode operators. The
†
mode operators âλ (k) and âλ (k) are related to the mode functions u(k; r, t) and u∗ (k; r, t)
via the time-independent scalar product
  
ε0
âλ′ (k) ≡ u(k)ǫ λ′ , Â

 
ε0 ↔
=i dr u∗ (k; r, t) ∂ t ǫ ∗λ′ (k) · Â(r, t) . (1.40)


We can then extract the operator b̂λ′ (κ), associated with the mode function v(κ; r, t), using
the procedure
    
ε0 ε0 ↔
b̂λ′ (κ) ≡ v(κ)ǫ λ′ , Â = i dr v ∗ (κ; r, t) ∂ t ǫ ∗λ′ (κ) · Â(r, t) . (1.41)
 

This is a definition of the operator b̂λ′ (κ), and is completely determined by the mode function
v(κ) and polarization vector ǫ λ′ (κ). Now suppose that we have an expression for Â(r, t) in
terms of mode functions u(k), mode operators âλ (k), and polarization vectors ǫ λ (k) given
in Eq. (1.27). The mode operator b̂λ′ (κ) then becomes
    † 
b̂λ′ (κ) = dk ǫ ∗λ′ (κ) · ǫ λ (k) (v, u) âλ (k) + ǫ ∗λ′ (κ) · ǫ ∗λ (k) v, u∗ âλ (k) , (1.42)
λ
11 1.2 Quantization of the electromagnetic field

where we express the mode operator b̂ in terms of mode operators â and ↠. The spatial
integration in the scalar products (v, u) and (v, u∗ ) must be evaluated before the integration
over k in order to make the scalar product of the two polarization vectors ǫ λ′ (κ) · ǫ λ (k)
definite. This demonstrates that the mode operators have a notion of orthogonality that is
directly inherited from the orthogonality of the mode functions. Up to addition of a complex
constant, Eq. (1.42) is the most general linear transformation of the mode operators, and
is called the ‘Bogoliubov transformation’. In principle it can mix the mode operators with
their adjoints when the scalar product (v, u∗ ) is non-zero.

Exercise 1.4: Using Eq. (1.42), show that

 
†
b̂λ (κ), b̂λ′ (κ ′ ) = δλλ′ δ 3 (κ − κ ′ ) , (1.43)

and    
† †
b̂λ (κ), b̂λ′ (κ ′ ) = b̂λ (κ), b̂λ′ (κ ′ ) = 0 (1.44)
These are the expected commutation relations for the mode operators.

1.2.3 Photons as excitations of the electromagnetic field

The revolutionary aspect of the quantum mechanical description of the electromagnetic

field is the notion that the field can deliver its energy only in discrete amounts. This leads
to the concept of the ‘photon’. In order to derive this from the quantum theory, we first
consider the Hamiltonian and momentum operators for the quantum field. We then con-
struct energy eigenstates, and regularize them to obtain well-behaved physical states of the
electromagnetic field.
From the quantum mechanical version of Eq. (1.17) we can formally derive the
Hamiltonian operator H of the free field as
 ωk  † †

H= dk âλ (k)âλ (k) + âλ (k)âλ (k)
2
λ
 
≡ dk Hλ (k) , (1.45)
λ

where Hλ (k) will be called the ‘single-mode Hamiltonian operator’. Similarly, the ‘field
momentum operator’ is
 k  † †

P̂ = dk âλ (k)âλ (k) + âλ (k)âλ (k) . (1.46)
2
λ

This operator is similar to H, but ωk is replaced by k. Therefore, the properties we derive

for the Hamiltonian can easily be translated into properties for the momentum. The field
momentum can be formally derived from Maxwell’s stress tensor, but this is beyond the
scope of this book.
12 The quantum theory of light

†
The Hamiltonian and the operators âλ (k) and âλ (k) obey the following commutation
relations:
 
† †
H, âλ (k) = −ωk âλ (k) and H, âλ (k) = ωk âλ (k) . (1.47)

We can define |ψn as an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian H such that

H |ψn = En |ψn , (1.48)

with En the corresponding energy eigenvalue (which depends on ωk ). From the commutation
relations in Eq. (1.47) we find
† † †
Hâλ (k) |ψn = âλ (k) (H + ωk ) |ψn = (En + ωk ) âλ (k) |ψn . (1.49)

†
This means that âλ (k) |ψn is again an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian H with energy En +ωk .
Similarly, âλ (k) |ψn is again an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian H with energy En − ωk .
The eigenvalues of H must be bounded from below, and there is therefore a ground state
|ψ0 for which âλ (k) |ψ0 = 0 for any k and λ. We call this state the ‘vacuum state’ for
that mode. This leads to the vacuum energy

 †
H |ψ0 = dk ωk âλ (k)âλ (k) |ψ0 . (1.50)
2
λ

Using the commutation relation in Eq. (1.29), we find that this expression diverges. The
vacuum energy is therefore infinite, and needs to be subtracted in all practical calculations
of energy expectation values. However, we cannot completely ignore the vacuum energy,
since it leads to so-called vacuum fluctuations. It has observable consequences, such as the
Lamb shift and vacuum noise. This will become important in certain applications of optical
quantum information processing, e.g., in Chapters 8 and 9.
For every mode denoted by k and λ, we can construct a set of basis states that are
†
eigenstates of the Hamiltonian by repeatedly applying the operator âλ (k) to the ground
state |ψ0 . After removing the infinite vacuum energy, we can find the relative energy of
each mode:
En (k) = n ωk , (1.51)
and we can write the energy eigenstate of mode {k, λ} as |n k,λ or |nk,λ . These states are
commonly known as ‘Fock states’.
We can similarly define the operator
 †
n̂ = dk âλ (k)âλ (k) . (1.52)
λ

The Fock states are clearly also eigenstates of n̂:

n̂|n k ′ ,λ = n|n k ′ ,λ , (1.53)

13 1.2 Quantization of the electromagnetic field

†
and for obvious reasons n̂ is called the number operator. We have seen that aλ (k) and aλ (k)
move us up and down the ladder of Fock states, and are therefore called the ‘creation’ and
‘annihilation’ operators, respectively.
†
However, the state created by applying the creation operator âλ (k), associated with a
plane wave, to the vacuum is not normalizable, and therefore unphysical. For example, the
scalar product of two single-excitation Fock states is

1k′ ,λ′ |1k,λ = δλ,λ′ δ(k − k ′ ) . (1.54)

In order to define physical states, we must construct well-behaved mode functions. Earlier,
we have seen that we can superpose plane waves

f (r, t) = dk α ∗ (k) u(k; r, t) + β ∗ (k) u∗ (k; r, t) , (1.55)

which can be normalized according to

  
(f , f ) = 1 ⇒ dk |α(k)|2 − |β(k)|2 = 1 . (1.56)

In general, f can be any well-behaved function, but in practice we often assume that f is
sharply peaked around a central wave vector k0 . This can then be considered a normalizable
frequency mode, even though it is strictly an approximation.
Using the definition of the mode operators in Eq. (1.40), we can then write the mode
operator for the mode f with polarization λ as
     
ε †
b̂f λ = ǫ λ f , Â = dk α(k) âλ (k) + β(k) âλ (k) . (1.57)


†
By definition, the mode operators b̂f λ and b̂f λ obey the commutation relation
 
†
b̂f λ , b̂f λ′ = δλλ′ , (1.58)

and if f is part of an orthonormal set of mode functions {f1 , f2 , . . .}, the commutation
relations become
     
† † †
b̂jλ , b̂kλ′ = δλλ′ δjk and b̂jλ , b̂kλ′ = b̂jλ , b̂kλ′ = 0 , (1.59)

where the subscripts j and k indicate the mode functions fj and fk , respectively. In the
remainder of this book, we will mostly consider these well-behaved, discretized mode
functions with their associated mode operators.
Assuming that β(k) = 0, a single excitation in mode fj with polarization λ can be
written as 
 
1jλ = b̂† |0 = dk α ∗ (k) ↠(k) |0 , (1.60)
jλ j λ
14 The quantum theory of light

where αj (k) is associated with fj , c.f., Eq. (1.55). This is the state of a ‘wave packet’, albeit
of infinite duration. It follows that

†
jλ 1 |1 jλ ′ = δ λ,λ′ dk dk ′ αj∗ (k)αj (k ′ )âλ (k)âλ′ (k ′ )

= δλ,λ′ dk |αj (k)|2 ≡ δλ,λ′ , (1.61)

where we used Eq. (1.56). Wave packets with higher numbers of excitations are easily
generated by applying the discrete creation operator to the vacuum several times
†
(b̂jλ )n
|n jλ = √ |0 . (1.62)
n!
√
The factor n! is found by normalizing the states and using the commutation relations. We
can now be precise about the action of the discrete operators as follows
√
b̂jλ |n jλ = n |n − 1 f λ
† √
b̂jλ |n jλ = n + 1 |n + 1 jλ . (1.63)

These relations strongly suggest an interpretation of |n jλ as a state of ‘n particles’. The

†
particle is created by the action of b̂jλ and annihilated by the action of b̂jλ , and is called
the ‘photon’. Photons in sharply peaked frequency modes have well-defined energy and
momentum.
The interpretation of |1 jλ as a physical particle is not without problems. The photon is
massless, and is therefore the ultimate relativistic particle, travelling at the speed of light. As
a consequence, there is no position operator for the photon, unlike for traditional particles.
Another subtlety is that the superposition f can in principle be chosen with non-zero β(k),
which means that b̂ is a superposition of annihilation and creation operators â(k) and ↠(k).
The concept of a photon therefore depends on the mode functions and the coordinate system.
We will encounter this mixing of creation and annihilation operators later in this chapter,
when we describe optical squeezing.

1.2.4 Quadrature operators

We now return to the continuous mode operators â(k) and ↠(k), and momentarily suppress
the polarization degree of freedom λ for notational brevity. The creation and annihilation
operators are not Hermitian, and are therefore not associated directly with physical observ-
ables. However, they can be used to construct Hermitian operators. For example, for any
operator F̂ we can construct a Hermitian operator F̂ † F̂, and with F̂ = â this led to the
number operator ↠â. We can also construct the Hermitian operator F̂ + F̂ † . Including an
extra phase freedom, this leads us to define the ‘quadrature operator’ x̂ζ of the general form

e−iζ â(k) + eiζ ↠(k)

x̂ζ (k) = √ , (1.64)
2
15 1.2 Quantization of the electromagnetic field

for a particular mode k. The natural observables associated with x̂ζ (k) are not dimensionless,
and in order to find the constant of proportionality, we use the well-known fact that the free
field single-mode Hamiltonian operator is formally identical to the Hamiltonian of the
simple harmonic oscillator. It can therefore be written as

Hλ (k) = ωk2 q̂λ2 (ωk ) + p̂λ2 (ωk ) . (1.65)

This must be of the same form as the definition in Eq. (1.45). It is not difficult to show that

  †

q̂λ (k) = âλ (k) + âλ (k) (1.66)
2ωk

and 
ωk  †

p̂λ (k) = −iâλ (k) − âλ (k) . (1.67)
2
These operators obey the commutation relation

q̂λ (k), p̂λ′ (k ′ ) = i δλλ′ δ 3 (k − k ′ ) , (1.68)

and the operators q̂ and p̂ are therefore often called the ‘position’ and ‘momentum’ quadra-
tures. They are not really associated with the position and momentum of a particle; they
merely have the same commutation relations.
The quadratures are Hermitian by construction, and this therefore raises the question as
to how these observables should be interpreted physically. To answer this, consider a single
mode of the quantum field  given in Eq. (1.27):

  
ik·r−iωk t † −ik·r+iωk t
Âk (r, t) = â(k) e + â (k) e , (1.69)
2(2π)3 ε0 ωk

where we have suppressed the polarization degree of freedom λ by considering just one
linear polarization direction. At a given time t and position r, we can write ζ = ωk t − k · r,
and the field becomes
 
 â(k) e−iζ + ↠(k) eiζ 
Âk = √ = x̂ζ (k) . (1.70)
(2π)3 ε0 ωk 2 (2π )3 ε0 ωk

Similarly, the canonically conjugate momentum to Âk is  = ε0 ∂ t Âk , which can be

written as
 
ˆ ε0 ωk â(k) e−iζ − ↠(k) eiζ ε0 ωk
= −i √ = x̂ζ +π/2 (k) . (1.71)
Âk (2π)3 2 (2π )3

So the quadratures correspond to the physical observables that are the single-mode field
amplitudes of A and E ∝ A .
16 The quantum theory of light

Exercise 1.5: Show that the commutation relations of the quadrature operators are

x̂ζ (k), x̂ζ +π/2 (k ′ ) = iδ 3 (k − k ′ ) and x̂ζ (k), x̂ζ (k ′ ) = 0 . (1.72)

For any discrete mode, the expectation values of the quadrature operators x̂ζ (k) are
dimensionless, whereas√the expectation
√ values of position and momentum quadratures q̂
and p̂ have dimensions M L and M LT −1 , respectively.

1.3 Mode functions and polarization

In this section we study in more detail some aspects of the mode functions and the polar-
ization. This is essentially a classical study, since the mode functions and the polarization
are inherited directly from classical electrodynamics. We first describe the structure of the
polarization of the field, and subsequently derive the orthonormal transverse mode functions
in terms of Hermite–Gaussian and Laguerre–Gaussian mode shapes.

1.3.1 Polarization

One of the most popular degrees of freedom for quantum information processing with
light is polarization. Usually, the polarization is defined in terms of the vector behaviour
of the electric field E. Here, however, we treat the vector potential  as the fundamental
quantized field. Since the electric field is proportional to the canonical momentum of the
vector potential, and the time derivative of  does not change the vector behaviour, we can
define the polarization based on the vector potential without problems.
We already established that polarization is closely related to the vector character of Â(r, t),
carried by the vector ǫ λ , and we will now explore this in more detail. Using the plane-wave
expansion and the Coulomb gauge condition that ∇ · Â = 0, it follows that

ǫ λ (k) · k = 0 for each λ . (1.73)

This means that the vectors ǫ λ point transversely to the direction of propagation k. Fur-
thermore, since the two dynamical variables indicated by λ are independent, we can
choose

ǫ λ (k) · ǫ ∗λ′ (k) = δλλ′ . (1.74)

The vectors ǫ λ have unit length, and are now identified with the polarization of the field.
They may in general have complex components, since the vector potential will still be
Hermitian if the term with the creation operator contains the complex conjugate of ǫ λ .
Suppose, without loss of generality, that the direction of propagation of the light is in the
z direction: k = k ẑ. We can then immediately construct two orthogonal vectors ǫ 1 and ǫ 2
17 1.3 Mode functions and polarization

according to
⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞
1 0
ǫ 1 = ⎝0⎠ and ǫ 2 = ⎝1⎠ . (1.75)
0 0
Furthermore, we can rotate these vectors around the z axis over an angle θ to find a new set
of orthonormal vectors. In addition, the third component of the vector is always zero, and
we therefore omit it from the description. The two independent polarization vectors then
become
cos θ − sin θ
ǫ1 = and ǫ 2 = . (1.76)
sin θ cos θ
These are real vectors, and they are associated with ‘linear polarization’ since they point in
an unambiguous spatial direction.
What happens when the vectors ǫ λ have complex components? Two possible orthonormal
polarization vectors are

1 1 1 1
ǫL = √ and ǫR = √ . (1.77)
2 i 2 −i

Due to the imaginary entries ±i, it is not straightforward to interpret the spatial direction
of these polarization vectors. It turns out that the imaginary entries cause a rotation of the
polarization in time. The polarization vectors in Eq. (1.77) therefore describe ‘circular’
polarization, and the two orthonormal vectors correspond to left-handed and right-handed
rotations. When the magnitudes of the real and imaginary components become unequal, we
speak of ‘elliptical polarization’. We will discuss the polarization of single photons in detail
in Chapter 5.

1.3.2 Transverse mode functions

The mode functions of the electromagnetic field, or in this case the vector potential, are
intrinsically a continuum, which has associated difficulties of normalization and precision in
addressing. For quantum information processing purposes it is essential that we have good
control over all possible degrees of freedom. We will derive an expression for properly
confined modes in the transverse direction, instead of infinitely extending plane waves, and
we then construct complete orthonormal sets of transverse mode functions. Finally, we use
these sets to construct the quantum mechanical creation and annihilation operators via the
procedure in Eq. (1.40).
First, we return to plane waves. The exact translational symmetry in the transverse plane
of the plane wave means that the propagation of the plane wave in the z direction is exact. In
reality, however, beams of light do not stretch out to infinity in the transverse directions. As
a result, translational invariance is lost, and the direction of propagation is no longer strictly
in the z direction. One way to understand this intuitively is to note that the localization of
the intensity at the position x = x0 and y = y0 requires some uncertainty in the transverse
momentum kx and ky . We next introduce the paraxial wave approximation, and then find
18 The quantum theory of light

the minimum uncertainty localized transverse mode. These modes can, in turn, be used as
a generating function when we construct the Hermite–Gaussian and Laguerre–Gaussian
transverse modes.
When the transverse momentum is small we can treat the beam in the ‘paraxial approxi-
mation’. We start with the Helmholtz equation for the jth spatial component of the classical
vector potential in the frequency domain Aj (r, ω), given by the Fourier transform
 ∞
Aj (r, t) = dω Aj (r, ω)e−iωt . (1.78)
0

Using ω = ck, this leads to the wave equation for the Fourier components
 
∇ 2 + k 2 Aj (r, ω) = 0 . (1.79)

This is the Helmholtz equation. For a wave propagating in the z direction, we use the
following ‘Ansatz’ for Aj :

Aj (r, ω) = j (r, ω) eikz . (1.80)

The differential operator acting on Aj can then be written as

  
∇ 2 Aj = ∂ 2x j eikz + ∂ 2y j eikz + ∂ z ∂ z j + ikj eikz . (1.81)

Substituting into Eq. (1.79), this leads to

∂ 2x j + ∂ 2y j + 2ik∂ z j + ∂ 2z j = 0 . (1.82)

Our discussion has been exact up to this point. We can now make the paraxial approxi-
mation when 2ik∂ z j ≫ ∂ 2z j , that is, when the variation of the field in the direction of
propagation z is much smaller than the wavelength of the light. In addition, we require
∂ 2z j ≪ ∂ 2x j , ∂ 2y j . The second derivative with respect to z can be dropped, leading to
the ‘paraxial wave equation’:

∂2 ∂2 ∂
 j + j = −2ik j . (1.83)
∂x2 ∂y 2 ∂z
We will almost exclusively use the paraxial approximation in this book.
We note something interesting about the paraxial wave equation: when we treat z as a time
variable, Eq. (1.83) is formally identical to the Schrödinger equation. Consequently, we can
use well-known results from quantum mechanics in our discussion of the transverse mode
functions. In particular, it will allow us to derive the orbital angular momentum properties
of paraxial light beams.

Gaussian modes
Rather than constructing solutions to the paraxial wave equation directly, we will instead
derive a complete set of orthonormal mode functions for the classical case, and subsequently
19 1.3 Mode functions and polarization

show that they are solutions to Eq. (1.83). We first derive the mode function of the lowest-
order Gaussian mode, and only then make the paraxial approximation.
In the scalar field approximation1 (where the polarization degree of freedom has been
suppressed, and A has become a scalar) we can write the transverse components for an
arbitrary solution of the wave equation with frequency ω in Cartesian coordinates

ω2
A(r, ω) = dk δ − k 2 α(k) eik·r + c.c.
c2
ε0
  
 δ k z − k 2 − |k |2
⊥

= dk  α(k) eik·r + c.c.
ε0 |2 k 2 − |k⊥ |2 |
 
 ikx x+iky y+i k 2 −kx2 −ky2 z
= dk⊥ f (k⊥ ) e + c.c.. (1.84)
ε0

In the first line the delta function is introduced to constrain the k vector to the ‘dispersion
shell’ k 2 = ω2 /c2 . In the second line we have simplified the delta function according to
δ(x0 )
δ (h(x)) = , (1.85)
|h′ (x0 )|
where h′ is the derivative of h with respect to x, and x0 is defined by h(x0 ) = 0. There
are two solutions x0 in the above case, and we have selected the term that corresponds to
propagation in the positive z direction.
 In the last line of Eq. (1.84) we evaluated the integral
over kz and absorbed the factor |2 k 2 − |k⊥ |2 |−1 into the amplitude function f , yielding
  
α k⊥ , k 2 − |k⊥ |2
f (k⊥ ) ≡   , (1.86)
 
2  k 2 − |k⊥ |2 

where k⊥ = (kx , ky ) and dk⊥ = dkx dky . For convenience we define the mode function u as

2 z
u(k, r) = f (k⊥ ) exp ik⊥ · r⊥ + i k 2 − k⊥ . (1.87)

Even though this expression is still completely general, it will be most useful when we
consider propagation in the z direction, such that f (k⊥ ) becomes small very quickly when
|k⊥ | becomes large.
The beam defined by the mode functions f (k⊥ ) will have a certain divergence, or ‘spread’
of the amplitudes f (k⊥ ) in k-space. This means that the transverse mode area of the beam
will become larger (or smaller) with increasing z. The divergence is given by the variance
in the transverse wave vector

dk⊥  2 
( k⊥ )2 = k + k 2 2
y |f (k⊥ )| , (1.88)
(2π )2 x

1 We will often call A a field, rather than a potential, because we do not want to call A the scalar potential (which
strictly means ), and in the scalar approximation it is inappropriate to call A a vector potential.
20 The quantum theory of light

where the domain of integration is now taken as the entire transverse wave vector space
−∞ < kx , ky < ∞. At the same time, the transverse extension in real space can be written as
      
ε0   dk⊥  ∂f 2  ∂f 2
2 2 2 2
( r⊥ ) = dx dy x + y |A(r)| = + , (1.89)
 (2π )2  ∂kx  ∂ky 

where the last equality follows from Eq. (1.84) and integrating over x and y. We use the
Cauchy–Schwarz inequality for square-integrable complex functions g and h:
   2
2 2
 ∗

|g(a)| da · |h(a)| da ≥  da g(a) · h (a)
 (1.90)

to obtain the classical ‘uncertainty relations’

f 2 f 2
kx x≥ and ky y≥ , (1.91)
4π 4π
where f 2 is the norm of the mode function:

f 2 = dk⊥ |f (k⊥ )|2 . (1.92)

For the minimum uncertainty in the beam (maximum transverse localization and minimum
divergence) the equality in Eq. (1.91) holds. This can only happen when ki f and ∂f /∂ki
differ by a constant factor. It is straightforward to verify that in this case f must be a Gaus-
sian function of ki . The (exact) minimum uncertainty mode function u0(ex) (k, r) therefore
becomes
 
w 2
u0 (k, r) = f (k⊥ ) eik·r = exp ik⊥ · r⊥ + ikz z − 0 |k⊥ |2 ,
(ex)
(1.93)
4

for some real number w0 . Indeed, it is clear that f (k⊥ ) drops to zero exponentially fast as
|k⊥ | becomes large. We now make the paraxial approximation that |k⊥ | is small compared
to k, and that led to the paraxial wave equation in Eq. (1.83):
 |k⊥ |2
kz = k 2 − |k⊥ |2 ≃ k − . (1.94)
2k
This leads to the following expression for the approximate mode function u0 (k, r):
   
w02 iz 2
u0 (k, r) = exp ik⊥ · r⊥ + ikz − + |k⊥ |
4 2k
 
s2 (z)
= exp ik⊥ · r⊥ + ikz − |k⊥ |2 . (1.95)
4
The parameter w0 is the beam waist and we have defined the complex parameter s:
2iz
s2 (z) ≡ w02 + , (1.96)
k
 21 1.3 Mode functions and polarization

Fig. 1.1. The mode shape of a beam of light localized in the transverse direction. The beam waist is w0 and
the Rayleigh length is zR . The angle of divergence is θ , which must be small for the paraxial
approximation to hold.

which can be interpreted as the curvature of the wave front. Since the divergence of the beam
is non-zero, the surfaces of constant phase are no longer planes of constant z extending in
the xy direction; they are curved surfaces. The surfaces of constant phase can be extracted
by writing the complex mode function u0 (k, r) in polar notation and setting the phase equal
to a constant. The mode has a characteristic length in the direction of propagation, called
the ‘Rayleigh length’:

kw02 π w02
zR = = , (1.97)
2 λ
which is the distance along the beam in which the waist becomes twice as large (in linear
dimensions), as shown in Fig. 1.1. Here, λ = 2π/k is the wavelength of the light. The
(scalar) field A0 (r, ω) in the fundamental Gaussian transverse mode can now be written as
(ω = ck)

dk⊥
A0 (r, ω) = √ u0 (k, r) + c.c.
ε0
4π x2 + y2
= √ 2 exp ikz − 2 + c.c. . (1.98)
ε0 s (z) s (z)

Exercise 1.6: Show that Eq. (1.98) is a solution to the paraxial wave equation.

In the quantum theory, the single-field mode in Eq. (1.98) is associated with the annihila-
tion operator â(k). The Gaussian function then describes the appropriate amplitude function
in the transverse to the beam direction. A physical state of a photon would require a fur-
ther regularization of the continuum of modes in the direction of propagation. For a mode
function strongly peaked around wave vector k0 we can then assign the photon a frequency
ω0 = ck0 .

Hermite–Gaussian modes
The Gaussian beam is only one possible transverse mode shape. In particular, we expect
that we can construct basis functions that can be used to describe any transverse amplitude
distribution. For example, such a basis can be given in terms of Hermite polynomials.
22 The quantum theory of light

We can write a general transverse mode shape of a field mode with (central) frequency
ω as a power expansion in kx and ky :
∞

u(k, r) = cnm kxn kym u0 (k, r). (1.99)
n,m=0

Suppose that a particular cnm = 1, and all the other coefficients are zero. The higher-order
mode Anm of the field can then be written as

dk⊥
Anm (r, ω) = √ (ikx )n (iky )m u0 (k, r) + c.c.
ε0

dk⊥ ∂ n+m
= √ u0 (k, r) + c.c.
ε0 ∂x n ∂y m
∂ n+m
= A0 (r, ω) . (1.100)
∂xn ∂ym

Given Eq. (1.98), it is clear that the field can be written in terms of Hermite polynomials:

2 d q −x2
Hq (x) = (−1)q ex e . (1.101)
dxq
This leads to a frequency component of the field in mode n, m
x y  
4π(−1)n+m x2 + y 2
Anm (r, ω) = √ n+m+2 Hn Hm exp ikz − 2 + c.c. . (1.102)
ε0 s (z) s s s (z)

If we take the Fourier transform in the frequency domain again, we find that the real scalar
field becomes

hg
Anm (r, t) = dk unm (k; r, t) + c.c., (1.103)

with
 
hg 4π(−1)n+m  x  y x2 + y 2
unm (k; r, t) = n+m+2 Hn Hm exp ikz − iωk t − 2 , (1.104)
s (z) s s s (z)

the Hermite–Gaussian mode functions.

We can now construct the quantum theory by associating an annihilation operator ânm (k)
hg (k; r, t) using Eq. (1.40)
with the functions unm

∞   
 
Â(r, t) = hg
dk ânm (k) unm (k; r, t) + â†nm (k) unm
hg∗
(k; r, t) . (1.105)
ε0
n,m=0

The modes unm hg (k; r, t) are complete and orthonormal (see Hochstadt, 1971), and depend

intrinsically on the waist dimension w02 (or, equivalently, the wave-front curvature s2 (z)).
Some of the lower-order modes are shown in Fig. 1.2.
23 1.3 Mode functions and polarization

The argument of the Hermite polynomials in unm hg (k; r, t) is complex because s2 (z) is

complex. These are the so-called elegant Hermite–Gaussian modes. There are also ‘standard’
Hermite–Gaussian modes, in which the argument of the Hermite polynomials is real. The
elegant modes can be written in terms of the standard modes, and the imaginary part is
then captured by a phase factor, called the ‘Gouy phase’. Most lasers create fields that are
near standard Hermite–Gaussian modes. For the translation from the elegant to the standard
modes, we refer the reader to Enderlein and Pampaloni (2004).

Laguerre–Gaussian modes
The Hermite–Gaussian functions were found using a power expansion of the wave vectors
kx and ky of the transverse mode function in Cartesian coordinates. We can also choose a
rotated coordinate system x ′ and y′ and expand the transverse mode functions in terms of
kx′ and ky′ , which leads simply to rotated Hermite–Gaussian modes. However, instead of
Cartesian coordinates in the transverse plane, we can also use ‘polar’ coordinates (r, φ):

x = r cos φ and y = r sin φ or

iφ −iφ
x + iy = re ≡σ and x − iy = re ≡ σ̄ . (1.106)

The transverse mode function can then be expanded as

∞

l l+m
u(k, r) ∝ dlm k+ k− u0 (k, r) , (1.107)
l,m=0

with k± = kx ± iky . We have chosen the powers l and l + m such that our equations will
simplify later on. In polar coordinates the fundamental Gaussian mode becomes

1 σ σ̄
A0 (r, ω) = exp ikz − . (1.108)
s2 (z) s2 (z)

We can then write for the field with a particular l and m:


Alm (r, ω) ∝ dk⊥ (ik+ )l (ik− )l+m u0 (k, r)

∂ 2l+m
= dk⊥ u0 (k, r)
∂σ l ∂ σ̄ l+m
∂ 2l+m
= A0 (r, ω) . (1.109)
∂σ l ∂ σ̄ l+m

Using the definition of the generalized Laguerre polynomials

eξ ξ −m d l  ξ l+m 
Lm
l (ξ ) = e ξ (1.110)
l! dξ l
 24 The quantum theory of light

this leads, after some algebra, to the elegant Laguerre–Gaussian mode functions

4π(−1)l+m l! r2 r2
Alm (r, ω) = √ 2(l+m+1) r |m| eimφ Lm
l exp ikz − + c.c. . (1.111)
ε0 s (z) s2 (z) s2 (z)

Taking the Fourier transform over the frequency domain, this leads to the classical field

lg
Alm (r, t) = dk ulm (k; r, t) + c.c., (1.112)

with

lg 4π(−1)l+m l! |m| imφ m r2 r2

ulm (k; r, t) = r e Ll exp ikz − iωk t − . (1.113)
s2(l+m+1) (z) s2 (z) s2 (z)

Analogous to the Hermite–Gaussian case, we can now construct the quantum field for the
elegant Laguerre–Gaussian modes:

∞   
  lg † lg∗
Â(r, t) = dk âlm (k) ulm (k; r, t) + âlm (k) ulm (k; r, t) . (1.114)
ε0
l,m=0

The Laguerre–Gaussian mode functions are orthogonal and complete (see, for example,
Hochstadt, 1971), and the lowest-order modes are shown in Fig. 1.2.
As noted before, the paraxial wave equation has a similar form to the Schrödinger
equation, where the time parameter is replaced with z. This allows us to use key results
from quantum mechanics. Specifically, we can construct an angular momentum operator
L̂z using the transverse position and momentum operators:

 ∂
L̂z = x̂p̂y − ŷp̂x = . (1.115)
i ∂φ

Fig. 1.2. The lowest-order transverse mode functions.

25 1.4 Evolution of the field operators

lg
It is immediately clear from Eq. (1.113) that the Laguerre–Gaussian mode functions ulm
are eigenfunctions of L̂z :
lg lg
L̂z ulm (k, r) = m ulm (k, r) . (1.116)

The Laguerre–Gaussian modes therefore carry orbital angular momentum in that the beam
exerts a torque on the medium it travels through. These are sometimes also called ‘helical’
modes. The angular momentum is quantized (with quantum numbers l and m) such that
each photon carries an orbital angular momentum of m. This effect is different from
the spin angular momentum, or polarization of the light. In particular, the orbital angular
momentum is not restricted to ±. In some circumstances it is difficult to separate spin
and orbital angular momentum, since both are determined by the direction and phase of the
electric and magnetic fields in the beam.

1.4 Evolution of the field operators

So far, we have concentrated mostly on the spatial aspects of the electromagnetic quantum
field. However, it is important for all physical applications, and for quantum information
processing in particular, to find the time evolution of the quantum fields. There are two
equivalent ways of achieving this. We can either take the time dependence into account
when we give a description of the quantum state (the Schrödinger picture), or we can
describe the time dependence in terms of the operators (the Heisenberg picture). Later
in the book we will adopt a hybrid approach, where the free evolution of the systems is
described in the state, and the deviation from this is described by the interaction Hamiltonian
(the interaction picture). For now, we will use the Heisenberg picture.

1.4.1 The Heisenberg equations of motion

In the Heisenberg picture an arbitrary Hermitian operator A evolves in time under the
influence of a unitary operator U (t) such that
i
A(t) = U (t)AU † (t) with U (t) = exp − Ht , (1.117)

where t is the time and H the Hamiltonian. In the exponential form of U (t), the Hamiltonian
is often called the ‘generator’ of U . For convenience, we define μ = −it/, such that we
have

A(μ) = exp(μH)A exp(−μH) . (1.118)

A general Taylor expansion of A(μ) around μ = 0 can be written as

 
dA  μ2 d 2 A 
A(μ) = A(0) + μ + + ··· (1.119)
dμ μ=0 2! dμ2 μ=0
26 The quantum theory of light

Next, we evaluate the derivatives of A to μ in Eq. (1.119) using Eq. (1.118) and

dU (t)
i = HU (t) . (1.120)
dt
In terms of the commutators with H the derivatives of A become:

dA d 2A
= [H, A] and = [H, [H, A]] , (1.121)
dμ dμ2

and so forth. This leads to the Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relation

μ2
A(μ) = A(0) + μ[H, A(0)] + [H, [H, A(0)]] + · · · (1.122)
2!
This equation is true for all Hermitian operators H and complex parameters μ. Hermiticity
of A is not required. In compact notation it reads

μ2
eμB Ae−μB = A + μ[B, A] + [B, [B, A]] + · · · , (1.123)
2!
where B is Hermitian. Taking the time derivative of Eq. (1.117) we find the Heisenberg
equation of motion for the operator A(t):

dA(t) i ∂A(t)
= [H, A(t)] + . (1.124)
dt  ∂t
The Heisenberg equations of motion for the creation and annihilation operators are then

†
d âλ (k) i d âλ (k) i  †

= H, âλ (k) and = H, âλ (k) , (1.125)
dt  dt 
where we have exploited the fact that the annihilation and creation operators do not have an
explicit time dependence. Using the expression in Eq. (1.47) we can solve the differential
equations for the creation and annihilation operators to get
† †
âλ (k, t) = âλ (k) e−iωk t and âλ (k, t) = âλ (k) eiωk t . (1.126)

The time-dependent annihilation operator is obtained by integrating over all wave vectors k:

âλ (t) = dk âλ (k) e−iωk t , (1.127)

and the time-dependent number operator can be written as

 
† †
n̂λ (t) = âλ (t)âλ (t) = dk dk ′ âλ (k) âλ (k ′ ) e−i(ωk′ −ωk )t . (1.128)

Exercise 1.7: Derive the Heisenberg equations of motion in Eq. (1.124).

27 1.4 Evolution of the field operators

As an example, suppose we have a wave packet containing exactly one photon with
polarization λ, defined in Eq. (1.60)

†
|1j,λ = dk αj (k)âλ (k)|0 , (1.129)

where, as in Section 1.2 the state is normalized according to a mode function αj (k) and |0
is the global vacuum state (i.e., no excitations in any mode). The number density n̂ at time
t is readily calculated to be
 2
 
1j,λ |n̂λ (t)|1j,λ =  dk αj (k) e−iωk t  . (1.130)

This is a function in t that depends on the amplitudes αj (k). We can construct temporally
localized, single-photon wave packets by choosing a suitable αj (k) in Eq. (1.129). For
example, a Lorentzian wave packet is defined by
√
1 γ
αL (k) = √ (1.131)
π γ + i(ωk − ω0 )

with median ω0 , and γ parameterizes the width of the distribution. Alternatively, Gaussian
wave packets can be written as
 
1 (ωk − ω0 )2
αG (k) = √ exp − , (1.132)
4
2π σ 2 4σ 2

which amounts to a wave packet with central frequency ω0 and spectral width 2σ . These
modes must be broadband, and when we speak of ‘the frequency’ of the wave packet, we
mean the central (mean) frequency, or median in the case of the Lorentzian.
The evolution of the quadrature operators is similarly determined by the Heisenberg
equation of motion
d x̂ζ (k) i
= H, x̂ζ (k) , (1.133)
dt 
the solution of which is given by

e−i(ζ +ωk t) â(k) + ei(ζ +ωk t) ↠(k)

x̂ζ (k, t) = √ . (1.134)
2

Integrating over all wave vectors then yields the time-dependent quadrature operator:

e−iζ â(t) + eiζ ↠(t)

x̂ζ (t) = √ . (1.135)
2

The position and momentum quadratures are then given by


   ωk  
q̂(t) = â(t) + ↠(t) and p̂(t) = −i â(t) − ↠(t) . (1.136)
2ωk 2
28 The quantum theory of light

1.4.2 Time-bin mode operators

We have shown how to construct temporally localized mode functions, with the Lorentzian
and Gaussian wave packets as examples. Here, we will construct mode operators that
create and annihilate photons in finite time intervals, or ‘time bins’, which are important
in quantum communication. It is most convenient to construct the time-bin operators from
discrete, one-dimensional plane-wave operators ân in a cavity of length L. The index n
relates to the discrete frequency ωn = nπ c/L, and the corresponding wave number is
kn = nπ/L. The field operator in terms of discrete modes is then given by

  
N
1
 = √ ân un (r, t) + â†n un∗ (r, t) , (1.137)
N +1 ε0
n=0

where we have suppressed the polarization for notational simplicity, and we cut off the
frequency at some sufficiently high value.
The finite time interval τ is determined by the cut-off frequency ωN , above which the
modes are unoccupied. This allows us to truncate the plane-wave expansion, and set
2L 2π n
τ= and ωn τ = . (1.138)
c(N + 1) N +1
We define the time-bin annihilation operator as
N

1
b̂μ = √ e−iμωn τ ân , (1.139)
N +1 n=0

which has the inverse

N
1
ân = √ eiμωn τ b̂μ . (1.140)
N + 1 μ=0
The integer μ indicates the time bin. To see that this can really be interpreted as a time-bin
operator, we relate b̂μ to the annihilation operator â(t) in the time domain
∞
 ∞ 
 N
−iωn t 1
â(t) = e ân = √ e−iωn (t−μτ ) b̂μ
n=0
N +1 n=0 μ=0
N
 ∞

 1 
−iωn (t−μτ )
= √ e b̂μ
μ=0
N +1 n=0
N

= αμ (t) b̂μ , (1.141)
μ=0

where, using ω = π c/L

1  −1
αμ (t) = √ 1 − e−iω(t−μτ ) (1.142)
N +1
29 1.4 Evolution of the field operators

are the time-bin expansion functions. They depend only on t − μτ and are discrete trans-
lations of αμ (0) with period τ : this is the requirement for b̂μ to be a time-bin operator.
Since we constructed the time-bin operators from (a discrete set of) infinite plane waves,
the αμ (t) are highly singular when t → μτ . Discrete mode functions, which have localized
transverse and longitudinal profiles and a regularized frequency distribution, can be used
to remove the singularity. The time-bin expansion function that is most natural for a given
application depends on the mode functions that describe the photon source.
†
We still need to verify if the operator b̂μ and its Hermitian adjoint b̂μ are valid mode
operators. In other words, we need to verify that the commutation relations hold. Assuming
†
that [ân , âm ] = δnm , we can write

  1
N
  
b̂μ , b̂†ν = e−iμωn τ +iνωm τ ân , â†m
N +1
n,m=0

N
1  −i(μ−ν)ωn τ
= e
N +1
n=0

N
1  −2πi(μ−ν)n/(N +1)
= e
N +1
n=0

= δμν , (1.143)

which is indeed the correct commutation relation for photons. The last equation can be
regarded as a definition of the Kronecker delta symbol. The remaining commutation
relations are also satisfied by the time-bin operators.

1.4.3 Mode transformations and optical elements

We have seen that the mode operators are defined with respect to mode functions, and that
linear mode transformations lead to Bogoliubov transformations of the mode operators. The
question is then how we generate Bogoliubov transformations. Since they are unitary, they
must be generated by Hermitian Hamiltonians. This will lead to a physical interpretation
of these Hamiltonians in terms of ideal beam splitters and phase shifters. In the remainder
of this chapter we will use discrete physical modes.
Let us assume that the mode functions are sharply peaked such that the discrete modes are
labelled with j, and can be associated with central wave vectors kj , and label the operators
†
âjλ and âjλ . The time evolution of a discrete single-mode operator depends only on the
†
discrete free-field Hamiltonian Hjλ = ωk âjλ âjλ , and this generates the natural ‘phase
shift’ exp(−iωj t) accumulated by the free evolution. This gives us a clue how to describe
lossless phase shifts in optical modes that are induced by materials with a refractive index
nr . When a dielectric of length ℓ is inserted in the optical beam, the phase shift is φ = nr kℓ,
where k = |k| is the wave number of the optical mode. We can construct a dimensionless
 30 The quantum theory of light

Fig. 1.3. Graphical representations of optical elements: (a) the phase shifter; (b) the beam splitter; and (c)
the polarization rotation.

single-mode ‘interaction’ Hamiltonian2 Hjλ

 
† i
Hjλ (φ) ≡ φ âjλ âjλ and U (φ) = exp − Hjλ (φ) . (1.144)


To stress that this is not ordinary time evolution, we have removed the parameter t from the
unitary operator and replaced it with φ. This will induce the transformation
   
i i
b̂jλ = exp − Hjλ (φ) âjλ exp Hjλ (φ) = âjλ e−iφ . (1.145)
 

The interaction Hamiltonian in Eq. (1.144) can be written in terms of the number operator
for mode kj , and the number operator is therefore the generator of phase shifts. See Fig.
1.3a for a graphical representation of the phase shift.
Similarly, we can construct an interaction Hamiltonian for two modes kj and kl and fixed
polarization λ

† †
Hjl (ζ , ϕ) = ζ eiϕ âjλ âlλ + ζ e−iϕ âjλ âlλ . (1.146)

Both terms must be present to ensure that Hjl (ζ , ϕ) is Hermitian. If we interpret Hjl (ζ , ϕ)
physically, it describes the creation of a photon in mode {kj , λ} and the annihilation of a
photon in mode {kl , λ}, and vice versa. We therefore expect that Hjl (ζ , ϕ) is the interaction
Hamiltonian for a beam splitter mixing modes kj and kl . Indeed, when we calculate the
transformations of âjλ and âlλ using the Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relation, we find that

i i
b̂jλ = e  Hjl âjλ e−  Hjl = cos ζ âjλ − ieiϕ sin ζ âlλ ,
i i
b̂lλ = e  Hjl âlλ e−  Hjl = −ie−iϕ sin ζ âjλ + cos ζ âlλ . (1.147)

2 It is not an interaction Hamiltonian in the standard sense of interactions, since we are considering free fields.
There is a microscopic interaction of the field with the dielectric, but the details are averaged out in this
Hamiltonian.
31 1.4 Evolution of the field operators

This can be expressed in terms of a unitary matrix:

 
b̂jλ cos ζ −ieiϕ sin ζ âjλ
= . (1.148)
b̂lλ −ie−iϕ sin ζ cos ζ âlλ

A physical beam splitter is typically described with ϕ = 0 or ϕ = π/2. When ζ = π/4,

we have a 50:50 beam splitter. The two-mode transformation given here is therefore a
generalized beam-splitter transformation. The beam-splitter and phase-shifter elements are
shown in Fig. 1.3b.
In the above example of a beam splitter we chose two modes with identical polarization λ,
but different wave vectors kj and kl . However, we can also vary the polarization (λ ∈ {1, 2})
and keep the wave vector constant:

† †
Hj (θ) = θ eiϕ âj1 âj2 + θ e−iϕ âj1 âj2 . (1.149)

This will lead to a polarization rotation

 
b̂1 cos θ −ieiϕ sin θ â1
= , (1.150)
b̂2 −ie−iϕ sin θ cos θ â2

where we have suppressed the dependence on kj for notational brevity. The graphical
representation of a polarization rotation is given in Fig. 1.3c.
If we also include a relative phase shift φ in the two modes a1 and a2 , the corresponding
matrix

eiφ/2 cos θ −ieiϕ sin θ

U (φ, θ , ϕ) = (1.151)
−ie−iϕ sin θ e−iφ/2 cos θ

is the most general two-mode unitary transformation. In other words, any 2 × 2 unitary
matrix can be written as a particular trio of angles (φ, θ , ϕ).
The beam splitter and the polarization rotation described here are lossless, and are there-
fore idealizations of real beam splitters and polarization rotations, as implemented by e.g.,
half-silvered mirrors and quarter wave plates. Nevertheless, we will see later that we can
account for photon loss quite easily in this formalism, and considering that the losses must
be low for quantum information processing anyway, this is an excellent approximation.
As a practical example of linear mode transformations, consider the Mach–Zehnder
interferometer (Fig. 1.4). It consists of two input and output modes, two 50:50 beam splitters
BS1 and BS2 , and a relative phase shift φ between the internal arms in the interferometer.
Suppose the input modes are â1 and â2 , and the output modes are b̂1 and b̂2 . The mode
transformations are
 
b̂1 1 1 1 1 0 1 −1 â1
= ,
b̂2 2 −1 1 0 eiφ 1 1 â2
 32 The quantum theory of light

Fig. 1.4. The Mach–Zehnder interferometer.

where the first matrix represents BS2 , the second is the phase shift, and the third represents
BS1 . The intensities (proportional to the number operators of the modes) in the output can
be related to the intensities in the input:

   
† † † † † †
b̂1 b̂1 − b̂2 b̂2 = cos φ â1 â1 + â2 â2 − i sin φ â1 â2 + â2 â1 ,

† † † †
b̂1 b̂1 + b̂2 b̂2 = â1 â1 + â2 â2 . (1.152)

Taking the expectation values on the right-hand side with respect to the input state gives
the expectation value of the intensity sum and difference in the output modes. The second
equality expresses photon number conservation in the Mach–Zehnder interferometer. Mea-
suring the intensity difference of the output modes gives information about the (unknown)
phase shift φ. We will return to this topic in Chapter 13.

1.4.4 Normal modes

A beam splitter is an example of the mixing of two optical modes. Often, we can think
of the modes as two Gaussian beams that have near-perfect overlap on the beam splitter.
It is then a good approximation to treat the system as an ‘interferometer’ of two discrete
modes, described by a unitary 2 × 2 matrix. This can be generalized to many modes. For
N discrete modes, the transformation is an N × N unitary matrix. The physical system is
sometimes called an ‘N -port interferometer’ (Fig. 1.5). The question is now whether we
can create any conceivable N -port interferometer out of regular beam splitters and phase
shifters, or whether we need more arbitrary M -point beam splitters (2 < M ≤ N ) that are
not reducible to beam splitters and phase shifters.
Reck et al. (1994) proved that every N -mode unitary transformation can be constructed
from at most N (N − 1)/2 beam splitters and phase shifters. A sketch of their proof runs as
follows: let’s denote the unitary transformation that describes the N -port interferometer by
U (N ). In addition, we define the matrix Tnm as the N -dimensional identity operator I (N )
with the elements Inn , Inm , Imn , and Imm replaced by the four elements of a 2 × 2 unitary
matrix. We can then use the Tnm to reduce the size of U (N ):

U (N ) · TN ,N −1 · TN ,N −2 · · · TN ,1 = U (N − 1) ⊕ eiφ . (1.153)
 33 1.4 Evolution of the field operators

Fig. 1.5. The N-port interferometer in terms of generalized beam splitters.

In block schematics this is

⎛ ⎞
⎛ ⎞
⎜ ⎟
⎜ ⎟ ⎜ U (N − 1) 0 ⎟
⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟
⎜ U (N ) ⎟ · TN ,N −1 · · · TN ,1 = ⎜ ⎟. (1.154)
⎜ ⎟ ⎝ ⎠
⎝ ⎠
0 eiφN

We therefore need N − 1 matrices T to reduce the unitary U (N ) to U (N − 1). We can repeat

this procedure to reduce U (N − 1) to U (N − 2), and so on. In total, we have to use at most
N (N − 1)/2 matrices T to reduce U (N ) to a diagonal matrix with only phases as non-zero
elements:
⎛ iφ1 ⎞
e 0
⎜ .. ⎟
U (N ) · TN ,N −1 · TN ,N −2 · · · T2,1 = ⎝ . ⎠. (1.155)
0 eiφN

Since the T matrices are unitary (and therefore invertible), we can write U (N ) as a series
of N (N − 1)/2 matrices acting on the diagonal matrix in Eq. (1.155). Because every Tnm
matrix is associated with a beam splitter and phase shift on modes n and m, this means that
any N -port interferometer can be constructed with only beam splitters and phase shifters.
Since U (N ) can be deconstructed into a series of beam splitters and phase shifters on
discrete modes an , we can write its generator in terms of a Hamiltonian
N

H1...N (B) =  â†n Bnm âm , (1.156)
n,m=1

where B is a Hermitian matrix. In the following argument, we will suppress the subscripts
and argument of H for brevity. Under the influence of this Hamiltonian a mode operator ân
becomes
N

i i
ân → b̂n = e  H ân e−  H = Unm âm . (1.157)
m=1
34 The quantum theory of light

The Unm are elements of the unitary matrix U (N ). We can diagonalize H by diagonalizing
B using a unitary matrix V :

N

V HV † =  Vjn â†n Vnj∗ Vjn Bnm Vmj
∗ ∗
Vjm âm Vmj
j,n,m=1
N
 †
= b̂j Djj b̂j , (1.158)
j=1

where D is a diagonal matrix. This gives us the ‘normal modes’ b̂n given in Eq. (1.157)
with Unm = Vnm Vmn ∗ . By construction, these modes diagonalize the Hamiltonian, which

in turn describes a set of non-interacting modes. Since beam splitters can be transformed
away using linear Bogoliubov transformations, their operation does not constitute a real
interaction between modes (and by implication between photons). This will have profound
implications for optical quantum information processing.

1.4.5 Non-photon-number-preserving transformations

So far, the ‘interaction’ Hamiltonians have generated transformations of annihilation opera-

tors into other annihilation operators (and creation operators into other creation operators).
However, we have seen in Eq. (1.42) that the most general mode transformations allow
for the transformation of annihilation operators into creation operators, and vice versa. The
question is therefore which Hamiltonian can generate such Bogoliubov transformations.
There is one type of quadratic Hamiltonian that we have not yet considered, namely the
Hamiltonians that are proportional to â2 and â†2 . First, we consider the Hamiltonian

†2
Hj (ξ , ϕ) = ξ eiϕ â2jλ + ξ e−iϕ âjλ . (1.159)

We use the Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relation from Eq. (1.123) to calculate the trans-
formed mode operators

†
b̂jλ = cosh(2ξ ) âjλ − ie−iϕ sinh(2ξ ) âjλ
† †
b̂jλ = ieiϕ sinh(2ξ ) âjλ + cosh(2ξ ) âjλ . (1.160)

In matrix form this is

   
b̂jλ cosh(2ξ ) −ie−iϕ sinh(2ξ ) âjλ
† = † . (1.161)
b̂jλ ieiϕ sinh(2ξ ) cosh(2ξ ) âjλ

We now observe that the quadratic Hamiltonian in Eq. (1.159) mixes the creation and
annihilation operators of the mode ajλ . This is called ‘single-mode squeezing’.
35 1.4 Evolution of the field operators

Alternatively, we can define ‘two-mode squeezing’ as the mode transformation that is

induced by the Hamiltonian
† †
Hjl (ξ , ϕ) = ξ eiϕ âjλ âlλ′ + ξ e−iϕ âjλ âlλ′ . (1.162)

The mode transformation then becomes

†
b̂jλ = cosh ξ âjλ − ieiϕ sinh ξ âlλ′
†
b̂lλ′ = −ie−iϕ sinh ξ âjλ + cosh ξ âlλ′ . (1.163)

In terms of the matrix representation this transformation can be written as

⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞⎛ ⎞
b̂jλ cosh ξ 0 0 −ieiϕ sinh ξ âjλ
⎜ b̂† ⎟ ⎜ −iϕ ⎜
⎟ ⎜ â†jλ ⎟
⎜ jλ ⎟ ⎜ 0 cosh ξ ie sinh ξ 0 ⎟⎜ ⎟
⎜ ⎟=⎝ iϕ ⎠ ⎝âlλ′ ⎟ .
⎝b̂lλ′ ⎠ 0 ie sinh ξ cosh ξ 0 ⎠
† −ie−iϕ sinh ξ 0 0 cosh ξ †
b̂lλ′ âlλ′

We now have all the ingredients for a general theory of discrete linear mode transforma-
tions: a general Bogoliubov transformation is given by
 †
b̂i = Aij âj + Bij âj
j
†
 †
b̂i = Bij∗ âj + A∗ij âj , (1.164)
j

†
where the labels i and j include the polarization degree of freedom. The operators b̂i and b̂i
must again be proper annihilation and creation operators, which means they have to obey
the commutation relations
     
† † †
b̂i , b̂j = δij and b̂i , b̂j = b̂i , b̂j = 0 . (1.165)

This leads to the following restrictions on A and B:

 T
ABT = ABT and AA† = BB† + Î. (1.166)

The second equation indicates that AA† and BB† are simultaneously diagonalized, for exam-
ple by a matrix U . The matrices A and B are then diagonalized according to the singular
value decomposition theorem:

A = UAD V † and B = UBD W † , (1.167)

where AD and BD are diagonal matrices. To determine the relation between V and W , we
consider the inverse transformation:
 †
âi = A∗ij b̂j − Bij∗ b̂j . (1.168)
j
 36 The quantum theory of light

Following the same argumentation as before, we find the restriction

 T  T
A† B = A† B and A† A = B† B + Î. (1.169)

This leads to the relation V ∗ = W , and

A = UAD V † and B = UBD V T . (1.170)

When we write the Bogoliubov transformation in matrix notation with a = (â1 , . . . , âN )
and b = (b̂1 , . . . , b̂N ), we obtain
 
b U 0 AD BD V† 0 a
b† = 0 U∗ ∗
BD A∗D 0 VT a†

A B c
= , (1.171)
B∗ A∗ c†

which agrees with Eq. (1.170). The three matrices in the top line are three successive
components in a nonlinear optical interferometer. The two block-diagonal matrices in the
first line do not mix creation and annihilation operators, and therefore describe linear optical
interferometers. The central matrix does mix creation and annihilation operators. However,
the components AD , BD , A∗D , and BD ∗ are themselves diagonal matrices, and the entire

matrix therefore corresponds to a set of single-mode squeezers. This procedure is called the
‘Bloch–Messiah reduction’, and is shown in Fig. 1.6.
The generator that is responsible for the Bogoliubov transformation in Eq. (1.164) is, in
terms of the normal modes,

 †
H= b̂i b̂i . (1.172)
2
i

Fig. 1.6. The Bloch–Messiah reduction: (a) a general multi-port interferometer including multi-mode
squeezing; (b) the reduction of the interferometer in two linear optical interferometers U and V† ,
and a set of single-mode squeezers S.
37 1.5 Quantum states of the electromagnetic field

We can now substitute the mode transformation in Eq. (1.164) into H in order to obtain

   †

∗ †

H= Aij âj + Bij âj Bik âk + A∗ik âk
2
ijk

  ∗ † † † †

= âj Aij Bik âk + âj Bij A∗ik âk + âj Aij A∗ik âk + âj Bij Bik
∗
âk
2
ijk

  † † †

= âj Fjk âk + 2âj Gjk âk + âj Fjk∗ âk , (1.173)
2
jk

where

∗
Fjk = Aij Bik (1.174)
i

and
1   δ
jk 
Gjk = Aij A∗ik + Bij∗ Bik + = Aij A∗ik . (1.175)
2 2
i i

The last equation follows from Eq. (1.166). The Hamiltonian in Eq. (1.173) is the most
general quadratic Hamiltonian. It governs the dynamics of free fields, where the mix-
ing of modes is given by the Bogoliubov transformations. These transformations can be
implemented with beam splitters and phase shifters, as well as single-mode squeezers.
At this point we should mention a possible source of confusion in the nomenclature. The
Bogoliubov transformation in Eq. (1.42) is linear, since it transforms a mode operator into a
linear combination of other mode operators. As we have seen, these linear transformations
are induced by generators (Hamiltonians) that are quadratic in the mode operators. In
particular, both (generalized) beam-splitter and squeezing transformations are generated by
quadratic Hamiltonians. On the other hand, when people mention linear optics, they often
refer specifically to optical elements that are described by generalized beam-splitters, and
not squeezers. The reason is that beam-splitters and phase-shifters are implemented with
linear dielectric media, whereas squeezing requires a nonlinear dielectric medium. When
using the term linear, we must therefore always give its context, namely either the mode
transformations of optical elements or the physical implementation.

1.5 Quantum states of the electromagnetic field

We have seen how the creation and annihilation operators produce and destroy photons
in their respective optical modes. In this section we study how linear and quadratic func-
tions of the mode operators can be used to define two important classes of states of the
electromagnetic field. Linear Hamiltonians give rise to ‘coherent states’, while quadratic
Hamiltonians produce ‘squeezed states’.
38 The quantum theory of light

1.5.1 Coherent states

We can define states according to the operators that produce them out of the vacuum. For
example, as in Eq. (1.62), the n-photon Fock state in a normalized mode a is produced by
the operator
n
â†
|n = √ |0 . (1.176)
n!
In general, a mode can be in a superposition of Fock states, which means that a single-mode
state can be written in the form
∞

|ψ = cn |n , (1.177)
n=0

where the cn are complex amplitudes3 and n |cn |2 = 1. A particular class of states that
we are interested in is created with an interaction Hamiltonian that is linear in the creation
and annihilation operators, that is, it is generated by the operator
 
D(α) ≡ exp α ↠− α ∗ â , (1.178)

where α is a complex number. We need both the creation and annihilation operator in
the exponent for D to be unitary. This is called the ‘Glauber displacement operator’.
Furthermore, we have:
D† (α) = D(−α) = D−1 (α) . (1.179)
We make use of the relation
1
exp(A) exp(B) = exp A + B + [A, B] , (1.180)
2
which holds when [A, B] commutes with both A and B. Using this relation we find that
  |α|2
D(α) = exp α ↠exp −α ∗ â exp − . (1.181)
2
Letting this act on the vacuum state |0 gives
  ∞ n
−|α|2 /2 † −|α|2 /2
 α n â†
D(α)|0 = e exp α â |0 = e |0
n!
n=0
∞
2 αn
= e−|α| /2 √ |n ≡ |α . (1.182)
n=0
n!

The states |α with α ∈ C are called ‘coherent states’. It is straightforward to verify that
|α is an eigenstate of the annihilation operator â:

â|α = α|α , (1.183)

3 This is the most general pure state for a single mode. We will consider mixed states in Chapter 3.
 39 1.5 Quantum states of the electromagnetic field

Fig. 1.7. The complex state space of coherent states. The state |α is represented by a point 2α. It is
surrounded by a circle, which indicates the region of uncertainty. The displacement operator
moves the point 2α around the plane.

and that the time evolution of the state is given by

i
U (t)|α = exp − Ht |α = e−iωt n̂ |α = |α e−iωt . (1.184)


where H is the free-field Hamiltonian, n the number operator (≡ ↠â) and successive Fock
states are separated by an energy ω. We label the state |α because it depends only on
the complex number α. The state can therefore be represented by a point α in the complex
plane (see Fig. 1.7), and the time evolution is described by a counter-clockwise circular
movement of the point around the origin. In addition, the origin |0 is identified with the
vacuum state α = 0. The operator D(α) therefore displaces the state from zero to α. A true
displacement operator would also induce the displacement on the coherent state |β :

D(α)|β = |ψ = |β + α . (1.185)

Indeed, this is how the displacement operator acts on arbitrary coherent states |β . We can
prove this by noting that
D(−α) â D(α) = â + α , (1.186)
and write

D(α)âD(−α) |ψ = D(α)âD(−α)D(α) |β = βD(α) |β = β |ψ , (1.187)

and  
D(α)âD(−α) |ψ = â − α |ψ . (1.188)
Equating the two expressions yields the eigenvalue equation

â |ψ = (β + α) |ψ , (1.189)

which is satisfied for |ψ = |β + α , as required.

40 The quantum theory of light

We can rewrite D(α) as a function of the canonical position and momentum operators q̂
and p̂ using the relations
 
ω i † ω i
â = q̂ + √ p̂ and â = q̂ − √ p̂ , (1.190)
2 2ω 2 2ω

which yields
 
D(α) = exp α ↠− α ∗ â
   
2ω 2
= exp iIm(α) q̂ − iRe(α) p̂ . (1.191)
 ω
√
Along q̂ we have the displacement of the real part of 2ω/ α (generated by the operator
√
p̂), and along p̂ the displacement is over the imaginary part of 2/ω α, generated by the
operator −q̂ (see Fig. 1.7). We can therefore choose q̂ and p̂ as two orthogonal axes in the
complex state space of the coherent states. When we rescale the position and momentum
√
quadratures by ω and , the dimensionless quadratures x̂ζ are then represented by straight
lines through the origin:
x̂ζ = cos ζ x̂0 + i sin ζ x̂π/2 . (1.192)
We will explore a variation of the state space depicted in Fig. 1.7 in more detail in Chapter 8.
The expectation value of the number operator n̂ is

α| n̂ |α = |α|2 , (1.193)

while the variance of the number operator with respect to the coherent state |α is

( n̂)2 = n̂2 − n̂ 2
= |α|4 + |α|2 − |α|4 = |α|2 . (1.194)

Similarly, the expectation value of an arbitrary quadrature is

1  
α| x̂ζ |α = √ αe−iζ + α ∗ eiζ , (1.195)
2

and the variance is x̂ζ2 = 1/2. For two orthogonal quadratures x̂ζ and x̂ζ +π/2 , the com-
mutation relation [x̂ζ , x̂ζ +π/2 ] = i leads to the general Heisenberg uncertainty relation for
the quadratures of the electromagnetic field

1   1
x̂ζ x̂ζ +π/2 ≥ x̂ζ , x̂ζ +π/2  = . (1.196)
2 2
The uncertainty relation for the position and momentum quadratures is then

1   
q̂ p̂ ≥ q̂, p̂  = . (1.197)
2 2
The coherent states satisfy the equality, and are therefore minimum uncertainty states.
41 1.5 Quantum states of the electromagnetic field

Finally, we note that the scalar product of two coherent states is given by
 
1 2 2 ∗
α|β = exp − |α| + |β| − 2α β , (1.198)
2

and the completeness relation for a single discrete mode is


d 2α
|α α| = Î . (1.199)
C π
We can see immediately from Eq. (1.198) that the scalar product between two coherent states
is never exactly zero; it approaches zero only when α and β become very different from
each other (that is, when at least one of them becomes large). The states |α therefore do not
form an orthonormal set. Moreover, the factor π −1 in the completeness relation indicates
that the set of all coherent states is ‘overcomplete’. For more details about coherent states,
see Perelomov (1986).
The coherent states are a very good approximation of the state produced by lasers oper-
ating high above threshold. Due to the photon statistics in the coherent state, it is also
often regarded as a ‘classical’ state of light, even though here we have given a quantum
description of the state.

1.5.2 Squeezed states

The next class of states we consider in this section is the ‘squeezed’ states, which are
created by quadratic Hamiltonians. As we have seen, there are two different ways to create
a single-parameter squeezing operator. There is single-mode squeezing:
 2
â†2 ∗ â
S(ξ ) = exp −ξ +ξ , (1.200)
2 2

and there is two-mode squeezing:

 
S(ξ ) = exp −ξ ↠b̂† + ξ ∗ âb̂ . (1.201)

We have used the two operators â and b̂ to distinguish the two modes. In both cases, the
squeezing operator is unitary and obeys the equations

S † (ξ ) = S(−ξ ) = S −1 (ξ ) , (1.202)

where the parameter ξ is a complex number. There are, however, qualitative differences
between the two types of squeezing.

Single-mode squeezing
In order to find out the effect of the single-mode squeezing operator S(ξ ) on the vacuum
state |0 we have to use a special operator-ordering theorem (a Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff
42 The quantum theory of light

relation). The theorem we need requires operators that obey the commutation relations
† †
[K− , K+ ] = 2K0 and [K0 , K± ] = ±K± , and also satisfy K+ = K− , and K0 = K0 . We can
then write the ordering formula

∗K ∗K
eκK+ −κ −
= eτ K+ e−2νK0 e−τ −
, (1.203)

where
κ
τ= tanh |κ| and ν = ln (cosh |κ|) . (1.204)
|κ|
We prove this relation in Appendix 1. It is readily verified that with the definitions

â†2 â2
K+ = and K− ≡ , (1.205)
2 2

the above conditions are satisfied. In particular, for K0 we find

1
2K0 = [K− , K+ ] = ↠â + . (1.206)
2

We therefore have
     
â†2 1 â2
S(ξ ) = exp −τ exp −ν ↠â + exp τ ∗ , (1.207)
2 2 2

with τ = ξ/|ξ | tanh |ξ | and ν = ln(cosh |ξ |). When we act with the squeezing operator on
the vacuum, we obtain the squeezed state
 
â†2
S(ξ )|0 ≡ |ξ = e−ν/2 exp −τ |0
2
∞ √
 n
1 (2n)! −ξ
=√ tanhn |ξ ||2n . (1.208)
cosh |ξ | n! 2|ξ |
n=0

The squeezed vacuum state |ξ has only even photon number states in the superposition.

Exercise 1.8: Prove that 12 â2 and 21 â†2 obey the algebra defined by the commutation
relations for K± and K0 .

Since S(ξ ) is a unitary evolution, we can ask how it evolves the creation and annihilation
operators. We have seen in the previous section that

ξ
S(−ξ )âS(ξ ) = â cosh |ξ | − ↠sinh |ξ |,
|ξ |
ξ∗
S(−ξ )↠S(ξ ) = ↠cosh |ξ | − â sinh |ξ |. (1.209)
|ξ |
43 1.5 Quantum states of the electromagnetic field

This leads to the eigenvalue equation (with eigenvalue zero)

 
ξ
â cosh |ξ | + ↠sinh |ξ | |ξ = 0 . (1.210)
|ξ |

Exercise 1.9: Prove Eq. (1.210).

In terms of the canonical position and momentum operators q̂ and p̂ we can write the
squeezing operator as
  iRe(ξ )  
iIm(ξ )  2 2 2

S(ξ ) = exp − ω q̂ − p̂ + q̂p̂ + p̂q̂ . (1.211)
2ω 2

This expression simplifies considerably when ξ is either purely real or imaginary:

 
ir  
Sr (r) = exp q̂p̂ + p̂q̂ for ξ = r real, (1.212)
2

and
 
ir  2 2
Si (r) = exp − ω q̂ − p̂2 for ξ = r imaginary. (1.213)
2ω
The next question we ask is how the squeezing operator acts on coherent states. It is easy
to show that the displacement operator and the squeezing operator do not commute, so we
have to be careful how we define a squeezed coherent state. We follow the convention in
the literature and apply the squeezing operator first:

|α, ξ ≡ D(α)S(ξ ) |0 . (1.214)

Using Eq. (1.210) we can deduce that for the reverse order of the displacement and squeezing
operator we have

ξ
|α, ξ = S(ξ )D α cosh |ξ | + α∗ sinh |ξ | |0 . (1.215)
|ξ |

Using the definition of the squeezed coherent state Eq. (1.214), we can evaluate the expec-
tation values of various important operators. First, the expectation value of the annihilation
and creation operators are

α, ξ | â |α, ξ = α and α, ξ | ↠|α, ξ = α ∗ . (1.216)

The average photon number in a squeezed coherent state is

α, ξ | n̂ |α, ξ = sinh2 |ξ | + |α|2 . (1.217)

44 The quantum theory of light

The expectation values of the mode operators also immediately allow us to calculate the
expectation value of an arbitrary field quadrature operator:

1  
α, ξ | x̂ζ |α, ξ = √ α e−iζ + α ∗ eiζ ≡ xζ (α) . (1.218)
2

Comparing this to Eq. (1.195), we see that squeezing has no effect on the expectation value
of the quadrature operator. However, it does have an effect on the variance of the quadrature
operator. To see this, we first calculate

1  2|ξ | 2  ϕ  ϕ 
α, ξ | x̂ζ2 |α, ξ = e sin ζ − + e−2|ξ | cos2 ζ −
2 2 2
1  −iζ 2
+ αe + α ∗ eiζ , (1.219)
2
where we have used the definition exp(iϕ) = ξ/|ξ |. This leads to the variance

1  2|ξ | 2  ϕ  ϕ 
x̂ζ2 = e sin ζ − + e−2|ξ | cos2 ζ − . (1.220)
2 2 2
If we line up the quadrature and the direction of squeezing such that ζ = ϕ/2, the vari-
ance can be made smaller than 1/2, the variance for a coherent state. This can lead to an
improved precision in determining the value of the quadrature. We will explore this further
in Chapter 13.
Finally, we consider the overlap of the single-mode squeezed coherent state |α, ξ and
the quadrature eigenstate |xζ . These states have an eigenvalue equation
   
x̂ζ xζ = xζ xζ . (1.221)

We define the wave function

!  
ψα,ξ (xζ ) = xζ  α, ξ , (1.222)
and we want to derive a closed functional form for it in terms of xζ , α, and ξ . This is
not a trivial task, but we can solve this problem by converting the eigenvalue equation in
Eq. (1.210) into a differential equation. To this end we first write
   ξ 
!  † ∗

xζ (â − α) cosh |ξ | + â − α sinh |ξ | |α, ξ = 0 , (1.223)
|ξ |

and make the substitution

eiζ   e−iζ  
â = √ x̂ζ + ix̂ζ +π/2 and ↠= √ x̂ζ − ix̂ζ +π/2 . (1.224)
2 2

The next step is to recognize that the commutation relation [x̂ζ , x̂ζ +π/2 ] = i implies that

!    d
xζ  x̂ζ +π/2 ψ = −i ψ(xζ ) , (1.225)
dxζ
45 1.5 Quantum states of the electromagnetic field

for any quantum state |ψ . Combining all of this leads to the differential equation

d
A + Bxζ + C ψα,ξ (xζ ) = 0 , (1.226)
dxζ

with
eiζ ξ e−iζ
A = √ cosh |ξ | − √ sinh |ξ | ,
2 |ξ | 2
eiζ ξ e−iζ
B = √ cosh |ξ | + √ sinh |ξ | ,
2 |ξ | 2
ξ
C = −α cosh |ξ | − α ∗ sinh |ξ |. (1.227)
|ξ |
Solving this differential equation gives
 
eipζ xζ [xζ − xζ (α)]2
ψα,ξ (xζ ) =  exp − [1 − i sin(2ζ − ϕ) sinh 2|ξ |] , (1.228)
4
2π x̂2 4 x̂ζ2
ζ

up to a phase, and where we have defined pζ as the expectation value x̂ζ +π/2 . In the limit
when |ξ | → ∞ we find that
! 
xζ  α, ξ → δ[xζ − xζ (α)] . (1.229)

Therefore, in this limit the squeezed coherent state becomes an eigenstate of the quadrature
operator. However, this can never be attained physically, since it requires an infinite amount
of energy:  
E = ω n̂ = ω |α|2 + sinh |ξ | → ∞ . (1.230)
The squeezed coherent states are useful approximations to quadrature eigenstates, and will
be used in quantum information processing with continuous variables in Chapters 8 and 9.

Two-mode squeezing
The operator that creates two-mode squeezing is
 
S(ξ ) = exp −ξ ↠b̂† + ξ ∗ âb̂ . (1.231)

†
When we define K+ = ↠b̂† and K− = K+ , then the same commutation relations hold as
for the case of single-mode squeezing:
†
[K− , K+ ] = 2K0 and [K0 , K± ] = ±K± and K0 = K0 , (1.232)

where 2K0 = ↠â+ b̂† b̂+1. This means that we can use the same operator-ordering formula
to find the two-mode squeezed vacuum state:
∗K
S(ξ ) = e−τ K+ e−2νK0 eτ − , (1.233)
46 The quantum theory of light

with
ξ
τ= tanh |ξ | and ν = ln(cosh |ξ |) . (1.234)
|ξ |
This leads to
∞
 n
−ν K+
S(ξ ) |0 = e (−τ )n |0
n!
n=0
∞
 (−ξ )n
1
= tanhn |ξ | |na , nb . (1.235)
cosh |ξ | |ξ |n
n=0

In other words, the two-mode squeezing operation on the vacuum creates photon pairs.
The annihilation and creation operators transform under the two-mode squeezing operator
according to

ξ
S(−ξ )âS(ξ ) = â cosh |ξ | − b̂† sinh |ξ | ,
|ξ |
ξ
S(−ξ )↠S(ξ ) = ↠cosh |ξ | − b̂ sinh |ξ | . (1.236)
|ξ |

Finally, we can define two-mode squeezing on multiple modes. For example, consider

1 † †
K+ = Ujk âj âk , (1.237)
2
j,k

† †
where the creation operator for mode i is denoted âi . We can require K+ and K− = K+ to
obey the commutation relations in Eq. (1.232). This places a restriction on U .

Exercise 1.10: Show that the commutation relations in Eq. (1.232) are satisfied when U is
unitary in Eq. (1.237).

1.6 References and further reading

In this chapter we have quantized the electromagnetic field in a non-relativistic setting in

the Coulomb gauge, and constructed normalizable discrete modes that can be populated
with photons. The earlier parts of the chapter relied heavily on results from classical and
quantum field theory. For a detailed introduction of field Lagrangians, see for example
Chapter 12 of Goldstein (1980). Canonical quantization of the vector potential is discussed
in detail in Bjorken and Drell (1965). There are many books on quantum optics, and a few
recent examples are Gerry and Knight (2005), Garrison and Chiao (2008), Fox (2006) and
the second edition of Walls and Milburn (2008). For a clear exposition of more advanced
methods in quantum optics, see Barnett and Radmore (1997). Orbital angular momentum
47 1.6 References and further reading

of light is a fairly large research area in its own right, and many of the important papers in
the field are collected in a volume edited by Allen et al. (2003). For the specific aspects of
Hermite– and Laguerre–Gaussian modes we have discussed here, we refer to Enderlein and
Pampaloni (2004). The theory of photon-number preserving networks was developed by
Reck et al. (1994), and the Bloch–Messiah reduction for general linear networks is given
in Braunstein (2005).
2 Quantum information processing

In general, all forms of information processing can be considered in a quantum mechan-

ical context, including for example communication, channel capacities, and the quantum
limits to information extraction. In this chapter we introduce the basic features of quan-
tum information processing. We first present qubits as abstractions of two-level addressable
quantum systems, before generalizing this concept to higher-dimensional qudit systems, and
continuous variables. We introduce the stabilizer formalism towards the beginning of our
discussion as a convenient way to track quantum information. In Section 2.2 we derive the
no-cloning theorem, which leads us to cryptography, teleportation, and quantum repeaters.
Section 2.3 describes quantum computing with qubits. We start with a brief description of
the circuit model, and use it to define cluster states and the one-way model. We study the
properties of cluster states and discuss error correction. In the last section we introduce
quantum computing over continuous variables.

2.1 Quantum information

Classically, information is carried by ‘bits’, which are physical systems that have two
(macroscopic) states denoted by 0 and 1.1 These bits are described classically, which imme-
diately raises the question of how we should extend this information-theoretic description
to the quantum mechanical case. This will lead to the quantum unit of information, the
quantum bit or ‘qubit’.

2.1.1 Classical and quantum bits

We can define the qubit as a two-dimensional quantum system, which means that the state
space of the system is a two-dimensional complex Hilbert space H . It is customary to
define a standard basis {|0 , |1 }, called the ‘computational basis’, which is used for the
preparation and read-out of the quantum information. In addition, the qubits must have
some level of addressability: if we want to manipulate quantum information, we need a
high level of control over the qubits.

1 In this book we denote the logical values of bits and qubits by a dedicated typeface in order to distinguish them
from photon number states.
49 2.1 Quantum information

In matrix notation, the computational basis can be written as

1 0
|0 = and |1 = . (2.1)
0 1

The basic operations on a qubit are a bit flip (X ), a phase flip (Z), and a combination of a
bit flip and phase flip (Y ):

0 1 0 −i 1 0
X = , Y = and Z= . (2.2)
1 0 i 0 0 −1

These are the ‘Pauli matrices’, which are traceless and have a determinant of minus one.
The square of the Pauli matrices is the 2 × 2 identity matrix Î. Another important property
of the Pauli matrices is that they anti-commute with each other:

XZ = −ZX , YX = −XY and ZY = −YZ . (2.3)

It is worth memorizing these relations, as they will be used again and again in the description
of the one-way model of quantum computation.
The eigenstates of the Pauli X matrix are
|0 + |1 |0 − |1
|+ = √ and |− = √ , (2.4)
2 2
such that

X |± = ± |± . (2.5)

The eigenvalues are +1 and −1. Similarly, the eigenstates of the Pauli Y matrix are
|0 + i |1 |0 − i |1
| = √ and | = √ , (2.6)
2 2
and the eigenvalue equations are

Y | = | and Y | = − | . (2.7)

Finally, the eigenvalue equations for the Pauli Z matrix are

Z |0 = |0 and Z |1 = − |1 . (2.8)

When the Pauli matrices are exponentiated, they generate a continuous family of single-
qubit rotations:

cos θ −i sin θ
UX (θ) = exp (−iθ X ) = cos θ Î − i sin θ X = ,
−i sin θ cos θ
cos φ − sin φ
UY (φ) = exp (−iφ Y ) = cos φ Î − i sin φ Y = ,
sin φ cos φ
e−iϕ 0
UZ (ϕ) = exp (−iϕ Z) = cos ϕ Î − i sin ϕ Z = . (2.9)
0 eiϕ
 50 Quantum information processing

Fig. 2.1. The Bloch sphere. The x axis intersects the sphere at the eigenstates of the Pauli X matrix: |± , the
y axis intersects the sphere at the eigenstates of the Y matrix: | , | , and the z axis intersects
the Bloch sphere at the eigenstates of the Z matrix: the computational basis |0 and |1 .

When we apply arbitrary UX , UY , and UZ rotations to a qubit state, for example |0 , we

generate a qubit-state space that can be represented by a three-dimensional sphere, called
the ‘Poincaré’ or ‘Bloch sphere’, shown in Fig. 2.1. Every point on the sphere corresponds to
a qubit state that is unique (up to a global phase). The two eigenstates of any Pauli operator
can be identified with antipodal points on the Bloch sphere, and the axis through these points
is the axis of rotation associated with that Pauli operator. The three Pauli operators define
three orthogonal rotation axes. For example, a rotation UX (θ) rotates the Bloch sphere
around the axis defined by |± over an angle 2θ (because orthonormal states in the Hilbert
space are antipodal in the Bloch sphere). It applies only an unobservable global phase to
the states |± , and they are therefore invariant under the rotation.
Note that the construction of the Pauli matrices does not depend on the physical represen-
tation of the two-level quantum system. This is a very important property, because it allows
us to consider a large variety of physical qubit systems, and treat each implementation
formally as a two-level quantum system.
There are a number of important single-qubit operations that have special names: the
‘Hadamard gate’, the ‘phase gate’, and the ‘π/8 gate’. The Hadamard gate H is given by

1 1 1
H=√ , (2.10)
2 1 −1

with H = H † and H 2 = Î. An important relation between the Pauli matrices and the
Hadamard operator is

HX = ZH or HXH = Z and HZH = X . (2.11)

51 2.1 Quantum information

In addition, we have HYH = −Y . The Hadamard operation is the Fourier transform in two
dimensions. It acts on the computational basis states as follows:

H |0 = |+ and H |1 = |− . (2.12)

The phase gate  is given by

1 0
= . (2.13)
0 i

Acting on the Pauli matrices, it behaves as follows:

X † = Y and Y † = −X and Z† = Z . (2.14)

Finally, the π/8 gate T is given by

e−iπ/8 0 1 0
T = exp(iπ/8) = , (2.15)
0 eiπ/8 0 eiπ/4

which acts on the Pauli operators according to

X +Y Y −X
TXT † = √ and TYT † = √ and TZT † = Z . (2.16)
2 2

The π/8 gate is therefore different from the Hadamard gate and the phase gate, in that it
does not generally transform Pauli operators into other Pauli operators. This will become
important later, when we discuss the stabilizer formalism. Both the phase gate and the π/8
gate are special cases of rotations around the z axis in the Bloch sphere.
We can generalize the results above from two-level systems to d-level systems. To do this,
observe first that we can construct the qubit Pauli operator Y from matrix multiplication
of X and Z, up to a constant. To determine this constant, we require that Y is Hermitian,
so that exponentiation of Y yields a unitary transformation (that is, a rotation). This means
that Y = αXZ, and Y † = Y . Solving for α gives α = ±i. The sign determines the chirality
of the three axes in the Bloch sphere. We traditionally choose α = −i, so that for cyclic
permutation of the Pauli operators, the commutator [X /2, Y /2] = iZ/2 always has a factor
+i. We can generalize this construction for d-level quantum systems, or ‘qudits’. First, we
define the Xd and Zd operators on the computational basis states |j with j = 0, . . . , d − 1 as

Xd |j = |(j + 1) mod d and Zd |j = e2πij/d |j . (2.17)

Raising these operators to the power d gives the identity: Xdd = Zdd = Î. We can construct
(d) a b (d)
Hermitian operators αa,b Xd Zd with phase factors αa,b determined up to a minus sign. It is
a b
convenient to represent all operators Xd Zd on a grid, shown in Fig. 2.2b. Fig. 2.2a depicts
the special case of the qubit.
 52 Quantum information processing

Fig. 2.2. (a) The Pauli matrices X2 and Z2 can be combined via matrix multiplication to form X2 Z2 = −iY2 .
The subscript ‘2’ indicates that they act on qubits. (b) The discrete Heisenberg–Weyl matrices in d
dimensions are created via repeated matrix multiplication Xad Zbd . The prefactor of Xad Zbd is
determined by Hermiticity (up to a minus sign). The open dot is the identity Î. There are d2 − 1
nontrivial operators.

The operators Xda Zdb form the so-called discrete Heisenberg–Weyl matrices. There are
d2 of them, including the identity. Each operator Xda Zdb generates qudit rotations around an
orthogonal axis labeled by (a, b), and the qudit-state space is (d 2 − 1)-dimensional. For
d = 2 we recover the familiar Bloch sphere. In the last section of this chapter we define
the generalized Pauli operators X (x) and Z(p), which are continuous Heisenberg–Weyl
operators for systems called ‘qunats’.
′ ′
Exercise 2.1: Show that Xd Zd = e2πi/d Zd Xd , and calculate [Xda Zdb , Xda Zdb ]. Prove that each
point in Fig. 2.2b corresponds to a different operator, and that there are d 2 − 1 different
operators.

2.1.2 Two-qubit logical operations and gates

Single-qubit operations are not sufficient to unlock all the computational power that is
contained in a collection of N qubits prepared in a computational basis state |0 or |1 . In
other words, if we apply only single-qubit operations to the qubits, whatever computation we
perform can be simulated efficiently2 on a classical computer. We therefore have to include
many-qubit operations (or ‘gates’) in our arsenal of primitive computational operations.
It turns out that it is sufficient to add a two-qubit gate to the single-qubit gates, in order
to probe the region that is no longer efficiently simulable on a classical computer. In fact,
almost any two-qubit gate is sufficient to enter the regime of quantum computing, when
added to the single-qubit gates. A set of single- and two-qubit gates that can simulate any
other multi-qubit gate efficiently is called a ‘universal’ set of gates.

2 Here, ‘efficient’ means that the classical computer uses resources that scale as a polynomial in N : O(N k ) with
k a finite number (as opposed to exponential scaling O(eN )). These resources include everything, from the
physical systems used, to the space and time requirements.
53 2.1 Quantum information

The Hilbert space H2 of two qubits is given by the tensor product of the single-qubit
Hilbert space H with itself: H2 = H ⊗ H . The computational basis for H2 is given by
the states

|00 , |01 , |10 , and |11 . (2.18)

We assume that this is the basis we use to prepare and read the state of the two qubits.
However, since H2 is a four-dimensional complex vector space, we can construct an infinite
number of bases, all connected by 4 × 4 unitary matrices U . One particular basis stands out
in that it is a set of four ‘maximally entangled’ states:
 ±  ±
 = √1 (|01 ± |10 ) and  = √1 (|00 ± |11 ) . (2.19)
2 2
These states are called ‘Bell states’. They form the complete orthonormal ‘Bell basis’.
It is impossible to obtain the Bell states from the computational basis states with (local)
single-qubit operations alone. To achieve this, we need two-qubit operations. These can
be given in matrix form, where the matrix is represented in the computational basis
{|00 , |01 , |10 , |11 } in that order. Here, we give two examples of two-qubit gates,
namely the controlled-not gate (denoted cx here, and often written as cnot) and the
controlled-Z gate (denoted cz, and often written as cphase). The cx gate applies a bit-flip
X to the target qubit j when the control qubit i is in the state |1 :
⎛ ⎞
1 0 0 0
⎜0 1 0 0⎟
cxij = ⎜
⎝0
⎟, (2.20)
0 0 1⎠
0 0 1 0

while the cz gate applies a phase-flip Z to the target qubit j when the control qubit i is in
state |1 :
⎛ ⎞
1 0 0 0
⎜0 1 0 0⎟
czij = ⎜
⎝0
⎟. (2.21)
0 1 0⎠
0 0 0 −1

This gate has the important properties that it is symmetric in the control and target qubits,
and that it is diagonal in the computational basis. The final two-qubit gate we discuss here
√
is the root-swap ( swap) gate:
⎛√ ⎞
2 0 0 0
√ 1 ⎜ 0 1 i 0 ⎟ ⎟.
swapij = √ ⎜ ⎝ ⎠ (2.22)
2 0 i 1 √0
0 0 0 2

When this gate is applied twice in a row on the same qubits, it executes a swap of the two
√
qubit states: ( swapij )2 |ψ, φ ij = |φ, ψ ij .
54 Quantum information processing

2.1.3 The stabilizer formalism

An important part of quantum information processing is the transformation of input states

into output states in some prescribed way. The stabilizer formalism is a way to describe
quantum states in terms of a collection of operators, called the ‘stabilizer’. Relations between
the operators can then be used to give a very compact description of the states and how they
evolve. The stabilizer formalism was developed by Daniel Gottesman, and is traditionally
used to describe quantum error correction. It has, however, many more uses. In particular,
we will use it to describe cluster states later in this chapter.
Suppose that |ψ is the quantum state of a set of qubits. A ‘stabilizer S’ is a set of
operators Si that leave the state invariant:

Si |ψ = |ψ . (2.23)

When two operators Si and Sj are members of a stabilizer, then their products Si Sj and Sj Si
are again members of the stabilizer, and [Si , Sj ] = 0. The identity operator is a (trivial)
member of the stabilizer, and so is the inverse Si−1 of every member Si :
 
Si−1 |ψ = Si−1 (Si |ψ ) = Si−1 Si |ψ = |ψ . (2.24)

The stabilizer S therefore forms a finite ‘abelian group’, in which the group elements all
commute with each other. The minimal subset of the stabilizer that can be used to retrieve
the complete group is called the set of stabilizer ‘generators’. This subset is generally not
unique.
Let’s make this construction more concrete with a few examples: consider a single qubit
in the state |0 . One element of the stabilizer is the Pauli Z operator, since Z |0 = |0 . Z
is also the generator of the stabilizer, since Z 2 = Î. The stabilizer for this state is therefore
the group S = {Î, Z}. Similarly, the stabilizer generator for the qubit state |− is −X , since
(−X ) |− = |− . Note that the minus sign is important, since the state stabilized by +X
is |+ .
For a less trivial example, consider the singlet state
 −  |01 − |10
 = √ . (2.25)
2
What is the stabilizer of this state? First, we can apply a bit flip on both qubits and obtain the
singlet state up to an overall minus sign. One generator is therefore −X1 X2 ≡ −X1 ⊗ X2 .
Second, a phase flip can be applied to both qubits and incurs again an overall minus sign.
The other generator is therefore −Z1 Z2 . The entire stabilizer for the singlet state is given
by S = {Î, −X1 X2 , −Y1 Y2 , −Z1 Z2 }.
The minus signs are important here; unlike in a state vector description they do not
correspond to overall phase factors that can be ignored. To illustrate this further, let us
construct the state corresponding to the generators S1 = X1 X2 and S2 = Z1 Z2 . Starting with
the requirement that X1 X2 |ψ = |ψ , with the most general expression for |ψ :

|ψ = c00 |00 + c01 |01 + c10 |10 + c11 |11 , (2.26)

55 2.1 Quantum information

we immediately deduce that

ceven codd
c00 = c11 ≡ √ and c01 = c10 ≡ √ . (2.27)
2 2

In other words, |ψ can be written as

   
|ψ = ceven + + codd  + . (2.28)

Next, we calculate
       
S2 |ψ = ceven Z1 Z2 + + codd Z1 Z2  + = ceven + − codd  + . (2.29)

It is a requirement that Z1 Z2 |ψ  = |ψ and so codd = −codd = 

0. The state stabilized by
X1 X2 and Z1 Z2 is therefore + , and not the singlet state  − .

Exercise 2.2: Show that X1 X2 and Z1 Z2 commute.

This example also illustrates another interesting property of the stabilizer generators.
When there are not enough generators to uniquely determine the state, a d-dimensional
subspace (with d > 1) of the Hilbert space is carved
 out.
 In Eq. (2.28) the subspace is two-
dimensional, and spanned by the Bell states + and  + . With every generator Si we can
associate a subspace Vi of the Hilbert space of the total system. A multi-qubit state therefore
always lies in the intersection of the subspaces associated with its stabilizer generators. In
the example above the subspaces of S1 and S2 are  V1 and V2 . We
 already determined the
subspace V1 in Eq. (2.28), and V2 is spanned by + and − . The intersection V1 ∩ V2
is the one-dimensional subspace associated with the state + . To define an N -qubit state
uniquely, we need N stabilizer generators on N linearly independent (but not orthogonal)
subspaces.
States are completely determined by the generators of their stabilizer group. All the other
group members of S can be constructed from the generators (by definition), and therefore
do not add any additional restrictions the state must meet. In other words, the subspaces
associated with the stabilizer generators form a set of linearly independent subspaces that
is complete in the subspace spanned by S (but not the total Hilbert space H ). This is a
very desirable property of the stabilizer, because the number of elements in S, denoted by
|S|, can be quite large. The number of generators, however, scales with log2 |S| or less.
To see this, imagine an operator T ∈ / S and Si ∈ S. This implies that Si T ∈ / S ∀Si , for
−1
if it was, then we would have T = Si Si T ∈ S, which is false by assumption. However,
when we add T to the set of generators of S, then Si T ∈ S for all Si . We therefore at least
double the size of the group whenever we add a new generator. This means that the number
of (independent) generators of a group can be at most log2 |S|. Describing a state in terms
of stabilizer generators can therefore be very efficient.
So far we considered examples where the Si are tensor products of Pauli operators. This
means that the stabilizer S was a subgroup of the ‘Pauli group’ for one and two qubits. The
Pauli group for a single qubit P1 is given by the Cartesian product of the numbers ±1, ±i,
56 Quantum information processing

and the Pauli operators (including the identity):

P1 = {±1, ±i} × {Î, X , Y , Z}

= {±Î, ±i Î, ±X , ±iX , ±Y , ±iY , ±Z, ±iZ} . (2.30)

Sometimes the Pauli group is called the Heisenberg–Weyl group. We can also define the
Pauli group for N qubits PN = P⊗N 1 . In the above example of the stabilizer of the singlet
state, the generators −X1 X2 and −Z1 Z2 are elements of P2 . Moreover, S ⊂ P2 for the
singlet state. No stabilizer ever includes −Î or ±i Î.
How can we describe other states that are not so obviously stabilized by tensor products of
Pauli operators? The equivalent question is how to construct the stabilizer of general states
that are unitary transformations of states with a stabilizer S ⊂ PN . Let |ψ be stabilized
by S ⊂ PN with generators Si . A state U |ψ then has stabilizer generators " Si = USi U † :

U |ψ = USi |ψ = USi U † U |ψ ≡ "

Si U |ψ . (2.31)

The group S " = {"

Si } is the stabilizer of the state U |ψ .
An important question is: which set of transformations U yields new generators " Si such
that S̃ is a subgroup of the Pauligroup,
 S̃ ⊂ PN ? By construction, these unitary operations
transform |ψ into another state ψ ′ that is stabilized by (possibly different) Pauli operators.
We answer this by considering another, more general question: let Pi , Pj ∈ PN be elements
of the Pauli group. What is the structure of the set of unitary transformations {Uk } that
satisfy the relation
†
Uk Pi Uk = Pj , (2.32)
for all Pi ∈ PN ? The answer is that the Uk form again a group under multiplication. To see
this, first, suppose that U1 and U2 both satisfy Eq. (2.32). Then we can find a Pj and a Pk
such that    
† † † † †
(U2 U1 ) Pi U1 U2 = U2 U1 Pi U1 U2 = U2 Pj U2 = Pk . (2.33)

In other words, the product U2 U1 is also an element of the group. A similar argument shows
that U1 U2 is an element of the group, but it is generally not the same as U2 U1 , and the
†
group is therefore not abelian. Second, the inverse of Uk , denoted by Uk , is an element of
the group:
 
† † † † †
Pi = (Uk Uk )Pi (Uk Uk ) = Uk Uk Pi Uk Uk = Uk Pj Uk . (2.34)

Finally, the unit element is in the group: ÎPi Î = Pi for all Pi ∈ PN . The name of this
group is the ‘Clifford group’, denoted by the symbol CN . It is again a finite group, with
a particularly compact set of generators, consisting of the Hadamard operator Hi and the
phase gate i on qubit i, and the cz gate on two arbitrary qubits i and j. Any U ∈ CN on
N qubits can be constructed from Hadamards, phase gates, and cz gates in at most O(N 2 )
steps. The proof of this is not too difficult, but it is a bit lengthy. It is given as an exercise
in Nielsen and Chuang (2000). Note that the π/8 gate given in Eq. (2.15) is not part of the
Clifford group.
57 2.2 Quantum communication

2.2 Quantum communication

In this section we explore various aspects of quantum communication. We first present the
no-cloning theorem and the famous BB84 and Ekert91 protocols for quantum cryptogra-
phy, and then we give the procedure for quantum teleportation. We conclude this section
with a discussion about quantum repeaters.

2.2.1 The no-cloning theorem and cryptography

An important operation in classical information processing is copying. In quantum mechan-

ics, on the other hand, it is not possible to copy an arbitrary qubit state |ψ = α |0 + β |1 .
The proof of this is simple. Imagine first that a copying operation does exist and is given
by the unitary operation U . It acts on the state |ψ 1 and on a second qubit in some initial
state |i 2 . The output of the copying procedure should be |ψ 1 |ψ 2 . Since |0 and |1 are
legitimate qubit states, the unitary operation must yield

U |0 1 |i 2 = |0 1 |0 2 and U |1 1 |i 2 = |1 1 |1 2 . (2.35)

However, due to the linearity of quantum mechanics this implies

U |ψ 1 |i 2 = α U |0 1 |i 2 + β U |1 1 |i 2 = α |0 1 |0 2 + β |1 1 |1 2

= |ψ 1 |ψ 2 . (2.36)

We therefore cannot make a perfect copy of an unknown qubit. Any copying procedure
must introduce some form of noise in the qubits. This result has become known as the
‘no-cloning theorem’, and it leads to perfectly secure key distribution for cryptography.
The objective of most quantum cryptography protocols is to establish a random bit
string between two parties, traditionally known as Alice and Bob. The random bit string
is called a ‘key’, and Alice and Bob can use it for secure communication by adding the
key to the message in binary (modulo 2). If the key is at least as long as the message, the
encrypted message is now completely randomized. However, decoding is straightforwardly
performed by performing the same modulo 2 addition to the key and the encrypted mes-
sage. Therefore, if Alice and Bob share a random key that is unknown to anybody else,
they can engage in secure communication. The earliest quantum protocol for key distribu-
tion was invented in 1984 by Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard, and has become known
as BB84.
In the BB84 protocol, Alice sends a sequence of qubits to Bob. Alice prepares each
qubit randomly in one of four states; |0 , |1 , |+ , or |− . Bob measures the qubits in the
Z basis {|0 , |1 } (the computational basis), or in the X basis {|+ , |− }. He varies his
measurement basis randomly. After Alice has sent a sufficiently long string of qubits, she
publicly announces the basis for each qubit that she sent (but not the state itself). This is a
classical bit string. Bob responds by publicly disclosing which of the qubits he measured
58 Quantum information processing

in the same basis as Alice. The (undisclosed) outcomes of Bob’s measurements of these
qubits must be correlated perfectly with Alice’s input state, and these form a random bit
string shared by Alice and Bob. In turn, they can use this string as a key for cryptography.
In principle, there may be an eavesdropper on the line (called Eve), who can intercept
the qubits sent from Alice to Bob. She can do whatever is permitted by the laws of quantum
mechanics in order to gain (partial) information about the random bit string, and this could
render the protocol insecure. However, due to the no-cloning theorem, she cannot make a
perfect copy of the qubits. In fact, whenever she gains any information about the qubits,
she necessarily disrupts the state of the qubits sent on to Bob, and as a consequence the
correlation between the bit string held by Alice and Bob will deteriorate. Alice and Bob
therefore publicly compare part of the random bit string to verify that the correlation is
perfect. If they detect an eavesdropper, they abandon this communication channel and try a
different one. An outline of the security proof of BB84 is given in Section 5.4. Note that this
protocol does not protect against ‘denial of service’ attacks, nor does it offer any guarantee
that Alice is talking to Bob, as opposed to someone posing as Bob.

Exercise 2.3: Eve measures randomly in the X or Z basis and sends the measured qubits
on to Bob. Show that the error rate in the verification procedure is 25%.

Another protocol for random key distribution is due to Ekert (1991), and uses entangle-
ment to protect against eavesdroppers. Alice prepares sets of two qubits in a maximally
entangled state, for example the singlet state

 −  |0 1 |1 2 − |1 1 |0 2 |+ 1 |− − |− 1 |+
2 2
 = √ = √ , (2.37)
2 2

and sends the second qubit in each singlet state to Bob. Next, they both measure their
qubits randomly in the X or the Z basis and publicly compare bases. From Eq. (2.37) it is
clear that they should find a perfect anti-correlation when they measure in the same basis.
Eavesdropper detection proceeds in very much the same way as in BB84: any information

extraction that Eve attempts will disrupt the state  − and will show up in the subsequent
verification of the random key.

2.2.2 Teleportation

One of the most striking protocols in quantum information processing is quantum telepor-
tation, in which a quantum state is transferred from one system to another. Teleportation
was invented by Bennett et al. in 1993, and it was demonstrated experimentally with light
in 1997 and 1998, and with massive particles (ions in traps) in 2004. Here, we describe the
protocol for qubits. Suppose that one communicating party, Alice, has a qubit in the state
|ψ = α |0 + β |1 with |α|2 + |β|2 = 1. This state may be unknown to her, meaning that
she has no information about α and β. In addition to the qubit she wishes to teleport, she is
given one part of an entangled system of two qubits. The other part of the entanglement is
59 2.2 Quantum communication

held by Bob. The shared entangled state is the singlet state3

 −  |0 A |1 B − |1 A |0 B
 = √ , (2.38)
2
where the subscripts A and B indicate the parts of the system held by Alice and Bob. The
total three-qubit system can then be written as
 − − |1 A |0 B
|0 A |1 B
|ψ A
 = (α |0 A + β |1 A ) ⊗ √
AB
2
α |00 A |1 B − α |01 A |0 B + β |10 A |1 B − β |11 A |0 B
= √ . (2.39)
2
Alice next makes a measurement in the Bell basis. In other words, she makes a specific
joint measurement on the two qubits that she holds. To understand the effect of this, we first
write the computational basis states as a superposition of Bell states:
 +  −  +  −
 +   − 
|00 = √ and |11 = √ ,
2 2
 +  −  +  −
 +   − 
|01 = √ and |10 = √ . (2.40)
2 2
Now substitute these equations into Eq. (2.39) and collect the terms with the same Bell
states:
 +  −
 −  
|ψ A  AB = A
(α |1 − β |0 ) + A
(α |1 + β |0 )
2 2
 +  −
 
A A
− (α |0 − β |1 ) − (α |0 + β |1 ) . (2.41)
2 2
Alice’s measurement can give all four Bell states with equal probability, regardless of the
values of α and β. It therefore reveals no information about the original state |ψ . Moreover,
when Alice obtains her measurement result, she can tell Bob exactly how to retrieve the
original
  qubit state using only the communication of two classical bits: when the outcome
is + , Alice needs
  to tell Bob to perform both a Z operation and anX operation;

when
the outcome is − , Bob needs to perform only an X operation; for  + the corrective
operation
 − is the Z operation, and finally, when Alice’s measurement outcome indicates
 , she needs to tell Bob to do nothing. After the corrective operation, Bob’s qubit is in
the state |ψ .
This is a remarkable protocol. We have shown that it is possible in quantum mechanics
to transfer the state of a quantum system to another quantum system perfectly, without
disturbing it and without gaining any information about the state. Neither the entanglement
channel, nor the classical communication of two classical bits from Alice to Bob, tells us
anything about the state |ψ . One may object that this violates the no-signalling principle

3 The singlet state is not essential; any maximally entangled Bell state will do.
60 Quantum information processing

(no information can travel faster than light), and the no-cloning theorem (we cannot make
a perfect identical copy of an unknown quantum state). However, on closer inspection we
realize that neither principle is violated: first, the no-cloning theorem is satisfied, because
Alice destroys her copy of |ψ by performing the Bell measurement. Second, the no-
signalling principle is satisfied because Bob needs to know the corrective operations in
order to make use of the quantum state |ψ . The operations occur with equal probability
(they are related to Alice’s measurement outcome), and applying these operators with equal
probability completely randomizes the state |ψ . In other words, without the corrective
operations, Bob does not know how to interpret the results of any measurements that he
may perform on his qubit. He has to wait for Alice’s classical message, which cannot travel
faster than the speed of light.
When Alice and Bob are located at approximately the same position we can simplify the
teleportation protocol considerably. Suppose again that Alice holds the unknown quantum
state |ψ = α |0 + β |1 , and Bob holds a second qubit prepared in the state |0 . Since
Alice and Bob are no longer spatially separated, we can apply a two-qubit gate such as the
cx gate. This will give the following state:

|ψ A |0 B →cx α |00 AB + β |11 AB . (2.42)

Next, Alice applies a Hadamard operation to her qubit such that the total state becomes

α |+, 0 + β |−, 1 = |0 A (α |0 + β |1 )B + |1 A (α |0 − β |1 )B . (2.43)

A measurement of Alice’s qubit in the computational basis then gives the state α |0 ± β |1
for Bob’s qubit, where the sign is determined by the measurement outcome m = 0, 1.
Bob can retrieve the original state by applying a corrective Z operation depending on the
measurement result. We can write this operation as Z m .
Note that in this case we use fewer qubits (two, rather than three), and Alice has to
communicate only one classical bit to Bob, rather than two in the original teleportation
protocol. Later in this chapter we will see how this two-qubit ‘local’ teleportation protocol
can be used to translate between the standard circuit model of quantum computation and
the one-way model using cluster states.

2.2.3 Quantum repeaters

When we want to implement any quantum communication protocol over a considerable dis-
tance, we have to pay attention to the fact that the physical system that carries the quantum
information may be degraded or even lost in the process. For example, when a single photon
carrying a qubit is sent through an optical fibre, the small but finite absorption coefficient
of the fibre will cause a considerable photon loss at long distances. When the probability
of photon transmission over a fibre of length l0 is 1/e, the probability that a photon travels
through a fibre of length l without being absorbed is exp(−l/l0 ). This exponential atten-
uation means that a different approach is required to allow quantum information to travel
over distances much longer than l0 .
61 2.2 Quantum communication

Classically, this problem is solved by adding repeater stations to a communication line.

First, the signal is encoded such that it can be faithfully reconstructed after a certain amount
of noise and loss. Before the signal becomes too degraded for noiseless decoding, a repeater
reads the information in the signal and re-encodes it in a new, strong signal. This is then sent
to the next repeater station. In quantum mechanics, however, the no-cloning theorem forbids
this type of signal amplification. A quantum repeater can nevertheless be constructed, using
‘entanglement swapping’ and ‘entanglement purification’.
We do not yet have the language to describe the degradation of the state of a qubit, so we
will describe the quantum repeater strictly in terms of qubit loss. This simplified version
will allow us to understand the essence of the mechanism. The repeater protocol begins
with entanglement swapping, which is a variation on quantum teleportation. However, it
differs from teleportation in that the unknown input qubit is itself part of an entangled qubit
pair. Suppose parties A, B share a singlet state, and B and C share another singlet state. The
total state is then
 −  −
  ′ = 1 (|0101 − |0110 − |1001 + |1010 )ABB′ C
AB BC 2
1  +   +     
=  BB′  AC −  − BB′  − AC
2
        
− + ′ + BB
+ − ′ −
AC
.
BB AC
(2.44)

A Bell measurement on systems B and B′ will leave parties A and C with an entangled
state (provided the measurement outcome is communicated to A and C), even though their
systems never interacted.
Assume that A and B are a distance l apart, and B and C are also a distance l apart.
To gain the full benefit of the repeater, we take A and C to be a distance 2l apart. The
probability for the successful transmission of a qubit from A to B and from C to B is given
by p = exp(−l/l0 ). That means that on average at least p−1 entangled qubit pairs must be
shared between A and B, and the same number of pairs must be shared between B and C.
Party B next determines which qubits have survived the transmission without collapsing the
qubit state. In other words, B checks whether the system carrying the qubit is there, without
measuring the qubit value. Once B has identified one qubit sent by A and one qubit sent by
C, he performs the Bell measurement and tells A and C both the measurement outcome and
the labels of the qubits he measured. The parties A and C now share an entangled state.
The physical cost of this procedure is 2p−1 singlet states. By contrast, if A had sent
entangled qubits directly to C, the transmission probability would have been exp(−2l/l0 ) =
p2 , and she would have had to send at least p−2 qubits. This procedure can be repeated N
times to stretch a distance Nl. The cost in entangled qubit pairs with this procedure is Np−1 ,
whereas the cost of direct transmission is pN . This is an exponential speed-up. A note of
warning: when N is very large, the probability of losing all qubits in one leg of the protocol
becomes appreciable. The number of attempts to share entangled qubits must therefore also
grow. If the number of shared qubits in one leg is n, and the total failure probability of the
protocol is smaller than ǫ, we require

N (1 − p)n < ǫ . (2.45)

62 Quantum information processing

For fixed p = exp(−l/l0 ), ǫ, and N , the number of pairs n must satisfy:

log ǫ − log N
n> . (2.46)
log(1 − p)

Therefore n grows only logarithmically in N , and the exponential gain of the quantum
repeater is preserved: n ≃ N log Np−1 as opposed to n ≃ p−N .
When the qubits are degraded during the transmission over distance l, the multiple
entangled pairs are purified before they engage in the entanglement swapping protocol.
This increases the resource requirement, but it does not alter the overall scaling of the
resource requirements. We will revisit the quantum repeater and entanglement purification
in Chapter 10.

2.3 Quantum computation with qubits

Quantum computation is a generic name for a class of operations on quantum systems that
start in a known input state, and evolve into the output state while implementing a certain
computational algorithm. Measuring the output state then gives the correct outcome of the
computation with a probability that is larger than some fixed bound (this probabilistic aspect
makes quantum computing useful only when the answer can be verified efficiently on a
classical computer). For some algorithms, such as factoring, quantum computing offers an
exponential speed-up over the best known classical algorithms. Specific architectures for
quantum computers differ in the way they evolve the input state into the output state. For
our purposes we distinguish between a unitary evolution, where the output state is a unitary
transformation of the input state, and a measurement-based evolution, in which adaptive
measurements are used to drive the computation along. In practice, the distinction between
them is somewhat blurred, since measurements are an essential component of quantum
error correction, which is needed in both models. Examples of the unitary evolution type
are the circuit model and adiabatic quantum computing, while examples of measurement-
based quantum computing are the one-way model and the Gottesman–Chuang teleportation
model. The quantum systems carrying the computation can be (among others) qubits, qudits,
or continuous variables. Here, we mainly consider quantum computation using qubits and
continuous variables in the circuit model and in the one-way model of quantum computing.
We first briefly review the circuit model for qubits, and subsequently translate this into the
one-way model. This leads directly to the Gottesman–Knill theorem and error correction.
In the next section, we introduce quantum computing using continuous variables.

2.3.1 The circuit model

As stated above, the circuit model essentially describes a unitary transformation to a col-
lection of input systems, here taken to be qubits. Any unitary transformation on N qubits
can be decomposed into single-qubit operations and a number of well-chosen, identical,
63 2.3 Quantum computation with qubits

√
two-qubit gates. Often the two-qubit gate is taken to be the cx, but the cz or the swap is
equally suitable. To keep track of (large) quantum computations, it is convenient to write
them as a collection of their constituent single-qubit and two-qubit gates. Every qubit will
undergo a subset of these operations, and their input state will be transformed into the out-
put state. The qubits themselves are the carriers of the information, and typically they are
taken to be distinguishable objects. This means that we can associate a ‘world line’ (i.e. a
trajectory in spacetime) with every qubit, drawn from left to right, with the operations, or
gates, as symbols on the line. For example, here is a single-qubit gate, transforming |ψin
to |ψout = U |ψin :

|ψin U |ψout

U can be any single-qubit gate, for example a Hadamard H , one of the Pauli operators X ,
Y , or Z, or any other rotation in the Bloch sphere.
Apart from single-qubit operations, a quantum computation needs two-qubit gates. We
√
have already encountered the cx, the cz, and the swap. In circuit language, these gates
are represented as follows:

cx : cz : swap :

The cx and cz gates are related via Hadamard gates:

H H

This is a very important identity that becomes indispensable when we construct cluster
states in the next section.
There are also three-qubit gates, the most famous being the Fredkin gate and the Toffoli
gate.

fredkin : toffoli :

As an example of how quantum circuits work, consider the quantum teleportation pro-
tocols that we studied in the previous section. The top line in the circuit below is the qubit
in the unknown state |ψ , held by Alice. The lower two qubits are prepared in state |00 ,
after which
 a Hadamard and a cx transform the state into the maximally entangled Bell
state  + . This combination of a Hadamard and a cx can be used to transform between
the computational basis and the Bell basis. We use this transformation again on Alice’s two
64 Quantum information processing

qubits to implement the Bell measurement.

ψ H ‘k’

0 H ‘l’

0 Zk X l ψ

Depending on the measurement outcome (k, l), Bob performs a single-qubit operation Z k X l
on his qubit, after which he retrieves the original qubit state |ψ . The ancilla state |00 can
be chosen differently (in particular |11 is a common choice), which would change the
corrective single-qubit gate for Bob.

Exercise 2.4: Give the circuit diagram of the teleportation protocol in which the two mea-
surements are replaced by one- and two-qubit unitary operators. What are the three output
states?

Similarly, we can give the circuit for the two-qubit local teleportation protocol:

ψ H ‘k’

0 Zk ψ

Next, we use this two-qubit protocol to construct the one-way model of quantum compu-
tation, which turns out to be particularly useful for optical implementations of quantum
computers.

2.3.2 Cluster states and the one-way model

The one-way model was introduced by Raussendorf and Briegel in 2001, and forms an
alternative approach to quantum computing. The heart of this architecture is to create a
large entangled resource state,4 called a ‘cluster state’. The computation then proceeds as a
series of single-qubit measurements. In this section, we first derive the one-way model from
the circuit model following Nielsen (2006), and in the process we will find a constructive
definition of the cluster state.
Consider the following circuit diagram of local single-qubit teleportation:

ψ H ‘m’

0 Zm ψ

The measurement is in the computational basis, and the outcome m = 0, 1 determines

whether we apply a Pauli Z operation to the teleported qubit. The next step is to translate

4 The philosophy behind this is somewhat similar to the Ekert protocol for cryptography, where entanglement is
created and shared beforehand, and subsequently used as a resource.
65 2.3 Quantum computation with qubits

the cx gate into the cz gate. This procedure incurs two Hadamard gates, which are absorbed
into the state of the ancilla (|0 → |+ ) and the teleported qubit:

ψ H ‘m’

H 0 HZ m ψ X mH ψ

A single-qubit rotation around the z axis over an angle α is written as UZ (α) = exp(iαZ/2).
We can apply this rotation to the input qubit in state |ψ , which means that after the local
teleportation protocol the output is in the state UZ (α) |ψ . In a circuit diagram this becomes

ψ UZ (␣) H ‘m’

X m HUZ (␣) ψ

Since the single-qubit gate commutes with the cz gate, we can write the circuit as

ψ HUZ (␣) ‘m’

X m HUZ (␣) ψ

We can reinterpret this diagram as an entangled state |ψ = UCZ |ψ, + , followed by a

single-qubit measurement on the first qubit that performs the single-qubit gate HUZ (α)
on the state |ψ . The measured observable is M (α) = UZ (α)XUZ (−α). In other words,
we can apply a single-qubit gate HUZ (α) to a qubit in state |ψ by entangling the qubit
with an ancilla qubit in state |+ via a cz gate, and then performing a measurement of the
observable M (α) on the initial qubit.

Exercise 2.5: Verify M (α) and show that it lies in the equatorial plane of the Bloch sphere,
depicted in Fig. 2.1.

So far, we have shown that we can apply rotations around the z axis (followed by a
Hadamard) via this measurement technique, but what about arbitrary single-qubit opera-
tions? Single-qubit operations are equivalent to arbitrary rotations in the Bloch sphere. Any
such rotation U (θ) over an angle θ around the axis θ̂ can be decomposed into three Euler
angles α, β, and γ :

U (θ ) = UZ (γ )UX (β)UZ (α) . (2.47)

Since X = HZH , we can rewrite

∞
 n
β β Xn
UX (β) = exp −i X = −i
2 2 n!
n=0
∞
 n  ∞ n
β (HZH )n β Zn
= −i = H −i H
2 n! 2 n!
n=0 n=0

= HUZ (β)H . (2.48)

66 Quantum information processing

Therefore

U (θ ) = H HUZ (γ ) HUZ (β) HUZ (α) . (2.49)

In circuit language, this becomes

HUZ (α) HUZ (β) HUZ (γ ) H

In order to implement an arbitrary rotation U (θ), the teleportation procedure presented

above must be concatenated three times
ψ HUZ (a) ‘k’

HUZ (b) ‘l’

HUZ (g) ‘m’

ψ out

with |ψout = (X m HUZ (γ )) (X l HUZ (β)) (X k HUZ (α)) |ψ . However, the operators X k ,
X l , and X m depend on the measurement outcomes, and we should try to get rid of them by
commuting them through the Pauli gates and Hadamards. This will give rise to an adjustment
of the measurement bases depending on the previous measurement outcomes. This is often
called ‘feed-forward’.

Exercise 2.6: Show that the effective single-qubit operation due to the three measurements
above corresponds to

HUZ (α) HUZ ((−1)k β) HUZ ((−1)l γ ) Xk Zl Xm

The rotation angle of UZ depends on the measurement outcome of the previous qubit,
and determines a temporal order in which to perform the measurements. This is why this
model of computation is called the ‘one-way’ model.
The four-qubit state in the above example can be regarded as an entangled resource for
the rotation U (θ ). It is convenient to introduce a graphical representation of this entangled
state: every qubit in the state |+ is represented by a circle (the ‘vertex’), while a cz gate
is represented by a line (the ‘edge’) connecting the qubits it operates on. Since any two
cz gates (on possibly overlapping qubit pairs) always commute, we do not have to take
the order into account. Any state that can be represented in this graphical way is a ‘cluster
state’. For example, in the four-qubit case above the initial entangled state is a cluster state
if |ψ = |+ . In graphical language, this becomes

GFED
@ABC
α GFED
@ABC ±γ GFED
±β GFED
@ABC @ABC

After the consecutive measurements M (α), M (±β), and M (±γ ), and the corrective Pauli
operations, the final qubit on the right is in the state U (θ) |+ .
67 2.3 Quantum computation with qubits

Exercise 2.7: Write out the state of a three- and four-qubit linear cluster in the computational
basis.

A distinction is often made between cluster states and ‘graph states’, where the former
is any d-dimensional regular lattice of qubits with nearest-neighbour cz operations, while
graph states are more general, and include any topology of vertices.
We can now determine how an arbitrary N -qubit computation defined by a quantum
circuit can be translated into a computation in the one-way model. First, all multi-qubit
gates in the circuit must be translated into single-qubit gates and cz gates. This is always
possible. Each ‘logical’ qubit in the circuit model is represented by a horizontal line. In
the one-way model the logical qubit becomes a string of ‘physical qubits’ in the state |+ ,
which are linearly connected (entangled) via cz gates:

@ABC
GFED GFED GFED
@ABC @ABC @ABC
GFED @ABC
GFED

Each logical qubit in the circuit model is associated with such a one-dimensional cluster
state. Just as in the circuit model, in the one-way model the logical qubits are arranged in a
vertical stacking, such that the cz gates between two logical qubits become lines connecting
physical qubits on different horizontal levels:

@ABC
GFED GFED GFED
@ABC @ABC @ABC
GFED @ABC
GFED

@ABC
GFED @ABC
GFED GFED
@ABC @ABC
GFED @ABC
GFED

@ABC
GFED @ABC
GFED GFED
@ABC @ABC
GFED @ABC
GFED

This reasoning shows by construction that two-dimensional cluster states can be a resource
for quantum computing. A natural question is if there are cluster states that are a universal
resource for quantum computing, meaning that the cluster allows the implementation of
any quantum computation up to a certain size (related to the size of the cluster). Before this
question can be answered, a framework is needed to describe the manipulation of cluster
states.

2.3.3 Manipulating cluster states

The manipulation of cluster states is most efficiently described using the stabilizer formal-
ism. The question is therefore: what are the stabilizer generators of a cluster state of N
qubits? In the case of a cluster state without any edges (that is, without cz gates), this ques-
tion is easily answered: each qubit is disconnected from every other qubit, and is therefore
in the |+ state. The stabilizer generator for |+ j is Sj = Xj , so the stabilizer generator
for the maximally disconnected cluster is {Xj }N j=1 . To find the stabilizer generators for less
trivial clusters we investigate how Sj (and Sk ) change when a czjk gate is applied to qubits
j and k.
68 Quantum information processing

First, the gate czjk can be written in terms of 2 × 2 matrices P (0) , P (1) , Z, and Î, where

1 0 0 0
P (0) = and P (1) = . (2.50)
0 0 0 1

These are ‘projectors’ onto the states |0 and |1 , respectively. The czjk gate then becomes

(0) (1)
czjk = Pj ⊗ Îk + Pj ⊗ Zk . (2.51)

This means that when qubit j is projected onto |0 , the operation on k is the identity, and
when qubit j is projected onto |1 , the operation on k is the Pauli Z gate. By definition this
is the cz gate, even though its symmetry is no longer manifest. The projectors P (0) and P (1)
obey the following relations:

P (0) X = XP (1) and P (1) X = XP (0) . (2.52)

Exercise 2.8: Prove Eqs. (2.51) and (2.52).

The effect of the cz gate on the stabilizer generator Sj is:

 
† (0) (1)
czjk Sj czjk = czjk Sj Pj ⊗ Îk + Pj ⊗ Zk
 
(1) (0)
= czjk Pj ⊗ Îk + Pj ⊗ Zk Sj
  
= Pj(0) ⊗ Îk + Pj(1) ⊗ Zk Pj(1) ⊗ Îk + Pj(0) ⊗ Zk Sj
 
= Pj(1) ⊗ Zk + Pj(0) ⊗ Zk Sj

= Sj Zk , (2.53)

where in the second line we have used Sj ∝ Xj , and in the last line we have used P (0) +P (1) =
Î. Since the cz gate is symmetric, we can immediately find the transformed stabilizer
generator for Sk :
†
Sk → czjk Sk czjk = Sk Zj . (2.54)
The cz gate therefore multiplies the stabilizer generator Sj with the Pauli Zk and vice versa.
If the Sj already contained a Zk , the effect of the second Zk is to remove the first one from Sj .
This agrees with the observation that applying the cz gate twice is the same as the identity
operator cz2jk = Îjk . From this we can construct the stabilizer for any N -qubit cluster state:
Each qubit j in a cluster state carries a stabilizer generator Sj that is given by
#
Sj = Xj Zk , (2.55)
k∈n(j)

where n(j) is the ‘neighbourhood’ of qubit j, i.e., the set of qubits that are directly connected
to j via a single cz gate. There are N stabilizer generators of this form, which completely
determines the cluster. Given the stabilizer generator {Sj }N
j=1 , we can easily find the graphical
69 2.3 Quantum computation with qubits

representation, and vice versa. This makes the stabilizer formalism a tremendously powerful
tool for tracking changes in cluster states.
 Sj is
A cluster state is defined as the state |C for which Sj |C = |C  for all j, where
defined as in Eq. (2.55). However, there are also states for which Sj C ′ = − C ′ for one
or more j. These states are orthogonal to |C :
†     
C|C ′ = C| Sj Sj C ′ = C| − C ′ = − C|C ′ , (2.56)

and this inner product must therefore be zero. An N -qubit cluster state will have N stabilizer
generators Sj (with eigenvalue 1), and by choosing eigenvalues −1 for subsets of Sj we can
construct 2N orthonormal states. These stabilizer states thus form a basis for the N -qubit
Hilbert space. Only the states with all eigenvalues of +1 for the stabilizer  generators are
strictly called a cluster state. However, any of the stabilizer states C ′ are often called
cluster states with a number of negative stabilizer eigenvalues.
As a simple example, we can calculate the effect of a Pauli operator on a cluster state.
†
From Eq. (2.31) we find that " Sj Ul |ψ = Ul |ψ with " Sj = Ul Sj Ul . If Ul is a Pauli operator
Pl(k) = X , Y , Z on qubit l, and Sj ∝ Pl(m) is a stabilizer generator of the cluster state |ψ ,
then by Eq. (2.55) we have
$ (m)
(k) (m) (k) Pl if m = k,
Pl Pl Pl = (2.57)
−Pl(m) if m = k.

A single Pauli operation on a cluster state will therefore take some stabilizer
 generators Sj
to −Sj , and the cluster state |C transforms into a cluster state C ′ with a few negative
stabilizer eigenvalues.
We now also see the reason for introducing the Clifford operations: these gates
(Hadamard, phase, cz, and cx gates) transform Pauli operators into (other) Pauli opera-
tors. When we act on a cluster state with a Clifford operation, the resulting state is again
a stabilizer state, i.e., the stabilizer generators are products of Pauli operators. When a
stabilizer state can be transformed into a cluster state using a Clifford operation made of
tensor products of single-qubit operations, the stabilizer state is called ‘lc-equivalent’ to
the cluster state. Here, lc stands for ‘local Clifford’.

Exercise 2.9: Show that the ghz state |000 + |111 is lc-equivalent to a three-qubit
cluster state. Construct the stabilizer of the ghz state and transform it into the stabilizer of
the cluster state using local Clifford gates.

An equally important question is how cluster states transform when some of their qubits
are measured. We will restrict the discussion to single-qubit measurements. We have already
seen that arbitrary single-qubit measurements in the equatorial plane of the Bloch sphere
can be used to implement single-qubit rotations. We can also infer from Exercise 2.6 that
in the special case where Uj (α) = Uj (−α), with j = X , Y , Z, there is no need to wait for
the measurement outcome k and l. These special unitary transformations correspond to the
respective Pauli operators. However, we have not yet determined the effect of measurements
in the eigenbasis of Pauli operators, and these turn out to be very important tools for
70 Quantum information processing

shaping cluster states. For pedagogical reasons we will first investigate measuring the Pauli
Z operator, and then the X operator. Measurement of the Y operator is left as an exercise
for the reader.
Consider again the linear cluster state

GFED
@ABC
1 GFED
@ABC
2 GFED
@ABC
Z3 @ABC
GFED
4 GFED
@ABC
5

where we measure the third qubit in the computational basis (indicated by Z3 ). The stabilizer
of the cluster before measurement is generated by

S1 = X1 Z2
S2 = Z1 X2 Z3
S3 = Z2 X3 Z4
S4 = Z3 X4 Z5
S5 = Z4 X5 . (2.58)

After the (projective) measurement of Z3 , the stabilizer generator of qubit 3 is ±Z3 . Assume
for definiteness that the measurement outcome was |0 , so the stabilizer generator is +Z3
(the measurement outcome |1 will only introduce overall minus signs on some generators,
which we can keep track of efficiently). To find out how the cluster has changed we need to
construct from Eq. (2.58) four more stabilizers that commute with Z3 . We immediately see
that the generators S1 , S2 , S4 , and S5 meet this requirement, and in principle we have solved
the problem. However, the stabilizer generator is not in the standard form of Eq. (2.55)
because in S2 we have a factor X2 Z3 , but there is no matching stabilizer that contains the
factor Z2 X3 . We therefore cannot yet make the identification with the graphical represen-
tation. To proceed, we use the group structure of stabilizers: the outcome of multiplying
any two stabilizer generators is another valid stabilizer. In particular, we can multiply both
S2 and S4 with Z3 to remove the factors Z3 (since Z 2 = Î). Furthermore, we can apply
a Hadamard gate to qubit 3 to change the stabilizer into X3 . The stabilizer generator then
becomes

S1′ = X1 Z2
S2′ = Z1 X2
S3′ = X3
S4′ = X4 Z 5
S5′ = Z4 X5 , (2.59)

and the cluster state can be drawn as

GFED
@ABC
1 GFED
@ABC
2 GFED
@ABC
H3 GFED
@ABC
4 GFED
@ABC
5
71 2.3 Quantum computation with qubits

Generally, a Z measurement removes the qubit from a cluster and breaks all the bonds with
its neighbours. A cluster like this, where there exist pairs of qubits that are not connected
via a continuous path of edges, is called a ‘disconnected cluster’.
Let us now consider again the linear five-qubit cluster with the stabilizer given by
Eq. (2.58), but this time we wish to determine the effect of a Pauli X operator measurement
on qubit 3. We assume that the measurement result is ‘+’, such that the stabilizer of qubit 3
is generated by X3 . In order to determine what the new cluster state looks like, we have to
find the new stabilizer generator, and put it into the form of Eq. (2.55) using lc operations.
First, note that again S1 and S5 commute with X3 , so these are valid generators. So is S3 – but
we multiply it by X3 to obtain S3′′ = Z2 Z4 . Second, we construct the remaining stabilizer by
multiplying S2 and S4 to obtain S2′′ = Z1 X2 X4 Z5 . This removes the troublesome Z3 factor.
Third, we multiply S3′′ with either S1 or S5 (we choose S1 ) to find S1′ = X1 Z4 . Finally, to
cast the stabilizer generator in the form of Eq. (2.55) we apply a Hadamard gate to qubit 2.
This results in the stabilizer generator

S1′ = X1 Z4
S2′ = X2 Z4
S3′ = X3
S4′ = Z1 Z2 X4 Z 5
S5′ = Z 4 X5 . (2.60)

Graphically, this is represented by the cluster state

GFED
@ABC
H2

GFED
@ABC
3 GFED
@ABC
1 GFED
@ABC
4 @ABC
GFED
5

A general rule for finding the results of X measurements will be given below.

Exercise 2.10: Show that two neighbouring X measurements in a linear cluster shorten
the cluster by two qubits and connect the neighbour of the first measured qubit with the
neighbour of the second.

Exercise 2.11: Show that the measurement of the Pauli Y operator on qubit 3 with outcome
“” results in the cluster

GFED
@ABC
3 GFED
@ABC
1 @ABC
GFED
2 GFED
@ABC
4 GFED
@ABC
5

where j is the phase gate applied to qubit j.

We can give the rules for how clusters change under Pauli measurements directly in terms
of operations on the graph. Define ‘inversion’ of a graph as the addition modulo 2 of edges
between every node in the graph. This has the effect of removing the existing edges, and
creating new edges where there were none previously. In graph language we then have
 72 Quantum information processing

Fig. 2.3. An X measurement of qubit a, using a designated neighbour b.

Z measurement: Remove all edges between the measured qubit and its neighbours. If the
measurement outcome is ‘1’, a Z operation is applied to all former neighbours of the
measured qubit, otherwise no corrective unitary is needed.
Y measurement: Invert the subgraph of the measured qubit and its neighbours. This auto-
matically removes the measured qubit from the graph. For the measurement outcome
‘’ or ‘’, the corrective operation on each neighbour is the phase gate  or † ,
respectively (up to a global phase).
X measurement: Choose one of the neighbouring qubits (call it b) of the measured qubit a
in graph state G (see Fig. 2.3). First, construct a subgraph G1 by drawing edges between
b and the other neighbours of a. Second, construct the subgraph G2 by drawing edges
between all qubits that are neighbours of both a and b (with respect to G). Third,
construct G3 by connecting each member of a’s neighbourhood with each member
of b’s neighbourhood (again, with respect to G). Add G1 , G2 , and G3 to the original
graph modulo 2 to obtain the final graph Gfinal after measurement. If the measurement
outcome is ‘+’, apply a Hadamard gate to qubit b, and a Z gate to the neighbours of
a that are not neighbours of b (or b itself). Similarly, if the measurement outcome is
‘−’, apply a Hadamard gate to qubit b, and a Z operation to the neighbours of b that
are not neighbours of a (or a itself).

General single-qubit measurements will change the stabilizer such that the generators
can typically no longer be expressed as tensor products of Pauli operators.

2.3.4 The Gottesman–Knill theorem

Using the stabilizer formalism and the knowledge about cluster states we just developed, it
is straightforward to prove a very profound and general theorem about quantum computing,
73 2.3 Quantum computation with qubits

namely the ‘Gottesman–Knill theorem’:

Gottesman–Knill theorem: Suppose a computation can be cast into a form with the
following properties:
(i) The input state is a computational basis state;
(ii) only gates from the Clifford group are applied;
(iii) measurements of Pauli operators are allowed; and
(iv) the measurement results may be used in classical control of subsequent Clifford
gates,
then such a computation can be simulated efficiently on a classical computer.

The proof of this theorem is almost immediate, given what we already know: an input
state in the computational basis is efficiently described by a stabilizer (Sj = ±Zj for each
qubit j). Subsequent Clifford gates (i.e., unitary gates that are members of the Clifford
group) and Pauli measurements transform stabilizer states into other stabilizer states, so at
any point in the calculation the quantum state is determined by a stabilizer. Any classical
control of Clifford gates based on outcomes of the Pauli measurements is turned into a
classical conditional transformation of the stabilizer.
A corollary of the Gottesman–Knill theorem is that the use of entanglement and non-
commuting observables is in itself not sufficient for a computational speed-up over classical
computing. In Chapter 9, we will derive the continuous-variable version of the Gottesman–
Knill theorem, which has important consequences for quantum computing with linear
optical elements.

2.3.5 Properties of cluster states

Now we consider a number of practical issues related to measurement-based quantum

computing. First, we need to know what cluster or graph state we need to prepare for the
quantum computation. Second, from the perspective of optical quantum computing, we
want to know whether measurement-based quantum computing can solve problems that are
difficult in the circuit model.

Universality of different classes of clusters

For any given computation in the circuit model, we can immediately find the corresponding
cluster state via the translation presented on page 64. The question therefore becomes more
general: what types of cluster state are universal for quantum computations up to a certain
size? In Fig. 2.4 we depict five examples of cluster state classes. The linear cluster is
not universal, because any quantum computation that can be performed on this cluster is
efficiently simulable on a classical computer. The same is true for tree clusters, which are
defined as graph states without ‘loops’, that is, there is no path on the graph such that by
starting from a vertex and following the edges (traversing each edge at most once) we return
to that vertex after a finite number of steps.
 74 Quantum information processing

Two-dimensional and higher-dimensional regular clusters are universal resources for

quantum computing. To see this, note that we can write every quantum computation in
terms of single-qubit operations and cz gates on nearest neighbours. We can then ‘punch
out’ qubits from the regular cluster by means of Z measurements, such that we retrieve the
cluster state needed for a particular computation. By virtue of the translation procedure we
used to introduce clusters, we know that we can always do this. The universal cluster is
analogous to a large piece of marble: the sculptor removes the excess marble to carve out
a statue of his design. Three-dimensional clusters (and higher) offer new possibilities over
two-dimensional clusters in that they allow for topological quantum computing, which has
particularly desirable error-correcting properties. For more information, see Raussendorf
et al. (2006).
When a two-dimensional cluster is large in one direction (say the horizontal direction in
Fig. 2.4), and short in the other (vertical) direction, we expect that for some ratio the cluster
becomes too much like the linear cluster and ceases to be a universal resource for quantum
computation. It turns out that when the vertical depth is a logarithmic function of the
horizontal width, the cluster can support only classically simulable quantum computations.
The intuition behind this is as follows: suppose the vertical depth is the number n of logical
qubits, and the horizontal width N is the length of the computation. When n ∝ log N , the

Fig. 2.4. Different classes of cluster state: (a) linear clusters are not universal; (b) tree clusters are not
universal; (c) two-dimensional clusters such as the square and (d) the hexagonal clusters are
universal; and (e) three- (and higher-) dimensional clusters and higher are also universal.
75 2.3 Quantum computation with qubits

length of the computation is exponential in the number of qubits, which scales in the same
way as a classical simulation.

Practical considerations
There are many practical reasons why the one-way model of quantum computing might be
preferable to the circuit model. The circuit model relies critically on the ability to perform
a universal set of quantum gates, both single- and two-qubit gates, with errors well below
the fault-tolerant threshold. The errors include noise and gate failure. In short, the circuit
model requires the quantum gates to be near perfect. Cluster states, on the other hand, can
be constructed before the computation takes place, which gives a considerable relaxation of
gate requirements: a near-perfect, deterministic cz gate is not needed to create the cluster;
any entangling operation will do, as long as we end up with the cluster state. In particular,
the entangling gate may have a large failure rate. Cluster state growth can then proceed via
a statistical procedure, which merely adds an extra overhead cost to the state construction.
As a simple example, consider a cz gate with success probability p. Assume that it is
always known whether the gate has failed or succeeded. We want to add a qubit to a linear
cluster of length N . In many implementations of the cz gate, failure scrambles the qubits it
acted on. As a result, we have to remove the qubit from the linear cluster, yielding a shorter
cluster of length N − 1. When p < 1/2, the cz gate fails more often than it succeeds, and
it becomes exponentially unlikely that we end up with a long cluster. However, we can
still grow long clusters efficiently. Rather than trying to add a single qubit, we prepare a
linear cluster of length m at some cost of p−m gate operations. This is a large but constant
overhead per added qubit. Given the success probability p, we want to know the size m of
the chains we have to add to the main cluster. This can be found by considering the average
length of the new cluster, and the growth requirement becomes

1−p
p(N + m) + (1 − p)(N − 1) > N =⇒ m> . (2.61)
p

Different entangling procedures for making cluster states can have different growth require-
ments, and there is a variety of different strategies for creating universal cluster states (see
for example Gross et al. 2006).
Another practical advantage of the one-way model over the circuit model is that the
qubits may be completely isolated from each other. If we are allowed to use probabilistic
entangling operations to create the cluster, we can create gates that do not rely on a direct
interaction between qubits. This may significantly reduce noise, and the lifetime of the
qubits can be extended by storing them in individually optimized environments. We will
return to this approach in Chapter 7.

2.3.6 Error correction and fault tolerance

In any practical implementation of a quantum computer we will encounter errors. The

qubits will have some interaction with the environment that, however small, can cause bit
76 Quantum information processing

flips, phase shifts, or other unwanted changes in the computation. When those errors occur
with probability p and accumulate in a computation of length N , the success probability
of finding the correct outcome of the computation generally deteriorates as ∼ pN . Thus,
any exponential speed-up over classical computation is lost, and so some form of error
correction becomes essential. Many error-correction codes have been developed over the
years, most notably the nine-qubit Shor code, Calderbank–Shor–Steane (css) codes, and
the minimal five-qubit code that corrects any single qubit error. These are examples of
so-called ‘stabilizer’ codes. However, not all error-correcting codes are stabilizer codes.
Another class is that of the so-called non-additive error-correcting codes, which we will
not discuss in this book. In this section, we give a short introduction to stabilizer codes,
followed by a discussion of how to make quantum computers fault-tolerant.

Stabilizer codes
Error correction requires three stages: first, the information is encoded in some (larger)
system. Second, after a noisy operation the ‘error syndrome’ is determined; it is a coded
message detailing which kind of error (if any) has occurred. Finally, the syndrome is used to
apply a correction to the system that eliminates the error. The remarkable feat of quantum
error correction is that these steps can be performed without affecting any of the quantum
information contained in the logical qubits to the environment.
The stabilizer formalism was used in Section 2.1.3 to uniquely define quantum states in
terms of a small set of operators, and more generally to define subspaces of Hilbert space.
Recall that the stabilizer S is the group generated by the operators Sj , with j ranging from
1 to n. We found that [Si , Sj ] = 0, and

Sj |ψ = |ψ for all j . (2.62)

This means that the states |ψ span a subspace V . When dim V = 1, the stabilizer deter-
mines a unique quantum state, as was the case when we constructed cluster states. In
quantum error correction, on the other hand, the dimensionality of V is typically larger
than one: to encode a qudit, the dimension of V must be d, and we need d orthonormal
basis states |ψ0 , . . . , |ψd , such that

Sj |ψk = |ψk for all j, k . (2.63)

Our single-qudit operations on {|ψ0 , . . . , |ψd } must commute with all Sj , but must not
themselves be members of the stabilizer. We often specify the generalized Pauli X and Z
operators on the qudit space, from which any single-qudit operation can be constructed.
The stabilizer codes are now constructed as follows: the quantum information is encoded
in states |ψ ∈ V , and the syndrome is extracted by measuring the stabilizer generators.
The measurement outcomes should tell us whether or not an error occurred, but should still
protect the quantum information.
For a particular state |ψ that lives in the subspace V of Hilbert space, a measurement
of any stabilizer generator Sj must by construction give the outcome +1. Moreover, since
all Sj commute, we can measure all generators simultaneously. Suppose an error E happens
77 2.3 Quantum computation with qubits

(with some probability). This will transform the state |ψ into E |ψ . In the case of a qubit,
E may be a bit-flip X , a phase-flip Z, or any other unitary error. We want the stabilizer to
pick up on this error, so for at least one Sj we want the measurement outcome to be different
from 1. Also, E |ψ must be another eigenstate of Sj , otherwise the error detection is not
deterministic. Without loss of generality we assume that the eigenvalue of Sj for E |ψ is
−1. This leads to
Sj E |ψ = −E |ψ = −ESj |ψ . (2.64)
Therefore, Sj and E must anti-commute for some j: {Sj , E} = 0. When the error does not
affect a particular Sk , the generator and the error commute: [Sk , E] = 0. This is the core of
the error-correction mechanism of stabilizer codes. When we measure a predetermined set
of members of the stabilizer, we obtain a series of +1 and −1 that tells us exactly which
error occurred. The anti-commutation relation between the error and the stabilizer generator
suggests that we should write the error operator E as a superposition of Pauli errors, and
the stabilizer as a set of Pauli operators from the Pauli group PN .
We give two simple examples of stabilizer codes, namely the three-qubit majority   code,
 
and the minimal five-qubit code. First, in the majority code the logical qubits 0̄ and 1̄
are encoded in three physical qubits:
   
0̄ = |000 and 1̄ = |111 . (2.65)
   
The stabilizer of the code space spanned by 0̄ and 1̄ is given by
% &
S = Î1 ⊗ Î2 ⊗ Î3 , Z1 ⊗ Z2 ⊗ Î3 , Z1 ⊗ Î2 ⊗ Z3 , Î1 ⊗ Z2 ⊗ Z3 , (2.66)

and the logical X and Z operations (denoted by X̄ and Z̄) are given by

X̄ = X1 X2 X3 and Z̄ = Z1 . (2.67)

Notice that there is a freedom in the choice of Z̄. The dimension of the Hilbert space of the
three qubits is 23 = 8, and S is generated by two operators, which we can choose from the
last three entries in the set. Each generator halves the size of the Hilbert space (see Section
2.1.3), so the resulting stabilizer space V is two-dimensional. It therefore supports a qubit,
as required.
Now suppose that with some (small) probability a bit-flip Xi occurs on one of the three
qubits. We do not know whether the error occurred, nor do we know which qubit is affected.
By symmetry, we can assume  error occurred on qubit 1: E1 = X1 ⊗ Î2 ⊗ Î3 . An
  that the
unknown quantum state α 0̄ + β 1̄ then becomes α |100 + β |011 , where the first qubit
is flipped. The eigenvalue equations for the stabilizer in this state are:

Z1 Z2 Î3 |100 = − |100 Z1 Z2 Î3 |011 = − |011

Z1 Î2 Z3 |100 = − |100 and Z1 Î2 Z3 |011 = − |011
Î1 Z2 Z3 |100 = |100 Î1 Z2 Z3 |011 = |011 . (2.68)
78 Quantum information processing

The eigenvalues of the stabilizer are the same for the states |100 and |011 . This is not a
coincidence. It needs to be in order for the stabilizer measurement not to reveal information
about α and β. The outcomes allow us to determine that we need to apply a corrective
bit flip on the first qubit. Note also that these are joint measurements, and not just three
independent measurements in the computational basis!
The three-qubit majority code is simple and small, but it cannot correct a phase flip.
The smallest code that can correct for any single-qubit error consists of five qubits. The
stabilizer generators are

S1 = X1 Z2 Z3 X4
S2 = X2 Z3 Z4 X5
S3 = X1 X3 Z4 Z5
S4 = Z1 X2 X4 Z5 (2.69)

and the qubit operations X̄ and Z̄ are

X̄ = X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 and Z̄ = Z1 Z2 Z3 Z4 Z5 . (2.70)
   
Exercise 2.12: Find the logical qubit states of the five-qubit code 0̄ and 1̄ , and verify that
X̄ and Z̄ are the Pauli operators in the logical qubit space that commute with the stabilizer.

There are many more quantum error-correcting codes, most notably the seven-qubit
Steane code and the class of css codes. For further details on quantum error-correction
codes, we refer to Chapter 10 of Nielsen and Chuang (2000).
You may object that errors are generally not unitary. Indeed, in the next chapter we will
see that general errors are so-called completely positive maps. However, these maps can
be written in terms of products of Pauli errors (in the case of qubits) and the codes outlined
above still work. This is rather remarkable, and in Chapter 6 we will discover a particularly
counterintuitive aspect of stabilizer codes.

Fault tolerance
We have seen how the general principle of stabilizer codes can protect a logical qubit from
a single error. However, the codes themselves consist of quite a few physical qubits, all
of which are prone to errors. What guarantees that quantum error correction does more
harm than good? The answer is ‘fault tolerance’, and we will sketch the general idea in the
remainder of this section.
Suppose we wish to implement a certain operation in a quantum computation (a ‘compu-
tational element’). This may be a state-preparation procedure, simple propagation in time,
a quantum gate, or a measurement. There will be a failure probability p associated with
the unencoded element. After encoding, syndrome extraction, and the recovery operation,
the total failure probability of the encoded computational element will be q. By virtue of
the error-correction code, q will be proportional to p2 : one error occurs with probability p,
but can be corrected, so the encoded procedure fails if there is a second error in the code,
79 2.3 Quantum computation with qubits

also with probability p. The constant of proportionality α in q = αp2 is simply the total
number of distinct places an error can occur in the code (and p must be small enough such
that q < 1). The larger the code, the larger α will be. In general, quantum error correction
is helpful only if for a specific code q < p, or

1 1
p< and pth = . (2.71)
α α
The probability pth is the ‘threshold’ of the error-correction code. For the Steane code α
is approximately 104 , and the corresponding error p must be very small to begin with.
Raussendorf and Harrington (2007) showed that two-dimensional cluster states have a
relatively high error threshold of pth = 0.75%. In many ways achieving fault tolerance is
the hardest part of implementing quantum computing with real systems.
The above analysis shows that error correction can be used to lower the failure rate of
a computational element, but it does not make it zero. Accumulated errors will still cause
an exponential decay in the success probability of the computation. To circumvent this, we
use the concept of ‘concatenation’: each logical qubit is encoded in a set of qubits, and
in turn these qubits are encoded again. The codes can be nested many times. If m is the
maximum number of operations needed to implement a computational element in one level
of encoding, k-fold concatenation means that the number of operations per computational
element becomes mk . This grows quite rapidly, so concatenation works only if the error
decreases even quicker. Indeed, the failure probability qk becomes
k
(αp2 )2
qk = . (2.72)
α
If a particular computation contains c(N ) computational elements, where N indicates the
size of the problem, and we want the quantum computation to succeed with probability
1 − ǫ, we require that
k
(αp2 )2 ǫ
≤ . (2.73)
α c(N )
Note that c(N ) is typically a polynomial function of N . The number of operations per
computational element in the fully encoded implementation is
log m  
log(αǫ) − log[c(N )] c(N )
mk = = O Poly log . (2.74)
log(αp) ǫ

When the error probability p is right at the threshold (p = 1/α), the factor log(αp) =
0 causes the number of operations to diverge towards infinity. Indeed, p parameterizes
a critical phenomenon, with a phase transition at pth = α. When p < pth , the above
construction is called ‘fault tolerant’.
A subtlety of fault tolerance is that error propagation and multiplication must be kept
in check. Consider for example a cx gate U , and a Pauli X error on the control qubit just
before the gate. We have

UX1 (α |00 + β |10 ) = U (α |10 + β |00 ) = X1 X2 (α |00 + β |11 ) . (2.75)

80 Quantum information processing

Suddenly, one error is turned into two errors, even though the cx worked perfectly! In this
case we are saved because the second error happens in a different qubit, inhabiting a different
code space. Nevertheless, we need to be careful that the gates we wish to implement do not
multiply errors in the code space of a qubit. It turns out that some gates can be constructed
in such a way that this error multiplication is kept under control. As well as the Clifford
operations H , , and cz, the π/8 gate can be constructed this way. Given a suitable error-
correction code and sufficiently small errors, and the fact that the Clifford operations plus
the π/8 gate can be used to efficiently construct any n-qubit unitary operator with some
precision δ, fault-tolerant ‘universal’ scalable quantum computation is indeed possible.

2.4 Quantum computation with continuous variables

As in classical computing, most research in quantum computing is based on the discrete qubit
model. However, it is also possible to do useful computations with ‘continuous variables’.
Classically, these computers are known as ‘analogue computers’, and their origin can be
traced back to the ancient Greeks. The continuous-variable variant of quantum computing
is due to Lloyd and Braunstein. In this section we present the basics of this approach.
Analogous to the discrete qubit states |0 and |1 we can construct the states |x x with
x ∈ R. These are eigenstates of an operator x̂ with a continuous spectrum, such as the position
operator, and are called ‘qunats’. A quantum computation over continuous variables is then
given by an input string |x1 , . . . , xN x , an evolution due to an interaction Hamiltonian H:
exp(−iHt/), and the output state |f1 (x1 , . . . , xN ), . . . , fN (x1 , . . . , xN ) x . The result of the
computation is read out by measuring the observables x̂i .
As an example, consider the addition of x1 and x2 . We assume that we can create a unitary
transformation U⊕ = exp(−iH⊕ t/), such that

|x1 , x2 x → U⊕ |x1 , x2 x = |x1 , x2 + x1 x . (2.76)

The first slot in the output must be there to keep the computation unitary. The outcome of
the computation (addition) of the two input states is written in the output state of the second
system. We now have to construct the Hamiltonians that correspond to the computation we
wish to perform.
Before we consider more general Hamiltonians, we define the canonically conjugate
operator p̂ to the operator x̂
x̂, p̂ = i . (2.77)
When x̂ is a position operator, p̂ is the canonical momentum to x̂. It also has a continuous
unbounded spectrum. We know from quantum mechanics that the eigenstates of x̂ and p̂ are
related by a Fourier transform:
 
dx i dp i
|p p = √ exp px |x x ; |x x = √ exp − px |p p . (2.78)
2π  2π 

Next, we will construct Hamiltonians from x̂ and p̂.

81 2.4 Quantum computation with continuous variables

2.4.1 Linear and quadratic interaction Hamiltonians

Now we are ready to consider some important operators on the states |x . First, we need the
ability to create an arbitrary input state |x from some initial state |0 , which can be taken
as the eigenstate of the eigenvalue x = 0. In other words, we need some ‘displacement
operator’ that changes the numerical value from 0 to x. Such an operator is given by
i
X (x) = exp − xp̂ . (2.79)

We distinguish operators from numbers by a hat. To prove that this is a displacement
operator, we calculate the effect of X (x) on an eigenstate |y x of x̂:

dp i i
X (x) |y x = √ exp − py exp − xp̂ |p p
2π  
  
dp i
= √ exp − p(x + y) |p p
2π 
= |x + y x . (2.80)

This is the continuous-variable generalization of the Pauli X operator, in that it adds a

number to the logical value of the computational basis state: the discrete Pauli X adds the
number 1 to the logical qubit value, modulo 2:

X |0 = |0 ⊕ 1 = |1 and X |1 = |1 ⊕ 1 = |0 , (2.81)

where ⊕ denotes addition modulo 2.

The construction of the X (x) operator immediately suggests another construction, namely
of the Z(p) operator:
i
Z(p) = exp px̂ , (2.82)

which acts on a position eigenstate |x x as follows:
i i
Z(p) |x x = exp px̂ |x x = exp px |x x . (2.83)
 
It is clear that this is the generalization of the Pauli Z operator for continuous variables: the
operator adds a state-dependent phase to the computational basis states. The generalized
Pauli operators for continuous variables are elements of the Heisenberg–Weyl group, and
to avoid confusion we will refer to them as Heisenberg–Weyl operators.
It is now a straightforward exercise to show that the Heisenberg–Weyl operators act on
momentum eigenstates |r p according to

i
X (x) |r p = exp − xr |r p and Z(p) |r p = |r + p p . (2.84)

It is tempting to calculate the commutator of X (x) and Z(p) and call it Y (s), but here the
analogy with the qubit case breaks down.
82 Quantum information processing

Exercise 2.13: Show that X (x)Z(p) = exp(−ixp/)Z(p)X (x).

The X (x) and Z(p) operators give us all the linear interaction Hamiltonians, but no
combination of X and Z can ever give us higher-order polynomials in x̂ and p̂ in the
Hamiltonian. To see this, we use the Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relation

1 1
eA Be−A = B + [A, B] + [A, [A, B]] + . . . (2.85)
1! 2!

If A is linear in x̂ and p̂, and B is linear in x̂ and p̂, we can never obtain higher orders in x̂
and p̂ because [A, B] is at most a constant. If we start in an eigenstate of x̂, all we can do
is displace the system to another eigenstate of x̂, or add an overall state-dependent phase.
Clearly, this is not enough for computation. We need to add interactions with quadratic
Hamiltonians.
Consider the unitary transformation F:
 
iπ 2
F = exp x̂ + p̂2 . (2.86)
4

We want to find the effect of this operator on a position eigenstate |x . This is not at all
straightforward to calculate directly, so we first compute the effect of F on the Heisenberg–
Weyl operators:
   
iπ 2 i iπ 2
FX (x)F † = exp x̂ + p̂2 exp − xp̂ exp − x̂ + p̂2
4  4
∞    
 1 ix n iπ 2 iπ 2
= − exp x̂ + p̂2 p̂n exp − x̂ + p̂2
n!  4 4
n=0
∞ n'    (n
 1 ix iπ 2 2 iπ 2 2
= − exp x̂ + p̂ p̂ exp − x̂ + p̂
n!  4 4
n=0
∞
 n
1 ix n i
= − −x̂ = exp xx̂
n!  
n=0

= Z(x) . (2.87)

In the third line we have used UAn U † = UAU † UA . . . AU † = (UAU † )n , and we evaluated
   
iπ 2 iπ 2
F p̂F † = exp x̂ + p̂2 p̂ exp − x̂ + p̂2
4 4
iπ  2 
= p̂ + x̂ + p̂2 , p̂ + . . .
4
= cos(π/2)p̂ − sin(π/2)x̂ = −x̂ (2.88)

Similarly, we find that

FZ(p)F † = X (−p) = X −1 (p) . (2.89)
83 2.4 Quantum computation with continuous variables

Comparing this to the discrete case, we are reminded of the Hadamard gate:

HZH = X and HXH = Z . (2.90)

We therefore suspect that F is the Fourier transform. We can prove this using the stabilizer
formalism: an eigenstate |x x of x̂ is stabilized by the operator

i
exp − px Z(p) |x x = |x x , (2.91)


while an eigenstate |p of p̂ is stabilized by

i
exp px X (x) |p p = |p p . (2.92)


Applying the transformation F to the state |x then gives

i
F |x x = F exp − px Z(p) |x x

i
= F exp − px Z(p)F † F |x x

i
= exp − px FZ(p)F † F |x x

i
= exp − px X (−p)F |x x . (2.93)


So the stabilizer Sx of F |x x is

i
Sx = exp − px X (−p) . (2.94)


Comparing this to Eq. (2.92), we see that F |x x is the ‘momentum’eigenstate |x p . Similarly,

the transformation F applied to the momentum eigenstate |p p yields a position eigenstate
|p x . Therefore, F is the Fourier transform.
Another unitary transformation that is generated by a quadratic Hamiltonian for a single
system is the phase gate (θ ):

i θ x̂2
(θ ) = exp , (2.95)
 2

where we have included the factor 1/2 for later convenience. Its effect on the Heisenberg–
Weyl operators is determined in the following exercise:

Exercise 2.14: Since [(θ ), Z(p)] = 0, Z(p) remains unaffected by the phase gate. Show
that the effect of (θ ) on X (x) is given by

xθ iθ x2
(θ )X (x)−1 (θ) = X (x)Z exp . (2.96)
 22
84 Quantum information processing

Next, we move up in the world, and consider quadratic Hamiltonians that act on two
qunats: the continuous-variable version of the cx is given by

i
cxij = exp − x̂i ⊗ p̂j . (2.97)


Its action on two eigenstates of the position operator is

i
cx |x1 , x2 x = exp − x̂1 ⊗ p̂2 |x1 , x2 x

i
= exp − x1 p̂2 |x1 , x2 x = X2 (x1 ) |x1 , x2 x

= |x1 , x1 + x2 x . (2.98)

This is the operator used in the example in Eq. (2.76), and it allows us to do simple arithmetic.
In general, the operator cx carries two indices that determine which two systems it operates
on. How does cx act on tensor products of generalized Pauli operators? It is straightforward
to verify that
 
cx X1 (x) ⊗ Î2 cx† = X1 (x) ⊗ X2 (x),
 
cx Z1 (p) ⊗ Î2 cx† = Z1 (p) ⊗ Î2 ,
 
cx Î1 ⊗ X2 (x) cx† = Î ⊗ X2 (x),
 
cx Î ⊗ Z2 (p) cx† = Z1 (p)−1 ⊗ Z2 (p). (2.99)

Finally, the continuous-variable analog of the cz gate is

i
czij = exp x̂i ⊗ x̂j . (2.100)


The cz gate is symmetric and commutes with the Z(p) operator. The nontrivial transforma-
tion of the Heisenberg–Weyl operators then becomes
 
cz X1 (x) ⊗ Î2 cz† = X1 (x) ⊗ Z2 (x) . (2.101)

This may remind you of the discussion leading up to Eq. (2.55), and indeed we may regard
Eqs. (2.99) and (2.101) as transformations of stabilizer generators.
We can construct a complete orthonormal set of epr states, which are the generalization
of the Bell states for continuous variables. In addition, we can obtain all possible unitary
evolutions corresponding to quadratic interaction Hamiltonians over arbitrarily many sys-
tems with the Heisenberg–Weyl operators Xi (x) and Zi (p), the Fourier transform Fi , the
phase gate i (θ), and the operators cx and cz.
85 2.4 Quantum computation with continuous variables

2.4.2 Universal quantum computation

The stabilizer generators of continuous-variable quantum computing are tensor products of

X (x) and Z(p). We have seen that the quadratic operators F, (θ ), and cx transform tensor
products of X (x) and Z(p) into other tensor products of X (x) and Z(p), and can therefore
be regarded as the continuous-variable equivalent of the Clifford operations for qubit sys-
tems. The mathematical structure of these transformations is identical to that presented in
Section 1.4 from page 34 onwards. Quadratic interaction Hamiltonians cause linear trans-
formations of the canonical position and momentum. This suggests that we can derive the
Gottesman–Knill theorem for continuous-variable quantum computing. Indeed, the gener-
alized Gottesman–Knill theorem states that a computation that proceeds by means of linear
and quadratic operators, and employs classical feed-forward, can be simulated efficiently
on a classical computer. We will return to this topic in Chapter 9.
Quantum computing with continuous variables requires Hamiltonians that are higher-
order polynomials in the canonical positions and momenta. In the remainder of this section
we will show that any such higher-order Hamiltonian suffices to generate a universal set of
gates for continuous variables efficiently. Mathematically, the reason why quadratic Hamil-
tonians produce linear transformations of the canonical position and momentum operators
is that the commutator [x̂, p̂] is a constant, and [H(x̂, p̂), x̂] can create polynomials in x̂ and
p̂ of at most order one if H is quadratic in x̂ and p̂. The Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relation
used to determine the operator transformations relies critically on these commutators.
To create higher-order functions of x̂ and p̂ we need Hamiltonians that are at least cubic
in x̂ and p̂. Here, we consider the Hamiltonian H = (x̂2 + p̂2 )2 , which can immediately be
seen to increase the order of polynomials in x̂ and p̂:

i  2  i  2 
H, x̂ = x̂ p̂ + p̂x̂2 + 2p̂3 and H, p̂ = − p̂ x̂ + x̂p̂2 + 2x̂ 3 . (2.102)
2 2
Repeated commutators generate higher and higher order polynomials in x̂ and p̂, as required.
A polynomial of order n and precision ǫ in p̂ and x̂ can be created by invoking H a number
of times. This number scales as a small polynomial in n and ǫ.
It is now not too difficult to see that we can create a quantum computation of the form

|x1 , . . . , xN x −→ ck |x1 , . . . , xN −1 , fk (x1 , . . . , xN ) x , (2.103)
UF
k

where one of the fk gives the outcome of the computation with probability |ck |2 . The
evolution UF is generated by a (large) polynomial F over multiple continuous variables:
 
i
UF = exp − F(x̂1 , . . . , x̂N , p̂1 , . . . , p̂N ) . (2.104)


This unitary transformation can be decomposed into a sequence of linear, quadratic, and
higher-order interactions, the length of which is polynomial in the number N of continuous-
variable systems (qunats). The difficulty is to find polynomials F that can implement
interesting quantum computations. However, this problem is beyond the scope of this book.
86 Quantum information processing

2.4.3 Cluster states for continuous variables

The continuous-variable model of quantum computation introduced in the previous section

is essentially a circuit model, where we apply gates to qunats. However, by introducing the
cz gate and its action on the Heisenberg–Weyl operators X (x) and Z(p) in Eq. (2.101) we are
strongly reminded of the stabilizer formalism that led to cluster states for qubits. A natural
question is therefore whether we can construct a one-way model for continuous-variable
quantum computing. We will now show that this is the case.
The most straightforward way to construct the one-way model is to exploit once more
the local teleportation protocol for qubits:
ψ UZ (␣) H ‘m’

X m HUZ (␣) ψ

We translate this into a protocol for continuous variables as follows: first, the input state
|ψ can be any superposition of position eigenstates
 
|ψ = dx ψ(x) |x x with dx |ψ(x)|2 = 1 . (2.105)

Second, the ancilla system is in a zero-momentum eigenstate |0 p


|0 p = dx |x x , (2.106)

which is the continuous-variable analog of the |+ state for qubits. Third, the two systems
are entangled using a cz gate, after which we apply the single-qunat operation. This gate
must commute with the cz gate, and we therefore have
 
i
UZ (α) → Uf = exp f (x̂) , (2.107)


where f is some polynomial in x̂. Fourth, the Hadamard gate for qubits becomes the Fourier
transform F † , and finally the top qunat is measured in the position basis. The circuit for
local qunat teleportation then becomes

ψ Uf F† ‘q’

0 p X (x)FUf ψ

The output state of the circuit is the input state with a gate FUf applied to it, and a corrective
Heisenberg–Weyl operator X (x) must be applied.

Exercise 2.15: Show that the above circuit gives the output state X (x)FUf |ψ .

The cluster-state model is obtained by preparing a set of qunats in the state |0 p and
applying the cz gates to the appropriate pairs of qunats. It is a straightforward exercise
87 2.4 Quantum computation with continuous variables

to give the stabilizers for the continuous-variable cluster states, and show that quadratic
polynomials in x̂ transform the cluster into another stabilizer state. Just as in the circuit
model for continuous variables, we need single-qunat transformations, the generators of
which are at least cubic in x̂ in order to achieve universality in our quantum computer.
The measurement bases of the qunats in the one-way model are given by
† †
Mf = Uf F x̂ F † Uf = Uf p̂ Uf . (2.108)

When f is linear, Uf is a simple displacement of p̂, and when f is quadratic, Uf is a simple

rotation in phase space.

2.4.4 Approximate position eigenstates and error correction

There is a problem with continuous-variable quantum computing that we have so far com-
pletely ignored: the position and momentum eigenstates |x x and |p p are unphysical. There
are many ways to define approximate position and momentum eigenstates, but the most
straightforward way is to construct a normalized Gaussian wave function that is sharply
peaked around a central position value x:
  
∞ dy (y − x)2
|ψ(x) x = √ exp − |y x , (2.109)
−∞
4
π 2 2 2

and similarly for a momentum value p:

 ∞ ds

(s − p)2 2
|ψ(p) p =  exp − |s p . (2.110)
−∞
4
π/ 2 22

We will see in Chapter 9 that these are very similar to the wave functions that are used in
optical quantum information processing with continuous variables. For our purposes here,
it will be convenient to define the Gaussian state centered at the origin:
  
∞ dx x2
|ψ(0) = √
4
exp − 2 |x x
−∞ π 2 2
 ∞  2 2
dp p
=  exp − |p p . (2.111)
−∞
4
π/ 2 22

A translation operator T (x) acting on |ψ(0) is defined as

T (x) |ψ(0) = |ψ(x) x . (2.112)

Since the continuous-variable states

√ now have finite precision, a translation x must be larger
than the width of the Gaussian 2 if we are to distinguish between the two approximate
position eigenvalues. A quantum computation of the form fk in Eq. (2.103) is also restricted
by this precision. This situation is reminiscent of classical analogue computing, in which
classical continuous variables have an intrinsic precision.
 88 Quantum information processing

We can still do robust quantum computing if we encode a finite-dimensional quantum

system in the continuous variable. In particular, we will now show how to encode a qubit in
a continuous variable. This encoding was introduced by Gottesman et al. (2001). An error
in a continuous variable can be written as x → x + δ for any δ ∈ R. Small errors mean that δ
is small on some suitable metric. We may not be able to protect the value x for finite errors,
but we can encode a qubit in the continuous-variable system. The code will be reminiscent
of the three-qubit majority code:
+∞
 +∞

   
0̄ = |2sα and 1̄ = |(2s + 1)α . (2.113)
s=−∞ s=−∞
 
The state 0̄ forms a comb of delta
  functions along the q axis, with a spacing of 2α between
the delta functions. The state 1̄ has the same structure, but the delta functions are shifted
by a distance α along the x axis. A Fourier transform turns these states into combs of
delta functions in p space, and the separation between the delta functions becomes 2π/α.
A measurement
  along the x axis can yield either an even or an odd multiple of α, which
 
indicates 0̄ or 1̄ , respectively. When the translation error δ is smaller than α/2, we can
infer the qubit state from the measurement outcome.
With approximate position and momentum eigenstates, the delta functions become
sharply peaked Gaussians with variance , and the amplitude of the terms in the superpo-
sition decreases according to a Gaussian profile centered around x = 0, and with width κ.
The encoded state therefore becomes
+∞

 
0̄ ∝ exp(−2κ 2 s2 α 2 ) T (2sα) |ψ(0)
s=−∞
+∞
  2 
 
1̄ ∝ κ (2s + 1)2 α 2
exp − T [(2s + 1)α] |ψ(0) , (2.114)
s=−∞
2
   
up to normalization constants. The amplitudes of 0̄ and 1̄ are shown in Fig. 2.5. For
this code to work, must be small compared to α, and κ is small compared to π/α. In

     
Fig. 2.5. The Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill
 code for 0̄ and 1̄ , respectively. The dashed line in the plot of 0̄
is 1̄ and vice versa. A small displacement error in the position x will not cause a Z error in the
code space.
89 2.5 References and further reading

       
momentum space, the Hadamard transformed qubits +̄ = H 0̄ and −̄ = H 1̄ are again
a superposition of regularly spaced Gaussians:
+∞ 
 
 2
 
+̄ ∝
+∞ p2 2 1 2π m
dp exp − − 2 p− |p p . (2.115)
m=−∞ −∞
2 2κ α
 
Exercise 2.16: Find the expression for −̄ in terms of momentum eigenstates.

2.5 References and further reading

In this chapter we introduced some of the basic ideas in quantum information processing.
Our treatment here is far from complete, and for a more in-depth treatment of the various
topics we refer to the general literature. Currently, the standard work on quantum information
processing is the book by Nielsen and Chuang (2000). For a more recent text see Bruß and
Leuchs (2007), and for a recent textbook focused mainly on the computer science aspect of
quantum computing, see Mermin (2007). Cluster-state quantum computing is not covered
in these books. For more details on the one-way model we refer to Raussendorf and Briegel
(2001), Raussendorf et al. (2003), and Hein et al. (2004). The stabilizer formalism was
developed by Gottesman (1996 and 1997).
The no-cloning theorem was first published by Wootters and Zurek (1982), and by Dieks
(1982). It led to the quantum key distribution protocol by Bennett and Brassard (1984),
and later to the entanglement-assisted key distribution protocol by Ekert (1991). Quantum
teleportation was discovered in 1993 by Bennett et al., and the first experimental demon-
strations were performed by the end of the decade by Bouwmeester et al. (1997), Boschi
et al. (1998), and Furusawa et al. (1998). See also Chapters 5 and 8 for more details on the
optical implementation of quantum teleportation. Quantum repeaters were introduced by
Briegel et al. (1998).
Continuous-variable quantum computing was developed by Lloyd and Braunstein (1999).
Two edited books on continuous-variable quantum information have been published, by
Braunstein and Pati (2003), and by Cerf et al. (2007). For a comprehensive review of
continuous-variable quantum information, see Braunstein and van Loock (2005). Cluster-
state quantum computing with continuous variables was developed by Menicucci et al.
(2006), and error-correcting codes for continuous variables were constructed by Gottesman
et al. (2001).
3 Figures of merit

Before we begin our detailed discussion of optical quantum information processing, we

need to introduce certain figures of merit that quantify how well our information processor
is performing. For a quantum computer, the time and resources it takes to complete a task
are good measures, but we are faced with the problem that we do not know what the final
design for a quantum computer will be. We therefore need additional figures of merit that
are applicable in a wide range of situations. We first introduce the concept of the ‘density
operator’, which will be used to describe quantum states about which we have incomplete
knowledge. We then define the ‘fidelity’, which is used for assessing how close we are
to a particular desired quantum state, and we discuss different measures of entanglement.
The later part of the chapter will focus on figures of merit that are particularly relevant for
assessing optical states, namely the first-order correlation functions, and the visibility of
interference phenomena.

3.1 Density operators and superoperators

Classical physics often confronts us with situations where we can say only a limited amount
about the state of a system: we can measure certain ‘bulk’ variables such as the temperature
and pressure, but we do not know all of the details of the microscopic make-up of the state.
For example, we typically have very little knowledge of the positions and velocities of all
the atoms that constitute the system. Nonetheless, we can still make definite statements and
predictions about the behaviour of such a system, using the methods of thermodynamics
and statistical mechanics. Similarly, situations commonly arise in quantum information
processing where we do not have complete knowledge of the quantum state of a system.
Nevertheless, we can still apply the laws of quantum mechanics to make definite predictions
about the system’s behaviour. In order to do this, we define a formal way in which statistical
uncertainty is represented in our description of a quantum state. We will define pure states
that contain all possible information about a system, and mixed states that contain only
partial information.
We will first construct an alternative representation of a pure state, |ψ , that can be
extended to deal with classical uncertainly. For this, we need the concept of the ‘trace of an
operator’ Â, which can be defined as
  !   
Tr  = φj   φj , (3.1)
j
91 3.1 Density operators and superoperators

 
for any complete orthonormal basis {φj }: the trace is independent of the choice of basis. In
matrix form, the trace is the sum of the elements on the diagonal. The trace of an operator
is therefore the sum of its eigenvalues. Another important property of the trace is that it is
‘cyclic’:
Tr(ÂB̂Ĉ) = Tr(B̂Ĉ Â) = Tr(Ĉ ÂB̂), (3.2)
regardless of the commutation relations between Â, B̂, and Ĉ. Finally, the trace operation
is linear
Tr(aÂ) = aTr(Â) and Tr(Â + B̂) = Tr(Â) + Tr(B̂), (3.3)
for any a ∈ C.
 
Exercise 3.1: Prove that the trace is independent of the basis {φj } in Eq. (3.1), and prove
the cyclic property and linearity.

Consider now the expectation value of  with respect to the state |ψ :

 = ψ|  |ψ . (3.4)

By expressing the state in an orthonormal basis {|χn } such that |ψ = n cn |χn with
cn = χn |ψ , we find 
 = cn∗ cm χn |  |χm , (3.5)
n,m
which can be written as

 = χm |ψ ψ|χn χn |  |χm
n,m

= χm |ψ ψ| Â |χm . (3.6)
m

In the second line we have used the completeness relation n |χn χn | = Î. We can now
define an operator ρ such that
ρ = |ψ ψ| , (3.7)
and this leads to the following form of the expectation value of Â:
 
 = Tr ρ  . (3.8)

It is clear that ρ then gives us a very natural way of expressing the expectation value of
operators. However, we have considered only pure states so far. A straightforward extension
of the definition in Eq. (3.8) allows us to describe a statistical mixture of states. Consider
one such mixture that is composed of states |ψi , not necessarily orthogonal, and each with a
certain probability pi . The expectation value  of an operator  should also be a weighted
average of the expectation values  i with respect to each state |ψi . We can write this
expectation value as
 
      
 = pi  i = pi Tr ρi  = Tr pi ρi  ≡ Tr ρ  , (3.9)
i i i
92 Figures of merit

where ρi = |ψi ψi |.1 We have generalized our definition of ρ as

 
ρ= pi ρi = pi |ψi ψi | , (3.10)
i i

where the |ψi do not have to be orthonormal. Since an expectation value is essentially an
averaging procedure, the operator ρ can be interpreted as a weight function, or a ‘density’.
We therefore call ρ the density operator. By construction, ρ represents the state of a single
system that is prepared in one of the states |ψi with probability pi . This is sometimes called
a ‘proper mixture’. We will consider improper mixtures shortly.
We now consider three important properties of density operators. Since ρ is a well-
behaved operator, it can be diagonalized. In other words, the matrix representation of the
density operator (called the ‘density matrix’) can be written as a diagonal matrix. This is
called the ‘spectral decomposition’ of the density operator
  ! 
ρ= λj λj λj  . (3.11)
j

As we now show, ρ must be Hermitian, which means that the λj are real. First, consider a pure
state in the form of a projector |ψi ψi |. Taking the Hermitian adjoint of this operator means
exchanging the arguments of the bra and the ket. Clearly, the projector is invariant under
the Hermitian adjoint, so it must be a Hermitian operator. Second, the sum of two Hermitian
operators is also a Hermitian operator. And finally, multiplying a Hermitian operator by a
real number again yields a Hermitian operator. Using these composition rules, it is clear
that ρ must be Hermitian, and its eigenvalues are therefore real.
Second, we prove that Tr(ρ) = 1. First, we calculate
 the trace of a pure state |ψi ψi |.

To this end, we choose an orthonormal basis { φj } of which |ψi is a member. This yields
 
Tr(|ψi ψi |) = φj |ψi ψi |φj = δij = 1. (3.12)
j j

Next, we use the linearity of the trace to show that

 
  
Tr(ρ) = Tr pi |ψi ψi | = pi Tr(|ψi ψi |) = pi = 1, (3.13)
i i i

where the last equality follows from the fact that probabilities must sum to unity. Therefore,
the trace of any density matrix must always be one.
Third, the density operator is positive, or ψ| ρ |ψ ≥ 0 for any state |ψ . We can show
this by noting that the eigenvalues of ρ can
 be
 interpreted as probabilities, and
  are therefore
non-negative. If the eigenbasis of ρ is {φj }, we can write |ψ = j cj φj in this basis

1 The operator ρ is ‘idempotent’, which means that ρ 2 = ρ . Since ρ is also an operator in a vector space, we
i i i i
call this a ‘projection operator’.
93 3.1 Density operators and superoperators

and evaluate
 ! 
ψ| ρ |ψ = cj∗ ck φj  ρ |φk
jk
 
 !  
= cj∗ ck φj  pl |φl φl | |φk
jk l

= pl cj∗ ck φj |φl φl |φk
jkl

= pl cj∗ ck δjl δkl
jkl

= pl |cl |2
l

≥ 0. (3.14)

To summarize:

(i) the density operator has real eigenvalues, and is therefore Hermitian;
(ii) the trace of ρ is one: Tr(ρ) = 1;
(iii) the density operator is positive, i.e., for any |ψ , ψ| ρ |ψ ≥ 0.

Conversely, any operator that has these three properties can be considered a valid density
operator.

Exercise 3.2: Show that the convex sum of two density operators ρ1 and ρ2 is again a valid
density operator
ρ = w1 ρ1 + w2 ρ2 , (3.15)
where w1 and w2 are real, and w1 + w2 = 1.

3.1.1 The qubit density operator on the Bloch sphere

We saw earlier that any qubit state |ψ can be represented by a point on the surface of
the Bloch sphere, and similarly the pure-state density operator |ψ ψ| must correspond
to the same point on the sphere. Equivalently, we can think of a pure-state representation
as a vector that connects the centre of the sphere to the point of representation on the
sphere’s surface. It is then straightforward to represent a mixed density operator. We again
begin at the centre of the sphere and then add the vectors corresponding to each state of a
particular decomposition of the density operator, and scale the length of each vector by its
corresponding probability in the decomposition. The point at the end of the final vector is
another point in the state space. Since a density operator is a convex combination of pure
states, these points must lie inside the sphere. A ‘maximally’ mixed state 21 |0 0|+ 12 |1 1|
lies at the centre of the sphere.
 94 Figures of merit

Fig. 3.1. A mixed state is represented by points inside the Bloch sphere. (a) Representation of the state
ρM = p0 |0 0| + p1 |1 1|, in terms of the states |0 and |1 . (b) An alternative decomposition of
the same density matrix, in terms of three component states.

In Fig. 3.1a, we show what the state ρM = p0 |0 0|+p1 |1 1| looks like in this picture.
The Bloch picture also shows us that the decomposition of a given density operator into dif-
ferent states with certain probabilities is not unique. In Fig. 3.1b we show another possible
representation of ρM , this time composed of three different states. The only constraint on any
particular representation of a density matrix ρ is that the vectors that compose it, when added
together, finish at the point that represents ρ, and, that their total length is unity.2 Using the
construction just outlined, it is obvious that there are an infinite number of possible decom-
positions of the density operator. However, apart from subtleties regarding degeneracies in
the eigenvalues of ρ, the spectral decomposition into orthogonal states is unique.
It is tempting to ascribe a notion of physical reality to the spectral decomposition, in the
sense that the state may be regarded as a real statistical distribution of the basis states of
the spectral decomposition. However, our physical construction of ρ in terms of potentially
non-orthogonal states |ψi in Eq. (3.10) shows that this is inappropriate. Deriving physical
consequences from elevating one decomposition of a density operator over another is called
the ‘partition ensemble fallacy’, or pef for short. In this sense, a quantum mechanical
mixture described by a density operator is fundamentally different from a classical statistical
distribution. A classical statistical distribution over states represents our lack of knowledge,
but the system really is in one unique state. A quantum mechanical mixture also represents
a lack of knowledge, but we can no longer assert that the system ‘really’ is in one pure state.
We have introduced the density operator as a way to describe states about which we
have incomplete knowledge. For example, the state ρ may have been created by an evasive
experimentalist, who prepares a quantum system in a particular pure state, but divulges only
a set of several possible states with a probability distribution. She would be hiding some
information, and the best we could do is to construct a statistical model of the behaviour of

2 This latter constraint arises simply because the probabilities of the states in the decomposition must sum to
unity.
95 3.1 Density operators and superoperators

that state. As a consequence of avoiding the pef, there is no operational procedure based on
measuring the system with arbitrary precision that will reveal which state the experimenter
chose to prepare. This remains true even if the experimenter sends many states that have
been prepared according to her probability distribution. We will see in Chapter 5 that this
will have profound consequences for quantum communication.
The density operator can also be interpreted in a much more fundamental way. Our
evasive experimenter may also be described as a (rather complex) quantum system that has
interacted with the system we are studying. Since we really do not have enough information
to describe the system and the experimentalist as a whole, we need a procedure that allows
us to ignore the experimentalist altogether. As we shall see, it turns out that this procedure
will lead directly to mixing in the quantum state. Density operators that arise in this way
are sometimes called ‘improper mixtures’.
In order to see how to do this, we give an abstract representation of the experimentalist, or
any other large system that we cannot describe in detail. We will call this the ‘environment’.
Consider the case of a qubit interacting with its environment. Assume that the qubit and
environment are initially in a highly correlated entangled state | , given by

| = c00 |0 q ⊗ |ψ0 e + c11 |1 q ⊗ |ψ1 e , (3.16)

where the subscripts q and e denote the qubit and the environment, respectively. We will
assume that through measurements we can directly observe the behaviour of the qubit alone.
Next, suppose that we wish to make a measurement on our qubit of the particular observable
Â. Since we are measuring a property of the qubit and not the environment, the measurement
operator takes the form Âqe = Âq ⊗ Îe . The expectation value is

| Âqe | = |c00 |2 0|q Âq |0 q + |c11 |2 1|q Âq |1 q . (3.17)

This is exactly what we would have calculated if we had used a density matrix for q, with
the probability |c00 |2 for state |0 and |c11 |2 for state |1 . This result is completely general,
and there is a well-defined operation that takes us from a pure density operator | |
for a larger system to the density operator of a smaller part of that system. It is called the
‘partial trace’, denoted by a subscript indicating the system that is traced over:

ρq = Tre (ρqe )
⎛ ⎞
  
 ∗⎠
= Tre ⎝ rij |φi q ⊗ ψj e φk |q ⊗ ψl |e rkl
ijkl
⎛ ⎞
  
∗
= Tre ⎝ rij rkl |φi q φk | ⊗ ψj e ψl |⎠
ijkl

∗
= rij rkl |φi q φk | χm |ψj ψl |χm
ijklm

∗
= rij rkl ψl |ψj |φi q φk | . (3.18)
ijkl
96 Figures of merit

It is commonly the case that the density matrix is expressed in an orthonormal basis, in
which case ψl |ψj = δlj , and the above expression simplifies to

ρq = sik |φi q φk | , (3.19)
ik

with sik = l rkl ∗ r . This is generally a mixed state. Note that we started with a pure state
il
for the qubit and its environment, and the partial trace over the environment produces a
mixed state of the qubit. The partial trace over the environment is equivalent to discarding
any information about the environment. We often have no choice but to take the partial
trace when we do not have any information about the environment. When the qubit and the
environment are in a separable state, the partial trace over the environment does not mix
the state of the qubit. For the qubit state to become mixed, it must be entangled with the
environment.
This interpretation of the density operator, as the state of a system that has interacted and
become entangled with other systems, is of fundamental importance in quantum information
processing. For example, a single electron spin that is embedded in a solid-state environment
is not isolated. It interacts with a whole range of different things in the environment such as
phonons, other electron spins, or nuclear spins. Indeed, it is never possible to completely
isolate the behaviour of a quantum system from its surroundings. In quantum informa-
tion processing, this often manifests itself as errors that must be corrected or protected
against.

3.1.2 Superoperators and completely positive maps

Next, we consider the mathematical properties of general operators acting on density oper-
ators. Suppose that we have a physical system described by a set of accessible states {|φj }.
The superposition principle and the linearity of quantum mechanics imply that this set spans
a Hilbert space H of dimension d. This is a complex vector space with an orthonormal
basis
⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞
1 0 0
⎜0⎟ ⎜1⎟ ⎜0⎟
⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟
⎜.⎟ , ⎜.⎟ , . . . , ⎜.⎟ .
⎝ .. ⎠ ⎝ .. ⎠ ⎝ .. ⎠
0 0 1

We can define a set of linear operators {Âk } on H that transform states into states:

Âk : |φj −→ |φj′ , (3.20)

where |φ ′ is again a state in H . A choice of a basis in H puts Hermitian non-negative

operators into a one-to-one correspondence with Hermitian non-negative matrices. The set
of all linear operators {Âk } in turn define a Hilbert space H ⊗ H of dimension d 2 , one
97 3.1 Density operators and superoperators

orthonormal basis of which can be written as

⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞
1 0 ... 0 0 1 ... 0 0 0 ... 0
⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟
⎜0 . . . ⎟ ⎜0 . . . ⎟ ⎜0 ..
. ⎟
⎜ ⎟,⎜ ⎟ ⎜ ⎟
⎜ .. .. ⎟ ⎜ .. .. ⎟ , . . . , ⎜ .. .. ⎟ . (3.21)
⎝. . ⎠ ⎝ . .⎠ ⎝. .⎠
0 0 ... 0 0 0 ... 0 0 0 ... 1

We can now define an even higher set of objects called ‘maps’, denoted by {L}, the elements
of which linearly transform the set of linear operators into itself:

L : Â −→ Â′ = L(Â) . (3.22)

As an example, consider the Schrödinger equation

d
i |ψ = H |ψ , (3.23)
dt
which holds for any isolated system in a pure state |ψ (in the absence of measurements).
Using the definition of the density operator in Eq. (3.10), we can write

d
i ρ = [H, ρ] ≡ L(ρ). (3.24)
dt
This is the von Neumann equation, and defines the Liouvillian L.

Exercise 3.3: Using Eq. (3.10) show that the equation of motion for the density matrix is
indeed given by the von Neumann equation.

The linear maps L are sometimes called ‘superoperators’. They are operators on the
Hilbert space H ⊗ H , but we give them a different name to avoid confusion. A simple
example of a map corresponds to a unitary transformation U : Â → Â′ = U † ÂU . The
corresponding map LU may be written as LU = U † ⊗U . The set of all maps thus constitutes
a Hilbert space H ⊗4 of dimension d 4 . A map L is called positive if for every non-negative
operator  the operator Â′ = L(Â) is again a non-negative operator. When Tr(Â′ ) = Tr(Â)
for every Â, the map L is ‘trace-preserving’. Trace-preserving positive maps are important in
quantum mechanics, since they transform the set of density operators to itself. This property
may lead one to expect that these maps correspond to physical processes or symmetries.
Interestingly, not all positive maps can be associated with physical processes in quantum
mechanics. This subtle fact becomes important when we consider composite systems.
(1)
Suppose we have two systems 1 and 2 with respective accessible states {|φj } and
(2)
{|ψk }. These states span two Hilbert spaces H (1) and H (2) with dimensions d1 and d2 ,
respectively. The accessible states of the composite system can be written on the basis of
(1) (2)
the tensor product of the states |φj ⊗ |ψk , generating a Hilbert space H (1) ⊗ H (2) of
dimension d1 × d2 . Similarly, the set of linear operators {Âj } on H (1) ⊗ H (2) generates
a Hilbert space of dimension (d1 × d2 )2 , and the set of maps generates a Hilbert space of
dimension (d1 × d2 )4 .
98 Figures of merit

Consider a map L1 , defined for subsystem 1. When this map is positive (and trace-
preserving) it transforms density operators of the subsystem to density operators. When
system 1 is part of a composite system 1 + 2, we want to know when a positive map of
system 1 (leaving system 2 unchanged) would transform a density operator defined on the
composite system again into a density operator. In other words, we ask when the ‘extended’
map L12 = L1 ⊗ Î2 , with Î2 the identity map of system 2, is again positive. Maps with this
property have a special name: a map L1 is called ‘completely positive’ if all its extensions
are positive.
There exist maps that are positive, but not completely positive. One such map is the trans-
pose. Take, for example, the singlet state of a two-qubit system written in the computational
basis
1
| = √ (|01 − |10 ) . (3.25)
2
The density operator of this state can be written as

1
ρ = | | = (|01 01| − |01 10| − |10 01| + |10 10|) . (3.26)
2
The transpose of a general density operator for a single system in this notation is given by

T : a |0 0| + b |0 1| + c |1 0| + d |1 1|
−→ a |0 0| + b |1 0| + c |0 1| + d |1 1| , (3.27)

that is, we exchange the entries of the bras and kets. This is a positive map. The extended
transpose (or ‘partial transpose’) on a compound system T℘ = T1 ⊗ Î2 , however, is not
positive. To see this, apply the extended transpose to the density operator given in Eq. (3.26),
and we obtain
1
T℘ : ρ −→ ρ ′ = (|01 01| − |11 00| − |00 11| + |10 10|) . (3.28)
2
If the eigenvalues of ρ ′ are non-negative, ρ ′ is again a density operator. In order to find
the eigenvalues of this operator we write ρ ′ in matrix representation on the computational
basis:
⎛ ⎞
0 0 0 −1
1⎜ 0 1 0 0 ⎟
ρ′ = ⎜ ⎟ . (3.29)
2⎝ 0 0 1 0 ⎠
−1 0 0 0

It is easily found that this matrix has eigenvalues 1/2 (with multiplicity 3) and −1/2. There-
fore, ρ ′ is not a density operator, and T , although positive, is not a completely positive map.
The fact that positive but not completely positive maps on a subsystem do not necessarily
transform density operators on the composite system to density operators can be exploited
to detect (or witness) quantum entanglement. We will return to this in Section 3.3.
99 3.1 Density operators and superoperators

We now present an important class of completely positive maps. Consider the general
map

L : Â −→ Â′ = L(Â) , (3.30)

with  and Â′ linear operators on the system Hilbert space. An important special case of
such a map is given by
 †
L : Â −→ Â′ = λk B̂k ÂB̂k , (3.31)
k

where the B̂k are again linear operators. When λk ≥ 0 for all k, the map in Eq. (3.31) is
again a positive map. To prove this statement, note that
† †
φ|B̂k ÂB̂k |φ = ( φ|B̂k )Â(B̂k |φ ) ≡ φ ′ |Â|φ ′ ≥ 0 (3.32)

for all B̂k and |φ if  is non-negative. We then have

 †

φ|Â′ |φ = λk φ|B̂k ÂB̂k |φ = λk φk′ |Â|φk′ . (3.33)
k k

The right-hand side of this equation is positive for all B̂k , λk ≥ 0, and non-negative operators
Â. Hence Â′ is a non-negative operator and L is positive. Furthermore, when λk ≥ 0 for all
k, such a map L is completely positive. To prove this statement, let L be a map on system
1 (henceforth denoted by L1 ) and consider a second system 2. Recall that L1 is completely
positive if all its extensions L1 ⊗ Î2 are positive. Define the extension L12 = L1 ⊗ Î2 .
System 2 can have arbitrary dimension, and may itself be composite. We thus have to show
that L12 is positive. Let Â12 be a non-negative operator on the composite system 1 + 2:

Â12 = ajk,lm |φj 1 |ψk 2 ψm |1 φl | , (3.34)
j,k;l,m

with ajk,lm = a∗lm,jk , and define the operator B̂i on system 1 as


B̂i = bipq |φp φq | . (3.35)
p,q

The map L1 ⊗ Î2 is then given by the transformation


Â12 → Â′12 = λi (B̂i ⊗ Î2 )A12 (B̂i ⊗ Î2 )†
i
  
= λi ajk,lm bipq |φp 1 φq |φj 1 |ψk 2 ψm |1 φl |φr 1 φs |bi∗
sr
i p,q;r,s j,k;l,m
  
= λi ajk,lm bpj |φp 1 |ψk 2 ψm |1 φs |bi∗
sl
i p,s j,k;l,m
 
= λi ajk,lm |φj′ 1 |ψk 2 ψm |1 φl′ | , (3.36)
i j,k;l,m
100 Figures of merit

where we defined |φj′ = p bpj |φp . Since this is a convex sum over non-negative
operators, the resulting operator is again non-negative and L is completely positive. This
completes the proof.
Let us now return to the case of a single system and the states, operators, and maps
defined on it. Consider a projection operator P defined by

P† = P and P 2 = P. (3.37)

In terms of the states {|φj } this operator can be written as

Pj = |φj φj |. (3.38)

Suppose we have a set of projection operators {Pμ }, with the states |μ not necessarily
orthogonal. We can define a ‘generalized projection operator’ Êν as a weighted measure
over this set:

Êν = λνμ Pμ , (3.39)
μ

with λνμ > 0 and


Êν = Î . (3.40)
ν

The operator Ek is called a ‘positive operator-valued measure’ or povm for short. This can
be generalised further by observing that

λνμ Pμ = αμν |μ ν|ν μ|αμν∗ , (3.41)

with |ν ∈ {|μ } and |αμν |2 = λνμ . When we define the operator A:


A≡ αμν |μ ν| (3.42)
μ,ν

we can write the povm as


Eν = Aμν A†μν . (3.43)
μ

The operators Aμν are called ‘Kraus operators’. We will use the techniques of superopera-
tors, povms, and completely positive maps extensively throughout the book.

3.2 The fidelity

So far, we have developed the formalism that allows us to describe the evolution of quantum
systems in the presence of information loss, which tends to manifest itself in quantum
101 3.3 Entropy, information, and entanglement measures

information processing as the occurrence of errors. A different question is how similar

a given output state is to the ideal state without errors. This notion is quantified by the
‘fidelity’. This concept is ubiquitous in quantum information processing, since it gives a
numerical value to the quality of state-preparation procedures, quantum gates, etc. Equally
important, the fidelity has an operational definition, which means that it does not rely on
interpretation-dependent concepts.
The fidelity of a quantum state with respect to a reference state is the probability that the
state is mistaken for the reference state in a measurement. For two pure states |ψ and |ψ0 ,
this probability is the overlap of the two states in Hilbert space, or

F = | ψ0 |ψ |2 , (3.44)

where we have chosen |ψ0 as the reference state. Nevertheless, it is clear that this pure-state
fidelity is symmetric in the states.
The fidelity of two pure states, although conceptually important, has limited applicability
in practical problems. Usually the quantum state that is produced in a real procedure is
mixed, and is represented by the density operator ρ. In this case, the fidelity with respect
to a pure state follows by extending Eq. (3.44) using the definition Eq. (3.10)

F = ψ0 |ρ|ψ0 = Tr[ρ |ψ0 ψ0 |]. (3.45)

Some authors define the fidelity as the square root of this number, but that precludes its
interpretation given above. It also gives a misleadingly high value.
Finally, for completeness we define the fidelity for two mixed states ρ1 and ρ2 :
  2
1/2 1/2
F = Tr ρ2 ρ1 ρ2 . (3.46)

This measure is again symmetric in ρ1 and ρ2 , even though this is not obvious from the
notation. It is not used very often, because for most applications the desired state is a pure
state.

3.3 Entropy, information, and entanglement measures

One of the fundamental resources for quantum information processing is entanglement. It is

therefore crucial that we are able to quantify the amount of entanglement in a system. There
are many ways we can do this, and here we will introduce the most widely known techniques,
namely the partial-transpose criterion, the von Neumann entropy, the concurrence, and the
entanglement of formation.

3.3.1 Partial-transpose criterion

The partial-transpose criterion is an algorithm that can detect entanglement in the state of
two systems. It does not give a numerical value of the entanglement, and can therefore not
102 Figures of merit

be considered a measure. Nevertheless, it can be a valuable tool in quantum information

theory. It also provides a profound example of the theory of completely positive maps,
developed in Section 3.1.
A density operator ρ of two systems 1 + 2 is separable if and only if it can be written as
 (1) (2)
ρ= pk ρk ⊗ ρk , (3.47)
k

(j)
with pk ≥ 0 and k pk = 1. The density operator ρk is defined on system j = 1, 2.
Consider again the transpose of an operator Â:

T : Â −→ ÂT . (3.48)

As we have seen, this is a trace-preserving, positive, but not completely positive map. We
showed this by extending the map to the ‘partial transpose’ T℘ ≡ T1 ⊗ Î2 . The partial
transpose is not positive on the composite system.
Under the partial transpose, the separable density operator from Eq. (3.47) will transform
according to
  
(1) T (2)
T℘ : ρ −→ ρ ′ = pk ρk ⊗ ρk . (3.49)
k

However, T is positive and (ρk(1) )T is again a density operator. Therefore ρ ′ is another

(separable) density operator. Now look at the eigenvalues of ρ ′ : clearly, if ρ is separable,
then ρ ′ has positive eigenvalues. Therefore, if ρ ′ has one or more negative eigenvalues, the
original density operator ρ must have been entangled. This is the Peres–Horodecki partial-
transpose criterion and is generally a necessary but not sufficient condition for separability.
Denoting a Hilbert space of dimension d by Hd , it has been proved that for the Hilbert
spaces H2 ⊗H2 and H2 ⊗H3 the partial-transpose criterion is both necessary and sufficient.
In other words, ρ is separable if and only if the eigenvalues of its partial transpose ρ ′ are
positive. For higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces this is no longer true. In that case there can
exist density operators which are not separable, but for which the eigenvalues of ρ ′ are
non-negative. Such states are said to exhibit ‘bound entanglement’.

3.3.2 Von Neumann entropy

In classical physics, entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. In statistical mechanics

it is related (through Boltzmann’s equation) to the number of microstates of a system that
correspond to a given macrostate. The more microstates there are, the higher the entropy. An
alternative viewpoint is that entropy is a measure of how much information we would gain if
we could find out which of the microstates is giving rise to the macrostate. If there was only
one microstate, no information would be gained, so the entropy is zero. More microstates
give rise to higher entropies. Information theorists use exactly this interpretation of entropy
to quantify how much memory it takes to represent a particular random variable associated
103 3.3 Entropy, information, and entanglement measures

with an information register or communication channel. This measure is called the ‘Shannon
entropy’. For a random variable A with probability distribution {pa } it is

H (A) = − pa log2 pa . (3.50)
a

This is a classical quantity, and we wish to define its quantum mechanical counterpart.
In Section 3.1, we introduced the density matrix as a way of representing uncertainty in
quantum states. But how much uncertainty is associated with a particular density matrix?
We define the von Neumann entropy of a density operator ρA for system A as

S(A) = S(ρA ) ≡ −Tr(ρ log2 ρ) = − λi log2 λi , (3.51)
i

where the λi are the eigenvalues of ρA . In order to make the definition complete, we must
also assert that 0 log2 0 ≡ 0 (or 00 = 1).

Exercise 3.4: Prove the final equality in Eq. (3.51). (Hint: if matrices A and B are related
by A = eB ≡ 1 + B + B2 /2 + ..., then B = ln A.)

Note that while H (A) is a classical quantity, S(A) is a quantum mechanical quantity, even
though they are both numbers. They are closely related. As an example, a qubit density
operator has eigenvalues x and 1 − x, such that the von Neumann entropy becomes

S(ρ) = −x log2 (x) − (1 − x) log2 (1 − x) ≡ h(x). (3.52)

This is identical to the Shannon entropy of a classical bit with probability distribution
{x, 1 − x}. If ρ is a pure state, then it has one eigenvalue of unity (and the rest are zero),
and the entropy is therefore zero. This is what we want, since there is no uncertainty built
into pure states. For a maximally mixed state, ρ = Î/d (with d the dimension of the Hilbert
space), it is easy to show that S(ρ) = log2 d, and this is the maximum possible value in a
Hilbert space of that dimension.
The entropy is a useful measure of how mixed a particular state is. It is not a direct
measure of entanglement in a system, but it can be used to at least partially characterize
entanglement. Consider a two-qubit system that is in a pure state. If we use the partial trace
in Eq. (3.18) to construct the density operator ρ for one of the two qubits, we find that if the
two qubits are entangled, then ρ is mixed. If the two qubits are in a (pure) product state, then
ρ is pure. The single-qubit entropy is therefore zero for an unentangled state and maximal
for a maximally entangled state. It can also be proved that the entropy is monotonic: it is
always non-negative, zero for separable states and maximal for maximally entangled states;
the numerical value cannot be changed by ‘local operations and classical communication’
(locc) between the two subsystems; and the entropy is convex under information loss:
  
pi S(ρi ) ≥ S pi ρi . (3.53)
i
i

It makes no difference which of the two subsystems one chooses to look at; both give the
same value of the entropy if together they are in a pure state. Therefore, the single-qubit
104 Figures of merit

entropy can be used to characterize entanglement, in this limited sense of a pure joint state.
However, we would like to find a more general measure that would take any full density
matrix of two qubits as its input and yield a numerical value which quantifies the amount
of entanglement between the qubits.

3.3.3 Concurrence and entanglement of formation

The von Neumann entropy measure of entanglement for pure two-qubit states can be
extended to the mixed case by first introducing the ‘concurrence’ C. Let ρAB denote the
matrix representation of our two-qubit state in the computational basis {00, 01, 10, 11}
∗ is its complex conjugate. Then C is defined to be
and ρAB

C = [max{β1 − β2 − β3 − β4 , 0}] , (3.54)

where the βi are the square roots of the eigenvalues (in decreasing order) of the matrix

∗
ρAB ρ̃AB = ρAB YA ⊗ YB ρAB YA ⊗ YB , (3.55)

where Yi is the Pauli Y operator acting on system i. The concurrence C is a monotonic

entanglement measure in its own right, having a zero value for product states and a unity
value for maximally entangled states. However, it does not reduce to the von Neumann
entropy measure.
In contrast to the concurrence, the ‘entanglement of formation’ EF corresponds exactly
to the reduced von Neumann entropy in the case of pure two-qubit states. It is defined as
 √ 
1+ 1 − C2
EF (ρ) = h , (3.56)
2

where h(x) is defined in Eq. (3.52). The entanglement of formation tells us how many Bell
states we need on average to prepare the state ρ using some prescribed locc procedure.

3.3.4 Mutual information and the Holevo bound

We have introduced the Shannon entropy H (A) for a classical random variable A, and the
von Neumann entropy S(ρ) for a quantum system in the state ρ. We can also introduce a
‘joint entropy’ H (A, B) for two classical random variables A and B

H (A, B) = − p(a, b) log2 p(a, b), (3.57)
a,b

where p(a, b) is the probability that A = a and B = b. It is straightforward to extend this

definition to a joint entropy H (A, B, C, . . .) of many random variables A, B, C, etc. The
joint entropy measures the total uncertainty about the random variables. We can use the
105 3.4 Correlation functions and interference of light

Shannon entropy of two random variables A and B, and the joint entropy to define the
‘mutual information’ H (A : B)

H (A : B) = H (A) + H (B) − H (A, B). (3.58)

It is a measure of how much information A and B have in common.

Quantum mechanically, we can also define the joint entropy and the mutual information,
according to
 
S(A, B) = S(ρAB ) = −Tr ρAB log2 ρAB , (3.59)
and
S(A : B) = S(A) + S(B) − S(A, B). (3.60)
Usually, in quantum communication protocols, after the quantum mechanical part the com-
municating parties have strings of classical measurement outcomes (i.e., random variables),
and therefore S(A : B) = H (A : B) ≡ I (A : B) is the mutual information between A and B.
In both the classical and the quantum case, I (A : B) is symmetric.
For any (quantum) communication protocol, the mutual information between the two
parties, Alice and Bob, is bounded. This is the celebrated ‘Holevo bound’, also known as
‘Holevo’s theorem’.

Holevo’s theorem: With probability pa Alice prepares a mixed state ρa chosen from a set
of states {ρ1 , . . . , ρN }. Bob performs an arbitrary (povm) measurement on this state, with
outcomes described by the random variable B. The mutual information between Alice and
Bob is then bounded by
N
I (A : B) ≤ S(ρ) − pa S(ρa ), (3.61)
a=1

where ρ = a pa ρa .

The proof is given in Nielsen and Chuang (2000). This is a very powerful theorem, and we
will use this bound in Chapter 5 to prove the security of quantum cryptographic protocols.

3.4 Correlation functions and interference of light

So far, we have concentrated on generally applicable measures of the quality of quantum

states. However, these are not always the most useful measures when considering optical
coherence. In particular, there exist quantum correlation functions that are more directly
relevant for assessing typical results of optics experiments. To see this, let us first consider
the famous Young’s double-slit experiment, depicted in Fig. 3.2. Light impinges on the first
screen, containing two slits that are placed close to each other. Due to Huygens’ principle,
the slits become the source of two diffracted optical waves, and a second (observation)
screen displays the interference pattern resulting from the two waves. At the observation
 106 Figures of merit

Fig. 3.2. A schematic diagram of Young’s double-slit experiment. We consider the amplitude of the
detected signal at a position r in the observation screen. The waves coming from the two slits
have the same frequency ω, and their wavevectors have the same magnitude, |k| = |k ′ | = k. The
distance between slit 1 or 2 and the point r is s1 or s2 .

screen, light is reflected to the observer, who sees light and dark fringes. At the quantum
level, individual photons are absorbed and re-emitted by the material of the screen. The
simplest quantum model that allows us to capture this kind of process is to picture the
observation screen as a set of individual atoms. Each atom has two levels, whose separation
is equal to the energy of the photons in the original light beam.
The interaction Hamiltonian that describes how the atom and photon couple together will
be properly derived in Chapter 7. Here we use the result of the derivation, and write

HI = −E(r, t) · p, (3.62)

where p is the dipole operator that connects the ground and excited states of the atoms. If the
atom is initially in the ground state, then the only possible transition is to the excited state.
This increases the energy of the atom, so must be associated with a decrease in the energy
of the field. The relevant associated field operator must therefore be the photon annihilation
operator.
Let us consider a single optical mode, and construct its creation and annihilation operators
â and ↠. In terms of this single mode, we can write the electric field operator in the form

Ê(r, t) = Ê + (r, t) + Ê − (r, t) (3.63)

where

Ê + ∝ â exp[i(ωt − k · r)]
Ê − ∝ ↠exp[−i(ωt − k · r)]. (3.64)
107 3.4 Correlation functions and interference of light

The detector absorbs a quantum of energy if the field undergoes the loss of a single photon,
and the relevant matrix element for this process is therefore

Mif = f | Ê + (r, t) |i , (3.65)

where |i is the initial field state and |f its final state. By ‘Fermi’s golden rule’, the
probability of the detector registering a photon is therefore proportional to |Mif |2 .

Exercise 3.5: By assuming a complete set of final states for the field, show that the square
of the detection process matrix element can be written as

|Mif |2 = i| Ê − (r, t)Ê + (r, t) |i . (3.66)

For a mixed initial state ρ of the field we can make a simple extension:

|Mif |2 = Tr[ρ Ê − (r, t)Ê + (r, t)]. (3.67)

This quantity is a measure of how well correlated the two operators Ê + and Ê − are at a
position r and time t. We can generalize this, and define the ‘first-order’quantum correlation
function:
G(1) (r, r′ , t, t ′ ) = Tr[ρ Ê − (r, t)Ê + (r′ , t ′ )]. (3.68)
This function is all we need to describe the interference that occurs in Young’s experiment.
To see this let us calculate it for a point r on the observation screen. We can now write the
field operator as a superposition of two modes, one coming from each slit:

Ê + (r, t) = Ê1+ (r, t) + Ê2+ (r, t). (3.69)

With reference to Fig. 3.2, we see that the field at the screen originating from slit 1 is equal
to the field that existed at the position of the slit a time τ = s1 /c earlier, with an amplitude
that has fallen by a factor of 1/s1 for a spherical mode. Therefore
 si  1
Êi+ (r, t) = Ê + ri , t − . (3.70)
c si

Here, ri is the position vector for slit i. For the factors appearing in the denominator, we
can assume that s1 ≈ s2 ≈ R. By substituting Eq. (3.70) into Eqs. (3.69) and Eq. (3.67) we
find that
R2 |Mif |2 = G (1) (x1 , x1 ) + G(1) (x2 , x2 ) + 2Re[G (1) (x1 , x2 )] (3.71)
where we have grouped r and t coordinates into a single spacetime variable x and ti ≡
t − si /c. The first two terms on the right-hand side are autocorrelation functions, and so
the phase terms in Eq. (3.64) are such that they cancel in G(1) , which is then equal to a real
number. On the other hand, the final term has different phases for the Ê + and Ê − parts and
so can be written

G (1) (x1 , x2 ) = |G (1) (x1 , x2 )|eiω(t1 −t2 ) = |G (1) (x1 , x2 )|eik(s1 −s2 )/c . (3.72)
108 Figures of merit

We can capture the phase dependence more succinctly by defining the normalized
correlation functions
G (1) (x1 , x2 )
g (1) (x1 , x2 ) ≡  = eik(s1 −s2 )/c . (3.73)
G (1) (x1 , x1 )G (1) (x2 , x2 )
The positions of the maxima and minima of intensity are given entirely by the value of
this function, (k(s1 − s2 )/c = 2nπ for a maximum and (2n + 1)π for a minimum). The
‘visibility’ of the interference pattern is given by
 −1
Imax − Imin 1 1
v= =2  + (3.74)
Imax + Imin G (1) (x1 , x1 ) G (1) (x2 , x2 )

which takes its largest value of unity when G (1) (x1 , x1 ) = G (1) (x2 , x2 ). To summarize, the
first-order coherence function is sufficient to describe the results of simple interference
experiments. However, as we will see next, we need to go further than this to fully capture
the quantum nature of light.

3.5 Photon correlation measurements

We have so far explored experimental scenarios that can be understood by considering

single-photon detection events. However, it is possible to tell a great deal more about the
nature of a quantum field by making measurements that involve two or more photons. The
first such experiment is due to Hanbury Brown and Twiss, who sent light into a 50:50 beam
splitter and placed a detector in each of the two output modes, as shown in Fig. 3.3. The
role of the beam splitter is to allow photons that are very closely separated in time to be
detected independently. A single detector is not usually capable of resolving two or more
photons that arrive simultaneously, so the two detectors are used to record the times of the
arrival of different photons.3 If we call these two times t and t + τ , then such a set-up gives
a measurement of the second-order quantum correlation function
 
G (2) (t, t + τ ) = Tr ρ Ê − (t)Ê − (t + τ )Ê + (t + τ )Ê + (t) . (3.75)

We have dropped the position dependence from the operators, since it is assumed that the
measurement is sensitive to the photon correlation at a single position, namely that of the
beam splitter. Once any transient effects of switching on the light source have settled, we
do not expect G (2) to depend on absolute time t, and we may set t = 0 without loss of
generality.
It will again be convenient to write G (2) in normalized form

G (2) (τ )
g (2) (τ ) = , (3.76)
|G (1) (0)|2

3 For more details on photon detectors, we refer the reader to Chapter 4.

 109 3.5 Photon correlation measurements

Fig. 3.3. A schematic diagram of the Hanbury, Brown, and Twiss apparatus. A 50:50 beam splitter is placed
in the path of an incoming light beam and two detectors are placed in the two arms downstream.
Photon counts are recorded as a function of time.

Fig. 3.4. Graph of g(2) (τ ). Curve (a) is expected for uncorrelated photons; (b) indicates photon
anti-bunching; and (c) indicates photon bunching.

similar to the first-order correlation function. When photon arrival times are completely
uncorrelated the second-order correlation function is a product of two first-order correlation
functions G(2) (τ ) = |G (1) (τ )|2 . Moreover, uncorrelated photon arrival times do not have
a characteristic time scale τ , and we therefore expect g 2 (τ ) = 1. Each photon acts as an
independent particle, and Poisson statistics are therefore applicable. This is shown in curve
(a) of Fig. 3.4. One of the states of light that produces this distribution is the coherent state
|α . We can use the relations in Eq. (3.64) to write

Tr[ρ ↠↠ââ]

g (2) (τ ) = , (3.77)
(Tr[ρ ↠â])2

with ρ = |α α|. Since â |α = α |α , it is clear that g (2) is independent of τ , and numeri-

cally equal to one. In this calculation we have assumed a continuous coherent light source,
we ignored any decoherence, and we assumed that modes are not repopulated once photons
are absorbed by the detectors.

Exercise 3.6: Show that for a number state (ρ = |n n|) we expect

1
g (2) = 1 − . (3.78)
n
110 Figures of merit

For a mode with a single photon, we have n = 1, and g (2) therefore vanishes. This is
a result that cannot be reproduced using a classical wave theory. Hence an observation of
such a coincidence rate is a signature of the quantum nature of a light source. A g (2) value
below one is an indicator of ‘sub-Poissonian statistics’: The variance of the photon number
distribution is smaller than for a coherent state with a Poisson distribution. This is shown
in curve (b) in Fig. 3.4.
In a real experiment, the coherence of the light will not be maintained for an infinite
time, and the mode will be repopulated. Therefore we would expect a time dependence for
g (2) such that for long enough times τl there is no correlation between the photon detector
events, i.e. g (2) (τl ) = 1. As we shall see later in Chapter 4, the quality of a single-photon
source is measured by how small g (2) is at time τ = 0. Since g (2) (0) < g (2) (τl ), there is
a tendency for photon-detection events to be spaced in time: photon arrival times are not
random but are rather ‘anti-bunched’.

Exercise 3.7: Show that g (2) = 2 for the single-mode thermal state of frequency ω
∞

ρ= Pn |n n| , (3.79)
n=0

with
Pn = (1 − exp(−ω/kB T ) exp(−nω/kB T ). (3.80)
This behaviour is shown in curve (c) in Fig. 3.4.

Again, in a real experiment we would eventually expect to return to g (2) (τl ) = 1 for
long enough τl . The enhanced coincidence count rate at time zero is associated with
super-Poissonian statistics and g (2) (0) > g (2) (τl ) indicates ‘photon bunching’. Unlike
anti-bunching, it is not a signature of a quantum light source, since it is also predicted by
the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation.

3.6 References and further reading

The general theory of density operators can be found in most modern advanced textbooks
on quantum mechanics. For the mathematical theory of povms, we refer the reader to Kraus
(1983). The fidelity for mixed quantum states was analyzed by Jozsa (1994), and for a recent
review of entanglement measures see Plenio and Virmani (2007). A treatment of coherence
properties of the electromagnetic field and correlation functions can be found in Walls and
Milburn (2008).
 PART II

QUANTUM INFORMATION IN
PHOTONS AND ATOMS
4 Photon sources and detectors

In optical quantum information processing, two of the most basic elements are the sources
of quantum mechanical states of light, and the devices that can detect these states. In
this chapter, we narrow this down to photon sources and photodetectors. We will describe
first how detectors work, starting from abstract ideal detectors, via a complete description
of realistic detectors in terms of povms, to a brief overview of current photodetectors.
Subsequently, we will define what is a single-photon source, and how we can determine
experimentally whether a source produces single photons or something else. Having laid
down the ground rules, we will survey some of the most popular ways photons are produced
in the laboratory. Finally, we take a look at the production of entangled photon sources and
quantum non-demolition measurements of photons.

4.1 A mathematical model of photodetectors

Photodetectors are devices that produce a macroscopic signal when triggered by one or
more photons. In the ideal situation, every photon that hits the detector contributes to the
macroscopic signal, and there are no ‘ghost’signals, or so-called dark counts. In this situation
we can define two types of detector, namely the ‘photon-number detector’, and ‘detectors
without number resolution’.
First, the photon number detector is a (largely hypothetical) device that tells us how
many photons there are in a given optical mode that is properly localized in space and time.
This property is called ‘photon-number resolution’. Every possible detection outcome (n)
is associated with a povm, P̂ (n) , which in the case of an ideal photon number detector is a
projection operator of the n-photon Fock state:

P̂ (n) = |n n| . (4.1)

The probability of detecting n photons given an input state ρ is then given by the Born rule
 
p(n|ρ) = Tr P̂ (n) ρ = n| ρ |n . (4.2)

It is also immediately clear that n P̂ (n) = Î, which ensures that the probabilities sum up
to 1. These detectors are extremely powerful from a quantum information processing point
of view, and there is a significant experimental effort to create such devices.
By contrast, the regular photodetector, also known as a ‘bucket detector’, is not capable
of discriminating between different photon numbers: it can tell us only whether or not there
114 Photon sources and detectors

were any photons present in the optical mode.1 The macroscopic signal is typically an elec-
tric pulse, which is recorded on a data acquisition device, such as a computer. Historically,
photon detectors (in the X-ray part of the spectrum) were often Geiger counters that made
a clicking sound when they registered a photon. This has survived in the terminology, and
we will generally denote the detector outcomes as a ‘click’ and ‘no click’. Again, the povms
associated with the detector outcomes are projection operators:
∞
 ∞

P̂ (click) = P̂ (n) = |n n| ,
n=1 n=1

P̂ (no click) = Î − P̂ (click) = P̂ (0) = |0 0| . (4.3)

The requirement that P̂ (click) + P̂ (no click) = Î is satisfied by construction. The probability
of recording a detector click given an input state ρ is
  ∞
p(click|ρ) = Tr P̂ (click) ρ = n| ρ |n (4.4)
n=1

and p(no click|ρ) = 1 − p(click|ρ), as required. As was already mentioned, these are
idealized detector models. They do not include imperfections such as photon loss (non-
unit efficiency of the detector), dark counts, afterpulsing, spatial non-uniformity, timing
resolution and jitter, and non-uniform spectral response. Next, we will discuss the single-
mode aspects of photon detectors, namely the detection efficiency and the dark-count rate.

4.1.1 Efficiency and dark counts

There is a conceptual subtlety when we want to discuss photon loss and dark counts in
a photodetector: before the optical mode is detected, the state of the mode is typically
not a number state, and we cannot speak of the number of photons before detection in a
meaningful way. After detection we have a macroscopic signal indicating that a certain
number of photons were detected, but the physical object we measured has been destroyed.
So what do we mean when we say that we have lost a photon when beforehand the number
of photons is undetermined, and afterwards there is no physical system left to compare the
macroscopic signal with?
The key to this problem is to realize that the efficiency and the dark counts are properties
of the detection system. This comprises not just the detector, but all the optics and free
propagation from the source to the detector. Now suppose that we wish to make a photon
number measurement on an arbitrary state ρ. We assume that the properties of the detector
are independent of the state of the optical mode we wish to detect.2 This allows us to choose

1 Another defining property of bucket detectors is that they do not provide information about other degrees of
freedom, such as where the photon hit the detection area.
2 This is an approximation: for example, a bright enough source will induce saturation effects, or even damage
the detector, leading to an effective change in detection efficiency. However, it is a very good approximation at
the single-photon level.
115 4.1 A mathematical model of photodetectors

a specific input state |ψ without loss of generality:

∞

|ψ = cn |n , (4.5)
n=0

where the cn are normalized amplitudes. The detector is characterized by a set of povms
{Ê (n) }, associated with all possible outcomes (n), that is completely general, and typically
no longer a projection operator. The probability of finding the outcome n is then given by
 
p(n|ψ) = Tr Ê (n) |ψ ψ| = ψ| Ê (n) |ψ . (4.6)

The question is how we can include photon loss and dark counts in Ê (n) in a well-defined
and meaningful way.
If we can choose |ψ as our input state without loss of generality, we can also choose a
two-mode entangled state
∞
 ′ 
ψ = cn |n 1 |n 2 , (4.7)
n=0

on modes a1 and a2 . This allows us to measure mode a1 with our photodetector (finding
(n)
outcome n), while mode a2 is projected onto the output state ρout . This state will generally
be mixed when Ê1(n) is a povm:
     ! 
(n) −1 (n)   ! 
ρout = d(n) Tr1 Ê1 ψ ′ ψ ′  and d(n) = Tr12 Ê1(n) ψ ′ ψ ′  . (4.8)

This construction allows us to compare the detection outcome of mode a1 with the state in
mode a2 . We can ‘measure’ the output in mode a2 with a hypothetical ideal photon number
measurement. This yields the probability distribution of finding k photons in mode a2 , given
that the realistic detector indicated n photons in mode a1 :
     ! 
−1
(n)
p(k|ρout ) = Tr2 P̂2(k) ρout
(n)
= d(n) Tr Ê1(n) P̂2(k) ψ ′ ψ ′  . (4.9)

(n) (n) (n)

It is clear that for Ê1 = P̂1 , the probability of finding n photons in mode a2 is p(k|ρout ) =
δnk . A general povm Ê (n) can be determined by choosing a specific form for the probability
(n)
distribution p(k|ρout ), as we will show below.
(n) (n)
The probability p(n|ρout ) is the fidelity of the output state ρout with respect to the ideal
state |n that would have been created had the photon number detector been ideal. We call
the fidelity
  (n)  
−1 ! ′ 
ψ Ê1 ⊗ |n 2 n| ψ ′
(n)
F (n) ≡ p(n|ρout ) = d(n) (4.10)

the ‘confidence’ in the detection outcome n. Having used the crutch of the secondary mode
to define the detection efficiency, the dark counts, and the confidence, we can use these
concepts in a counterfactual manner.
116 Photon sources and detectors

Detection efficiency
We now present a model for describing detectors that suffer only from photon loss (the dark
counts are negligible). These are sometimes called ‘lossy’, or ‘finite-efficiency’ detectors.
The physical mechanism of photon loss depends on the details of the actual detector that
is used, but in general it is a very good approximation to say that each photon entering the
detector has a certain probability η to trigger a count event. Classically, this would lead to a
probability distribution of counts given the number of input photons. In order to construct
(n)
the povm associated with photon loss, we require that the probability distribution p(k|ρout )
coincides with the corresponding classical probability distribution: take k = n + m objects
distributed over two containers labelled ‘detected’ and ‘lost’, with n objects detected and
m lost. If the probability of an object going into the ‘detected’ container is η, then the
probability to find n objects in the ‘detected’ container and m in the ‘lost’ container is

n+m n
p(n, m) = η (1 − η)m . (4.11)
n
 
This is the familiar binomial distribution. Given the input state ψ ′ in Eq. (4.7), we expect
(n)
the probability distribution p(n + m|ρout ) to be

−1
|cn+m |2 p(n, m).
(n)
p(n + m|ρout ) = d(n) (4.12)
  (n)
The terms |k 1 in the superposition of ψ ′ with k < n do not contribute to p(n + m|ρout )
because there are not enough photons to trigger the detector (we assumed negligible dark
counts). We will now use Eq. (4.9) and Eq. (4.12) to derive
 
(n) −1 (n) (n+m)  ′  ! ′ 
p(n + m|ρout ) = d(n) Trab Ê1 P̂2 ψ ψ
 
−1
Tr1 Ê1 |cn+m |2 |n + m 1 n + m|
(n)
= d(n)
−1
|cn+m |2 n + m| Ê1 |n + m
(n)
= d(n)
n+m n
−1
= d(n) |cn+m |2 η (1 − η)m , (4.13)
n

where the last equality follows from Eq. (4.12). The last two lines lead to the identification

p(n, m) = n + m| Ê (n) |n + m , (4.14)

from which we can deduce the povm of a finite-efficiency photon number detector:

∞
 n+m n
Ê (n)
= η (1 − η)m |n + m n + m| . (4.15)
n
m=0

Exercise 4.1: Show that (n) = Î.

n Ê
 117 4.1 A mathematical model of photodetectors

Fig. 4.1. A model for detector loss using a beam splitter with transmission coefficient η. The reflected mode
is traced over.

This povm was derived using only the requirement of compliance with a classical prob-
ability distribution. However, in many cases it is both convenient and instructive to have a
physical model for detector loss. The commonly used model is provided by a beam splitter
with transmission coefficient η placed in the optical mode (see Fig. 4.1). The reflected pho-
tons are considered lost, while the transmitted photons are detected with an ideal photon
number detector. To show that this leads to the same povm, consider the input state

|ψ = |k 1 |0 2 , (4.16)

on modes a1 and a2 , and the beam-splitter transformation

† √ †  †
â1 → η b̂1 + 1 − η b̂2 . (4.17)

Mode a1 is the signal mode, which is transformed to mode b1 by the beam splitter. The
modes a2 and b2 are auxiliary modes. After the beam splitter, mode b2 is traced out, since it
is identified with the environment. This will lead to the following state of the optical modes:

1 †k
|φ φ| = â |0, 0 0, 0| âk1
k! 1
1 √ †   √  k
† k
→ ηb̂1 + 1 − ηb̂2 |0, 0 0, 0| ηb̂1 + 1 − ηb̂2
k!
k
1  k k √ 2k−l−m  l+m †k−l †l
= η 1−η b̂1 b̂2 |0, 0 0, 0| b̂k−m
1 b̂m
2
k! l m
l,m=0

k
 η2k−l−m (1 − η)l+m
= k! |k − l, l k − m, m|
(k − l)! l! (k − m)! m!
l,m=0
 ! 
≡ φ ′ φ ′  . (4.18)

We can take the trace over mode b2 to remove the environment from the state. This leads
to the mixed single-mode state

k
  !   k k−m
Tr2 φ ′ φ ′  = η (1 − η)m |k − m k − m| , (4.19)
m
m=0
118 Photon sources and detectors

which is the state that results from preparing a state |k and evolving it through a
Poissonian
 ′ loss mechanism. If the initial state is instead the two-mode number state
ψ =
k ck |k, k 12 , the resulting state after loss in mode a1 becomes

∞ 
 k
k k−m
ρ12 = |ck |2 η (1 − η)m |k − m, k 12 k − m, k| . (4.20)
m
k=0 m=0

Considering this two-mode photon-entangled state allows us to evaluate the probability of

m photons in mode b2 given a measurement outcome of n photons in mode b1 , similar to
Eq. (4.9). First, we recall that we can write
   
(n) −1 (n) (n)
ρout = d(n) Tr1 P̂1 ρ12 and d(n) = Tr12 P̂1 ρ12 . (4.21)

This state has the same interpretation as the state in Eq. (4.8). Next we calculate the
probability
 
(n) −1 (n) (n+m)
p(n + m|ρout ) = d(n) Tr12 P̂1 P̂2 ρ12
∞ 
 k
|ck |2 k k−l
= η (1 − η)l δi,n δj,n+m δi,k−l δj,k
d(n) l
i,j,k=0 l=0

n+m n
−1
= d(n) |cnm |2 η (1 − η)m . (4.22)
m

This is the same expression as Eq. (4.12), which means that the beam-splitter model for
detector loss leads to the same povm in Eq. (4.15). This model is constructed entirely with
linear optical elements and perfect photon number detectors. It can therefore be very con-
venient in deriving properties of linear optical experiments with finite-efficiency detectors
using the techniques introduced in Chapter 1.
From Eq. (4.15) we can find the povm for photodetectors without photon number res-
olution (bucket detectors) by choosing n = 0. The povm for finding no detector click is
equivalent to the photon number povm in the case when all photons are lost:
∞

Ê (no click) = Ê (0) = (1 − η)m |m m| . (4.23)
m=0

The povm for finding a detector click is

∞

(no click)
Ê (click)
= Î − Ê = 1 − (1 − η)m |m m| . (4.24)
m=0

In the situation where dark counts are negligible, this is a good approximation to the
description of a real photodetector. Again, this finite-efficiency photodetector can be accu-
rately modelled by a beam splitter with transmission coefficient η preceding an ideal
photodetector.
119 4.1 A mathematical model of photodetectors

Detector dark counts

Next, we consider the case of finite-efficiency detectors where the dark counts cannot be
neglected. In the given time interval of detection, there will be some probability distribution
D(k) for the occurrence of k dark counts, such that

∞

D(k) = 1. (4.25)
k=0

At this point, we do not assume any specific forms of this probability distribution: it can be
a Poisson distribution, when all dark counts occur independently of each other; or it can be
a thermal distribution, which may be more likely when the detector is sensitive to (and not
properly shielded from) infrared wavelengths. In practice, it will be some multi-parameter
distribution that is a result of a variety of physical mechanisms.
Classically, we again have a probability distribution in which objects are put in the
‘detected’ or ‘lost’ container, but now we have two types of objects the real objects (defined
again via a two-mode entangled photon number state) and the false positives, or spurious
objects. Let n−k real and k spurious objects be deposited in the ‘detected’ container (giving
a total of n detected objects), and let m objects be deposited in the ‘lost’ container. Including
the binomial coefficient to count all possibilities this distribution can be realized, we have

n − k + m n−k
p(n, m, k) = D(k) η (1 − η)m (4.26)
m

as the probability of finding n objects in the ‘detected’ container, given n−k +m real objects
and k spurious objects. We included a factor D(k) since we assume that the probability of
k spurious objects is independent of the number of real objects. There will be at most n
spurious objects, and the probability distribution of finding n detected objects is therefore

n
 n
 n − k + m n−k
p(n, m) = D(k)p(n, m, k) = D(k) η (1 − η)m . (4.27)
m
k=0 k=0

We can derive the povm again via the relation n + m| Ê (n) |n + m = p(n, m). Using the
following Ansatz for Ê (n) :

∞ 
 n
Ê (n) = f (n, i, j) |n + i − j n + i − j| (4.28)
i=0 j=0

we find (relabeling j = k on the left-hand side):

n
 n
 n − k + m n−k
f (n, m, k) = D(k) η (1 − η)m . (4.29)
m
k=0 k=0
120 Photon sources and detectors

This allows us to equate the expressions under the summation on both sides. Substituting
this into Eq. (4.28) gives the povm for the detector outcome ‘n’
∞ 
 n
n − k + m n−k
Ê (n) = D(k) η (1 − η)m |n + m − k n + m − k| , (4.30)
m
m=0 k=0

when the detector has efficiency η and dark count distribution D(k).
We can choose any suitable probability distribution for the dark counts D(k). One
possibility is that the dark counts are distributed according to a Poisson distribution:

δ k exp(−δ)
D(k) = . (4.31)
k!
Alternatively, the distribution may be thermal:
 
D(k) = 1 − e−γ exp(−kγ ), (4.32)

where γ is the characteristic parameter for a thermal distribution, typically γ = ǫ/kB T

with ǫ the corresponding energy value of the dark count, kB Boltzmann’s constant, and T
the temperature. There may be a weighted sum or integral involved over all possible energy
values. In many practical situations the dark-count rate is sufficiently low that the probability
of having two dark counts is negligible. In that case we can choose the distribution

D(0) = 1 − δ and D(1) = δ. (4.33)

This gives the correct results up to order δ 2 in photon number detectors, but it significantly
simplifies the povm.
For bucket detectors the distribution in Eq. (4.33) is exact and completely general. The
povm for a bucket detector can again be found from the general photon number povm by
setting Ê (no click) = Ê (0) :
∞

(no click)
Ê = Ê (0)
= D(0) (1 − η)m |m m|
m=0
∞

Ê (click) = [1 − D(0)(1 − η)m ] |m m| . (4.34)
m=0

The dark counts are completely determined by a single parameter D(0), which encapsulates
all the physical mechanisms that may lead to the false positives.

Absolute detection efficiencies and dark currents

We can experimentally determine the ‘absolute efficiency’ of a detector as follows: consider
the two-mode squeezed state in Eq. (1.235), which is a good approximation to the output
state of a parametric downconverter (see Section 4.3.3). The critical property of this state
is that the photons are created in pairs, i.e., when there are n photons in mode a1 , there are
also n photons in mode a2 . This allows us to relate the count rates N1 and N2 in the detectors
121 4.2 Physical implementations of photodetectors

in modes a1 and a2 . The measured count rate of detector i = 1, 2 is

Ni = ηi τi N , (4.35)

with ηi the detection efficiency of detector i, τi the transmittance from the source to the
detector, and N the (unknown) rate of photon pairs produced by the source. The measured
coincidence rate Nc is given by

Nc = η1 η2 τ1 τ2 N . (4.36)

The detection efficiency of the detector in mode a1 and mode a2 can be expressed as

Nc Nc
η1 = and η2 = . (4.37)
τ1 N2 τ2 N1

The rates Nc , N1 , and N2 are directly generated in the experiment, and τ1 and τ2 can be
inferred by varying the distance from the detector to the source. Alternatively, τ1 and τ2
can be incorporated in the detection efficiency of the detection device. Since the measured
efficiency of detector a1 does not depend on the efficiency of detector a2 , and vice versa,
this is an ‘absolute measurement’ of η1 and η2 .
Similarly, the absolute dark current can be determined by measuring the count rate in the
absence of a source.

4.2 Physical implementations of photodetectors

Now that we have developed a general theoretical model for photon detectors, we can
discuss a number of physical implementations of both bucket detectors and photon number
detectors. We first consider photomultiplier tubes and avalanche photodiodes, followed by
a discussion on detector cascading. This is a technique that purports to turn many bucket
detectors into photon number detectors. We conclude this section with photon number
detectors based on superconducting devices.

4.2.1 Photomultiplier tubes and avalanche photodiodes

The most common photodetectors are ‘photomultiplier tubes’ (pmts) and ‘avalanche photo-
diodes’ (apds). They exploit the photoelectric effect to convert a photon into an electron,
which is subsequently used in an electronic amplification process. In the case of a pmt,
the electron is created at a photocathode in a vacuum tube. It is then accelerated towards
a ‘dynode’ that is held at a positive voltage with respect to the photocathode. When the
electron hits the dynode, its kinetic energy releases several more electrons, which in turn are
accelerated towards a second dynode held at a positive voltage with respect to the first. This
process repeats several times, until finally, a macroscopic number of electrons hit the anode,
where they are detected as a current spike, giving the ‘click’ of the detector (see Fig. 4.2).
 122 Photon sources and detectors

Fig. 4.2. A photomultiplier tube. A single photon produces an electron that is accelerated to a dynode at
positive voltage V1 . The dynode will release several electrons, which in turn are accelerated to the
dynode at V2 > V1 , and so on. At the anode, the electrons create a macroscopic current spike.

Fig. 4.3. Energy structure of an avalanche photodiode. An electron is promoted from the valence band to
the conduction band and causes an avalanche of secondary electron–hole pairs. This leads to a
macroscopic signal.

In an apd, the incoming photon promotes an electron from the valence band to the
conduction band of a semiconductor. The gap left in the valence band is called a ‘hole’ and
acts as a particle in its own right, and has a positive charge.3 A large potential difference
is applied across the semiconductor, which causes the electron to accelerate towards the
positive end (and the hole to the negative end). In doing so, the accelerating particles promote
other valence electrons to the conduction band, creating further electron–hole pairs. In turn,
these pairs get accelerated and produce more electrons and holes, which eventually becomes
an avalanche. When the current becomes macroscopic in size, the electronics of the apd
registers a current spike, giving the ‘click’ of the detector (see Fig. 4.3). The avalanche
must be stopped actively by reversing the potential across the semiconductor. The effect of

3 We will return to holes in Chapter 11.

123 4.2 Physical implementations of photodetectors

this reversal is that the detector has a period immediately after a detection event in which
it cannot register incoming photons. This is called the ‘dead time’, and typically lasts for a
few nanoseconds.
In quantum optics, apds are mostly used. These devices generally do not have number-
resolving capabilities (although there are exceptions), and it is not difficult to see why:
two photons will not create a conduction electron at exactly the same time, and the sec-
ond electron will therefore be just another conduction electron in the avalanche, rather
than the seed of an avalanche. Other properties of apds that can have an effect on the
quality of quantum information processing are the spatial uniformity (or lack thereof) of
the detection area, time resolution and jitter, afterpulsing, and the spectral response of the
detector:
Spatial uniformity: The active area of a detector may have non-uniformities that affect
properties such as the detection efficiency η(r), which then becomes a function of
position on the detection area r = (x, y). This can be decomposed in terms of the
Hermite–Gaussian or Laguerre–Gaussian modes η(r) = nm ηnm unm (r) introduced
in Section 1.3, such that each incoming transverse mode unm (r) has a constant detection
efficiency ηnm . The detector will be triggered with probability ηnm by photons in
these transverse modes. When the transverse mode information is not recorded in the
detector, the modes have to be included in the povm description of the detector.
Time resolution and jitter: A photon wave packet is often several nanoseconds in
duration, but the time resolution of apds may be as short as tens of picoseconds. In
a very practical sense, the detector collapses the ‘wave function’ of the photon in
the temporal domain. Consequently, there will be a temporal variation in the moment
when the detector clicks, but this is due to the nature of the wave packet, rather than
the structure of the detector. There is, however, also a detector-specific timing noise,
called ‘jitter’. This is mainly due to thermal electronic noise in the apd, and typically
follows a Gaussian distribution.
Spectral response: In addition to the spatial uniformity of the detection area, the detection
efficiency depends on the frequency of the incoming light. Clearly, the efficiency of the
detector will drop to zero when the wavelength becomes too long for the photoelectric
effect to occur. In general, there will be a spectral band over which the detection
efficiency is approximately constant. The characteristics of this band are determined
by the physics of the detector.
Afterpulsing: A detector click that was triggered by a true photon (as defined above in
the two-mode setting) can be followed by one or more spurious detector clicks. This
is called afterpulsing. Just like dark counts, these pulses can lead to false positives. A
specific example of afterpulsing is so-called hot carrier luminescence, where the cas-
cade produces photons in the optical range. These photons can enter the interferometer
and reflect back into the detectors (Ulu et al., 2000).
All these effects must be taken into account when designing protocols, since they may
compromise the fidelity of the quantum information processes.
As an example, we will now determine the povm for a photodetector with spatial non-
uniformity of the detection efficiency. The detection efficiency η(r) is a function of the
 124 Photon sources and detectors

position r on the active detection area. What is the povm for a detector click in such a
photodetector? Since we assume that the detector has no number-resolving capability, we
choose to calculate the povm for ‘no click’ Ê (0) , and calculate the povm for a click via the
relation Ê (1) = Î − Ê (0) . We have already established that for a transverse mode unm (r),
the detection efficiency ηnm is constant. The povm for this mode is therefore

∞

(0)
Ênm = (1 − ηnm )k |k k| . (4.38)
k=0

Since each mode labeled by n and m independently responds to the incoming light field,
the total povm for no click in the photodetector is
)
Ê (0) = (0)
Ênm . (4.39)
n,m

It is usually infeasible to calculate an analytic form for Ê (0) . Fortunately, this is hardly ever
necessary. Many quantum information protocols require the photon to be strictly in a single
mode, in which case the effective povm reduces again to Eq. (4.38). Only when transverse
mode functions are used can variations in ηnm become problematic. In that case it is usually
sufficient to consider only a few modes.

4.2.2 Photon number resolution: detector cascading

A conceptually straightforward way in which regular photodetectors (such as pmts or apds)

can be used to achieve single-photon resolution, i.e., to build a photon number detector,
is by ‘cascading’, shown in Fig. 4.4. In a detector cascade, the incoming mode is divided
equally over a large number of modes, which are all detected. If the number of modes is
much larger than the typical number of photons in the input mode, the probability for two
photons entering the same detector becomes arbitrarily small.

Fig. 4.4. A detector cascade with 50:50 beam splitters (BS). A photon in the input mode is equally likely to
end up in any of the photodetectors.
125 4.2 Physical implementations of photodetectors

A particular N -port detector cascade is given by the discrete Fourier transform

 
1 (j − 1)(k − 1)
Ujk = √ exp 2πi , (4.40)
N N

which leads to the transformation of the mode operators

N
 N

† †
b̂j = Ujk âk and b̂j = Ujk∗ âk . (4.41)
k=1 k=1

A photon entering any input port has an equal probability of exiting any output port. We
next derive an expression for the povms of the detector cascade, including the probability of
two photons in the same output mode, detector efficiencies, and dark counts. For simplicity,
we assume that all the detectors in the cascade are identical photodetectors.
We follow the same strategy as in Section 4.1. First, we construct the input state we wish
to detect on mode a1 . Then, we extend this to a two-mode entangled state, including the
hypothetical mode a0
∞
 ′ 
ψ = cn |n, n 10 , (4.42)
n=0
which allows us to talk about the counterfactual probability that the detector indicated n
photons, while mode a1 contained k photons:
 
(n) (n) (k)   ! 
p(k|ρout ) = Tr10 Ê1 P̂0 ψ ′ ψ ′  . (4.43)

The classical probability of distributing k identical objects over N containers is the well-
known multinomial distribution:
k!
pcascade (k, n) = pn1 · · · pnNN , (4.44)
n 1 ! · · · nN ! 1

where pi is the probability of putting the object in the ith container, and n = (n1 , . . . , nN ) is
the N -tuple of the number of objects in each container. For an arbitrary N -tuple n we define
|n| as the number of non-zero ni , and n = i ni is the total number of objects. In the
case of the detector cascade pi = 1/N , and the probability of n input photons triggering n
detectors is given by
 N n!
pcascade (n|n) = pcascade (n, n) = . (4.45)
n Nn
|n|=n

This probability approaches 1 in the limit N → ∞, as required.

For the more general case we return to the quantum input state ρ after the application of
the N -port in Eq. (4.40). The probability of finding the photon distribution n in the output
modes, given a distribution k = (k1 , . . . , kN ) in the input modes is (ρ = |k k|)

 2
 = n| U ρU † |n =  n| U |k  .
pcascade (n|k) (4.46)
 126 Photon sources and detectors

For a detector cascade, we have k = (k, 0, . . . , 0). This can be evaluated in terms of multi-
dimensional Hermite polynomials, but that is beyond the scope of this book. For more
information see Kok and Braunstein (2001). The confidence of a detector outcome given
an input state |ψ = k ck |k is

|cn |2 pcascade (n|n)

F (n) = ∞ 2
. (4.47)
m=0 |cn+m | pcascade (n|n + m)

The probability of an n-fold detector coincidence in detectors with efficiency η, given n

input photons is
N ηn n!
pcascade (n|n) = . (4.48)
n Nn
This probability approaches ηn as N → ∞. Detector cascading therefore works well only
with high-efficiency photodetectors.
There are several experimental implementations of detector cascades, and the one that
is most closely related to the theoretical model of the detector cascade given here is the
‘visible light photon counter’ (vlpc), in which the active area of the detector is divided
into many independent active regions (see e.g., Waks et al., 2003 and 2004). Each region
acts as a separate photodetector, with its own efficiency, dark-count rate, and detector dead
time. Rather than using many beam splitters to divide the beam over the detectors, the vlpc
relies on the fact that each individual detection area is much smaller than the beam size,
and the photon wave packet randomly collapses onto a single area. The probability that two
photons collapse onto the same area is small, and roughly follows the distribution for the
detector cascades derived above. Here, N is the number of active areas in the vlpc.

Time multiplexing
Rather than randomly distributing the photons in an input mode over N spatial output modes
in a detector cascade, the photons may be distributed randomly over N time intervals. This
is called ‘time multiplexing’, and to date there have been two distinct implementations of
this idea.
The time multiplexer shown in Fig. 4.5a is the temporal equivalent of the detector cascade
described in the previous section. An incoming photon encounters a fibre coupler that acts

Fig. 4.5. Time-multiplexing detector cascade: (a) Fitch et al. (2003) and Achilles et al. (2003); (b) Thé and
Ramos (2007).
127 4.2 Physical implementations of photodetectors

as a 50:50 beam splitter. The two possibilities for the photon are to travel to a second
50:50 fibre coupler via the short path or the long path with length L. The short path has
negligible length. This process repeats again at the next beam splitter, but now the long path
has twice the length (2L). After n iterations, the most recent long path has length 2n L. An
incoming photon will travel a distance that is a superposition of all possible paths through
the multiplexer. Each path can be uniquely described by an n-bit string: when a photon is
reflected at the k th beam splitter into the long arm, the bit string records a 1 in the (n − k)th
place. If the photon is transmitted into the short path, the bit string records a 0. Since each
delay line has a length that is a power of two with respect to L, each possible path has a
unique number, corresponding to its length. This is translated into a unique time of arrival
for each path. When n is sufficiently large, it is very unlikely that two incoming photons
take exactly the same path, and will therefore result in two separate clicks in the detectors.
Each path is equally likely. The probability distribution for the detected photons given a
number of input photons is therefore the same as that of the detector cascade described
above, although by its very nature the time multiplexer is considerably slower than the
spatial detector cascade.
A slightly different version of a multiplexer is shown in Fig. 4.5b. The incoming photons
are stored in a fibre loop by means of an optical switch. Weakly coupled to the loop is
another fibre that leads to a photodetector. Every time the wave packet passes through
the fibre coupler, there is a small probability that a photon is transferred to the fibre and
into the detector. The difference between this model and the previous multiplexer is that
here the beam is not split off randomly, but rather a small amplitude is leaked out of the
fibre loop many times in a row, like grains of sand falling slowly through your fingers. We
need a cut-off in time, after which we declare that the number of detector clicks equals the
number of photons in the incoming mode. If the fibre loop has length L, the cut-off time is
τ = NL/v, where v is the speed of light in the fibre, and N is the number of revolutions.
To maximize the confidence in the detection outcome, the fibre coupler should have a
transmission coefficient of 1/N . In the language of cascades, this corresponds to a single
mode passing through N beam splitters with reflection coefficient 1/N . If the previous
cascade had a tree structure, this cascade has a linear structure.

4.2.3 Superconducting photon-number detectors

A particularly elegant solution to the problem of achieving photon-number resolution is

the use of the superconducting-to-Ohmic transition in areas and nanowires. There are two
basic mechanisms, called ‘transition edge sensors’ (tes) and ‘superconducting nanowire
detectors’ (snd). We will briefly describe both mechanisms, and compare current state-
of-the-art implementations. We finish this section with an overview of some experimental
implementations of photon-number resolving detectors.
In a tes, the temperature of the active area is held at the point where the material is at
the edge of the transition from the superconducting state to the Ohmic state (see Fig. 4.6).
The active material is still superconducting, but any rise in temperature will take it into
the transition to the Ohmic regime. An incoming photon will be absorbed in the material
 128 Photon sources and detectors

Fig. 4.6. The transition edge of a superconducting material, as used in a TES photon-number resolving
detector. R is the resistivity of the active detection area, and T is the temperature. The transition
between the superconducting and Ohmic state is nearly linear, which allows for photon-number
detection up to a certain number of photons.

and creates a small rise in temperature. This will cause the resistance of the material to
rise very steeply at the transition edge, creating a measurable change in the current through
the material. Since the transition edge is almost linear, a second absorbed photon will
increase the resistance of the material by the same amount. The measured resistivity is then
proportional to the number of detected photons. When too many photons are absorbed by
the detection area, the transition edge is saturated and the detector loses its photon-number
resolution.
The quantum efficiency of the tes can be made very high by making the active area
sufficiently thick, such that most incoming photons will be absorbed. However, after a
detection event the active area must again be cooled to the initial temperature. If the active
area is too thick, this will take a long time, resulting in a drop in the repetition rate.Adetection
efficiency of η = 88% and a repetition rate of 50 kHz have been reported (Rosenberg et al.,
2005). This detector operates at a temperature around 100 mK.
In an snd a single superconducting nanowire is meandering such that it creates a number
of active two-dimensional regions, each of which can act as a single-photon detector. In
this sense, the detection statistics follows that of the detector cascade. When a photon is
absorbed by the wire it creates a hotspot in which the superconductivity breaks down. The
supercurrent must flow around the hotspot, and therefore becomes most dense in the region
adjacent to the hotspot. If the bias current is strong enough, the supercurrent will exceed
the critical current in the dense areas, and superconductivity is lost. This creates a resistive
barrier. The total resistivity of the nanowire is proportional to the number of resistive barriers
in the wire, and therefore to the number of photons that created the barriers.
The snd has a number of advantages over the tes, and one important drawback (Divochiy
et al., 2008). The advantages are its extremely low dark-count rate (0.15 Hz), and the very
high repetition rate (80 MHz). It also operates at a temperature that is an order of magnitude
higher than the tes, which makes an important practical difference in implementation. The
downside of the snd is its low detection efficiency (η = 2%), which is partly due to the
difficulty of filling a two-dimensional surface with a one-dimensional wire. This prevents
 129 4.3 Single-photon sources

Table 4.1. Important properties of some number-resolving photodetectors

Detectora R (kHz) D (Hz) η (%) λ (nm) Nmax T (K)

apdcb 20 1.6 × 108 33 1 064 1 024 246

pmtc 670 400 <7 523 4 293
vlpcd 15 2 × 104 85 543 10 6–7
tme 10 – 66 700–800 8–16 293
tesf 50 400 88 1550 < 10 < 0.1
sndg 80 000 0.15 2 1300 4 2
a Here, R is the repetition rate, D the dark count rate, η the detection efficiency, λ the frequency,

Nmax the maximum detectable photon number, and T the operating temperature.
b Avalanche photodiode cascades (Jiang et al., 2007).
c Photomultipliers (Zambra et al., 2004).
d Visible light photon counters (Waks et al., 2003, 2004).
e Time multiplexing (Achilles et al., 2003, and Fitch et al., 2003; no dark count rates reported).
f Superconducting transition edge sensors (Rosenberg et al., 2005).
g Superconducting nanowire detectors (Divochiy et al., 2008).

the snd from reconstructing photon-number distributions with high fidelity. Nevertheless,
the large repetition rate compensates for this in the bit rate that can be achieved in quantum
communication. Both tes and snd operate at telecom wavelengths.
Finally, in Table 4.1 we list some important properties of a number of experimental
detectors with photon-number resolution. The repetition rate R gives a bound on the pos-
sible quantum information processing speed, and the dark-count rate D tends to have an
immediate effect on the fidelity of quantum information processing. The efficiency η is the
total collection and detection efficiency of the detector, not just the quantum efficiency. The
maximum detectable photon number Nmax can in some cases be very high, but is meaningful
only when η is reasonably high as well.

4.3 Single-photon sources

In this section we discuss the criteria for good single-photon sources. It is important to
remember that the behaviour of a single-photon source is determined by the way it triggers
photodetectors. We describe the Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment and the Hong–Ou–
Mandel experiment, and show how they provide diagnostic tools for single-photon sources.
Subsequently, we discuss some of the most widely used sources in single-photon experi-
ments, such as weak coherent states and photons from heralded parametric downconversion.
We end the section with an overview of triggered quantum structures, and more exotic pho-
ton sources. The physics of generating photons with atom-like structures will be described
in more detail in Chapters 7 and 11.
130 Photon sources and detectors

Intuitively, we can immediately formulate two requirements for single-photon sources.

First, whenever we ‘push the button’ on our source to create a single-photon state, the device
must indeed produce one and only one photon. That is, when placed in front of an ideal
detector, triggering the source should always result in the detector indicating the presence
of a single photon. Second, the photon should be pure. By this, we mean that the source
creates a single photon in a discrete single optical mode. If the source produces a single
photon in an incoherent mixture of modes (e.g., due to entanglement of the photon with
another system), the quantum interference that can be achieved with these states is limited.
Note, however, that this may not be such a problem for quantum cryptographic applications.
There is a third requirement that is important for applications such as quantum computing
with single photons, linear optics, and photodetection: the source should be reproducible
to the extent that two independent sources produce identical photons. To a large extent,
these requirements are captured by the Hanbury Brown and Twiss and Hong–Ou–Mandel
experiments.

4.3.1 Hanbury Brown and Twiss, and Hong–Ou–Mandel

The results of Hanbury Brown and Twiss, and Hong–Ou–Mandel experiments give an
indication of the quality of single-photon sources. Furthermore, these experiments can be
performed for any physical realization of a single-photon source, and therefore provide a
good metric for the quality of the sources, as well as an excellent way to compare different
single-photon sources. Indeed, we can use these experiments to define how a perfect single-
photon source should behave. Together with the source efficiency, they give all the relevant
information for quantum information processing.
The Hanbury Brown and Twiss (hbt) experiment tells us how well the input field is
described by a single-photon state, regardless of the purity of this state. It constitutes a
measurement of g (2) (τ ) of a single input mode. In the previous chapter, we have seen that
a single mode a1 with n photons gives rise to a value

1
g (2) = 1 − . (4.49)
n

Therefore, a single-photon input state should lead to g (2) = 0. Since g (2) is proportional to
† †
Tr(ρ â1 â1 â1 â1 ), the observable associated with the measurement of g (2) is proportional to
† †
â1 â1 â1 â1 . There is no detector that is described directly by this operator, but it is not too
hard to devise one that is constructed from simple optical components. Consider two modes
† †
b1 and b2 , and photon-number detectors described by b̂1 b̂1 and b̂2 b̂2 . We can multiply the
† †
measurement result of the two detectors, which forms the new observable b̂1 b̂1 b̂2 b̂2 . We
† †
can translate this into a measurement that depends on â1 â1 â1 â1 by transforming modes b1
and b2 into modes a1 and a2 , where a2 is required by unitarity of the transformation. In
particular, we can choose the 50:50 beam-splitter transformation

â1 + â2 â1 − â2

b̂1 → √ and b̂2 → √ . (4.50)
2 2
 131 4.3 Single-photon sources

Fig. 4.7. The Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment. (a) The experimental set-up consists of a 50:50 beam
splitter (BS) with one input mode (the second input is held at vacuum). (b) A typical g(2) plot for a
single-photon source, adapted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature, Santori et al.
(2002).

†
Similarly, the normalization factor Tr(ρ â1 â1 )2 in g (2) is proportional to the photon number
in mode a1 . If we choose the vacuum input state in mode a2 , we obtain n̂in = n̂1 + n̂2 , and
the measurement of the photocurrents in modes b1 and b2 suffice to determine g (2) . This
set-up is given in Fig. 4.7a.
Whenever the input mode contains only a single photon, pure or mixed, it is easy to see
that coincidence counts in modes b1 and b2 can never occur. Indeed, this is consistent with
Eq. (4.49). In addition, if the input states have non-zero amplitude for components |n with
n ≥ 2, then the coincidence rate will never be zero. Therefore, a zero coincidence rate
n̂1 n̂2 , given a non-zero total photocurrent n̂1 + n̂2 , indicates that the input field was in a
single-photon state. Experimental data for a periodically pumped photon source is shown
in Fig. 4.7b. At zero time delay between the detection windows in modes b1 and b2 no
coincidence counts are found. The question remains whether the single-photon input state
is pure. To determine this, we need to perform another experiment.

Exercise 4.2: Show that the experimental set-up in Fig. 4.7a allows a measurement of g (2) .

The Hong–Ou–Mandel (hom) experiment can be used to determine the purity and the
distinguishability of two single-photon states. The set-up involves a single 50:50 beam
splitter, and single-photon input states in each input mode (see Fig. 4.8a). If we label the
(spatial) input modes a1 and a2 , the mode transformation of the beam splitter can be written

â1 (k) + â2 (k) â1 (k) − â2 (k)

b̂1 (k) = √ and b̂2 (k) = √ , (4.51)
2 2

where k = ωk /c indicates the wave number. The input states are two single-photon states
 
  †   †
1f =
1
dk f (k) â1 (k) |0 1 and 1g =
2
dk ′ g(k ′ ) â2 (k ′ ) |0 2 . (4.52)

We have suppressed the polarization degree of freedom, assuming that the two input states
have the same polarization. However, it is straightforward to put the polarization back in
 132 Photon sources and detectors

Fig. 4.8. The Hong–Ou–Mandel effect. (a) The experimental set-up consists of a 50:50 beam splitter (BS)
with two single-photon input states. The output ports are detected with standard photodetectors.
(b) A typical Hong–Ou–Mandel ‘dip’ in the coincidence counts between the two detectors, adapted
from Lounis et al. (2000) with permission from Elsevier.

by adding the label λ to f and â1 , and the label λ′ to g and â2 . The functions f and g are
normalized such that
 ∞  ∞
|f (k)|2 dk = |g(k)|2 dk = 1. (4.53)
−∞ −∞

We are interested in the coincidence counts in the two detectors, which is determined by
a second-order correlation function C:
 * +
† †
C= â1 (t)â2 (t ′ ) â1 (t)â2 (t ′ ) dt dt ′ . (4.54)

We assume that C is time-averaged over a period that is much longer than the carrier
frequency of the photons. The output state before the photodetectors is

|ψout = U |ψin , (4.55)

where U is the transformation of the beam splitter in Eq. (4.51), and U |0 = |0 . We can
then write the output state as
  
† †
|ψout = dkdk ′ f (k)g(k ′ ) U â1 (k)U † U â2 (k ′ )U † U |0
   
1 † † † †
= dkdk ′ f (k)g(k ′ ) â1 (k) + â2 (k) â2 (k ′ ) − â1 (k ′ ) |0
2

1
= dkdk ′ f (k)g(k ′ ) [|1 1k |1 2k ′ − |1 1k |1 1k ′ |0 2
2
+ |1 2k |1 1k ′ − |0 1 |1 2k |1 2k ′ ] . (4.56)
133 4.3 Single-photon sources

Using this output state, we can calculate C, and we find


1 1
C= − dkdk ′ f (k)f ∗ (k ′ )g(k ′ )g ∗ (k). (4.57)
2 2

When the two functions f and g are identical, the coincidence counts reduce to zero, C = 0.
This is the famous Hong–Ou–Mandel dip, shown in Fig. 4.8b. The shape of the dip depends
on the mechanism of the source described by the functions f and g, and is often modeled
as a Gaussian or a Lorentzian.

Exercise 4.3: Using Eq. (1.117) and averaging over t and t ′ , verify Eq. (4.57).

When the single-photon states are in a mixed state described by a density operator ρ, the
hom dip will never become zero, even when the two input states are identical (ρ1 = ρ2 ).
This can be seen by considering the example
 !   ! 
ρ = p 1f 1f  + (1 − p) 1g 1g  , (4.58)

where f and g may denote orthogonal mode functions (for example different time bins or
different Hermite–Laguerre modes). When both input photons are in this state, the output
will be a statistical mixture of four components. 2
   With probability p the contribution to
the coincidence counts will be from 1f 1 and 
  1f 2 , which
 gives the maximum hom dip.
Similarly, with probability (1−p) the states 1g 1 and 1g 2 contribute a maximum hom dip.
2 
However, with probability 2p(1−p) two completely distinguishable photons interfere on the
beam splitter and give no dip at all. Since the hom experiment requires a statistical ensemble
to show the dip, the ratio between the minimum and the maximum count rate (taken when
the delay between the photons is large enough to distinguish them) is 2p(1 − p). A complete
dip (no coincidence counts at zero time delay) therefore tells us that the single-photon states
are pure.
In conclusion, a maximal hom dip can be reached only when the input states are pure
indistinguishable single photons. Any multi-photon component in the input states will show
up as a coincidence count at zero time delay. The full hom dip is therefore a good indicator
for good single-photon sources. There are two things it cannot tell us, however. First, it does
not reveal the efficiency of the photon source. In order to determine this, a calibrated count
rate must be established (taking detector efficiency and dark counts into account). Second,
when the dip is non-maximal, the experiment does not tell us how much of the coincidence
rate is due to impurity of the sources, and how much is due to multi-photon components in
the input states. In order to determine this, an hbt experiment must be performed.
Finally, since both hbt and hom experiments operate in a post-selected fashion, the
figures of merit g (2) (0) and C do not distinguish sources that produce the state |1 1| and
the state ρs = (1 − ηs ) |0 0| + ηs |1 1|. Whenever the latter state is collapsed onto the
vacuum, no spurious coincidences in the detectors occur to produce false positives. It is
tempting to call ηs the efficiency of the source, but this is correct only in a post-selected
set-up. When ρs is freely propagating we cannot make ontological statements about the
optical mode that elevate the number basis over all others, for to do so is to commit the
pef (see Section 3.1). The value of ηs can be measured with calibrated detectors, using the
134 Photon sources and detectors

procedure leading to Eq. (4.37). The quality of a single-photon source Qsp can therefore be
defined as  
Qsp = ηs (1 − 2C) 1 − g (2) (0) , (4.59)

where 1 − 2C is the visibility of the hom experiment, and g (2) (0) is the value of the hbt
experiment at zero time delay. However, rather than their product Qsp , it is often much more
instructive to quote the three separate values, since these reveal how the source performs
in different circumstances.

4.3.2 Weak coherent states and post-selection

We have mentioned that a single-mode laser operating far above threshold is described by
a coherent state
∞
2 αn
|α = e−|α| /2 √ |n . (4.60)
n=0
n!
For any non-zero value of α, the coherent state has non-zero amplitude for each photon
number. We can calculate the probability of finding n photons in the coherent state as
2
|α|2n e−|α|
p(n|α) ≡ | n|α |2 = . (4.61)
n!

This is a Poissonian probability distribution. When the laser is highly attenuated (|α|2 ≪ 1
and exp(−|α|2 ) ≃ 1), the probability of two photons in a pulse (or time interval) becomes
very small. Indeed, due to the Poissonian photon statistics of the coherent state, when a
single photon appears with probability p = |α|2 , the two-photon contribution has proba-
bility p2 /2. Can we use a highly attenuated laser as an approximation to a single-photon
source?
The answer to this is a cautious ‘yes’. When a weak coherent source is used as a single-
photon source, the empty pulses will not trigger the detector, whereas the pulses with one
or more photons do (assuming reasonably good photodetectors). Even though the rate of
photon generation is small, the rate of two-photon generation and higher is even smaller
and visibilities in single-photon experiments can be made arbitrarily close to one (at the
expense of the data-acquisition rate). This is called post-selection.
Post-selection of weak coherent states can fail in a dramatic way when more than one weak
coherent state is used in an interferometry experiment. Suppose an N -port interferometer has
two weak coherent input states operating as approximations to single-photon sources, and
a set of photodetectors in the output modes. Post-selection requires that the detectors must
indicate the presence of two photons if a detection event is to be accepted (for this example
we do not care whether the detectors are ideal, number-resolving, or bucket detectors).
The probability that both weak coherent input states result in a single photon triggering a
detector is p2 . The data-acquisition rate of the interferometry experiment will be dominated
by this factor. However, the probability that one of the weak coherent sources produces
two photons in the detectors, while the other produces nothing is p2 /2. There are two
135 4.3 Single-photon sources

ways this failure mode can happen (either source 1 or source 2 produces the two photons),
so this rate is of the order p2 . If the experiment is set up in such a way that the detector
signatures do not tell us whether we had two weak coherent sources yielding a single photon
each or if one produced two photons, then the error rate is of the same order as the data-
acquisition rate, and the weak coherent sources are no longer good single-photon sources.
The type of experiment determines whether post-selected weak coherent states are a good
approximation to single-photon sources.
As an example, we will now show that an optical pulse in a weak coherent state fails the
hom test. First, we consider the coincidence rate in a hom experiment given two perfectly
distinguishable input photons. Distinguishability means that the photons occupy different
optical modes, labelled 1 and 2. If the input modes are a1 , a2 , and b1 , b2 , and the output
modes are c1 , c2 , and d1 , d2 , the transformations of a 50:50 beam splitter are

† † † †
† ĉi + d̂i † ĉi − d̂i
âi → √ and b̂i → √ , (4.62)
2 2

with i = 1, 2. The input state |1, 0; 0, 1 a1 ,a2 ;b1 ,b2 then transforms into

1
|1, 0; 0, 1 a1 ,a2 ;b1 ,b2 → (|1, 1; 0, 0 − |1, 0; 0, 1 + |0, 1; 1, 0 − |0, 0; 1, 1 ) . (4.63)
2

The detectors in modes c and d do not indicate whether photons in mode 1 or 2 were
detected, they just indicate whether a photon was present in either mode (c or d). This state
therefore yields a coincidence rate of 50%, which is the ‘base rate’ in that no interference
has occurred in the experiment.
Second, we compare this situation with the case where the input states of the hom
experiment are two weak coherent states. Since these states are used as approximations
to single-photon states, the phase of the coherent state is unimportant, and phase stability is
not required. Furthermore, the finite time interval that constitutes a detection coincidence
is limited by the temporal resolution of the detector, which is typically much longer than
the period of the optical frequency ω. This means that the phases of the two weak coherent
input states are randomized with respect to each other, and we can model the weak coherent
state as an incoherent Poissonian mixture:

 2π  2π ∞
2 α ∗n α m ei(n−m)ωt
dt |α α| = e−|α| dt √ |m n|
0 0 n,m=0
n!m!
∞

2 |α|2
= e−|α| |n n| . (4.64)
n!
n=0

The two input states of the hom experiment are both given by this randomized weak coherent
state, and in contrast to the previous set-up, the mode-matching on the beam splitter is
perfect. That is, the photons are perfectly indistinguishable, and we take a1 = a2 = a, etc.
136 Photon sources and detectors

The input state is then given by

ρin ∝ |0, 0 0, 0| + p (|1, 0 1, 0| + |0, 1 0, 1|)

p2
+ (|2, 0 2, 0| + |0, 2 0, 2| + 2 |1, 1 1, 1|) + O(p3 ). (4.65)
2

If we post-select on events where we see two photons in the output modes (by using either
number-resolving detectors or detector cascades) the normalized part of the input state
responsible for these events is

1 1 1
ρin = |2, 0 2, 0| + |0, 2 0, 2| + |1, 1 1, 1| . (4.66)
4 4 2
  √
Notice that the state no longer depends on p. If we define ψ ± = (|2, 0 ± |0, 2 )/ 2, the
beam splitter transforms the input state into the output state

1  −  ! −  1  +  ! +  1
ρout = ψ ψ + ψ ψ + |1, 1 1, 1| . (4.67)
2 4 4
 
The states ψ ± do not give rise to coincidence counts, and all the coincidences are due to
the state |1, 1 . The coincidence rate for this state is therefore 25%.
Compared to the hom experiment with distinguishable input photons, the coincidence
rate is reduced by a factor 2. This is the classical limit to the hom experiment, since we
have shown it to be true for coherent states that are often regarded as the classical solutions
to the field equations of motion. Deviations from the Poisson distribution can reduce the
coincidence rate, and the input state becomes more like a single-photon state.

4.3.3 Heralded parametric downconversion

Another practical way of producing high-quality single-photon sources is via ‘parametric

downconversion’ (pdc). In this system a crystal with a large χ (2) nonlinearity is pumped
with a strong laser at a frequency ωP . There is a small probability (proportional to χ (2) ) that
photons from the pump laser are absorbed by the crystal and re-emitted as two photons with
frequencies ωS and ωI (see Fig. 4.9). The indices S and I stand for ‘signal’ and ‘idler’, which
are the traditional names for the output modes. The interaction Hamiltonian governing this
process can be written as

† † †
H ∝ eiθ χ (2) âkP ,ωP âkS ,ωS âkI ,ωI + e−iθ χ (2) âkP ,ωP âkS ,ωS âkI ,ωI , (4.68)

where we have introduced a phase θ to be general. Next, we note that the pump is very bright,
and is therefore very well described by a classical coherent state âkP ,ωP → αP . Collecting
all factors in a single complex number ξ ∝ αP χ (2) eiθ , we write the Hamiltonian as

† †
Hpdc = ξ âkS ,ωS âkI ,ωI + ξ ∗ âkS ,ωS âkI ,ωI . (4.69)
 137 4.3 Single-photon sources

Fig. 4.9. The principle of parametric downconversion. (a) In a nonlinear crystal a photon from the pump
can be absorbed and re-emitted into two photons. (b) The two photons emerge from the crystal
in two different modes.

This is the generator of two-mode squeezing, introduced in Section 1.5.2. The operator
for the pump has become a parameter in the Hamiltonian, and the photons from the
pump are converted down to two photons with lower energy. Hence the name ‘parametric
downconversion’.
The output state of a two-mode squeezer is given in Eq. (1.235), and choosing tanh |ξ | = λ
we can write
∞

1
|pdc(λ, φ) = √ λn einφ |n S ⊗ |n I . (4.70)
1 − λ2 n=0

The parameter λ tends to be very small, of the order 10−2 . The two lowest-order
contributions to the output state are therefore

|pdc(λ) = 1 − λ2 |0, 0 + λ |1, 1 SI + O(λ2 ), (4.71)

where we have set φ = 0 for convenience. We can place a photodetector in one of the
output modes, say the signal mode. When dark counts are negligible, a detector click will
then herald the presence of a photon in the idler mode. Moreover, since λ is small, this will
be an almost ideal single-photon state with a negligible two-photon contribution.

Exercise 4.4: Given a click in a lossy photodetector (without dark counts) in the signal
mode, calculate the output state in the idler mode of a parametric downconverter.

In practice, filtering of the modes can be used to make the signal and idler modes extremely
pure, and both hbt and hom experments are easily performed in the lab. However, the
efficiency of pdc as a single-photon source is very low. Theoretical proposals exist in
which a large array (∼ 104 ) of pdcs are used in parallel to produce a single photon with
unit probability. However, this is a rather large overhead for a single deterministic single-
photon source, and is unlikely as a practical solution for the foreseeable future. Alternatively,
a single pdc can be used to create a heralded photon, which is subsequently switched into a
fibre loop, where it can be stored for a reasonable amount of time until it is needed. In this
case switching losses are the dominant source of errors (see Pittman et al., 2002).
 138 Photon sources and detectors

Table 4.2. Important properties of some single-photon sources, after Lounis and Orrit (2005).

Sourcea ES γ (MHz) τ (ns) FL R (MHz) ME T (K)

pdcb sharp line 103 10−3 Yes 10−3 Yes 300

cac sharp line 10 15 Yes 0.1 No 10−6
itd sharp line 10 15 Yes 0.1 No 10−3
ltme ZPL/broad 30/103 4 Yes/No 100 No 1–10
rtmf broad band 106 4 No 100 No 300
ccg broad band 106 –107 10 No 10 No 300
qdh sharp line 103 0.3 Yes 1 000 Yes 1–30
nci broad line 3 · 104 30 No 10 No 300
a Here, ES is the emission spectrum, γ is the linewidth, τ is the emission lifetime, FL stands

for ‘Fourier-limited’, R is the emission rate, ME stands for ‘multiple excitations’, and T is the
operating temperature.
b Parametric downconversion (Lounis and Orrit, 2005).
c Cold atom (Lounis and Orrit, 2005).
d Ion in trap (McKeever et al., 2004).
e Molecule at low temperature (Basché et al., 1992, and Brunel et al., 1999).
f Molecule at room temperature (Lounis and Moerner, 2000, and Treussart et al., 2002).
g Colour centre at room temperature (Gruber et al., 1997).
h III-V quantum dot (Brokmann et al., 2004).
i II-VI nanocrystal (Santori et al., 2002).

4.3.4 Other single-photon sources

Both weak coherent states and heralded parametric downconversion suffer from multi-
photon contributions to the wave function. In the case of the weak coherent state we have
seen that this leads to the classical limit of the hom experiment. Photons produced in her-
alded parametric downconversion can perform very well in hbt and hom experiments, since
the second-order term proportional to O(λ2 ) can be made arbitrarily small. However, this
means that the source efficiency |λ|2 must also be small, and the data-acquisition rate low.
The reason for these multi-photon contributions is that the number of quantum excitations
in the source is ill defined. In a weak coherent state the laser has an average number of
photons, and in parametric downconversion we cannot tell how many photons are being
converted in the crystal.
An obvious way around this problem is to take a single system that acts as the photon
emitter. When a photon is emitted, the system needs to be reloaded before a second photon
can be emitted. Examples of such systems are atoms and ions in cavities or traps (or both),
colour centres in materials such as diamond, quantum dots in microcavities, and single
molecules. In Chapter 7 we will describe how single photons can be produced in atom-like
structures in cavities, and in Chapter 11 we describe single-photon emitters in the solid
state, such as quantum dots and colour centres in diamond.
139 4.4 Entangled photon sources

Some important properties of single-photon sources are given in Table 4.2. One such
property is the emission spectrum, which indicates whether the source produces a broad
range of frequencies, or whether it produces a narrow line in the frequency spectrum.
Similarly, the emission lifetime indicates the time interval in which most of the energy of
the source is concentrated. The linewidth and lifetimes are often Lorentzian or Gaussian
functions, for which a meaningful measure can be given. When the lifetime and the linewidth
are related via a Fourier transform, the source is said to be ‘Fourier-limited’. This means
that the output state of the source is a pure state, and is therefore a critical property when
we need a maximum hom dip (i.e., no coincidences in the detectors). The emission rate is
an important consideration for any scalable quantum information processing protocol.

4.4 Entangled photon sources

There are important applications in optical quantum information processing where entangled
photon sources are required. Rather than applying entangling gates to two single-photon
states, which will be addressed in Chapter 6, it may be more feasible to create sources of
entangled photons. In this section, we give a brief overview of these devices.

4.4.1 Post-selected parametric downconversion

In the previous section we have seen how the output of a parametric downconverter is natur-
ally described by two-mode squeezing. In this section we treat parametric downconversion
in a bit more detail, and show how it can be used to create maximally entangled photon
pairs (at least in some post-selected way).
The signal and idler modes have frequencies ωS , ωI and wave vectors kS , kI , respectively.
However, how are the values of these quantities determined? There are so-called ‘phase-
matching’ conditions inside the crystal that need to be satisfied by the process. They amount
to energy and momentum conservation of the process:

ωP = ωS + ω I and kP = k S + k I . (4.72)

These conditions hold only in the limit of infinite crystal size. For finite crystals, the phase-
matching conditions will be approximate, and the delta functions must be replaced by
squared sinc functions. Here, we will use the delta functions for simplicity.
We can write the broadband Hamiltonian as an integral over all signal and idler wave
vectors, and include the phase-matching conditions as delta functions. The interaction
Hamiltonian in the parametric approximation was given by Eq. (4.69), and the broadband
Hamiltonian becomes

Hpdc = dkS dkI dωS dωI δ(kP − kS − kI )δ(ωP − ωS − ωI )
 
† †
× ξ âkS ,ωS âkI ,ωI + ξ ∗ âkS ,ωS âkI ,ωI . (4.73)
 140 Photon sources and detectors

Fig. 4.10. The output modes of PDC form cones that satisfy the phase-matching conditions of Eq. (4.72): (a)
the output cone for a single crystal; (b) phase-matching conditions; and (c) double crystal for
entangled photon-pair generation.

The squeezing parameter ξ generally depends on the wave vectors and frequencies as well.
The delta functions remove the integration over, say, kS and ωS , but there is still an integral
over kI . The effect of this is that by symmetry the downconverted photons form ‘cones’
(see Fig. 4.10). The experimenter can select specific kS and kI by placing a screen with
pinholes in the output cone. When the two pinholes are placed correctly, the number of
photons passing through one pinhole is identical to the number of photons passing through
the other pinhole. The output states are therefore superpositions of |n S |n I , as we found
earlier.
Apart from the frequency and the wave vectors, we have the polarization as a degree of
freedom. In the above set-up, the downconversion crystal can be cut along certain axes such
that the two modes kS and kI have identical polarization. This is called ‘type-I parametric
downconversion’ (type-I pdc). When the crystal is cut such that the output modes have
orthogonal polarization, we speak of ‘type-II’ pdc. We can create polarization-entangled
photon pairs as follows: we place two thin crystals, cut for type-II pdc, on top of each other.
Since they are very thin, the output cones from the crystals almost perfectly overlap each
other. The crystals are rotated around the pump axis such that the first crystal produces
† †
photons according to âH ,kS âV ,kI , and the second crystal produces photons according to
† †
âV ,kS âH ,kI . Here, H and V are linear polarization directions. Since the thickness of the
crystals is much shorter than the coherence length of the pump pulse, the two terms add
coherently. Including a π phase shift and a π/2 polarization rotation in the signal (or idler)
mode, the Hamiltonian becomes proportional to the generator
† † † †
K̂+ = âH ,kS âV ,kI − âV ,kS âH ,kI . (4.74)

Using S(ξ ) = exp(ξ K̂+ + ξ ∗ K̂− ), the state created by this pdc set-up is (assuming ξ real)

 ∞  ∞
1 K̂ n 1
S(ξ ) |0 = tanhn |ξ | + |0 = tanhn |ξ | |n
cosh |ξ | n! cosh |ξ |
n=0 n=0
 ∞

≡ 1 − λ2 λn |n , (4.75)
n=0
 141 4.4 Entangled photon sources

where we have defined λ = tanh |ξ |, and

n

1
|n = √ (−1)m |m, n − m S |n − m, m I . (4.76)
n + 1 m=0

This state includes the horizontal and the vertical component of each mode. It is easy to see
that n |m = δnm , since both states have different total photon numbers. When λ ≪ 1,
the resulting state is approximately
 λ
S(ξ ) |0 ≃ 1 − λ2 |0, 0 + √ (|H , V − |V , H ) + O(λ2 ). (4.77)
2

In other words, there is a small probability of creating a maximally entangled state in the
polarization of two photons. Such a state can be produced with parametric downconversion,
where typically λ ≈ 10−2 . This is how most entangled photon states are produced in
practice.
Parametric downconversion is not the only way to create entangled photon pairs. Similar
to single-photon sources, we can construct a system that must be reloaded in order to create
a second entangled photon pair, thus suppressing unwanted multi-pair production. A level
system for a physical device that can produce entangled photons is shown in Fig. 4.11. There
are four levels: one ground state |g , one upper excited state |e , and two non-degenerate
(possibly meta-stable) intermediate states |s1 and |s2 . The system cannot decay directly
from |e to |g , for example, because of a selection rule. Instead, the only possible decay
mechanisms are via the intermediate states. If the decay path is via |s1 , the system creates
a single photon with polarization L and frequency ω1 , followed almost immediately by a
second photon with polarization R and frequency ω2 . This state can be written as |L1 , R2 .
By contrast, if the decay takes the path via |s2 , the two-photon state that is produced is

Fig. 4.11. A level system for creating two entangled photons in frequency and polarization. The direct
transition from |e to |g is forbidden owing to an angular-momentum selection rule. The
intermediate states |s1 and |s2 are relatively short-lived. The system can take two paths from |e
to |g , namely via |s1 or |s2 . In the first case the system produces two photons with polarization
L and R, and frequencies ω1 and ω2 , respectively: |L1 , R2 . The second path gives rise to the
two-photon state |R1 , L2 . Since the system
√ does not record which path was taken, the state of the
emitted photons is (|L1 , R2 + |R1 , L2 )/ 2, that is, an entangled state.
142 Photon sources and detectors

|R1 , L2 . When the system does not record in any way which path has been taken, the two
states are superposed coherently, and the output state of the device is

|L1 , R2 + |R1 , L2
|out = √ . (4.78)
2
Note that this state is entangled in both frequency and polarization. This is sometimes called
‘hyper-entanglement’, and it may or may not be a desirable feature. For example, hyper-
entanglement is an essential ingredient in some protocols for optical quantum computing
(see, e.g., Yoran and Reznik, 2003). However, for the purpose of producing clean polariza-
tion entangled states the frequency entanglement may be disastrous, since a trace operation
over the frequency degree of freedom destroys all entanglement.

4.5 Quantum non-demolition photon detectors

In addition to photodetectors (which destroy the photons), and sources (which create pho-
tons), one can imagine a device that measures the number of photons in a mode without
destroying them. Such a device would be both a detector and a source. These are called
‘quantum non-demolition’ (qnd) measurements. They do not have to operate in the photon-
number basis; any orthonormal basis will do. An ideal qnd measurement projects the
measured mode onto the eigenstate corresponding to the eigenvalue that was inferred from
the measurement outcome. It is therefore a perfect von Neumann measurement.
One way to implement a qnd measurement of photon number is using a cross-Kerr
nonlinearity, described by the Hamiltonian
† †
HK = κ â1 â1 â2 â2 , (4.79)

acting on modes a1 and a2 . This symmetric Hamiltonian induces a phase shift in either
mode that depends on the intensity of the field in the other mode. When the interaction κ
is strong enough, such a device can be used to create an optical switch for photons. Under
the interaction HK t, the mode â1 transforms into

i i
â1 (t) = exp − HK t â1 exp HK t
 
† † (−iτ )2  † †

†
= â1 − iτ [â1 â1 , â1 ]â2 â2 + â1 â1 , [â1 â1 , â1 ] (â2 â2 )2 + . . .
2!
†
= â1 eiτ â2 â2 , (4.80)

where τ = κt, and t is the duration of the interaction. When one mode, say a1 , is the
signal mode, and a2 is a probe mode, the presence of n photons in mode a1 induces a phase
shift φ = nτ in mode a2 . Such a phase, when it is sufficiently large, can be measured
with a Mach–Zehnder interferometer, as shown in Fig. 4.12. We will discuss the optical
implementation of HK in Chapter 8.
 143 4.5 Quantum non-demolition photon detectors

Fig. 4.12. Schematic of an optical QND measurement for a single photon in a1 . The cross-Kerr nonlinearity
induces a phase shift τ in the probe mode a2 , dependent on the presence or absence of a photon
in the signal mode a1 . The phase can be measured with a Mach–Zehnder interferometer. The
detection signature in D1 and D2 indicates whether there is a photon in mode aout .

The qnd measurement can now be implemented by combining the cross-Kerr nonlinearity
with a Mach–Zehnder interferometer, as shown in Fig. 4.12. From Eq. (1.152) in Chapter 1,
the difference between the measured intensities in detectors D1 and D2 in a Mach–Zehnder
interferometer can be written as
 ′†
  ′†

† †
I = ID1 − ID2 = cos φ â2 â2 + â2 â′2 + sin φ â2 â′2 + â2 â2 , (4.81)

and therefore gives an estimation of the phase φ. When the secondary input mode a′2 of the
Mach–Zehnder interferometer is the vacuum, this reduces to

†
I = cos τ â2 â2 . (4.82)

In a single-shot measurement with a single photon in mode a2 , the only way to gain full
knowledge about the presence or absence of a photon in the output mode aout is if the
absence of photons in a1 produces a click in one detector (e.g., D1 ), and the presence of
a photon in a1 produces a click in D2 . The phase shift that is needed for such a switch in
I is τ = π . However, such large cross-Kerr phase shifts are impossible to achieve (see
Appendix 3).
On the other hand, when the probe field is in a coherent state |α , the intensity difference is
I = cos τ |α|2 . The average photon number |α|2 may be very large, and we can distinguish
between smaller intensity differences. The precision of such a measurement is given by the
variance of I , Var( I ), and we require that the change in intensity difference is (much)
larger than Var( I ). In practice, τ will be much smaller than one, and we can evaluate
how large |α| must be given a value of τ (see Exercise 4.5). Another advantage of using
a bright coherent state is that n-photon components in the state of the signal mode a1
induce a phase shift nτ in the probe mode. When nτ < π, this may induce a measurable
intensity difference (depending on the variance), and the set-up can distinguish more than
just the single-photon state from the vacuum. Finally, when more exotic states are used in
the Mach–Zehnder interferometer (possibly using the secondary input port), the number of
photons may in principle be measured deterministically for much smaller values of τ . We
will describe these advanced phase-estimation techniques in more detail in Chapter 13.
144 Photon sources and detectors

Exercise 4.5: Show that in order to construct a deterministic photon-number qnd

measurement with a coherent probe state, we must choose |α| ≫ τ −2 .

When we take into account various practical imperfections, such as detection inefficien-
cies, dark currents, photon loss in the Kerr medium, etc., the qnd measurement is no longer
a perfect von Neumann measurement, and the question is how the output state in mode aout
is affected. In general, the output state will no longer be a pure state, even if the input state
in a1 was pure. The qnd measurement can therefore no longer be modeled as a projection,
but instead we need to model it as a completely positive map. The techniques presented in
Sections 3.1 and 4.1 can be used to evaluate these maps explicitly.
The use of Kerr nonlinearities is not essential for constructing a qnd measurement. For
example, a single-photon qnd experiment was performed by Nogues et al. (1999), using the
strong atom–photon interactions of microwave cavity quantum electrodynamics. If one is
willing to sacrifice the deterministic character, single-photon qnd measurements can also be
implemented with passive linear-optical elements and auxiliary single-photon sources (Kok
et al., 2002b). Traditionally, qnd measurements have been considered for the quadrature
operators of the electromagnetic field. For an introduction to this type of qnd measurement,
see for example Chapter 14 of Walls and Milburn (2008).

4.6 References and further reading

Most of the references to the primary literature regarding photon detectors and sources
are contained in the captions of Table 4.1 and Table 4.2. An overview of state-of-the-art
photon-number detectors was given by Divochiy et al. (2008), and a recent comprehensive
review of single-photon sources is Lounis and Orrit (2005). Entangled photons have been
generated with parametric downconversion for years (Kwiat et al., 1995), and recently
other sources have emerged. Kuzmich et al. (2003) produced entangled photons in atomic
ensembles, and photonic Bell pairs have been created with solid-state devices by Stevenson
et al. (2006), Akopian et al. (2006), and Hafenbrak et al. (2007).
 Quantum communication with
5 single photons

After the preceding four introductory chapters, we are finally ready to discuss optical
quantum information processing. While in principle quantum communication can be imple-
mented with atoms or electrons, in practice the implementation of choice for long-distance
quantum communication will almost certainly be optical. In this chapter, we will develop
some of the key topics in quantum communication with single photons, and we will discuss
continuous-variable quantum communication in Chapter 8. In some ways, quantum com-
munication is the most technologically advanced part of quantum information processing.
Most protocols in this chapter, such as teleportation and cryptography, have been con-
vincingly demonstrated in the lab, and there are already several commercial organizations
that sell cryptographic systems based on quantum mechanical principles. In particular, the
promise of secure communication with quantum cryptography is one of the driving forces
behind the development of single-photon sources and detectors. In this chapter, we first con-
struct several optical representations of the qubit, including polarized photons and time-bin
encoding. Since the single-photon implementation of a qubit is central to optical quantum
information processing, this constitutes a large part of the chapter. In Section 5.2 we discuss
quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping with single photons. We also present a
method for entanglement distillation using entanglement swapping. In Section 5.3 we intro-
duce decoherence-free subspaces, which can be used to reduce noise in the transmission of
quantum information, and even establish communication channels in the absence of shared
reference frames. Finally, in Section 5.4 we analyze quantum cryptography with single pho-
tons. We will give a proof of security for BB84 and Ekert91, and show how multi-photon
sources can be used to increase the data transmission via decoy states.

5.1 Photons as information carriers

There are several representations in which a single photon can carry a single qubit of
quantum information. The advantage of using photons is that single-qubit operations can
be implemented with high precision. The most common implementation is the ‘dual-rail
representation’, where a single photon can be in a superposition of two optical modes. These
modes can be either spatial modes, polarization, or orthogonal transverse mode functions.
The dual-rail implementation is contrasted with the ‘single-rail implementation’, where the
qubit is carried by a single optical mode, and the qubit degree of freedom is the photon
number. This representation is much less common, since the corresponding single-qubit
operations do not preserve photon number and are therefore very hard to implement in
146 Quantum communication with single photons

practice. We will concentrate here on the dual-rail implementation, and consider spatial
modes, polarization, and ‘orbital angular-momentum’ (oam) states of the photon. Finally,
we will discuss time-bin encodings, in which the computational basis states of the qubit are
associated with a photon in two different time intervals.
At this point, we recall our discussion in Chapter 1 about optical modes. In most books
the electromagnetic field is quantized in terms of plane waves that are extended to infinity
in all directions. The advantage of this approach is that the quantization becomes relatively
simple in terms of wave vectors. On the other hand, true plane-wave modes are not physical,
and any real, localized optical mode must be a superposition of the unphysical plane waves.
In general we can then talk only of approximate wave vectors. Nevertheless, the localized
physical modes are also true modes in the sense that their creation and annihilation operators
obey the bosonic commutation relations. In the remainder of this book, we take optical
modes to mean physical modes that are suitably localized.1 In addition, the modes are
labelled with an index for polarization, and a continuous variable for the (approximate)
wave vector. We will often omit the explicit wavevector dependence when its continuous
character is not important to the discussion.

5.1.1 Spatial dual-rail qubits

We now define the single-photon representation of a qubit. The computational basis for the
dual-rail implementation on two spatial modes a1 and a2 is denoted by
† †
|0 = â1 |0, 0 12 = |1, 0 12 and |1 = â2 |0, 0 12 = |0, 1 12 , (5.1)

which are defined as the eigenstates of the Pauli Z matrix. We have suppressed the polar-
ization degree of freedom (or any other degree of freedom, for that matter) in the creation
operator, since it is assumed to be the same for all operators. The mode functions associated
with the operators âj can be assumed to be suitably localized. The modes a1 and a2 may
have the same direction and frequency, in which case the index serves to distinguish two
parallel, non-overlapping beams. In Section 1.3 we have seen that this situation is well
defined in the paraxial approximation, and suitably described by Gaussian mode functions.
Single-qubit operations can be written as mode transformations on a1 and a2 . These are
the generalized beam-splitter and phase-shift transformations. In Eq. (1.146) we saw that
the general Hamiltonian of a two-mode transformation is
† †
H(θ, ϕ) = θ eiϕ â1 â2 + θ e−iϕ â2 â1 , (5.2)

which leads to a (Bogoliubov) transformation on the creation and annihilation operators

â1 → cos θ â1 − ieiϕ sin θ â2 ,

â2 → −ie−iϕ sin θ â1 + cos θ â2 . (5.3)

1 In Chapter 7 we will show how to derive the Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian using plane waves, but will again
see the necessity of introducing physical, localized modes.
147 5.1 Photons as information carriers

The parameter θ describes the reflectivity of the beam splitter, while ϕ determines the
phase shift imparted on the reflected mode by the beam splitter. Physically, this phase can
be implemented by using a suitable coating, or by using an additional phase shift.
When the creation operators associated with Eq. (5.3) are applied to the vacuum state,
we obtain the qubit transformations
†
|0 = â1 |0, 0 12 → cos θ |1, 0 12 + ie−iϕ sin θ |0, 1 12

= cos θ |0 + ie−iϕ sin θ |1 ,

†
|1 = â2 |0, 0 12 → ieiϕ sin θ |1, 0 12 + cos θ |0, 1 12
iϕ
= ie sin θ |0 + cos θ |1 . (5.4)

Using suitable values for θ and ϕ, it is straightforward to define the eigenstates of the Pauli
X and Y matrices:
1 1
|+ ≡ √ (|1, 0 12 + |0, 1 12 ) and |− ≡ √ (|1, 0 12 − |0, 1 12 ) ,
2 2
1 1
| ≡ √ (|1, 0 12 + i|0, 1 12 ) and | ≡ √ (|1, 0 12 − i|0, 1 12 ) .
2 2
(5.5)

All the qubit rotations are contained in Eq. (5.3), and can therefore be implemented with
beam splitters and phase shifters.
Some transformations are not rotations, however. The Hadamard gate has determinant
minus one (det H = −1), and can therefore not be reduced to a rotation and implemented
with a generalized beam splitter of the form in Eq. (5.3). Instead, this transformation is
obtained by using a mode-dependent phase shift in addition to a single-qubit rotation. For
a phase π (which is sufficient) this operator is the Pauli Z matrix.

Exercise 5.1: How do we implement a Hadamard transformation?

5.1.2 Polarization qubits

Another natural single-photon qubit degree of freedom is polarization, since the generators
of polarization transformations are also Pauli matrices. The polarization degree of freedom
for a mode with wave vector k is given by the vectors ǫ λ (k), with λ indicating one of two
possible orthogonal polarization states. Two often-used orthogonal polarization directions
are the horizontal and vertical directions with respect to some reference frame:

1 0
ǫH = and ǫV = , (5.6)
0 1

where we have suppressed the k dependence since it is common to all polarization vectors in
this discussion. Note that we have also omitted the third dimension of the vector ǫ λ . We are
148 Quantum communication with single photons

working in the Coulomb gauge, in which the polarization is perpendicular to the direction
of propagation (ǫ λ · k = 0), so the third term of ǫ λ is always zero. We next show that the
polarization vectors span a two-dimensional complex vector space (a Hilbert space), and
may therefore be used to define a qubit degree of freedom.
First, the two vectors ǫ H and ǫ V can be considered eigenvectors of the Pauli Z matrix
with eigenvalues +1 and −1, respectively. Similarly, we can define diagonal polarization
1 1 1 1
ǫD = √ and ǫA = √ , (5.7)
2 1 2 −1
where D and A indicate ‘diagonal’ and ‘anti-diagonal’, respectively. Since the diagonal and
anti-diagonal polarizations are related to the horizontal and vertical polarization according to
ǫH + ǫV ǫH − ǫV
ǫD = √ and ǫA = √ , (5.8)
2 2
these vectors can be considered eigenvectors of the Pauli X matrix. Finally, the polarization
vectors can have complex components. In particular, circular polarization is defined as
1 1 1 1
ǫL = √ and ǫR = √ . (5.9)
2 i 2 −i
It is not difficult to verify that these are the eigenvectors of the Pauli Y matrix. Since these
six vectors are identified with the eigenvectors of the Pauli matrices, they form the three
orthogonal axes in a Bloch sphere. Formally, any complex 2 × 2 unitary matrix rotates a
polarization vector ǫ λ to another vector ǫ λ′ .
†
If a photon with polarization ǫ H in mode a is created by the creation operator âH , and
a photon in the same spatial mode with polarization ǫ V is created by the creation operator
†
âV , we can immediately work out the Bogoliubov transformation for a creation operator
that creates a photon in an arbitrary polarization ǫ λ = (α, β) with |α|2 + |β|2 = 1. Since
ǫ λ = αǫ H + βǫ V , we have
† † †
âλ = α âH + β âV . (5.10)

We will use this correspondence between the polarization vectors and the mode operators
throughout the book, without always explicitly mentioning it. It is a consequence of the
direct relation between mode functions and mode operators, developed in Chapter 1. We
now define the horizontal and vertical polarization states as the computational basis:
†
|0 ≡ âH |0, 0 HV = |1, 0 HV = |H ,
†
|1 ≡ âV |0, 0 HV = |0, 1 HV = |V . (5.11)

The remaining eigenstates of the Pauli operators X and Y for the qubit follow automatically
from this identification

|+ ≡ |D and |− ≡ |A ,
| ≡ |L and | ≡ |R , (5.12)

where we have implicitly introduced modes aD , aA , aL , and aR .

 149 5.1 Photons as information carriers

Physically, polarization rotations are implemented with quarter- and half-wave plates.
These plates are pieces of material with a birefringent property, where light with different
polarization travels at different speeds through the material. The birefringence of a uniaxial
material is characterized by a single optical axis. If the field is linearly polarized, such that
the E field is oscillating along this axis, the propagation velocity takes a different value. We
will assume in this discussion that the velocity along the axis vf is faster than the velocity
perpendicular to the axis vs . When the polarization is orthogonal to this, the propagation
velocity is minimal. The phase shift induced by a dielectric is given by φi = vi kl/c, where
vi denotes the velocity of propagation in the respective direction (i = f , s), k is the wave
number, and l is the thickness of the dielectric wave plate. To induce a relative phase shift
of π between the polarization along the two perpendicular directions, we can choose l
such that
λ c
l= , (5.13)
2 vf − vs

where λ is the wavelength of the light. This is a ‘half-wave plate’, and is shown schematically
in Fig. 5.1. The larger the birefringent effect (vf ≫ vs ), the thinner the material can be, and
fewer photon losses may occur due to absorption in the dielectric. Note also that the wave
plate is wavelength-dependent.
The optical axis of the material is oriented in the plane of the wave plate. Now suppose
that this axis makes an angle θ with the horizontal axis. A single photon with horizontal
†
polarization ǫ H is then created by âH :
† † †
âH = cos θ âF + sin θ âS , (5.14)

where the subscripts F and S denote the linear polarization along and perpendicular to the
optical axis, respectively. The half-wave plate induces a π phase shift in the slow axis:
† † † †
âF → âF and âS → −âS . (5.15)

Fig. 5.1. The effect of a ‘half-wave plate’ (HWP) on a linearly polarized beam of light. Axes parallel and
perpendicular to the optical axis of the half-wave plate are indicated by F and S, respectively. A
spatial rotation over an angle θ of the wave plate induces a polarization rotation over an angle 2θ .
 150 Quantum communication with single photons

Horizontally polarized light therefore becomes

† † † † †
âH = cos θ âF + sin θ âS → cos θ âF − sin θ âS . (5.16)
† † † †
We can express âF and âS in terms of âH and âV , which leads to
   
† † † † †
âH → cos θ cos θ âH − sin θ âV − sin θ sin θ âH + cos θ âV
† †
= cos 2θ âH − sin 2θ âV . (5.17)

Unitarity of the operation of the half-wave plate immediately gives us the expression for
the vertical polarization
† † †
âV → sin 2θ âH + cos 2θ âV . (5.18)

Therefore, a rotation over an angle θ of the half-wave plate results in a polarization rotation
over an angle 2θ . In the Bloch sphere, this corresponds to a rotation around the y axis
through the states |  and |  , generated by the Pauli Y matrix

cos 2θ − sin 2θ
Uhwp (θ) = UY (2θ ) = exp (2iθ Y ) = , (5.19)
sin 2θ cos 2θ

in the {ǫ H ,ǫ V } polarization basis.

Similarly, a quarter-wave plate is a birefringent material that is cut such that the linear
polarization perpendicular to the optical axis is retarded by a relative phase π/2. If the
incoming light has left-handed circular polarization ǫ L :
1  † 
† †
âL = √ âH + iâV , (5.20)
2

Fig. 5.2. The Bloch sphere for a single-photon polarization qubit. The effects of a ‘half-wave plate’ (HWP)
and a ‘quarter-wave plate’ (QWP) are indicated as rotations around the y and the z axis,
respectively.
151 5.1 Photons as information carriers

then the quarter-wave plate will change the polarization of, say, the vertically polarized
wave, and the polarization becomes

1  †  e−iπ/4  † 
† † † †
âL = √ âH + iâV → √ âH + ieiπ/2 âV = e−iπ/4 âA . (5.21)
2 2

A quarter-wave plate can therefore change circular polarization into linear polarization, and
vice versa. In the Bloch sphere, this corresponds to a rotation around the axis through the
states |H and |V , generated by the Pauli Z matrix

iπ 1 0
Uqwp = exp − Z = exp (−iπ/4) , (5.22)
4 0 i

in the ǫ H -ǫ V polarization basis.

An arbitrary polarization rotation can be decomposed into three rotations around two
specific non-parallel axes. One possible decomposition would be a rotation α around the
y axis, exp(−iαY ), followed by a β rotation around the x axis, exp(−iβX ), and finally
another rotation around the y axis, this time of angle γ , exp(−iγ Y ). The y-axis rotations
are implemented by half-wave plates oriented at suitable angles α/2 and γ /2, as described
in Eq. (5.15). The x-axis rotation can be implemented using two quarter-wave plates (rotated
over an angle π/2 with respect to each other) and a half-wave plate physically rotated over
an angle β/2:
 π   π 
exp(−iβ X ) = exp i Z exp(−iβY ) exp −i Z
4 4
1 0 cos β − sin β 1 0
=
0 −i sin β cos β 0 i
cos β −i sin β
= . (5.23)
−i sin β cos β

An arbitrary rotation in the Bloch sphere can therefore be written in terms of half-wave
plates and quarter-wave plates as
γ  β α 
†
U (α, β, γ ) = Uhwp Uqwp Uhwp Uqwp Uhwp
2 2 2
iπZ/4 iπZ/4
= exp(−iγ Y )e exp(−iβY ) e exp(−iαY ). (5.24)

The adjoint of the quarter-wave plate transformation corresponds to the interchange of the
fast and slow axes, in other words a rotation over π/2. This decomposition of an arbitrary
rotation into rotations about the y and x axes is not unique, and half-wave and quarter-wave
plates may also be used to implement different decompositions of qubit rotations.
Frequently, experiments do not need arbitrary polarization rotations. In that case the
experimenter can often make do with fewer quarter- and half-wave plates. There are also
other optical elements available that may be used to change the polarization of a light beam.
152 Quantum communication with single photons

These elements are generally variations of the mechanism described here. It is worth noting
that even though we treated the half- and quarter-wave plates quantum mechanically, they
can be understood completely classically in electrodynamics. However, it is convenient for
the applications in this book to give the quantum mechanical treatment.
Finally, a single-photon qubit in the polarization implementation can be translated deter-
ministically into a single-photon qubit on two spatial modes with linear optical elements.
The physical set-up again involves a birefringent material: when polarized light is incident
at a non-normal angle to the surface of a birefringent crystal with an optical axis at an
angle < 90◦ with the surface of the crystal, the angle of transmission will be different for
orthogonally polarized beams. This allows us to separate horizontal and vertical polarization
spatially, and it is the principle behind ‘polarizing beam splitters’. The mode transformation
of a polarizing beam splitter may have the following form:

âH ,1 → b̂H ,1 and âV ,1 → b̂V ,2

âH ,2 → b̂H ,2 and âV ,2 → b̂V ,1 , (5.25)

where â and b̂ denote the input and the output modes of the polarizing beam splitter. In this
case the horizontally polarized light is always transmitted, while the vertically polarized
light is always reflected. It is straightforward to construct the Hamiltonian that gives rise
to this transformation.
To transform polarization qubits into qubits on two spatial modes, we split the two
polarization modes into two spatial modes using a polarizing beam splitter. A suitable
polarization rotation in one of the spatial modes can then be used to align the polarization
of one mode with the other, thus effectively removing this degree of freedom. Of course,
it is still there; we just choose not to encode any information in this degree of freedom.
Since all steps in this procedure are unitary, we can easily reverse them, and translate spatial
qubits into polarization qubits. The two representations are therefore equivalent.

5.1.3 Orbital angular-momentum qubits

We now turn our attention to the degrees of freedom associated with the transverse mode
functions. The Hermite–Gaussian (hg) and Laguerre–Gaussian (lg) transverse mode func-
tions were constructed as solutions of the paraxial wave equation. We will show that the
hg and lg mode functions of order one (for a beam propagating in the z direction) can
be used to encode a qubit degree of freedom. The orthonormal mode functions of order
one are
√
hg −1 2 y x2 + y2
u0,1 (k; r) = 4 √4
exp ikz − iωk t − 2 ,
s (z) π s (z)
√
hg −1 2 x x 2 + y2
u1,0 (k; r) = 4 √ exp ikz − iω k t − , (5.26)
s (z) 4 π s2 (z)
153 5.1 Photons as information carriers

where s2 (z) was defined in Eq. (1.96). These two mode functions can be represented by a
two-dimensional vector

hg 1 hg 0
u0,1 (k; r) = and u1,0 (k; r) = , (5.27)
0 1

by virtue of their orthonormality.

When we rotate the Hermite–Gaussian modes over an angle θ around the z axis, we
obtain another set of orthonormal modes. The rotation is given by

x′ = cos θ x + sin θ y
y′ = − sin θ x + cos θ y, (5.28)

and the rotated Hermite–Gaussian modes become

hg
u0,1 (k; r′ ) = cos θ u0,1
hg hg
(k; r) + sin θ u0,1 (k; r)
hg
u1,0 (k; r′ ) = − sin θ u0,1
hg hg
(k; r) + cos θ u0,1 (k; r), (5.29)

where we used that x2 +y2 = x′ 2 +y′ 2 . These mode functions are linear superpositions of the
Hermite–Gaussian functions in Eq. (5.26), and therefore again solutions to the paraxial wave
equation. In the special case of θ = π/4 we obtain the Hermite–Gaussian modes at 45◦ :

hg 1 1 hg 1 1
u0,1 (k; r) = √ and u1,0 (k; r) = √ . (5.30)
2 1 2 −1

It is clear that the hg mode functions of order one are analogous to the polarization states
ǫ H and ǫ V of the previous section, and the hg modes rotated over 45◦ are analogous to ǫ D
and ǫ A . We therefore construct the following superposition to complete the analogy:
hg (k; r) + iuhg (k; r)
u0,1 hg (k; r) − iuhg (k; r)
u0,1
0,1 0,1
√ and √ . (5.31)
2 2

These are the Laguerre–Gaussian modes of order one:

hg (k; r) + iuhg (k; r)
u0,1
lg 0,1
u0,1 (k; r) = √ ,
2
hg (k; r) − iuhg (k; r)
u0,1
lg 0,1
u0,−1 (k; r) = √ , (5.32)
2

with

lg −1 reiφ r2
u0,1 (k; r) = √ exp ikz − iω k z − ,
s4 (z) 4 π s2 (z)

lg −1 re−iφ r2
u0,−1 (k; r) = √ exp ikz − iωk z − . (5.33)
s4 (z) 4 π s2 (z)
154 Quantum communication with single photons

Consequently, we can define the remaining orthogonal pair of vectors as

lg 1 1 lg 1 1
u0,1 (k; r) = √ and u0,−1 (k; r) = √ . (5.34)
2 i 2 −i
Following the procedure for polarization qubits, we use these three orthogonal pairs of
transverse mode functions to define the eigenstates of the three Pauli matrices.

Exercise 5.2: Show that the modes in Eq. (5.32) are the Laguerre–Gaussian modes of
order one.

Now that we have constructed a two-dimensional complex Hilbert space from the trans-
verse mode functions of order one, we can represent a qubit by a single photon that is
supported on these modes. Again, this is completely analogous to the polarization qubit.
First, the modes unm hg (k; r) with n, m = 0, 1 are associated with the annihilation operators

ânm , such that for single photons we can define

†
|0 ≡ |hg01 = â01 |0, 0 01,10 = |1, 0 01,10 ,
†
|1 ≡ |hg10 = â10 |0, 0 01,10 = |0, 1 01,10 , (5.35)

as the eigenstates of a Pauli Z matrix, and hence the computational basis states. The single-
photon eigenstates of the Pauli X matrix can then be written as
† †
â01 + â10
|+ ≡ |hg01 = √ |0, 0 01,10 ,
2
† †
â − â
|− ≡ |hg10 = 01√ 10 |0, 0 01,10 . (5.36)
2
Finally, the eigenstates of the Pauli Y matrix can be constructed as
†
| ≡ |lg1,0 = b̂1,0 |0, 0 1,−1 = |1, 0 1,−1 ,
†
| ≡ |lg−1,0 = b̂−1,0 |0, 0 1,−1 = |0, 1 1,−1 , (5.37)

where we used the Bogoliubov transformation for transforming the creation and annihilation
operators of hg mode functions into those of lg mode functions via

â1,0 + iâ0,1 â1,0 − iâ0,1

b̂1,0 = √ and b̂−1,0 = √ . (5.38)
2 2
This means that the state space of a single photon with transverse mode functions of order
one is again a Bloch sphere (see Fig. 5.3). The remaining questions regarding the optical
implementation of the transverse mode functions as a qubit are then threefold: (1) Can we
create single photons in transverse modes of order one? (2) Can we implement arbitrary
qubit transformations? and (3) Can we detect which transverse mode the single photon is in?
Starting with a regular Gaussian beam u0lg (k, r), we can create a beam that has a higher-
order transverse mode function using a hologram, shown in Fig. 5.4. We first review the basic
 155 5.1 Photons as information carriers

Fig. 5.3. The Bloch sphere for a single-photon qubit with transverse-mode shapes of order one. The effects
of the lenses are indicated as rotations around the y and the z axis, respectively.

Fig. 5.4. A hologram is produced in two stages. (a) A scattered wave and a reference wave produce an
interference pattern on a plate P; (b) illumination of P with a second reference wave produces the
scattered light, retrieving the image of the scatterer.

principle behind holography, and then show how this can be used to create any transverse
mode function, and in particular the order-one lg mode.
A hologram is produced by recording the interference pattern of light scattered from
an object with a coherent reference beam. When the interference pattern is subsequently
illuminated with the reference beam, in well-defined directions the diffracted light will
have the phases and amplitudes of the original scattered beam, ‘showing’ the viewer the
object. We treat the light classically. Suppose that the electric field of the reference beam is
given by

ER = exp(ik · r), (5.39)

156 Quantum communication with single photons

and the light scattered from the object is given by


EO = Ej exp(ikj · r). (5.40)
j

For simplicity, we assume that the light remains polarized in one direction, and we normal-
ized the amplitude of the reference beam. Also note that the scattered light propagates in a
different direction from the reference beam (assume that all kj propagate approximately in
the same direction). The interference pattern between the two beams is then given by
 
|ER + EO |2 = 1 + IO + Ej exp i(kj − k) · r + Ej∗ exp −i(kj − k) · r , (5.41)
j

where IO is the intensity of the scattered light. This pattern can be recorded as a phase
image, and when we illuminate the interference pattern again with the reference beam, the
scattered light takes the form
 
eik·r |ER + EO |2 = eik·r + IO eik·r + Ej eikj ·r + Ej∗ e−i(kj −2k)·r . (5.42)
j

We now notice several things: the first two terms propagate in the direction of the reference
beam, and the last term (inside the brackets) is a diffracted wave propagating in the direction
∼ kj − 2k. For a suitable choice of k and kj , these can be separated from the third term,
which remarkably depends only on the scattered light. Since all the phase relations are
preserved, an observer looking into this scattered light sees the object in true 3D.
We can use this technique to create any transverse mode function, and in particular lg
mode functions. First, we calculate the interference pattern of the wave with transverse
(lg)
mode function ul,+l (k, r), with a reference plane wave. Let the lg wave propagate in the
z direction, and the plane wave has wave vector k = k(sin θ , 0, cos θ ). In the z = 0 plane,
this pattern becomes y
(x, y, 0) = l arctan + kx sin θ , (5.43)
x
where l is the ‘orbital angular-momentum’ (oam) quantum number. We can produce a
phase plate according to the specifications of (x, y, 0), which produces a structure shown
in Fig. 5.5 for l = 2. By virtue of the holographic technique presented above, when we
illuminate such a plate at the same angle as the original reference beam, light with the
desired transverse mode function is scattered into the mode propagating in the z direction.
Since the probability of scattering into the desired mode is less than one, this procedure
can be used for creating single-photon oam (‘orbital angular-momentum’) qubits only in
post-selected fashion.
The second question is how to implement arbitrary qubit rotations with optical elements.
First, in order to construct the physical implementation of a rotation around the y axis in
the Bloch sphere we define the hg transverse modes in some basis r ′ = (x′ , y ′ ), with

x′ = cos θ x − sin θ y,
y′ = sin θ x + cos θ y. (5.44)
 157 5.1 Photons as information carriers

Fig. 5.5. Defects in phase holograms can induce angular momentum. (a) The hologram that increases the
orbital angular momentum by 2; (b) the hologram that decreases the orbital angular
momentum by 2.

This means that we can write

cos θ sin θ
hg
u0,1 (k; r′ ) = and hg
u1,0 (k; r′ ) = , (5.45)
− sin θ cos θ

hg (k; r) and uhg (k; r). The annihilation

in the basis of the transverse mode functions u0,1 0,1
operators corresponding to the hg modes in the primed (rotated) coordinate system are

â′0,1 = cos θ â0,1 − sin θ â1,0

â′1,0 = sin θ â0,1 + cos θ â1,0 . (5.46)

This is completely analogous to the polarization case, as it should be: every orthogonal mode
function has its own annihilation operator. In the case of the polarization, we had an element
(the half-wave plate) that introduced a minus sign in one polarization state ǫ S relative to
the orthogonal polarization ǫ F . Due to the correspondence between mode functions (in this
case polarization) and the mode operators, we obtained the Bogoliubov transformation

âF → âF and âS → −âS . (5.47)

Eq. (5.15) showed how this transformation is sufficient to create a rotation in the Bloch
sphere around the y axis. Similarly, we imagine that we have a physical device that performs
the following transformation on the hg mode function in the r′ frame:

hg
u0,1 (k; r′ ) → u0,1
hg
(k; r′ ) and hg
u1,0 (k; r′ ) → −u1,0
hg
(k; r′ ). (5.48)

This then means that we have the transformation rule for the mode operators:

â′0,1 → â′0,1 and â′1,0 → −â′1,0 , (5.49)

 158 Quantum communication with single photons

Fig. 5.6. (a) Two cylindrical lenses with focal length fx′ a distance 2fx′ apart. This system will cause
inversion in the x′ direction: x′ → −x′ . (b) The two lenses are rotated with respect to the xy frame
by an angle θ to induce a rotation over 2θ around the y axis in the Bloch sphere.

where the prime again indicates that we consider the rotated hg mode functions. The primed
basis can be considered an eigenbasis for the device that induces this transformation, and
whatever the device will be, it is clear that it will operate similarly to the half-wave plate.
When we compare the transformation in Eq. (5.48) with the functional form of u0,1 hg (k; r′ )
hg (k; r′ ) in Eq. (5.26), we see that it is equivalent to the spatial inversion
and u1,0

x′ → −x′ and y′ → y′ . (5.50)

This can be implemented with cylindrical lenses, which have curvature in only one direction
(in this case the x ′ direction). In other words, the focal length fx′ has some finite value f ,
but the focal length fy′ → ∞. When we combine two identical cylindrical lenses and
place them a distance d = 2f apart, the x′ -coordinate in the transverse field mode will be
inverted, while the y ′ -coordinate remains unaffected (see Fig 5.6). Rotating the cylindrical
lens around the z axis (the direction of propagation) over an angle θ induces a rotation

â′0,1 = cos 2θ â0,1 − sin 2θ â1,0

â′1,0 = sin 2θ â0,1 + cos 2θ â1,0 , (5.51)

which amounts to a rotation around the y axis in the Bloch sphere. The pair of cylindrical
lenses in Fig. 5.6 is called a π -converter, since it imparts a phase shift eiπ = −1 on the
optical wave along the inversion axis. It is the transverse-mode analog of the half-wave
plate for polarization (see Fig. 5.7a).
To generate arbitrary qubit rotations, we also need the analog of the quarter-wave plate.
Such a device must be able to convert order-one hg modes to modes with orbital angular
momentum, or lg modes of order one. From the mode operator transformations we see
that this involves a π/2 phase shift (a factor i), hence we call this device a π/2-converter.
It can also be implemented with a set of cylindrical lenses. However, this time √ the two
lenses (with focal length f in the x direction) are separated by a distance d = 2f . In
 159 5.1 Photons as information carriers

Fig. 5.7. Transverse-mode converters: (a) the π -converter, and (b) the π/2-converter. The cylindrical lenses
have focal length f in the x direction, and are placed a distance d apart. In (b) the incoming mode
must be made to converge by a second set of lenses.

addition, changing d means that we have to add another set of (cylindrical) lenses to ensure
that the incoming beam converges correctly onto the mode converter, as shown in Fig. 5.7.
Mathematically, the description of the π/2-converter is rather involved, and we refer the
reader to the original paper by Beijersbergen et al. (1993) for the details.
We considered the cylindrical lens system in the regime of geometrical optics (or ray
optics). This means that we have made the implicit assumption that the wave vector of the
beam k is much larger than 2fx′ /w2 , with w the linear dimension of the spot size. This is a
fairly good approximation in most experimental conditions, but it has severe implications
for the miniaturization of optical circuits using single-photon oam qubits. Other methods for
implementing unitary transformations for single-photon oam qubits are using Dove prisms,
which act similarly to the π -converter, and regular beam splitters and phase shifters (see
Zou and Mathis, 2005).
Finally, we have to implement a way to perform a single-qubit measurement with optical
elements. Given arbitrary single-qubit transformations for the oam qubit, we have to con-
struct a qubit detector that can make reliable measurements in a single basis only (typically
the computational basis). The combination of a fixed measurement basis and arbitrary qubit
rotations then allows for arbitrary effective measurements. To make a (theoretically) deter-
ministic measurement in the basis {|hg01 , |hg10 }, it is sufficient to find an interferometer
that spatially separates the two modes u0,1 hg (k, r) and uhg (k, r). The resulting two spatial
1,0
modes are then sent into a regular photodetector that is insensitive to the transverse-mode
functions.
The spatial separation can be implemented using the so-called fractional Fourier trans-
(x)
form Ff (θ) (frft). The frft is an operator whose eigenfunctions are the Hermite
polynomials, and the eigenvalues are phase shifts proportional to θ :

Ff(x) (θ) [Hn (x)] = einθ Hn (x). (5.52)

Optically, this operator can be implemented using a dielectric material that has a variable
index of refraction n(r) in the transverse direction r = (x, y). In particular, n(r) is a quadratic
function in the x direction, but constant in the y direction:

n(r) = n0 − n2 x2 . (5.53)
 160 Quantum communication with single photons

This behaviour is independent of the intensity of the field, and works equally well for
photons as for laser beams. When we wish to distinguish between the modes u0,1 hg (k, r) and
hg (k, r), we need the frft in the x and y directions. However, since the mode functions are
u1,0
simple products of the Hermite polynomials, the frft in the x direction acts independently
of the frft in the y direction, and we have
(x) (y)
Ff (θ)Ff (φ) [Hn (x) Hm (y)] = einθ +imφ Hn (x) Hm (y). (5.54)

The frft in the y direction is implemented using a dielectric with n(r) = n0 − n2 y2 , and
no variation in the x direction.
A Mach–Zehnder interferometer can be used as a switch between output modes, depen-
dent on the relative phase shift in the two arms of the interferometer. If one input mode is in an
unknown (coherent or incoherent) superposition of single-photon states |hg01 and |hg10 ,
and the second input mode is in the vacuum state |0 , then a dielectric medium described by
Eq. (5.53) can be used to apply a phase shift to |hg01 , but not to |hg10 (or vice versa). For
the appropriate phase difference θ , we have a perfectly deterministic switch, as shown in
Fig. 5.8. We can measure the output modes of the interferometer with photodetectors, result-
ing in a deterministic measurement of |hg01 and |hg10 , which therefore serves as a mea-
surement in the computational basis {|0 , |1 } for the oam qubit. A technique for measuring
the oam of a single photon using Dove prisms was proposed by Leach et al. (2002).

Exercise 5.3: Calculate the value of θ for the Mach–Zehnder interferometer in Fig. 5.8 to
act as a separator of transverse modes into different spatial modes.

The interferometric set-up serves another purpose, besides providing an optical imple-
mentation for the measurement of an oam qubit. Using single-qubit rotations to transform
the photons from the modes unm hg (k, r) to ulg (k, r), and reducing the angular momentum to
1,1
zero, we have (in principle) a completely unitary method to translate between spatial (dual-
rail) single-photon qubits and oam qubits. By extension we therefore also have a complete
optical-unitary transformation between the oam qubit and the single-photon polarization
qubit with passive optical elements. This allows us to extend the results for linear optical-
mode transformations (the Bogoliubov transformations) for dual-rail or polarization qubits
to oam qubits. In particular, the difficulties that we will encounter for information pro-
cessing with single-photon polarization qubits (such as deterministically entangling two
photons) will also apply to single-photon oam qubits.

Fig. 5.8. Separating the transverse-mode functions uHG0,1 (k, r) and u1,0 (k, r) into spatial-mode functions by
HG

means of a graded index of refraction that acts as the FRFT Ff . When the output modes of the
interferometer are sent to regular photodetectors, this set-up is a qubit measurement in the basis
{|HG01 , |HG 10 } ≡ {|0 , |1 }.
 161 5.1 Photons as information carriers

Finally, unlike the spin degree of freedom for a photon (the polarization), which can
be at most ±1, the orbital angular momentum of a single photon can in principle have
an arbitrary large (integer) value. In addition, the technique of using mode converters to
implement qubit rotations can be extended to higher-order mode functions, and the frft
can be used to spatially separate higher-order mode functions as well. This means that the
transverse-mode functions can be used to encode qudits, i.e., quantum systems with d basis
states. This has been demonstrated experimentally for second-order transverse modes by
Langford et al. (2004).

5.1.4 Time-bin encoding

The last type of single-photon qubit we consider here is the so-called time-bin qubit, in which
the photon can occupy two consecutive time intervals. The computational basis states are
† †
|0 ≡ |e = b̂μ=e |0 and |1 ≡ |ℓ = b̂μ=ℓ |0 , for the ‘early’ and ‘late’ time intervals,
†
respectively. The time-bin operators b̂μ and b̂μ were defined in Section 1.4, and particularly
in Eq. (1.141).
There are no passive linear optical interferometers that translate time-bin qubits to polar-
ization qubits, but we can still construct a linear Bogoliubov transformation that relates
the time-bin qubit unitarily to the polarization qubit. For this to work, we need fast opti-
cal switches. The interferometric device that translates between time-bin and polarization
qubits is shown in Fig. 5.9. The optical switch acts on the incoming beam, and operates in
the interval between the early time bin and the late time bin. When switched on, it induces
a polarization rotation over 90◦ . Suppose that the incoming photon is polarized in the ver-
tical direction. When it is in the early time bin, the switch does nothing, and the photon is
reflected in the polarizing beam splitter and takes the long path through the interferometer.
If, however, the photon is in the late time bin, the switch has turned on a polarization rota-
tion, and the photon is transmitted through the polarizing beam splitter, such that it takes
the shortest path. The second bin catches up with the first at the second polarizing beam
splitter, and the result is a single photon in the output mode with a polarization state that is
dependent on the path it took in the circuit. A linear superposition of the time-bin qubit then
translates perfectly (in principle) to a coherent superposition in polarization. The circuit

Fig. 5.9. Time-bin to polarization circuit. The single photon in state |V is sent into the polarizing beam
splitter such that it is reflected, and takes the longer path. Between the two time bins, the optical
switch induces a polarization rotation over 90◦ , sending the late qubit in the second time bin into
the shorter optical path. The second polarizing beam splitter recombines the two paths into a
single spatial mode.
162 Quantum communication with single photons

can be run in reverse to translate polarization qubits (and by extension arbitrary dual-rail
qubits) into time-bin qubits.
In practice, optical switches such as these can be quite lossy. The question then becomes
why one would go to such lengths to implement qubits this way. The answer is that time-bin
qubits have beneficial properties when single photons are used for quantum communica-
tion: the decoherence of time-bin qubits is much lower than for polarization qubits when
the communication takes place in optical fibres. Tension in fibres changes the propagation
velocity of light, and any asymmetric tension on a fibre induces a different propagation
velocity for different polarizations, which in turn introduces an unwanted qubit rotation.2
When the qubit is sent through a commercial fibre over long distances, this qubit rota-
tion is unknown, and the result is decoherence of the quantum information that is being
communicated. Time-bin qubits have the advantage that the decoherence mechanism in the
transmission through a fibre is much weaker, which results in a higher fidelity of quantum
communication protocols.

5.2 Quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping

Having spent quite some time on the definition of single photons as qubit carriers, we are
now ready to put them to use. We will use exclusively polarization qubits in the remainder
of this chapter, but the techniques of the previous section show how this can be extended
to general dual-rail qubits, including oam qubits and time-bin qubits.

5.2.1 Two-photon entanglement

The first application we consider here is quantum teleportation. In Chapter 2, we introduced

the quantum teleportation protocol for qubits, and one may expect that we can replace every
|0 with |H , and every |1 with |V , and find the optical implementation. Unfortunately,
it is not that straightforward. Whereas we have seen that individual qubit rotations and
measurements can be implemented optically in a deterministic manner, the quantum tele-
portation protocol requires two-qubit operations that we have not considered thus far. In
fact, general two-qubit operations cannot be implemented deterministically with the linear
optical devices that are described by linear Bogoliubov transformations. Assuming that we
have high-quality single-photon sources, this presents us with two problems. First, we need
to create maximally entangled Bell states for teleportation:

 ± 1  ± 1
 = √ (|HV ± |VH ) and  = √ (|HH ± |VV ) , (5.55)
12 12
2 2

2 This is, in fact, exactly how polarization rotations are implemented when the single-photon qubits are kept in
a fibre as opposed to the free-space implementation discussed earlier. Mathematically, this is analogous to the
quarter- and half-wave plates, in which we had an optical symmetry axis.
163 5.2 Quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping

† †
where |H j = âjH |0 j and |V j = âjV |0 j , with j = 1, 2. Second, Alice needs the ability
to perform a measurement in the Bell basis. We will postpone the problem of creating Bell
states to the next chapter, where we will discuss in detail how to implement two-qubit gates
for single-photon qubits, and circumvent the problem by assuming that we can use the
output of a suitably engineered parametric downconverter. Instead, we will discuss why
creating entanglement in a deterministic fashion is difficult, and how this leads to a partial,
or probabilistic, optical implementation of the Bell measurement.
The physical reason why it is difficult to entangle two single-photon polarization qubits
is that photons do not interact directly with each other. Mathematically, this is due to
the linearity of the Bogoliubov transformations. Consider the Hong–Ou–Mandel effect, in
which the state of two identical photons after a 50:50 beam splitter is given by

|2, 0 − |0, 2
|1, 1 → √ . (5.56)
2

This is clearly an entangled state, since we cannot write it as a product of |0 and |2

1  
√ (|2, 0 12 − |0, 2 12 ) = (α |0 1 + β |2 1 ) α ′ |0 2 + β ′ |2 2 . (5.57)
2

However, on the level of the mode operators, there is no entanglement:

 † †
 † †

b̂1 + b̂2 b̂1 − b̂2 1  †2 
† † †2
â1 â2 → √ √ = b̂1 − b̂2 . (5.58)
2 2 2

It is straightforward to verify that these operators give rise to Eq. (5.56) when acting on
the vacuum. The entanglement in the state arises from the cancellation of cross terms in
† †
the special product of the operators b̂1 and b̂2 in Eq. (5.58), and from the fact that repeated
application of the creation operator leads to orthonormal number states.
By contrast, consider two polarization qubits. The entangling operation we are interested
in requires a transformation of the form

1
|HH → √ (|HH + |VV ) (5.59)
2

or something that is equivalent. In terms of the creation operators, this requires a

transformation
† † † † † †
â1H â2H → b̂1H b̂2H + b̂1V b̂2V , (5.60)
which takes a product of two creation operators to an inseparable product
⎛ ⎞⎛ ⎞
† † † †
 † †
 † †
b̂1H b̂2H + b̂1V b̂2V = ⎝ U1λ b̂1λ + U2λ b̂2λ ⎠ ⎝ V1λ b̂1λ + V2λ b̂2λ ⎠ . (5.61)
λ=H ,V λ=H ,V

Here, U and V are unitary matrices. The terms in brackets are Bogoliubov transformations
(see Section 1.2.2), and correspond to the linear optical transformation in Eq. (1.157). In
 164 Quantum communication with single photons

other words, the right-hand-side in Eq. (5.61) is exactly what you get with passive linear-
optical devices such as beam splitters, phase shifters, polarizers, etc. In turn, this means that
passive linear-optical elements alone cannot create deterministic maximal entanglement in
dual-rail photonic qubits.
The reverse situation is also true by virtue of unitarity: we cannot take a maximally
entangled input state of two dual-rail photonic qubits and turn it into a separable state.
The question remains, however, of whether we can perform a complete deterministic Bell
measurement. We will give a simple example of a probabilistic Bell measurement based
on linear optics and photon counting, and use this to construct an implementation of the
quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping of polarization qubits.

5.2.2 Photonic Bell measurements

Consider the simple interferometer shown in Fig. 5.10. Modes a1 and a2 are the two spatial
input modes of a 50:50 beam splitter, which induces a mode transformation

1   1  
â1λ = √ b̂1λ + b̂2λ and â2λ = √ b̂1λ − b̂2λ , (5.62)
2 2
where λ indicates the polarization degree of freedom. The beam splitter does not affect
the polarization. In the output modes b1 and b2 of the beam splitter we place polarization-
sensitive photodetectors. If such detectors are not available, we can separate the polarization
modes into two spatial modes with a polarizing beam splitter, and detect the four resulting
output modes with polarization-insensitive detectors. We will now investigate what state
(and therefore what detector signature) the different Bell states give rise to after the beam
splitter.   √
Consider the singlet state  − = (|HV − |VH )/ 2. In terms of creation operators
acting on the vacuum, this is
 −  
 = √1 ↠↠− ↠↠|0 . (5.63)
1H 2V 1V 2H
2

Fig. 5.10. Probabilistic Bell measurement with one 50:50 beam splitter (BS) and two polarization-sensitive
detectors D1 and D2 . The detectors
 ± each consist of a polarizing beam splitter and two
photodetectors. Only the  Bell states can be identified unambiguously in this set-up. The
 ± 12
 Bell states give an ambiguous detector signature.
12
165 5.2 Quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping

The mode transformations in Eq. (5.62) then turn this into

 − 1  †     
 → √ † † † † † † †
b̂1H + b̂2H b̂1V − b̂2V − b̂1V + b̂2V b̂1H − b̂2H |0
2 2
1  † †   
† †
= √ b̂1V b̂2H − b̂1H b̂2V |0 =  − . (5.64)
2

The singlet state is invariant under a 50:50 beam splitter! The other Bell states give rise to
the following states:

 +
 = √1 (|HV , 0 + |0, HV )
2
 + 1
 = (|2H , 0 − |0, 2H + |2V , 0 − |0, 2V )
2
 − 1
 = (|2H , 0 − |0, 2H − |2V , 0 + |0, 2V ) , (5.65)
2
†2 √ † †
where |2H = b̂1H |0 / 2, and |HV = b̂1H b̂1V |0 , etc.

Exercise 5.4: Verify Eqs. (5.65).

All terms in all three output states in Eq. (5.65) have two photons either in spatial mode
b1 or mode b2 , whereas the singlet state has one photon in mode b1 and one in mode b2 .
A
 detection
 coincidence in D1 and D2 , regardless of polarization,
  therefore tells us that a
 − was detected without ambiguity. Similarly, the state  + gives rise to two detector
clicks in the same output mode b1 or b2 , but with different polarization.
 +  No other Bell state
gives this detector signature, and we can uniquely identify the  input state as well.
 
The ± input states, on the other hand, are problematic. They do give rise to orthogonal
output states (as required by unitarity), but the orthonormality comes in the phases rather
than the photon number of the modes. Photodetectors are insensitive to the phases of the
different terms in the superposition (phase and photon number
  are conjugate
 variables), and
this set-up therefore cannot tell the difference between + and − . In this set-up (with
ideal, lossless detectors) we can therefore unambiguously identify two out of the four Bell
states.
Is this the best we can do? Are there other interferometric set-ups that allow us to tell all
the Bell states apart deterministically? It turns out that we can choose to detect other Bell
states, but we can identify at most two Bell states unambiguously in deterministic set-ups
like the one described above. The proof of this is given by Lütkenhaus et al. (1999), and is
a bit too long to include here. The assumptions of the proof are that we may use any linear
optical elements, classical feed-forward, and perfect number-resolving photodectection, and
we require perfect distinguishability between all four Bell states. This still leaves open the
case where we can distinguish between all Bell states with arbitrary high (but not perfect)
success probability. Indeed, if we are willing to admit a small error probability, we can
distinguish between all four Bell states. We will return to this in Appendix 2.
 166 Quantum communication with single photons

5.2.3 Teleportation of single photons

We can finally turn our attention to quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping. In
Fig. 5.11 we show the schematic set-up. For simplicity, assume that all detectors are photon-
number resolving. Two ‘parametric downconverters’ (pdcs) are used to create entangled
photon pairs, as described in Section 4.4. In the case of teleportation, the pdc that creates
entangled photon pairs in modes a1 and a2 is operated as a heralded single-photon source,
while the other pdc creates the entanglement channel for teleportation. The polarization
rotation θ1 in mode a1 , together with the polarization-sensitive detector D1 , is used to cre-
ate arbitrary pure single-photon polarization qubit states in mode a2 . For entanglement
swapping, both pdcs are used as entanglement channels. The Bell measurement detects
modes a2 and a3 , and the outcome of a successful Bell measurement determines the cor-
rective polarization rotation θ4 . The detector D4 in mode a4 is used to verify the teleported
state. This experiment was performed in 1997 by Bouwmeester et al.
Suppose that the pdcs create photon pairs in the singlet state of polarization:

 −
 = √1 (|HV − |VH ) . (5.66)
2

Strictly speaking, this is wrong. As shown in Section 4.4, a downconverter never creates
states with definite photon number, but rather a coherent superposition of different numbers
of photon pairs. When the probability of creating a photon pair is small, most of the time
there will be no photon pairs created, sometimes a single pair is created, and with even
lower probability two or more pairs are created. However, in the set-up of Fig. 5.11, we
know that photons have been produced in the pdcs, since they trigger all four detectors in

Fig. 5.11. Optical set-up for post-selected quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping. The
‘parametric downconverters’ (PDCs) create entangled photon pairs, and the polarization rotations
θ1 and θ4 , together with the polarization-sensitive detectors D1 and D4 , can be chosen such that
the measurement statistics are consistent with teleportation or entanglement swapping. The Bell
measurement is implemented as shown in Fig. 5.10.
167 5.2 Quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping

the experiment (ignoring detector dark counts). So we can use Eq. (5.66), provided we take
into account the appropriate detection signatures.
The Bell measurement and the polarization rotations θ1 and θ4 apply to different modes,
and we can therefore perform the Bell measurement first, and manipulate the polarization
afterwards. Writing the output of the two pdcs according to Eq. (5.66) in the Bell basis for
modes a1 , a4 , and a2 , a3 gives

 −  − 1    1   

12

34
=  + 23  + 14 −  − 23  − 14
2 2
1  +   +  1   
−  23  14 + − 23 − 14 . (5.67)
2 2
If
 only
 the singlet state is identified in the Bell measurement, this leads to the singlet state
 − in modes a1 and a4 . The detectors D1 and D4 should therefore find measurement
14
statistics consistent with the singlet state. This is indeed what was found in the experiment
by Pan et al. (1998), and the set-up can therefore be interpreted
 − as+entanglement
 swapping.
 
If the Bell measurement is used to distinguish both  and  , extra operations may
have to be applied to mode a4 (or mode a1 ), in accordance with the rules for quantum
teleportation.
When mode a1 is measured in a particular polarization basis set by θ1 , the state in mode
a2 before the Bell measurement becomes

|HV − |VH
12 12 |H
√ → √ 1 (cos θ1 |V 2 + sin θ1 |H 2 )
2 2
|V 1
+ √ (− cos θ1 |H 2 + sin θ1 |V 2 ) . (5.68)
2

The measurement of an H - or V -polarized photon in D1 therefore produces a single-photon

qubit in the state cos θ1 |V 2 +sin θ1 |H 2 or cos θ1 |H 2 −sin θ1 |V 2 , respectively, in mode
a2 . This can be interpreted as the state preparation
  of the single-photon input qubit in mode
a2 . After the Bell measurement, the state is  − 14 , and a measurement of mode a1 produces
the state in mode a4 instead of mode a2 . We can interpret this as quantum teleportation.
Note that modes a1 and a4 never interacted. Moreover, the set-up in Fig. 5.11 makes it clear
that entanglement swapping and quantum teleportation are fundamentally the same thing,
because the teleported qubit may be itself part of an entangled state.
All output modes are detected in the set-up in Fig. 5.11, and as a consequence there is
no freely propagating teleported photon. We call this ‘post-selected quantum teleportation’.
Some form of post-selection is always necessary in a proof-of-principle experiment in
order to verify that teleportation has occurred with high fidelity. We have seen that by
using Eq. (5.66) as an approximation of the output of a pdc, we also need the measurement
outcome of D1 to signal that there was indeed an entangled photon pair in the pdc on
modes a1 and a2 , and the detector D4 indicates an entangled photon pair in modes a3 and
a4 . However, modes a2 and a3 are always subjected to a Bell measurement, and a natural
question is to ask whether the heralding of photons in a successful Bell measurement is
sufficient to ensure that there are always two entangled photons, one in mode a1 and one
168 Quantum communication with single photons

in mode a4 , even when we do not use D1 and D4 . In other words, can we prepare a freely
propagating, or ‘event-ready’ Bell state in this way?
Unfortunately, this is not possible. The reason is that the probability of finding one
entangled photon pair in each pdc is similar to the probability of finding two pairs in one
pdc, and nothing in the second. Even with ideal photon-number resolving detectors the
Bell measurement cannot always distinguish between these two cases. If one pdc creates
a double pair in, say, modes a1 and a2 , while the other creates no pairs, the two photons
trigger D1 . The photons in mode a2 can produce the right Bell measurement signature in
the detectors, e.g., a photon in D2 and one in D3 (recall that this constitutes a projection
onto the singlet state). If detector D1 cannot distinguish between one and two photons, then
without using detector D4 we cannot distinguish between a true teleportation event with a
teleported photon in mode a4 and a spurious event where mode a4 is in the vacuum state.
If the detector D1 indicates a click, we may think that the input state in mode a2 is a single
photon in the polarization state |ψ(θ1 ) , and conditioned on a successful Bell measurement
we expect a teleportation event with high fidelity. However, the actual state of mode a4
before detection has the form

ρ = p |ψ(θ1 ) ψ(θ1 )| + (1 − p) |0 0| , (5.69)

where p is comparable to (1 − p). Without further post-selection we cannot say that the state
|ψ(θ1 ) was teleported with high fidelity and efficiency p, since that would be elevating
one basis in Hilbert space over all others, thus committing the ‘partition ensemble fallacy’
(see Section 3.1). There is therefore a real difference between post-selected teleportation
and non-post-selected teleportation. Whether this presents a practical problem very much
depends on the application that the teleportation protocol is used for. For example, if it is
used in a photon-number conserving experiment, the spurious events will always reveal
themselves in the end. But if it is used in conjunction with states that do not have a definite
photon number (such as, for example, coherent states), it is generally impossible to tell the
spurious events from real teleportation. Currently, the vast majority of photon interference
experiments operate in post-selected fashion.

5.2.4 Entanglement distillation

Entanglement swapping can be used in a distillation procedure that consumes two photon
pairs with degraded entanglement, and produces a photon pair that is more strongly entan-
gled than the initial pairs. We assume that the entire procedure is operated in post-selected
fashion, which simplifies our description while still dealing with an interesting problem. In
the discussion below, we follow the argument of Bose et al. (1999b).
Consider a protocol
 in which we wish to distribute maximally entangled photon pairs,
 +
say the state  , between two distant communicating parties, Alice and Bob. One of the
photons in the singlet will travel to Alice, and the other will travel to Bob, e.g., via an optical
fibre. Generally, there will be absorption in the fibre, and we saw in Chapter 4 that this can
be modelled by a ‘beam splitter’ in each fibre mode. Let the transmission coefficient be
169 5.2 Quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping

parametrized by an angle θ such that a single photon with polarization λ is transformed

according to
|1 λ |0 l → cos θ |1 λ |0 l + sin θ |0 λ |1 l , (5.70)
where l denotes the lost mode. If the loss is polarization-independent, and Alice and Bob
post-select their detection events on both finding a photon in their detector set-up, the
measurement statistics are determined by the (unnormalized) state

cos4 θ
ρ= (|HH HH | + |HH VV | + |VV HH | + |VV VV |) , (5.71)
2

where the renormalization factor cos4 θ is the probability of Alice and Bob both finding a
photon in their detectors. The state ρ can be found by projecting the loss modes onto the
vacuum state. Note also that the coherence between the photons is preserved in this noise
model: ρ describes a pure state. This can work only in the post-selected model, because
without post-selection we cannot make the projection of the loss mode onto the vacuum.
In the above model of lossy transmission, no entanglement degradation occurs in the
post-selected data, but the data rate is reduced by a factor cos4 θ . However, we can modify
the noise model such that now the loss is polarization-dependent. We assume that the
loss is stronger for vertically polarized light. We can simplify this model (without loss of
generality) by incorporating the losses for horizontally polarized light in the data rate, and
then the transmitted state of light (in the post-selected set-up) can be treated as a lossy
channel where only the vertically polarized light experiences loss. After projection of the
loss mode onto the vacuum, the measurement statistics are consistent with the input state

|HH + cos2 θ |VV

√ ≡ cos φ |HH + sin φ |VV = |ψ(φ) . (5.72)
1 + cos4 θ
In other words, the measurement statistics are no longer those of maximally entangled
photons, and any quantum communication protocols that Alice and Bob wish to engage in
will be noisy.
Using two copies of |ψ(φ) , the entanglement between Alice and Bob can be increased
via entanglement swapping. When the initial state is |ψ(φ) 12 ⊗ |ψ(φ) 34 , and an ideal Bell
measurement is performed on modes a2 and a3 , the output states are given by

cos2 φ |HH ± sin2 φ |VV

|ψout ∝ 
cos4 φ + sin4 φ
 
|ψout =  ± , (5.73)

depending on the Bell measurement outcome. In other words, for two outcomes of a Bell
measurement, the remaining entangled state is a maximally entangled Bell state. The other
two states are less entangled than the input state |ψ(φ) . We can implement this Bell
measurement optically with a 50:50 beam splitter and polarization-sensitive photodetectors.
We must ensure that the Bell measurement distinguishes the two states that lead to the
successful distillation events.
170 Quantum communication with single photons

Exercise 5.5: Show that the failure probability for this distillation protocol is 12 (cos4 φ +
sin4 φ), and calculate the concurrence of |ψ(φ) and |ψout .

5.3 Decoherence-free subspaces for communication

The entanglement distillation procedure discussed above is probabilistic, with a maximum

success probability of 1/2 in the case of perfect photodetection. A natural question is whether
there are deterministic protocols that can help protect quantum information in communica-
tion protocols. Without employing the full machinery of quantum error-correction codes,
there are indeed techniques that protect against some noise in a deterministic fashion. When
there is a source of decoherence in the communication channel that has a particular mathe-
matical form, we can often choose an encoding that is insensitive to this type of decoherence.
The cost of this encoding is that each logical qubit must be implemented with a number of
physical qubits. The Hilbert space of the physical qubits is then split into two subspaces,
each associated with one logical qubit state. When the logical qubit is no longer sensitive
to the particular type of decoherence, these are called ‘decoherence-free subspaces’ (dfss).
We will now give an explicit example of a dfs.
Suppose that we can send multiple photons in different modes simultaneously through
a communication channel, for example an optical fibre. To be specific, assume that the
photons have different frequencies, and that the propagation of different frequency modes
through the fibres is about equal. As usual, we take the qubit degree of freedom to be the
polarization of the photon. A photon that propagates through the fibre can be subjected to
an unwanted qubit transformation U , due to stresses in the fibre. This transformation is
unitary, since the fibre does not generally retain a memory of the state of the photon passing
through. Moreover, U may change reasonably rapidly over time, making it impractical to
correct for it by calibration. The transmitted qubits are therefore no longer pure, since we
must in some mathematical sense average over all possible U .
When many photons are transmitted through the fibre, and if the transmission time is
shorter than the changes in U , each photon experiences almost the same decoherence process
U . Symbolically, we write this as
 +  +  +
 (N )  (N )  (N )
in → out = U ⊗N in . (5.74)

Let θ parameterize U = U (θ). When two (distinguishable) single-photon qubits in modes

a1 and a2 with initial state |ψ 12 travel through the fibre, the output state becomes

ρout ∝ dθ p(θ) U (θ) ⊗ U (θ) |ψ 12 ψ| U † (θ) ⊗ U † (θ), (5.75)

where p(θ) is a probability distribution over θ . We will now show how we can define
decoherence-free subspaces in the Hilbert space H of the two qubits. We are seeking two
subspaces V0 ⊂ H and V1 ⊂ H such that

V0 ∪ V 1 = H and V0 ∩ V1 = ∅. (5.76)
171 5.3 Decoherence-free subspaces for communication

The two subspaces V0 and V1 are used to encode the logical qubit as follows. By construc-
tion, any state |ψ(0) ∈ V0 remains in V0 under the transformation U ⊗ U . We can write
this symbolically as
U ⊗ U V0 U † ⊗ U † = V0 . (5.77)
If we write V0 ⊕ V1 = H , it is straightforward to prove that V1 is also invariant under
U ⊗ U . First note that H is invariant under U ⊗ U . We then have

U ⊗ U (V0 ⊕ V1 ) U † ⊗ U † = U ⊗ U V0 U † ⊗ U † ⊕ U ⊗ U V1 U † ⊗ U †
= V0 ⊕ U ⊗ U V1 U † ⊗ U †
= V0 ⊕ V1 . (5.78)

In the last line we have used H = V0 ⊕ V1 is invariant under U ⊗ U , and we therefore

find
(U ⊗ U ) V1 (U † ⊗ U † ) = V1 . (5.79)
To encode a logical qubit in these subspaces means that we have to find a state |ψ(0) ∈ V0
and a state |ψ(1) ∈ V1 , and use these as the computational basis of the logical qubit. After
transmission, a measurement of the logical qubit in the computational basis boils down to
projecting the state of the two physical qubits onto the subspace V0 or V1 . It is not obvious
a priori that the invariant subspaces V0 and V1 exist, since the transformation U ⊗ U is
rather general. However, we will show by explicit construction that there exist such states.
In fact, we will prove something slightly stronger, namely that there is a subspace V0 that
is one-dimensional.
Any single-qubit unitary U can be decomposed into rotations generated by the Pauli
operator X and rotations generated by Z. Starting with X , we can formulate the invariance
requirement for a state |ψ as
 
UX ⊗ UX |ψ = exp −iθ (X1 ⊗ Î2 + Î1 ⊗ X2 ) |ψ = eiϕ |ψ . (5.80)

This is satisfied when

(X1 ⊗ Î2 + Î1 ⊗ X2 ) |ψ = 0. (5.81)
When we write |ψ in the most general form

|ψ = c00 |00 + c01 |01 + c10 |10 + c11 |11 , (5.82)

the requirement in Eq. (5.81) reduces to

c00 = −c11 and c01 = −c10 . (5.83)

Similarly, for rotations generated by Z1 and Z2 , the requirement becomes

(Z1 ⊗ Î2 + Î1 ⊗ Z2 ) |ψ = 0, (5.84)

172 Quantum communication with single photons

which leads to the restriction c00 = c11 = 0. There are no additional restrictions we need
to impose, since all rotations can be decomposed into rotations generated by X and Z, and
the invariant one-dimensional subspace V0 is therefore spanned by the singlet state

|01 − |10
|ψ(0) = √ . (5.85)
2

The complementary subspace V1 is then spanned by the triplet states

|01 + |10
V1 = Span |00 , |11 , √ . (5.86)
2

The two subspaces can be evolved unitarily by the receiving party, so the qubit measurement
is not restricted to the computational basis. However, these generally require two-qubit
entangling operations, which are difficult to implement.
Apart from unknown polarization rotations in optical fibres, this technique can be used
when the communicating parties lack a common reference frame. The polarization of a
photon is defined with respect to an external reference frame, and both parties in the com-
munication must have access to the same reference frame if their measurement statistics are
to exhibit the right correlations. It so happens that for N qubits, a rotated reference frame
induces a transformation U ⊗N , which is exactly the problem considered above. This means
that our encoding is also capable of establishing a communication channel in the absence
of a shared frame of reference. This application of decoherence-free subspaces is reviewed
in detail by Bartlett et al. (2007).

5.4 Quantum cryptography

In this section we give a brief description how the standard protocols introduced in Section
2.2 (BB84 and Ekert91) can be implemented with single-photon qubits. Recall that in
BB84, Alice sends a series of qubits (in this case single photons) randomly prepared in X
and Z eigenstates, and Bob measures the X and Z operators. If the preparation and detection
observables coincide, Alice and Bob share a secret random bit. In Ekert91, Alice and Bob
share Bell pairs, and both measure their qubits randomly in the X or Z basis. When their
measurement bases coincide, they know that their measurement outcomes are perfectly
correlated, and they again share a secret random bit. In both cases Alice and Bob sacrifice
part of the key to test the correlation between their keys. Any eavesdropping permitted
by the laws of quantum mechanics will show up as reduced correlations, and results in
abortion of the communication channel. Since neither protocol requires two-qubit gates
or (deterministic) Bell measurements, the implementation is straightforward when good
single-photon or entangled photon sources are available. We first prove the security of
Ekert91, and then in a sequence of steps translate this to BB84. We end this section with a
consideration of multiphoton states (such as coherent states), and introduce so-called decoy
states that can be used to increase the data rate of the communication channel.
173 5.4 Quantum cryptography

Before we start the security proof of BB84 and Ekert91, let us recall the purpose of
quantum cryptography, and equally important, the issues that it does not address. First, the
quantum mechanical part of quantum cryptography is the ‘key distribution’ (qkd). Once
Alice and Bob share a secret key, they can classically encode a message by adding the key to
the message (addition modulo two, if the key and the message are in binary). Both BB84 and
Ekert91 provide a provably secure means to distribute the key. That is, an eavesdropper
who tries to intercept the key during the qkd stage will leave an easily detectable tell-
tale sign. However, an encrypted communication channel is only as secure as its weakest
component, and in practice undetected eavesdropper attacks may still be possible on parts
of the protocol other than the qkd component. This is an important problem that occupies
many people in the security community. Second, qkd is not an authentication protocol. In
other words, neither BB84 nor Ekert91 can guarantee Alice that the person she shares the
key with is who she thinks he is. There exist both classical and quantum authentication
protocols, but we will restrict our discussion to quantum key distribution.

5.4.1 Security of Ekert91

While BB84 is the older qkd protocol, it turns out that the security proof of Ekert91 is
easier. This can in turn be used to prove the security of BB84 via an elegant argument by
Lo and Chau (1999) and Shor and Preskill (2000). We first give a strict definition of what
constitutes secure communication, and show that near-maximally entangled pairs shared
between two parties give rise to the possibility of secure key distribution. Such pairs can be
distilled from noisy entangled pairs via entanglement distillation or by employing quantum
error correction on the communication channel. We then reduce the protocol based on Bell
pairs to the BB84 protocol.
What does it mean for a protocol to be secure? We could require that an eavesdropper (Eve)
obtains no information at all about the key shared by Alice and Bob, but this is too restrictive:
in any practical situation, there will be noise induced by the channel between Alice and Bob.
As a matter of principle, they cannot tell whether this was due to unrecoverable information
loss to the environment, or whether Eve replaced the noisy communication channel by a
less noisy channel and induced the additional noise by eavesdropping. The security of a
‘quantum key distribution’ (qkd) protocol must therefore put a bound on the amount of
information Eve can obtain.

Definition: Aqkd protocol betweenAlice and Bob is secure if for some parameters a, b > 0,
any eavesdropping strategy that respects the laws of quantum physics either results in
abortion of the protocol, or the protocol is not aborted it succeeds with probability 1−O(2−a )
and the mutual information of Alice and Bob with the environment is smaller than 2−b .

The protocol parameters a and b are chosen by Alice and Bob, and the mutual information
between the joint system of Alice and Bob and the environment puts a bound on the amount
of information that Eve can obtain about the distributed key. 
Suppose that Alice and Bob attempt to share n Bell states +
n =2
−n/2 (|00 + |11 )⊗n

using some imperfect channel. The fidelity of the noisy state ρ that they actually shared is
174 Quantum communication with single photons

given by !   +
F = +  
n ρ n . (5.87)
The success probability of the qkd protocol can be identified with the  fidelity,
 since F is
interpreted as the probability that the state ρ is mistaken for the state +
n . Next, we prove
that

F > 1 − 2−a ⇒ S(ρ) < [(2n + a) ln 2 + 1] 2−a + O(2−2a ), (5.88)

where S(ρ) = −Tr(ρ ln ρ) is the von Neumann entropy of ρ. If F > 1 − 2−a , then the
largest eigenvalue of ρ must be larger than 1 − 2−a . The entropy of ρ can then be written as

S(ρ) < −(1 − 2−a ) ln(1 − 2−a ) − λi ln λi , (5.89)
i

where i denotes the sum over the remaining eigenvalues λi of ρ. This term is maximal
when λi = λj for all i and j, or
 2−a
λi ln λi = 2−a ln , (5.90)
22n
−1
i

from which Eq. (5.88) follows after some algebra. We can choose a value of b that scales
at most logarithmically with n, and write S(ρ) < 2−b , with

b = a − log2 [(2n + a) ln 2 + 1] , (5.91)

which is logarithmic in n.
The bound on the entropy of the n shared entangled pairs can be related to the mutual
information between the n pairs and the environment via Holevo’s theorem. We write AB
for the system of qubits shared by Alice and Bob, and E denotes the environment (including
Eve). The mutual information between the system AB and the environment is then

I (AB : E) ≤ S(ρ). (5.92)

In the worst-case scenario, the information I (AB : E) leaked from Alice and Bob’s n
entangled pairs is all captured by Eve’s probe system. The bound on the entropy S(ρ) in
Eq. (5.88) therefore limits the amount of information Eve can obtain about the distributed
key. Alice and Bob can estimate the fidelity F by sacrificing part of the shared entangled
pairs. If they find that F > 1 − 2−a , they can be confident that their communication channel
is secure within the parameters a and b. This constitutes a proof of the Ekert91 protocol.
As noted before, in practice the fidelity of the shared entangled pairs will be degraded
by various channel imperfections, which may or may not be due to an eavesdropper. In
particular, the fidelity easily drops below the threshold value of 1−2−a . However, rather than
dismissing this channel, Alice and Bob can introduce entanglement distillation or quantum
error correction into the qkd protocol. This reduces the number of shared entangled pairs,
but increases the fidelity and lowers the information held by the environment below the
security threshold of 2−b .
175 5.4 Quantum cryptography

5.4.2 Security of BB84

So far, we have considered the establishment of k Bell pairs with high fidelity for the
purpose of secure qkd in Ekert91. In a series of steps that demonstrably will not increase
the mutual information between Alice and Bob on the one hand, and the environment on
the other, we now reduce Ekert91 to BB84. The security of the former then implies the
security of the latter.
First, we observe that Alice does not have to delay the measurement of her qubits until she
has sent their entangled partners to Bob. She can measure her qubits at any point after the
creation of the Bell pairs, since both her and Bob’s remaining part of the original Ekert91
protocol (without entanglement distillation) is strictly local. In the BB84 protocol, Alice
must use two random variables in order to determine which states to send to Bob: one for
the determination of the bases, and one for the determination of the basis states once a basis
has been chosen. Suppose Alice creates the entangled state
 +  |00 + |11 |++ + |−−
 = √ = √ , (5.93)
2 2
and measures randomly in the X basis or in the Z basis. Due to the nature of entanglement,
her measurement outcomes are completely random, but the remaining state (that is sent to
Bob) is maximally correlated to her measurement outcome. This procedure can therefore
play the role of the random variable determining the basis states. We are using the inherent
probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical measurements as the random-number generator.
Next, the secure qkd protocol proceeds as follows. We define the ‘key qubits’as the qubits
that are used to share the random key, and the ‘check qubits’ as the qubits that are used
in eavesdropper detection. In Ekert91 we admitted entanglement distillation or quantum
error correction to establish Bell pairs that were sufficiently pure for the required level of
security. Since Alice has already measured her part of the entangled pairs, entanglement
distillation is not an option, and we must use quantum error correction. Alice encodes k
qubits in a stabilizer code of n key qubits that corrects d errors. In particular, she encodes
her key qubits by choosing random eigenvalues for the stabilizer generators of the code.
She then mixes the n key qubits with the n check qubits, and sends everything to Bob, who
stores the qubits in a quantum memory and publicly acknowledges receipt of the qubits.
Alice then announces her random stabilizer eigenvalues, which qubits are the key bits and
which are the check bits, and the values of the check bits. Bob compares the check bits, and
decides whether the channel is secure or not. He then measures the stabilizer generators
and uses Alice’s announcement of her choice of stabilizer generator eigenvalues to decipher
the key.
This general procedure requires that Bob stores his qubits in a quantum memory, and the
measurement of the stabilizer generators generally requires the type of control provided by
a quantum computer. Therefore, one may think that the security of this protocol is condi-
tional on having perfect quantum memory and a sufficiently powerful quantum computer.
However, there are quantum error-correction codes, such as the css codes, which do not
need either a quantum memory or a quantum computer. The protocol then proceeds by Bob
measuring the incoming photons in the appropriate bases, followed by a comparison of the
176 Quantum communication with single photons

check qubits. This is formally identical to BB84. The combined error rate of bit flips and
phase flips in the limit n → ∞ is 11%.

5.4.3 Multi-photon states and decoy states

So far, we have assumed that the photon sources are near perfect: true single-photon sources
in the case of BB84, and entangled photon pairs for Ekert91. However, this is a rather strong
technological requirement. As we discussed in Section 4.3, a less challenging method for
producing a source that, under certain conditions, can be used as a single-photon source is
to attenuate a laser such that the probability of two or more photons being emitted is small.
Of course, such a source has a large vacuum contribution, and as a result the data rate is
reduced significantly. In addition, there is always a finite probability of measuring more
than one photon in an attenuated laser source; we found previously in Eq. (4.61) that the
probability of measuring n photons is given by the Poisson distribution
2
|α|2n e−|α|
p(n|α) = , (5.94)
n!
where α is the complex amplitude of the coherent laser state.
Let us now consider how an eavesdropper may exploit multi-photon events. First of all,
since the components used by Alice and Bob are not perfect, Eve may be able to hide her
presence in the noise. The typical imperfections that can hide Eve are channel loss between
Alice and Bob, the fact that Alice’s source will often produce no photons, and that Bob’s
detectors are inefficient. Hence only a fraction (or yield Y ) of the total number of pulses
sent by Alice is ever detected by Bob. On the other hand, for the purposes of a security proof
we grant Eve complete technological power within the boundaries of quantum mechanics
and she therefore has access to a lossless channel to both Alice and Bob. Imagine that Eve
can non-destructively measure how many photons are in each pulse sent by Alice. This is
in principle allowed by quantum mechanics, using a perfect qnd detector (see Section 4.5).
If she measures a single photon, she blocks that signal completely. If she measures two or
more photons, she keeps one and sends the rest on to Bob. This kind of attack is called a
‘photon number-splitting strategy’.
The probability of more than one photon in each pulse is given by pmulti = 1 −
2
e−|α| (|α|2 + 1), and if this is greater than Y , Eve can disguise her activity completely.
We summarize this in the security condition

Y > pmulti . (5.95)

Put another way, this condition states that the total number of pulses detected by Bob is
greater than the total number of pulses that can be attacked by Eve. For realistic, very lossy
channels, Y is small and Alice is√forced to reduce |α| in order to satisfy this condition (in
this limit, we can write |α|2 < 2Y ). This severely reduces the efficacy of the protocol,
since only a small fraction |α|2 ≪ 1 of the pulses generated by Alice can be used by Bob.
In the remainder of this section we will discuss a way to overcome this restriction.
177 5.5 References and further reading

Imagine that Alice has access to two different attenuated laser sources, characterized by
different values of α. One will act as the signal source (αs ) and the other as a ‘decoy-state’
source (αd ). As the nomenclature suggests, only the signal source will ultimately be used to
transmit the key; the decoy source replaces the signal for a random selection of transmitted
pulses in order to foil Eve’s attempted espionage. The protection by decoy states works,
because Eve’s strategy sends an abnormally high number of multiphoton pulses to Bob.
Therefore, if |αd |2 > |αs |2 , the proportion of decoy-state pulses getting through to Bob is
higher than the proportion transmitted by Alice. Eve’s attack can then be straightforwardly
inferred by Bob when Alice publicly announces which of her pulses were decoys and which
were signals.
To discuss the idea more thoroughly, let us first define yn to be the yield for an n-photon
state, which must be independent of whether that state is part of a signal or decoy pulse.
We then find the yields Ys and Yd of the decoy and signal pulses:

Yd = p(n|αd ) yn ,
n

Ys = p(n|αs ) yn . (5.96)
n

In fact, by running a series of decoy pulses with a whole set of values of αd , it is possible
for Alice and Bob to calculate exactly which values of pn characterize their communication
channel. Any attempt by Eve to intercept the message and keep some information herself
can then immediately be detected by Alice and Bob. This means that Alice and Bob can use
any value of αs for their signal, with full confidence that a photon number-splitting attack
will always be detected.
If the yield for a single-photon state is given by η, then in a simple model one would
expect that the probability of an n-photon Fock state making it through the channel would
be 1 − (1 − η)n , which is approximately ηn in the small η limit. The condition for security
without decoys in the photon number-splitting attack is then η > |α|2 /2, so |α|2 must be
chosen to be 2η at most, leading to Ys < 2η2 . On the other hand, with decoy states there is
no such restriction, and Alice is free to increase the intensity of her source until Ys ≈ 1, a
possible improvement in data-transmission rates by several orders of magnitude.

5.5 References and further reading

In this chapter we have discussed only a fraction of quantum communication with single
photons. We have indicated where the straightforward implementation of communication
protocols breaks down due to physical restrictions posed by the implementation. The holo-
graphic technique for creating transverse-mode shapes was pioneered by Heckenberg et al.
(1992), and the detection of both the polarization and the orbital angular momentum of a
single photon using interferometric techniques was proposed by Leach et al. (2004). Post-
selected teleportation with photons was demonstrated experimentally by Bouwmeester et
al. (1997) and Boschi et al. (1998), and entanglement swapping was demonstrated by Pan
178 Quantum communication with single photons

et al. (1998). See also Kok and Braunstein (2000) for a detailed discussion about post-
selection in optical protocols. For general entanglement distillation we refer to Bennett et
al. (1996). The concept of decoherence-free subspaces were introduced by Zanardi and
Rasetti (1997), and demonstrated experimentally in two-photon systems by 2004. Details
of the security proof of BB84 can be found in Lo and Chau (1999), Nielsen and Chuang
(2000), Shor and Preskill (2000), and Gottesman and Preskill (2003). The theory of decoy
states was developed by Hwang (2003) and Lo et al. (2005).
 Quantum computation with
6 single photons

In the previous chapter we developed some of the basic aspects of quantum information
processing with single photons as qubits. Apart from noting the obvious benefit of using
light for quantum communication, we identified some difficulties in manipulating quantum
information that is encoded in photons. In particular, it is difficult to construct two-qubit
gates for photonic qubits. In this chapter we will have to face this difficulty head-on in
our discussion of quantum computation with single photons and linear-optical elements.
The possibility of a quantum computer based on single photons, linear optics, and photon
counting was demonstrated in a landmark paper by Knill, Laflamme, and Milburn in 2001.
Their protocol is commonly referred to as the ‘klm protocol’. In subsequent years, the klm
protocol has been dramatically slimmed down in terms of complexity and the necessary
resources to create the universal set of quantum gates. For pedagogical reasons we give the
streamlined version here, and we briefly describe the original klm protocol in Appendix 2.
We will make extensive use of the results in Section 1.4 about mode transformations, and
Section 2.3 about cluster-state quantum computing. We start this chapter, however, with a
description of linear-optical networks, and how they fail as deterministic quantum comput-
ers. In Section 6.2 we discuss the principle of post-selection, and how this can be used to
create probabilistic gates with deterministic feed-forward control. Having developed these
techniques, we show in Section 6.3 how to build linear-optical quantum computers using
so-called fusion gates, both in the one-way model and in the circuit model. In Section 6.4
we show how these models can be made tolerant against photon loss, and in Section 6.5 we
consider more general errors and discuss fault-tolerance thresholds for quantum computing
with linear optics and single photons.

6.1 Optical N-port interferometers and scalability

In Chapter 1 we stated that any unitary transformation U (N ) on N optical modes can be

realized in practice using O(N 2 ) beam splitters and phase shifters. This raises a pressing
question: a quantum computer relies on implementing unitary transformations, so why can
we not build a quantum computer based on such an N -port interferometer? The unitary
transformation on n qubits in a quantum computer is a 2n × 2n matrix. The interferometer
U (N ) must therefore have N = 2n optical modes, which is exponentially large in the number
of qubits. This unitary is implemented with at most N (N −1)/2 beam splitters, which is also
exponentially large in the number of qubits. In other words, such an implementation would
generally need an exponentially large amount of resources, and any exponential speed-up
that the quantum computer offers will be offset by the necessary resources.
 180 Quantum computation with single photons

6.1.1 Optical simulation of a quantum computer

Even though the N -port interferometer offers only a semi-classical simulation of a linear-
optical quantum computer, it is instructive to show how it is implemented, and where it fails
to be a real quantum computer. Each input (and output) mode in the N -port corresponds to
a bit string, rather than a qubit. A single photon in a particular mode indicates that the state
of the computer is given by the bit string corresponding to that mode. Since the photon can
be in a coherent superposition of modes, the state of the computer can be a superposition as
well. This is different from our usual qubit representation, where each qubit is represented
by a single photon in two optical modes (spatial, polarization, etc.). In this simulation there
is only one photon entering the input mode associated with the bit string |00 . . . 0 , and
exiting with high probability in the output mode that corresponds to the correct outcome of
the computation.
We construct the optical elements shown in Fig. 6.1 that are used to build the simulator.
The arbitrary phase gate, the Hadamard, and the cx gate suffice to construct any unitary
transformation. The (arbitrary) phase gate is defined by the transformation

1 0
U (φ) = . (6.1)
0 eiφ

Suppose that we want to apply the phase gate to qubit i at some stage in the computation.
We implement this gate in the N -port by inserting an optical phase shift φ in each mode
corresponding to the bit strings where the value of qubit i is 1. Therefore, to implement
a single phase gate we need to insert N /2 = 2n−1 phase shifters in the interferometer.
This is an exponential growth in the number of optical elements needed for only one gate.
Similarly, a Hadamard gate acting on this qubit can be implemented with a 50:50 beam
splitter and two −π/2 phase shifters (see Fig. 6.1):
|1, 0 + |0, 1 |1, 0 − |0, 1
|1, 0 → √ and |0, 1 → √ . (6.2)
2 2
In the case of many qubits, the beam  splitter
 must
 be applied to any pair of modes that
corespond to the bit strings si , 0, sj and si , 1, sj for all partial bit strings si , sj . Again, we

Fig. 6.1. Elements of a classical simulation of a linear-optical quantum computer. Horizontal lines
correspond to bit strings, rather than single qubits. (a) The arbitrary phase gate φ is generated by
an optical phase shift; (b) the Hadamard gate is generated by a 50:50 beam splitter (BS) with
appropriate phase corrections; and (c) the CX gate is a simple mode swap. The broken line
indicates that there is no interaction between the crossing modes.
181 6.2 Post-selection and feed-forward gates

need of the order of 2n−1 optical elements. It is now clear where the exponential increase
in resources comes from in this simulation: each quantum gate must be applied an expo-
nentially large number of times. The last gate we discuss here is the cx gate, which is also
the simplest gate. It corresponds to a simple swap of the modes carrying |10 and |11 .

Exercise 6.1: How many mode swaps need to be implemented for every cx gate in an
N -port, where N = 2n ?

Finally, there is another reason why the single-photon N -port construction we have pre-
sented here can only be a semi-classical simulation of a quantum computer: the equations
of motion for a single photon are exactly the classical Maxwell equations. In particular,
rather than using a single photon as the input of the N -port, we could have used a classical
coherent light pulse. Whenever the single photon ends up in (predominantly) one output
mode, the classical coherent pulse will also end up in that mode. Another way of saying
this is that single-photon interference is essentially the same as classical interference. Gen-
uine quantum computing with single photons and linear optics therefore relies critically on
higher-order interference, such as the Hong–Ou–Mandel effect.

6.2 Post-selection and feed-forward gates

The previous section demonstrates that our construction of a quantum computer based on
linear optics and single photons must be amended. In particular, rather than doing a many-
qubit computation with a single photon, we encode each individual qubit in a single photon
with two modes. This dual-rail representation was introduced in detail in Chapter 5. We
constructed a complete set of single-qubit gates, based on a spatial dual-rail representation,
polarization, orbital angular momentum, and time-bin qubits. We also showed that we cannot
create deterministic two-qubit gates, nor can we perform a deterministic Bell measurement.
These are enormous obstacles to scalable quantum computation. In this section we will
first give a theoretical construction of a deterministic two-photon cz gate using nonlinear
optical elements, and argue that this cannot be created in practice. Next, we show that we
can create ‘probabilistic’ two-qubit entangling gates when we allow the use of so-called
ancilla qubits and photodetection. These gates can then in principle be used for the creation
of cluster states. An alternative technique is gate teleportation, which historically led to the
klm protocol.

6.2.1 A CZ gate based on Kerr nonlinearities

Conceptually, it is relatively straightforward to come up with a photon–photon interaction

that can be used to create a cz gate. In Chapter 4 we encountered the cross-Kerr nonlinearity
governed by the interaction Hamiltonian
† †
HK = κ â1 â1 â2 â2 (6.3)
 182 Quantum computation with single photons

Fig. 6.2. The CZ gate based on the cross-Kerr nonlinearity. Each qubit mode is split into two modes with a
polarizing beam splitter, and the modes with  vertical
 polarization are sent into the Kerr medium.
The logical state then transforms into eijkτ j, k , with j, k = 0, 1. When τ = π , this amounts to the
CZ gate.

on modes a1 and a2 . This interaction leads to the mode transformations

† †
â1 (t) = â1 eiκt â2 â2 and â2 (t) = â2 eiκt â1 â1 (6.4)

where t is the interaction time. We saw that for sufficiently large τ = κt the cross-Kerr
nonlinearity can act as a photon switch. This suggests that such a nonlinearity can be used
in quantum computation with single-photon qubit states.
The construction of the cz gate is as follows (see Fig. 6.2): consider two single-photon
qubits in the polarization encoding, such that each input aj consists of two polarization modes
aj,H and aj,V . The output modes are denoted by b1 and b2 , also with a polarization degree
of freedom. We assume that the logical basis is given by |0 = |H and |1 = |V . The
input qubits are each split into two spatial modes with horizontal and vertical polarization.
The modes of vertical polarization are sent into the interaction region described by HK . We
can now calculate the effect of this device on the two-qubit computational basis.
If both qubits are in the state |00 , the corresponding photons are both horizontally
polarized, and neither will go through the interaction region. The output therefore remains
unchanged. Alternatively, when one of the photons is vertically polarized (that is, when the
qubit state is |01 or |10 ), the phase due to the interaction HK is

† †
|01 = |H , V = â1,H â2,V |0, 0
† †
† †
→ e−iτ â1,V â1,V â1,H â2,V |0, 0 = e−iτ â1,V â1,V |H , V = |H , V
= |01 , (6.5)

where we have used that the photon number in mode a1,V is zero. A similar reasoning leads
to |10 → |10 . Finally, if both qubits are in the state |11 , the interaction of the modes
leads to the transformation
† †
â1,V â2,V → â1,V â2,V eiτ (â1V â1V +â2V â2V −1) . (6.6)
 183 6.2 Post-selection and feed-forward gates

It is left as an exercise to the reader to verify that

|11 → e−iτ |11 . (6.7)

If we choose τ = π , and the path lengths for the horizontal and vertical modes are kept equal,
the device in Fig. 6.2 implements a deterministic cz gate on single-photon polarization
qubits.

Exercise 6.2: Verify Eq. (6.7).

Unfortunately, it is physically impossible to create cross-Kerr nonlinearities of this mag-

nitude (τ = π) and at the same time keep the noise low enough for quantum information pro-
cessing purposes. In Appendix 3 we show why this is fundamentally so. This means that we
have to find a different way to implement two-qubit gates for single photons. Most of the rest
of this chapter is devoted to demonstrating how we can build probabilistic two-qubit gates
for single photons, and how we can use them to construct an efficient quantum computation.

6.2.2 A probabilistic CZ gate for single-photon qubits

We will now construct a probabilistic cz gate with linear optics, ancilla photons, photode-
tection, and feed-forward processing. The construction consists of two stages: we first build
a cz gate using linear optics and a black-box operation, and then we give a linear-optical
implementation of the black box.
The cz gate based on the black-box operation has four optical input modes: each qubit
has two optical modes, corresponding to the logical states |0 and |1 . The |1 modes of
the two qubits are the input modes of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer. In each arm of the
interferometer we insert a black-box operation (see Fig. 6.3). The black box acts on a single
optical mode, and has the following effect on photon-number states:

|ψ = c0 |0 + c1 |1 + c2 |2 −→ c0 |0 + c1 |1 − c2 |2 , (6.8)
black box

where the ci are arbitrary ampltudes. Its action on higher photon-number states is not
defined. A quick examination of this operation tells us that the black box cannot just be a
linear phase shift implemented by a unitary operator exp(iφ n̂), with n̂ the number operator

Fig. 6.3. The CZ gate for two single-photon qubits in the dual-rail representation.
 184 Quantum computation with single photons

on the mode. For a linear phase shift to produce a shift of −1 in the state |2 , the phase of
|1 must be ±i. We therefore call the black-box operation the ‘nonlinear sign’, or ns gate.
A better name would be ‘nonlinear phase gate’.
Now, let us consider what happens to the various input states in the computational basis.
The |00 state corresponds to two photons, both in the modes that do not interact with the
beam splitter (the top and bottom lines in Fig. 6.3). We therefore have the transformation
|00 → |00 . The next two input states we consider are |01 and |10 : only one photon
enters the first beam splitter, in either input mode. The ns gate does not affect the optical
states |0 and |1 , so the second beam splitter simply reverses the effect of the first, and the
transformation becomes

|01 → |01 and |10 → |10 .

The nontrivial operation of the gate happens when there are two photons impinging on the
first beam splitter, one in each input mode. This is the two-qubit state |11 . The input state
will transform into the following output state:

|2, 0 − |0, 2
|1, 1 → √ . (6.9)
2
This state will pick up an overall minus sign due to the ns gate, before it will be returned to
the state |1, 1 by the second beam splitter. Consequently, the transformation of the photon
states is |1, 1 → − |1, 1 , which translates in a transformation of the computational basis
state |11 :
|11 → − |11 . (6.10)
This amounts to a cz gate on the two input qubits.
How can the ns gate be implemented with linear optics and projective measurements?
It is worth going through this in some detail. We want to use only photon-number states,
passive linear optics, and (perfect) photodetection. As we mentioned before in Chapter 1, the
most general linear-optical network is the N -port, which can be drawn as Fig. 6.4. Without

Fig. 6.4. Efficient construction of an arbitrary N-port with beam splitters and phase shifters.
185 6.2 Post-selection and feed-forward gates

loss of generality, we can choose the lowest input mode in the figure as the input mode
of the ns gate (indicated in the figure). The other modes represent ancillas. This way the
main mode couples to the ancilla modes with just one beam splitter. Conservation of photon
number means that if the number of ancilla photons is not equal to the number of detected
photons (assuming perfect photodetectors), then we must add or subtract photons in the
main mode. A nonlinear phase shift in the main mode does not alter the photon number, and
we must therefore register all the input ancilla photons in the photodetectors. The resulting
gate operation is probabilistic because there is a non-zero chance that we obtain the wrong
detection outcome.
The simplest N -port that could possibly be turned into an ns gate is a 2-port with an
n-photon ancilla state |ψ 1 |n 2 , where |ψ is defined in Eq. (6.8). The mode transformation
is a 2 × 2 unitary matrix, and we can write it as a matrix equation
   
† †
â1 u v b̂1
† = † , (6.11)
â2 −v ∗ u∗ b̂2

† †
where âj are the input mode operators, b̂j the output mode operators, and |u|2 + |v|2 = 1.
We want the ns gate to succeed with an appreciable probability (we need two of them
for the cz gate to work), and we will therefore first determine the success probability of
this 2-port protocol. For this, consider the vacuum contribution in the input state |ψ . The
2-port transforms this as
 n
†n −v ∗ b̂† + u∗ b̂†
â 1 2
c0 |0, n = c0 √2 |0, 0 → c0 √ |0, 0 = u∗n c0 |0, n + . . . (6.12)
n! n!
Since c0 |0 must remain untouched by the ns gate, the term u∗n on the right-hand side
must be the success probability amplitude of the gate, leading to psuccess = |u|2n . This
becomes very low, very quickly, as n increases. We therefore set n = 1 in the remainder
of this calculation (n = 0 would lead to a deterministic gate, and we already know that is
impossible).

Exercise 6.3: Show that for n = 1 the relevant term in the output state (before detection)
is given by
   
u∗ c0 |0, 1 + |u|2 − |v|2 c1 |1, 1 + u |u|2 − 2|v|2 c2 |2, 1 . (6.13)

The ns gate then requires that

 2 
|u| − |v|2 u  2 
=1 and |u| − 2|v|2 = −1 . (6.14)
u∗ u ∗

Show that the equations in (6.14) cannot be solved for u and v.

This exercise shows that we cannot build an ns gate with one photon in one ancilla mode.
It is a bit more difficult to show that this is true for any photon number |n in the ancilla
mode of a 2-port.
 186 Quantum computation with single photons

Fig. 6.5. The NS gate based on three variable beam splitters and single-photon detection.

Fig. 6.6. A polarization-based NS gate with polarization rotations.

The next attempt to build a simple ns gate must involve a 3-port. We have seen that
increasing photon number decreases the success probability, and we therefore assume a
single photon in one of the ancilla modes, and vacuum in the other mode. The set-up is
shown in Fig. 6.5.

Exercise 6.4: Show that the gate in Fig. 6.5 works if

1 √
η12 = η32 = √ and η22 = 3 − 2 2 , (6.15)
4−2 2

and show that the success probability of this ns gate is 1/4.

The ns gate makes use of beam splitters with non-standard transmission amplitude (η1 and
η2 ). In Chapter 1, we showed that the beam splitter is formally equivalent to a polarization
rotation, and we are going to make use of this in the next example. Fig. 6.6 shows a
polarization-based ns gate acting on the input mode in horizontal polarization. It is therefore
still a single-mode ns gate. The two elements labeled φ and θ are polarization rotations over
angles φ and θ , respectively. The first polarizing beam splitter has one vertically polarized
ancilla photon in the secondary input port, and no photons are detected in the output port.
The second polarizing beam splitter has no ancilla input photons, and the secondary output
must detect a single vertically polarized photon. We will now show that this interferometer
acts as an ns gate when the detector signature is (0, V ).
The input state is horizontally polarized, and can be written as

† c2 †2
|ψin = c0 |0 H + c1 |1 H + c2 |2 H = c0 + c1 âH + √ âH |0 . (6.16)
2
187 6.2 Post-selection and feed-forward gates

† † †
The first polarization rotation yields the transformation âH → cos φ âH + sin φ âV . After
detecting no photons in the secondary output mode of the first polarizing beam splitter, the
state of the optical modes just before the element θ is

† c2 †2 †
c0 + c1 cos φ âH + √ cos2 φ âH âV |0 .
2

The second polarization rotation is given by

† † † † † †
âH → cos θ âH + sin θ âV and âV → − sin θ âH + cos θ âV . (6.17)

Detecting a single vertically polarized photon at the second output port then yields the final
output state

|ψout = c0 cos θ |0 + c1 cos φ cos 2θ |1 + c2 cos2 φ cos θ (1 − 3 sin 2 θ ) |2 (6.18)

in the horizontally polarized mode. If this is to implement an ns gate, the following equations
must hold:
cos φ cos 2θ  
= 1 and cos2 φ 1 − 3 sin 2 θ = −1 . (6.19)
cos θ
The success probability for this gate is cos2 θ . To solve for φ and θ , we first eliminate cos φ,
and then we substitute w = cos2 θ . We find
√
21 − 7 2
psuccess = w = ≃ 0.227 . (6.20)
49

This leads to rotation angles θ ≈ 61.5◦ and φ ≈ 150.5◦ . The success probability of this
gate is slightly smaller than the previous ns gate.

Exercise 6.5: Verify Eq. (6.18) and solve for φ and θ .

The ns gates operate properly when a specific number of photons is detected in some
auxiliary modes, and no photons in others. The detectors must therefore not only have
photon-number discriminating capabilities, they must also have a near-perfect detection
efficiency. If the detection efficiency is lower than one, there is a probability that some
photons may have entered a mode where no photons should be, without triggering the
detector. This lowers the fidelity of the gate, leading to potential qubit loss and dephasing.
In Chapter 4 we saw that it is extremely difficult to make detectors that have near-perfect
detection efficiency. We will address this problem in Section 6.3.

6.2.3 Improving success probabilities of optical gates

What is the maximum success probability of the ns gate? There is a simple proof due to Knill
(2003) that limits the maximum success probability of a linear-optical ns gate to one half.
188 Quantum computation with single photons

The proof reveals an interesting property of optical interferometers, so we will describe it in

some detail. There are two stages: first, we show that we can transform a two-photon input
state |1, 1 into a state |2, 0 with passive linear-optics and use of a single ns gate. In the
second stage we prove that the average photon number in each output mode is smaller than
or equal to one. Reconciliation of these two facts then requires that the success probability
of the ns gate cannot exceed one half.
† †
For the first stage, we write |1, 1 = â1 â2 |0, 0 and we mix the two modes on a beam
splitter with transmission amplitude cos(π/8). The mode transformations are

† † † † † †
b̂1 = cos (π/8) â1 + sin (π/8) â2 and b̂2 = − sin (π/8) â1 + cos (π/8) â2 . (6.21)

The output state is then

√  
|ψout = − 2 cos (π/8) sin (π/8) |2, 0 + cos2 (π/8) − sin2 (π/8) |1, 1
√
+ 2 cos (π/8) sin (π/8) |0, 2 . (6.22)

Applying the ns gate to mode a1 changes the sign of the first term in the superposition, and
we can write
√  
|ψout → 2 cos (π/8) sin (π/8) |2, 0 + cos2 (π/8) − sin 2 (π/8) |1, 1
√
+ 2 cos (π/8) sin (π/8) |0, 2
1 
†2 † † †2
= sin(π/4) b̂1 + 2 cos(π/4) b̂1 b̂2 + sin(π/4) b̂2 |0, 0
2
 † 
† 2 †2
1 b̂1 + b̂2 ĉ
=√ √ |0, 0 12 = √1 |0, 0 12 = |2, 0 12 . (6.23)
2 2 2

The ns gate therefore lets us combine two photons into the same mode. No linear-optical
unitary mode transformation can accomplish this deterministically, because the transforma-
† † †2
tion âi âj → b̂k requires that two input modes are mapped to the same output mode. This
requires two identical columns in the unitary matrix U that describes the transformation,
and therefore det U = 0. However, unitary matrices must have | det U | = 1.
For the second stage of the proof, suppose that we have N optical modes. A selection
of these modes is occupied by one photon, while the remaining modes are in the vacuum
state. We can write the input state as

† †
|ψ = â1 . . . âk |0 1,...,N , (6.24)

where we have k input photons in the first k modes (we may have to relabel the modes to
get the state in this form). We now use this state as the input of an N -port that implements a
unitary transformation U , and calculate the average photon number of an arbitrary output
189 6.2 Post-selection and feed-forward gates

mode j:

† †
n̂j = ψ| U † âj âj U |ψ = ψ| U † âj U U † âj U |ψ
 N
 N  N
  
∗ †
= ψ| ujm âm ujn ân |ψ = ∗
ujm ujn ψ| â†m ân |ψ
m=1 n=1 m,n=1

N

= |ujm |2 ≤ 1 , (6.25)
m=1

where we used the relation U † âj U = N n=1 ujn ân , and the inner product in the second-to-
last line is a Kronecker delta δmn because |ψ has definite photon number in each mode.
The final inequality follows from the unitarity of U . This tells us that on average we can
never measure more than one photon in the output modes of an arbitrary unitary N -port if
the input modes had at most one photon each.
The ns gate is probabilistic, and each application of the gate gives a ‘success’ or ‘failure’
indication. If we ignore this indication, the state of the output mode ĉ in Eq. (6.23) becomes
a mixture:
ρ = p |2 2| + (1 − p)ρ ′ , (6.26)

where p is the success probability of the ns gate, and ρ ′ may or may not contain the projector
|2 2|. The average photon number in mode a is then

n̂a = Tr n̂a ρ = 2p + q , (6.27)

with q the contribution from ρ ′ . Since n̂a ≤ 1 and q ≥ 0, we obtain

1
p≤ . (6.28)
2

This is not a tight bound. Subsequent work by Scheel and Lütkenhaus (2004) and Eisert
(2005) has shown that the maximum success probability of the ns gate is one quarter, and
the construction above is therefore optimal.
When we apply the probabilistic ns gate, we are hoping for a specific detection signature
indicating ‘success’. In this signature we include the possibility that we still have to apply a
deterministic passive linear-optical operation. When we get a different detection signature,
there are two possibilities:

(i) The detection signature indicates that with more ancilla photons and photodetection
the ns gate can still be made to work;
(ii) The detection signature indicates a catastrophic error, and the gate has failed beyond
repair. This is the case when the detected number of photons is larger than the number
of ancilla photons. Such a signature can happen only when there was a photon in the
input state, thus revealing information about this state.
 190 Quantum computation with single photons

Fig. 6.7. Schematic structure of increasing the success probability of the NS gate via feed-forward.

In the event of possibility (i), we can apply another post-selection linear-optical network
designed to salvage the gate. The detection signature of this second round again has three
possible outcomes, namely ‘success’, ‘failure’, or ‘retry’ in the case of a correctable failure.
We can repeat this procedure until we obtain either a catastrophic failure or a successful
gate operation (see Fig. 6.7).
We can use this construction to put increasingly tighter bounds on the success probability
of the feed-forward ns gate. The probability of a catastrophic failure typically depends on
the input state, and we therefore have to consider the maximal failure rate. This occurs when
c0 = c1 = 0, and c2 = 1, and determines a failure rate of pfailure ≈ 0.61. This is larger than
1/2, the minimum failure bound for general optical gates we found before. We can sum the
catastrophic error probabilities at each iteration, but due to the number of parameters this is
very difficult and only feasible numerically. The result indicates that the catastrophic failure
rate approaches 2/3 (Scheel et al., 2006). The improvement in gate probability seems very
modest (after one iteration we obtain psuccess ≈ 0.28, which is only marginally larger than
one quarter). The prospects of feed-forward gates are therefore not very promising, and in
the next section we will encounter different gates that are simpler and have a higher initial
success probability.

6.2.4 A CX gate that consumes entanglement

Previously, we have seen how we can construct entangling gates like the cz and the cx gate
with single-photon states as ancillas. The success probability of these gates is relatively
low: 1/16 without feed-forward, and towards 1/9 with feed-forward. In this section we
investigate whether entangled ancilla states can help increase the success probability. We
find that it does, and the success probability rises to 1/4.
To see how entanglement can be useful, consider the following hand-waving argument: its
use makes sense only if we send one part of the entangled photon pair into an interferometer
with the control qubit, and the other part into a second interferometer with the target qubit,
because we need to establish (or remove) entanglement between the control and the target
qubit. This will be our general approach. We will first construct a formal entanglement-
assisted ‘completely positive’ (cp) map that induces a probabilistic cx gate, and second, we
will give an optical implementation.
Suppose we use the following Bell state on modes 1 and 2 as our entangled resource
 + 1
 = √ (|HD 12 + |HA 12 + |VD 12 − |VA 12 ) , (6.29)
12
2
191 6.2 Post-selection and feed-forward gates

where we have written the second qubit in the diagonal polarization basis. The qubit input
states are
|ψ c = α |H + β |V and |φ t = γ |D + δ |A , (6.30)
where c and t denote ‘control’ and ‘target’, respectively. In the computational basis, the
joint state can be written as

α(γ + δ) |HH ct + α(γ − δ) |HV ct + β(γ + δ) |VH ct + β(γ − δ) |VV ct .

We will now show how the following two maps will create a cx gate:

M1 = |H HH | + |V VV | and M2 = |D DD| + |A AA| . (6.31)

The bras in M1 (M2 ) act on the modes 1 and c (2 and t) and the ket is c (or t). These are
cp maps, rather than proper projectors in Hilbert space, because they are not idempotent:
Mi = M2i . First, M1 gives
 
M1 |ψ c + 12 = α |HD c2 + α |HA c2 + β |VD c2 − β |VA c2 . (6.32)

Subsequently, the second map gives

 +
|ψout ct = M2 M1 |ψ c
 |φ t
12
= αγ |HD ct + βγ |VD ct + αδ |HA ct − βδ |VA ct . (6.33)

When we write this in the computational basis we obtain

α(γ + δ) |HH ct + α(γ − δ) |HV ct + β(γ − δ) |VH ct + β(γ + δ) |VV ct .

The two maps therefore induce a swap between |VH and |VV , while doing nothing to
|HH and |HV . This is a cx gate. It is also not hard to see that if we replace D and A with
H and V , respectively, two M1 maps will implement a cz gate.

Exercise 6.6: Verify that the two maps M1 and M2 operate as advertised.

How do we implement the maps M1 and M2 ? To answer this question we note a couple
of things: first, each map takes two input photons and produces one output photon. We
therefore need to measure at least one photon. Second, we may assume initially that there
are no ancilla photons (other than the entangled photon pair), since each added photon has
the tendency to lower the success probability on account of creating more possible output
states.
Now consider the map M1 = |H HH | + |V VV |. This operation means that when
the two input photons have equal polarization in the computational basis {H , V }, they will
enter two different output modes, one of which will be measured. This is a description of a
polarizing beam splitter rotated to separate horizontal and vertical polarization, where one
output mode is detected. Without detection, the action of the polarizing beam splitter is

α |HH + β |HV + γ |VH + δ |VV

→ α |H , H + β |HV , 0 + γ |0, VH + δ |V , V , (6.34)
 192 Quantum computation with single photons

Fig. 6.8. The entanglement-assisted cx gate.

where we have added commas to separate the spatial modes in the second line to avoid
confusion. We see that post-selecting on a single measured photon in one mode will ensure
that there is a single photon in the second mode with exactly the same polarization. Note
also that zero or two photons in one mode indicate a failure of the map.
We have to be careful, because a polarization-insensitive photodetector will erase the
polarization information of the detected photon, and thus cause the output state to be mixed.
On the other hand, measuring a horizontally polarized photon (say) will create the map
|H HH |, which is not what we want. We have to measure the photon in a conjugate
(or mutually unbiased) polarization basis {D, A} (diagonal polarization) or {L, R} (circular
polarization). We follow the literature and choose D and A.
The map M2 works in exactly the same way as M1 , except that we have to swap the roles
of {H , V } and {D, A}: the polarizing beam splitter is rotated to separate diagonal polariza-
tion, while the photodetector measures horizontally and vertically polarized photons. The
two maps are then combined with the entangled ancilla state to form the linear-optical inter-
ferometer shown in Fig. 6.8. The gate succeeds when each photodetector detects exactly
one photon. Counting all possibilities, it is not too difficult to see that the overall success
probability is 1/4, a great improvement over gates that do not consume entanglement.
There is one more subtlety in the operation of this gate. Given a successful event (one
detected photon), the photodetector in M1 (M2 ) can indicate D or A (H or V ). Unitarity
requires that these two orthogonal detector results produce orthogonal output states of the
gate. Indeed, we need to apply a (deterministic) single-photon operation depending on the
measurement outcome.

Exercise 6.7: Prove that the linear-optical cx based on entangled resources succeeds with
probability 1/4. What are the single-photon operations for each measurement outcome?

6.3 Building quantum computers with probabilistic gates

Having introduced probabilistic two-photon entangling gates like the cz gate and the cx
gate, we can in principle use them to create universal cluster states and perform any quantum
193 6.3 Building quantum computers with probabilistic gates

computation. However, the gates introduced so far are not the most economical in creating
cluster states, and when we consider realistic photodetectors we find that they are very hard
to make loss-tolerant since they rely in part on not counting photons. Furthermore, it is not
necesary to have a cz or a cx gate if you want to construct a cluster state. Any entangling
operation that gives you the right result will do. In this section we introduce ‘fusion gates’,
and show how they can be used to create cluster states efficiently. We also show how a
simple qubit encoding allows the fusion gates to be used in the circuit model for quantum
computing.

6.3.1 Fusion gates and four-photon GHZ states

The two maps M1 and M2 that make up the fixed components of the cx gate can be used
to create multi-photon entangled states. If the two photons in modes 2 and 3 are part of an
entangled pair, the resulting output photons from the map M1 form a three-photon ghz
state:

M1 (|HH 12 + |VV 12 ) (|HH 34 + |VV 34 ) = |HHH 134 + |VVV 134 , (6.35)

where we detected a single photon with polarization D in mode 2, and we suppressed the
normalization. The map M1 fused the two entangled photon pairs at the cost of a single
photon. We therefore rename M1 as a ‘fusion’ gate. In particular, it is the first of two fusion
gates, and we will therefore call it the ‘type-I fusion gate’ FI :
'
detector outcome D: |H HH | + |V VV | ,
FI : (6.36)
detector outcome A: |H HH | − |V VV | .

The second fusion gate FII (type-II) is based on the map M2 with the modification that
both output modes are measured with a photodetector in the {H , V } basis. When the two
detectors each indicate the presence of a single photon the gate is successful. There are four
possible detector outcomes that indicate a successful gate operation: (H , H ), (H , V ), (V , H ),
and (V , V ). When both detectors give the same outcome (H , H ) or (V , V ), the resulting
output state is found by taking the inner product of the input state with HV | + VH |,
while opposite polarization leads to an output state that is found by the inner product with
HH | + VV |:
'
detector outcome (H , H ) or (V , V ): HV | + VH | ,
FII : (6.37)
detector outcome (H , V ) or (V , H ): HH | + VV | .

Clearly, this gate removes two photons from the input state, and can therefore not be used to
produce larger entangled states when the input states are entangled photon pairs. However,
when we apply FII to two photons that are each part of a three-photon ghz state (say, the
output of FI ), then we can create the following four-photon ghz state:
'
|HHHH + |VVVV
FII (|HHH + |VVV ) (|HHH + |VVV ) =
|HHVV + |VVHH ,
 194 Quantum computation with single photons

Fig. 6.9. Two fusion gates FI and FII . The type-I fusion gate FI is a polarizing beam splitter rotated to
separate the {H, V} direction, followed by a single-photon detection in the basis {D, A} in only one
output mode, and the type-II fusion gate FII is a polarizing beam splitter oriented to the {D, A}
direction, followed by single-photon detection in the {H, V} basis in each output mode.

depending on the detection signature. We have again suppressed normalization, and assumed
that the fusion gate acted on one photon in the first superposition and one in the second. The
two fusion gates are shown in Fig. 6.9. There is a third fusion gate FII′ that acts similarly to
FII , but in the basis {D, A}, rather than {H , V }. We will use this gate in Section 6.3.3.

Exercise 6.8: Construct the dual-rail equivalent of the two polarization-based fusion gates.

The type-II fusion gate consumes more photons than the type-I fusion gate, which begs the
question: why use type-II at all? It turns out that FII has two important practical advantages
over FI . First, the failure mode of FII is less catastrophic when we want to create cluster
states. We will discuss this in the next section. Second, the type-II gate still works in the
presence of lossy sources and detectors. We demonstrate this with a practical example.
So far, we have assumed that our photodetectors are perfect. In other words, we can
always tell exactly how many photons there were present in a particular detected mode. In
practice, this is of course not the case at all. There will be losses in the detector, and often
the detector gives only a binary output (click/no-click) without any additional information
about photon number (see Chapter 4 for more details). In addition, we may assume that
our entangled resource photons are always created in pairs, but sometimes pair-production
may fail altogether (see, e.g., parametric downconversion). Remarkably, we can still create
high-fidelity four-photon ghz states when we choose the right configuration of FI and FII
gates.
In order for FII to be helpful at all, we must first create two three-photon ghz gates with
two FI gates, each acting on two entangled photon pairs (shown in Fig. 6.10). There are
several ways in which the creation of the three-photon ghz state can fail, even though the
detector signature in FI indicates success. First, not every source of photon pairs may in
fact create a pair. If the source efficiency is denoted by ηs , the output of the source ρs can
be written as
 ! 
ρs = ηs + +  + (1 − ηs ) |00 00| . (6.38)

The probability that both sources produce an entangled pair is ηs2 (assuming all sources
are identical). We accept a certain event only when we find a detector click, which means
 195 6.3 Building quantum computers with probabilistic gates

Fig. 6.10. Failure modes of the three-photon GHZ state factory. (a) One of the sources may fail to produce an
entangled photon pair; (b) one of the photons may not be detected by the photodetectors; and
(c) taking the possibly ‘empty’ optical modes and applying a type-II fusion gate to them ensures
that a high-fidelity four-photon GHZ state is created. This construction assumes that the dark counts
in the detectors and higher-order pair production in the sources are negligible.

that at least 1 one source must have produced an entangled photon pair. If the other source
did not create a photon pair, then the output mode of FI will be empty (the vacuum state).
Second, even if both sources produce an entangled photon pair, the natural evolution of the
polarizing beam splitter may send two photons into the detected modes. If the detector has
detection efficiency ηd , then there is a probability 2ηd (1 − ηd ) that only one of the two
photons triggers a detector. As a result, we accept the event, even though the output of FI
is again empty.
Finite-source and detection efficiency will cause empty output modes in the fusion gates.
Whenever the output mode of FI is not empty (conditioned on a successful detection
signature), the fusion gate has worked correctly. For this it is essential that the detector dark
counts and the multiple pair-production of the sources are negligible. This places severe
restrictions on parametric downconversion as the source of entangled photon pairs. Given
these caveats, we can now apply the type-II fusion gate to the output modes of the two type-I
fusion gates. Since two photons must be detected in FII , whenever one of the output modes
of the two FI is empty, FII cannot give a two-fold detection coincidence, and therefore
cannot give the required detection signature. The overall success probability p of creating
a loss-tolerant four-photon ghz state is

(ηs ηd )4
p= , (6.39)
8
since we have four successfully operating sources, four detected photons, and three fusion
gates with intrinsic success probability of 1/2.

1 We assume that detector dark counts are negligible. This is often a very good approximation, but it is important
to remember that in general dark counts will give us false positives, which directly affect the fidelity of these
operations.
196 Quantum computation with single photons

Exercise 6.9: Show that the creation of four-photon ghz states with the fusion gates
described above requires at most bucket detectors.

6.3.2 Optical cluster-state generation

The four-photon ghz states that are created according to the loss-tolerant procedure in
the previous section are locally equivalent (or, more specifically, lc-equivalent) to cluster
states. In this section, we will explore how the two fusion gates connect two arbitrary cluster
states to make a large cluster state. This procedure, together with the recipe to create small
ghz states, is sufficient to create universal cluster states for quantum computing. In the
final part of this section we show how failure of the fusion gates affects the clusters.
Since our aim is to join two clusters by applying a fusion gate to a single qubit from
each cluster, we first write an arbitrary cluster state |C explicitly as a single qubit that is
entangled with the rest of the cluster. Recall that a cluster state is obtained by preparing
a collection of qubits in the |+ state, followed by cz gates between the qubit pairs that
require a connection in the graph. Suppose the cluster state consists of N qubits, and we
wish to apply the fusion gate to qubit 1. The cluster state |C is obtained from the state
|+ 1 |ψ 2..N by applying cz gates between qubit 1 and all its neighbours in |C :
#
|C = CZ1k |+ 1 |ψ 2..N . (6.40)
k∈n(1)

Here, n(1) is the neighbourhood of qubit 1 in the state |C . Given that the cz gate CZ1k is
by definition a Pauli Z operation on qubit k when qubit 1 is in the state |1 , we can write
the cluster state as #
|C = |0 1 |ψ 2..N + |1 1 Zk |ψ 2..N , (6.41)
k∈n(1)

where we have suppressed the overall normalization factor. We now consider two cluster
states |CA and |CB :
#
|CA = |0 1 |ψA 2..N + |1 1 Zj |ψA 2..N
j∈n(1)
#
|CB = |0 1′ |ψB 2′ ..M ′ + |1 1′ Zj |ψB 2′ ..M ′ . (6.42)
j∈n(1′ )

We can then apply the fusion gates FI and FII to qubits 1 and 1′ .
First, we consider the effect of FI on qubits 1 and 1′ . The operation can be written as

FI = |0 1 11′ 00| ± |1 1 11′ 11| , (6.43)

where the relative sign (±) depends on the measurement outcome. This leads to
#
FI |CA , CB = |0 1 |ψA 2..N |ψB 2′ ..M ′ ± |1 1 Zj |ψA 2..N |ψB 2′ ..M ′ , (6.44)
j∈n(1,1′ )
 197 6.3 Building quantum computers with probabilistic gates

Fig. 6.11. Failure modes of FI with perfect detectors. (a) Zero photons are detected: the input modes were
in the state |V, H ; (b) two photons are detected: the input modes were in the state |H, V . This is a
measurement in the computational basis.

where n(1, 1′ ) = n(1) ∪ n(1′ ) is the union of the neighbourhoods of qubit 1 and 1′ , respec-
tively. When the measurement outcome of FI indicates that the minus sign is actuated, we
can apply a corrective Z operation to qubit 1. It is clear that the resulting state is again a
cluster state, since it takes the same form as Eq. (6.41).
The fusion gate FI succeeds at most only half the time, so it is important to know what
happens when the gate fails. Assuming perfect photodetectors, the measurement outcomes
that indicate gate failure are ‘no photons’ and ‘two photons’. In the latter case, the two
photons must have opposite polarization, as was determined in Eq. (6.34). First, if no
photons are detected, then both photons must be in the output mode. This can happen only
when one incoming photon is horizontally polarized, and the other vertically. Moreover,
we know exactly which photon has what polarization (see Fig. 6.11). Therefore, finding no
photons is an effective single-photon qubit measurement in the computational basis {H , V }.
Second, when two photons are detected there is again only one possible two-photon state
that causes both photons to enter the output mode that leads to the detector. Hence a two-
photon detector outcome is also equivalent to a measurement in the computational basis.
As a result, the failure of FI results in a Z measurement of the two qubits it is acting on.
Recall from Chapter 2 that the Z measurement of a qubit in a cluster state breaks all the
bonds of that qubit with the rest of the cluster. When we are trying to increase the size of
the cluster, this a rather bad way to fail.
Next consider the effect of a type-II fusion gate FII on two qubits that are part of a cluster.
We can deduce from Eq. (6.42) that a successful application of FII yields the state
#
|ψA 2..N |ψB 2′ ..M ′ + Zj |ψA 2..N |ψB 2′ ..M ′ ,
j∈n(1,1′ )
# #
or |ψA 2..N Zj |ψB 2′ ..M ′ + Zj |ψA 2..N |ψB 2′ ..M ′ . (6.45)
j∈n(1′ ) j∈n(1)

It is not so easy to see directly that these are again cluster states, so we will use the stabilizer
formalism to prove that FII produces cluster states. This approach also has the advantage
that we can see exactly what bonds the type-II fusion gate creates.
198 Quantum computation with single photons

Suppose that before the application of FII , the qubits 1 and 1′ are connected to several
other qubits in their respective clusters. We will consider an arbitrary neighbour i of qubit
1 and j from qubit 1′ , and study how their stabilizers change under FII . Since our result is
true for two arbitrary neighbours, it is true for all neighbours. The stabilizer generator for
qubits i, 1, 1′ , and j can be written as

Si = A Xi Z1
S 1 = B Zi X1
S1′ = X1′ Zj C
Sj = Z1′ Xj D, (6.46)

where A, B, C, and D are products of Pauli Z operations on the neighbouring qubits that
are not i, 1, 1′ , or j. A successful application of FII projects the two qubits onto the state
|HH + |VV or |HV + |VH . We consider here the case where the projection is onto
|HH + |VV and leave the alternative as an exercise. The stabilizer generators for this state
are X1 X1′ and Z1 Z1′ . Since the fusion gate removes the two qubits it acts upon, we have to
find two new stabilizers for qubits i and j that commute with the stabilizer of the projected
fusion state. We find these by multiplying Si Sj with Z1 Z1′ , and S1 S1′ with X1 X1′ :

Si′ = A Xi Xj D and Sj′ = B Zi Zj C . (6.47)

We can transform these stabilizer generators into the standard form by applying a Hadamard
operation to either qubit i or qubit j. Applying, say, Hj then yields the new generators

S̄i = A Xi Zj D and S̄j = B Zi Xj C . (6.48)

This means that FII creates a bond between qubit i and qubit j. When there are multiple
neighbours of qubit 1 and 1′ , one of the neighbouring qubits k inherits all the links with the
neighbours of qubits 1 and 1′ , while the other qubits inherit both their own neighbours and
all the neighbours from k.

Exercise 6.10: Construct the stabilizer generators S̄i and S̄j when FII projects onto
|HV + |VH .

Assuming again perfect photodetectors, the type-II fusion gate fails when we find two
photons in the same output mode of the polarizing beam splitter. This can happen only when
one photon was in the polarization state |D and the other in |A . Which detector finds the
two photons determines which photon was in |D and which one was in |A . A failed FII
gate therefore acts as an X measurement on each photon. From Chapter 2 we recall that an X
measurement of a qubit in a cluster does not break the bonds but rearranges the bonds among
the neighbours of the measured qubit. In particular, in a linear cluster the X measurement
shortens the cluster by two qubits, while redundantly encoding one of the neighbours of the
measured qubit. When we try to fuse clusters, the gate failure of FII is therefore considerably
less catastrophic than gate failure of FI . Linear-optical quantum computing now proceeds
by creating the necessary cluster states with fusion gates, and performing single-qubit
199 6.3 Building quantum computers with probabilistic gates

measurement on the photons. These measurements are polarization measurements (although

any dual-rail representation works), and can be performed deterministically, up to detector
inefficiencies. In Section 6.4 we consider finite-detection efficiencies.

6.3.3 Photonic quantum computing in the circuit model

The one-way model of quantum computing using cluster states is a very elegant way to
perform quantum computation with probabilistic entangling gates, but it is not the only way.
When we choose the right encoding of a logical qubit, we can still do quantum computing
in the circuit model. The idea behind this model is to make a large multi-qubit encoding for
each logical qubit, such that the fusion gates can be used to implement probabilistic gates
without destroying the logical qubit when the gate fails. In this section we will introduce
the encoding that makes this possible, and then we construct the necessary circuit elements.
The computational basis states for the logical qubits are defined as n-qubit states
⊗n ⊗n ⊗n ⊗n
(n) |+ + |− (n) |+ − |−
|0 = √ and |1 = √ . (6.49)
2 2

These are even and odd ‘parity states’, respectively. The parity of a bit string is even when the
string contains an even number of 1s, and it is odd if the string contains an odd number of 1s.
Classically, a bit string always has a well-defined parity. In quantum mechanics, however,
qubit states can be superpositions of different parity states (for example, the three-qubit
ghz state |000 + |111 does not have a well-defined parity).

Exercise 6.11: Show that |0 (n) is a uniform superposition of all even parity qubit strings,
(n)
and that |1 is a uniform superposition of all odd parity qubit strings.

Exercise 6.12: Construct an operator that corresponds to the parity observable for n qubits.

Having defined |0 (n) and |1 (n)

as even and odd parity states, we can introduce a recursive
construction of the states:
(n) (n) (n) (n)
(n+1) |0 |0 + |1 |1 (n+1) |0 |1 + |1 |0
|0 = √ and |1 = √ . (6.50)
2 2

From this construction it is immediately clear that a measurement in the computational

basis {|0 , |1 } of one qubit will not destroy the encoding, but instead will reduce the size
n of the encoding by one. For example, when a qubit is in a state α |0 (n+1) + β |1 (n+1) ,
measurement of a qubit in the computational basis would give α |0 (n) +β |1 (n) for outcome
0 and α |1 (n) + β |0 (n) for outcome 1. It is clear from Eq. (6.50) that a bit-flip X of a
single qubit in the logical qubit encoding will induce a bit-flip X (n) of the logical qubit.
How do we apply single-qubit operations to these encoded logical qubits? The Pauli Z (n)
operation must induce the unitary transformation |0 (n) → |0 (n) and |1 (n) → − |1 (n) .
Since |0 (n) has an even number of 1s, and |1 (n) has an odd number of 1s, we can make a
Z (n) operation by applying Z operations to all n qubits in the encoding. The next single-qubit
200 Quantum computation with single photons

operation we consider is an arbitrary rotation around the x axis in the Bloch sphere of the
encoded qubit. Such a rotation is generated by

UX(n) (θ) = cos θ Î − i sin θ X (n) . (6.51)

We have already seen that a bit-flip X on a single qubit in the encoding acts as a bit-flip
X (n) on the encoded qubit. We can therefore implement an arbitrary rotation around the x
axis by performing a single-qubit rotation on any of the qubits in the encoding:

UX (θ) = cos θ Î − i sin θ X . (6.52)

(n)
The single-qubit gates Z (n) and UX (θ) are not universal for quantum computing. In order to
generate a universal set of gates we have to add two more gates, for example the single-qubit
(n)
phase gate  = UZ (π/4) and the two-qubit cx gate. However, these cannot be imple-
mented deterministically with linear-optical elements, and we therefore have to construct
them from the fusion operators. It is not intuitively obvious that the fusion gates should be
capable of this, but we will show that it is indeed the case by explicit construction.
Before we construct the two remaining gates, we need to understand better how the fusion
gates act on the encoded qubits. We use the variation FII′ instead of FII . The gate FII′ works
exactly like FII , but in the basis {D, A}, rather than {H , V }. The main practical difference
between the two gates is that the failure mode of FII′ amounts to a computational basis (Z)
measurement {H , V }, rather than a measurement in the X basis. Whereas a Z measurement
is bad news for cluster-state generation, an X measurement of a single photon collapses the
parity state |0 (n) , as can be seen from Eq. (6.49), and is therefore catastrophic. The action
of a successful FII′ is
'
detector outcome (D, D) or (A, A): HH | + VV | ,
FII′ : (6.53)
detector outcome (D, A) or (A, D): HH | − VV | ,

while failure results in a measurement in the computational basis. This reduces the encoding
from size n to n − 1.
How do we create the parity encoding of the logical qubit? We first use the type-I and
type-II fusion gates FI and FII to create the four-photon ghz state from the previous section,
given by |HHHH + |VVVV ≡ |0000 + |1111 . When we apply a Hadamard operation
to each photonic qubit, we obtain the state |+ + ++ + |− − −− = |+ ⊗4 + |− ⊗4 .
(Incidentally, this state can also be created with FII′ , so only one version of the type-II gate
is required for the circuit model protocol.) By definition, this is the logical computational
basis state |0 (4) . We can make smaller states by measuring photons in the {H , V } basis
and applying a bit flip to one photon in the remaining state, depending on the measurement
outcome. Next, we can again use Eq. (6.50) to show that a successful type-II fusion gate
FII′ applied to one photon from each logical qubit |0 (n+1) and |0 (m+1) creates the state

FII′ : |0 (n+1)
|0 (m+1)
→ |0 (n+m)
. (6.54)

Depending on the detector outcome, it may be necessary to apply a phase flip Z (n+m) to
the photons in |0 (n+m) . Similarly, when the input photons of FII′ are part of the logical
 201 6.3 Building quantum computers with probabilistic gates

qubits |1 (n+1) and |0 (m+1) , a successful type-II fusion operation creates |1 (n+m)
. We can
summarize these two results by defining an arbitrary pure encoded qubit

(n+1) (n+1) (n+1)

|ψ = α |0 + β |1 . (6.55)

The successful fusion operator FII′ then creates

FII′ : |ψ (n+1)
|0 (m+1)
→ |ψ (n+m)
, (6.56)

subject to a phase-flip Z (n+m) given the measurement outcome.

Exercise 6.13: Verify Eq. (6.56).

We now show how we can create the phase gate (n) . The entire protocol is shown in
Fig. 6.12. First, we apply  to a single qubit in an n + 1 encoded qubit |ψ (n+1) ; second, we
prepare another encoded qubit in the state |0 (m+1) and we send one of its qubits into FII′ ,
together with the qubit we applied the  gate to; finally, we perform a parity measurement
(which is a computational basis measurement in this encoding) and apply a corrective
bit-flip and/or phase shift to the output qubit. The output state is then (m) |ψ (m) .
When the fusion gate fails, the participating qubits are measured in the computational
basis and hence are removed from the encoding. The gate  can therefore be attempted
again, but now on |ψ (n) with ancilla qubit |0 (m) . For sufficiently large encoding n and
m, the gate succeeds before the encoding runs out of steam. We can choose the size of the
ancilla |0 (m) such that on average the output qubit has the same level of encoding as the
input qubit.
The cx gate is implemented as shown in Fig. 6.13. The control and target qubits are
encoded in n and m level qubits, respectively, and we require one ancilla qubit |0 (k) . First,
we use a type-I fusion gate on a qubit from the control and a qubit from the ancilla. The
resulting qubit is fed into an FII′ gate, together with a qubit from the target. Depending on
the parity of the control qubit, a corrective X operation must be applied to the remaining
ancilla and target qubits. The ancilla becomes the new control qubit. When the fusion gates
fail, the encoding of the qubits is lowered but no quantum information is destroyed. The
level of encoding must be chosen such that the overall failure probability falls well below
the fault-tolerance threshold.

Fig. 6.12. Using the fusion gate FII′ and the phase gate  to create the (n) gate.
 202 Quantum computation with single photons

Fig. 6.13. Using the fusion gates FI and FII′ to create the CX gate.

Exercise 6.14: Verify that the  and cx gates operate in the manner shown in Figs. 6.12
and 6.13.

6.4 Photon counting and quantum memories

In addition to the errors that occur due to the natural failure modes of the fusion gates, there
are also errors in the computation that arise because of noise or other physical imperfections,
and we need to protect against these errors as well. One of these imperfections that is
typical for implementations using single photons is loss, either due to inefficient sources or
detectors.

6.4.1 The tree encoding

We look first at protection from photon loss in the one-way model of quantum computation
with single photons and linear-optical elements. The situation is initially as shown in Fig.
6.14a. Suppose that a particular qubit (the middle bottom) must be measured in the basis
M (±α) as part of a quantum algorithm. However, there will be some probability that
the photon carrying the qubit will be lost, due to source or detection inefficiency. Since
M (±α) is part of the algorithm,2 the actual sign of α is not determined until just before
the measurement is made. We cannot therefore perform this measurement at the cluster
state-preparation stage, but we must do the loss protection in-line.
To protect against photon loss, we will ‘plant a tree’: we will create a (large) tree structure
at the site of the qubit that is to be measured in M (±α), as shown in Fig. 6.14b. The trunk
of the tree consists of two qubits, both of which will be measured in the X basis at the
state-preparation stage. A highly connected cluster state results, shown in Fig. 6.14c. This
encoding must be repeated for every qubit in the cluster, which will generally lead to an

2 For brevity, we will denote both the basis and the observable by M (±α).
 203 6.4 Photon counting and quantum memories

Fig. 6.14. Tree encoding for protection against photon loss. (a) A particular algorithm requires that we
measure a certain qubit in the cluster in the basis M(±α). The photon carrying the qubit may be
lost. (b) We replace the qubit by a tree, and perform the two X measurements at the
state-preparation stage. (c) The encoded cluster is now highly connected. If the measurement
M(±α) in (b) is successful, then Z measurements of the shaded qubits will yield the cluster in (a).
If M(±α) fails due to photon loss, we can attempt it again on the other qubit on the same level in
the tree. The lost qubit can still be projected onto the computational basis by measuring the next
level in the tree.

even higher degree of connectivity. Here, we will consider the tree encoding of only this
one qubit, in order to keep the figures readable. Since the two adjacent X measurements
occur at the state-preparation process, we can assume that they are always successful,
and below we will freely switch between Fig. 6.14b and 6.14c when discussing the tree
encoding.
When the M (±α) measurement in Fig. 6.14b succeeds, the shaded qubits must be mea-
sured in the Z basis. Recalling that a Z measurement breaks all the bonds, it is easy to see
that successful Z measurements turn Fig. 6.14c back into 6.14a. When the M (±α) mea-
surement in Fig. 6.14b fails, we can retry on another qubit at the same (horizontal) level.
We may have several branches coming off the lowest qubit labelled X , which gives us
many opportunities to get the M (±α) measurement done. However, every lost photon will
cause local decoherence in the cluster. Somehow, we have to measure the lost qubit in the
computational basis (the Z basis), and this is where the rest of the tree comes in.
We can perform an indirect Z measurement when we find that a qubit is lost. Consider
Fig. 6.15, and suppose that the black qubit is lost. We wish to retroactively measure this
qubit in the computational basis. This seems an impossible task, until we realize that a
successful measurement of the stabilizer generator associated with a qubit directly below
the lost qubit (qubit 1 in Fig. 6.15) will determine the computational basis state of the lost
qubit. The cluster state | was prepared as an eigenstate of stabilizer generators, one of
which is
S1 = Zlost X1 Z2 Z3 Z4 with S1 | = | . (6.57)

This equation means that if we measure X on qubit 1 and Z on its neighbours (including the
not-yet-lost photon), the product of the five measurement outcomes (±1) will be +1. Now
 204 Quantum computation with single photons

Fig. 6.15. Suppose the black qubit is lost. Its value in the computational basis can be inferred by measuring
the remainder of the stabilizer generator of a neighbouring qubit.

suppose the photon is lost. An X measurement of qubit 1, together with Z measurements

of qubits 2–4 will give outcomes ±1. When we multiply these outcomes, we obtain either
+1 or −1. Assuming no other errors have occurred, this means that a Z measurement
of the lost qubit would have yielded +1 or −1, respectively, perfectly correlated with
the actual measurement outcomes. The tree structure allows us to make a counterfactual
measurement of the lost photon! This is very counterintuitive, and a direct consequence of
the entanglement that was present in the cluster state before the photon was lost.
We have just seen that we can do an indirect Z measurement on a particular photon, even
when it is lost. However, the measurement involves several other photon-detection events,
any of which may fail due to photon loss. However, only one of the X measurements in
Fig. 6.15 must succeed, because the remaining (lower) Z measurements connected to the
successfully X -measured qubit can again be either direct or indirect measurements. This
leads to contradictory requirements on the tree structure: on the one hand, we want many
qubits at the level of the M (±α) and X measurements, so we can repeat the measurement
often, and photon loss may be high. On the other hand, we want to minimize the number of
(direct or indirect) Z measurements we need to do. It turns out that the maximum permissible
photon loss is η = 50%. Physically, this limit can be understood as follows: suppose that the
photons are not lost, but are captured by your evil twin. If you and your twin can both do the
quantum computation with half of the qubits, you can do the computation twice. This can be
used to violate the no-cloning theorem, since the two systems can generate perfect identical
output states based on a single (possibly unknown) input state of the computer. Therefore,
it is impossible to recover from photon loss if the losses are 50% or more. Numerical
simulations have shown that the total number of qubits in a tree scales as a polylog function
of the loss rate. For more details, see Varnava et al. (2006).
When the photon loss becomes considerable (but still less than 50%), the tree structure
that is necessary to protect against loss becomes very large. Consequently, phase errors
become important, and the trees lose their advantage. Other error-correction codes must
therefore complement the tree encoding. Nevertheless, the tree encoding is a wonderful
example of the counterintuitive power of cluster states and the stabilizer formalism.
205 6.4 Photon counting and quantum memories

6.4.2 The redundant encoding

In Section 6.3, we showed how a parity encoding, together with two fusion operators FI
and FII′ , can in principle be used to perform quantum computing in the circuit model. In this
section, we show how an extra layer of encoding, the so-called redundant encoding, can be
used to protect the quantum computation from photon loss. Again, we assume that there
are no other errors. First, we determine how to create the redundant encoding with fusion
gates. Second, we show how to encode a universal set of quantum gates in this encoding,
and finally, we discuss the loss threshold in this error model.
We have already encountered   a three-qubit redundant
 encoding in Chapter 2, where we
called it a ‘majority code’: 0̄ = |000 and 1̄ = |111 . Here, we assume that the basic
qubits are parity-encoded (see Eq. (6.49)), which yields the redundant encoding
  (n)
0̄ = |0 ⊗ · · · ⊗ |0 (n)
≡ |0 (n,q)
and
1 q
  (n)
1̄ = |1 ⊗ · · · ⊗ |1 (n)
≡ |1 (n,q)
. (6.58)
1 q

A logical qubit can then be written as

(n,q) (n,q) (n,q)
|ψ = α |0 + β |1 . (6.59)
(n)
This state can be constructed efficiently from |ψ (see Eq. (6.55)) with the following
resource:
(n,q) (n,q) (n) (n) (n) (n)
|0 + |1 = |0 1 ⊗ · · · ⊗ |0 q + |1 1 ⊗ · · · ⊗ |1 q . (6.60)

We can obtain the redundantly encoded qubit |ψ (n,q) from |ψ (n) and this resource state by
applying a fusion gate FII′ to a photon in |ψ (n) and a photon in the resource state. After a
successful fusion operation (which may take several attempts), the photons supporting the
original qubit |ψ (n) are subjected to a parity measurement3
    
|ψ (n) |0 (n,q) = α |0 (n) |0 + |1 (n) |1 + β |0 (n) |1 + |1 (n) |0
 
⊗ |0 |0 (n,q−1) + |1 |1 (n,q−1)
 
−→ |0 (n) α |0 (n,q−1) + β |1 (n,q−1)
FII′
 
(n) (n,q−1) (n,q−1)
+ |1 α |1 + β |0 . (6.61)

Depending on the outcome, a bit-flip in the redundant encoding will be applied, and the state
|ψ (n,q) is created. The resource state in Eq. (6.60) can be created from |0 (n) (n)
1 ⊗ · · · ⊗ |0 q
by applying a Hadamard on the first parity-encoded qubit, followed by q − 1 cx gates
between qubit 1 and the remaining qubits.

3 The notation suggests that each parity qubit has a level n encoding, but this is not necessary. Each parity qubit
i, with i ∈ {1, . . . , q} can have a different level of encoding ni . However, so as not to burden the notation too
much, we will use the superscript (n, q), where n is understood as a vector n = (n1 , . . . , nq ).
 206 Quantum computation with single photons

Exercise 6.15: Construct the Pauli operators in the parity encoding and the redundant
encoding. How many single-photon operations are necessary to implement each operator?

How do we apply a universal set of quantum gates at the level of the redundant encoding?
In the parity encoding we constructed the Pauli gates, arbitrary rotations around the x axis
(n)
in the Bloch sphere UX (θ), the phase gate (n) , and the cx gate. These last two are
probabilistic gates. In the redundant encoding, on the other hand, we construct the universal
(n,q)
set consisting of the Pauli gates, the cx gate, a rotation UX (π/4), and arbitrary rotations
(n,q)
around the z axis UZ (ϕ)

π  1 1 −i e−iϕ 0
(n,q) (n,q)
UX =√ and UZ (ϕ) = . (6.62)
4 2 −i 1 0 eiϕ

(n,q)
The gate UZ (ϕ) is shown in Fig. 6.16. The bundle of fat lines denotes the redundant
encoding. The auxiliary state is given by |0 (n+1) . As before, the detection of the parity-
encoded qubit in the figure is a parity measurement, which comprises a computational basis
measurement of all photons in the computational basis. When a single photon is lost in this
measurement, the parity of the qubit is unknown. The redundant encoding ensures that the
measurement can be repeated on another parity qubit in the code.
(n,q)
The gate UX ( π4 ) is shown in Fig. 6.17, where the auxiliary state is given by |aux (n,q) =
|0 (n,q) +|1 (n,q) . The single-qubit operation is performed on a single photon in the redundant
encoding, after which a fusion gate is applied that links the photon to the auxiliary state.
The parity qubit associated with the single-photon operation is measured with a standard
parity measurement, while the rest is measured in the X (n,q) basis {|+ (n,q) , |− (n,q) }. At
the single-photon level, the diagonal basis amounts to a successful measurement of a single
photon in the X basis in each parity encoding. The encoding n must be large enough to
allow the diagonal measurement, but not so large that the success probability of a parity
measurement becomes too small.
Finally, we consider the cx gate between two redundantly encoded qubits. This is simply
a series of q cx gates on the parity encoding that forms the basis of the redundant encoding.
When photon loss occurs, we remove that particular parity qubit by a measurement in the
X (n) basis.

(n,q)
Fig. 6.16. Using the fusion gate FII′ and a single-photon qubit rotation UZ (ϕ) to create the gate UZ (ϕ) in
the redundant encoding.
 207 6.5 Threshold theorem for linear-optical quantum computing

(n,q) π
Fig. 6.17. Using the fusion gate FII′ and a single-photon qubit rotation UX ( π4 ) to create the gate UX (4) in
the redundant encoding. The auxiliary state is |aux (n,q) = |0 (n,q) + |1 (n,q) .

As was the case for the tree encoding, there are conflicting requirements in the parity
and redundant encodings. On the one hand, we need a large n to ensure that the X (n,q)
measurement is nearly deterministic, but at the same time n must be small enough for a
parity measurement to succeed with considerable success probability. This translates again
into a maximum loss probability. Several thresholds for different situations have been
established numerically. For example, the loss threshold for simple propagation is about
18% for the photon sources, detectors, and fibre attenuation. When one or more components
have lower loss (e.g. sources and attenuation), the remaining components (in this case the
detectors) typically have higher loss thresholds. Similarly, the loss threshold for the cx gate
is about 10%. For more details, see Hayes et al. (2008).

6.4.3 Quantum memory for single photons

In both the cluster-state and the circuit model of linear-optical quantum computation with
single photons, an essential part of the protocol is the adaptation of subsequent qubit opera-
tions depending on measurement outcomes. While the measurements are being performed,
the remaining photons that will be subjected to gates depending on the measurement out-
comes must be stored somewhere. This means that we will always need a quantum memory
to store the single-photon qubit.
The most common quantum memory is a delay line in free space or in an optical fibre.
While practical at the level of proof-of-principle experiments, the space requirements of
delay lines mean that they will not be the solution for a large-scale optical quantum computer.
It is more likely that a scalable delay line will take the form of a microcavity with a high Q-
factor (see, e.g., Armani et al., 2003). Alternatively, single-photon qubits could be stored in
atoms in cavities, or in atomic ensembles. We will return to this topic in Chapters 7 and 10.

6.5 Threshold theorem for linear-optical quantum computing

In practice, photon loss is by far the dominant error in optical implementations of quantum
computing. Other errors, such as dephasing and depolarization, occur much less frequently.
208 Quantum computation with single photons

However, when a sufficiently large number of logical operations are made, the probability
of a depolarization (or dephasing) error becomes arbitrarily close to one, and we have to
protect our computation against these errors. In particular, tree structures and the redundant
encoding require a very large number of photons per logical qubit when the loss rate is
appreciable. In the tree encoding, an error rate of 1% per gate with detectors of η = 80%
efficiency requires between 200 and 300 qubits in a tree. Consequently, depolarization and
dephasing are no longer negligible, and we need to find a threshold for a more general error
model.
We consider the cluster-state model introduced in Section 6.3.2. This model uses two-
photon maximally entangled Bell states as input states, so we assume that we have a suitable
source for these states. Furthermore, we can apply deterministic single-qubit operations
in the form of linear-optical elements, and we have some kind of single-photon quantum
memory. We can also apply the two fusion gates FI and FII , which operate in a probabilistic
fashion. Finally, we assume that we have polarization-sensitive photodetectors that can
distinguish between zero, one, and two photons. This may seem a departure from the
realistic photodetectors that indicate whether or not any photons were present (the so-called
bucket detectors), but at this time no threshold for optical cluster-state quantum computing
with bucket detectors is known. Since bucket detectors provide less information than the
simple number-resolving photodetectors considered here, the threshold is expected to be
worse with bucket detectors.
The computation proceeds in time steps of length τ , and each qubit is subjected to exactly
one operation per time step. This can be a single-qubit operation, a fusion gate, detection,
or just a single-photon memory operation in which no logical operation is applied to the
qubit. The error model is characterized by two parameters, γ and ǫ. The loss probability
per photon per cycle τ is denoted by γ , and it occurs at each step in the computation.
After the Bell-state preparation, the loss channel is applied to both qubits independently.
Similarly, the loss channel is applied before single-qubit operations, the memory channel,
and before the photon enters a fusion gate. Finally, the loss channel is applied just before
photodetection. Clearly, γ is used to parameterize not only the detector efficiency, but also
memory loss and any other losses.
The second parameter ǫ characterizes the probability of a single depolarizing error. It
can occur both in the single-qubit components (single-qubit gates, quantum memory and
photon measurement), as well as in the two-qubit components (Bell-state preparation and
fusion gates). In the single-qubit components, the depolarizing channel introduces a random
Pauli gate X , Y , or Z with probability ǫ/3, while the probability of no error is 1 − ǫ. The
Kraus operators for the single-qubit components are therefore

√ ǫ
A0 = 1 − ǫ Î and Ai = σi , (6.63)
3

with σi ∈ {X , Y , Z}. The two-qubit components are subjected to depolarizing noise with
total probability ǫ as well: after the Bell-state preparation and before a fusion gate, with
probability (1 − ǫ) no error will occur, and with probability ǫ/15 a two-qubit error such as
209 6.6 References and further reading

X ⊗ Î or X ⊗ Y will occur. The Kraus operators for the two-qubit components are

√ ǫ
A00 = 1 − ǫ Î ⊗ Î and Aij = σi ⊗ σj (i, j) = (0, 0) . (6.64)
15

It was shown numerically by Dawson et al. (2006) that the fault-tolerant threshold for
this error model is γ < 3 · 10−3 and ǫ < 10−4 , comparable to thresholds for other
models of quantum computation. Recently, Raussendorf and Harrison (2007) proved a
general threshold theorem for two-dimensional cluster states, allowing an error probability
of 0.75%.

6.6 References and further reading

In this chapter, we showed how to implement a quantum computer with linear-optical

elements and single-photon qubits. There remain many challenges in this approach, mainly
related to the relatively low success probabilities of the entangling gates, and the high
photon-loss rates in sources and detectors, compared to fault-tolerant thresholds. In addition,
due to the feed-forward nature of post-selection quantum gates and the natural speed of
propagation of photons, any quantum computer based on linear optics requires quantum
memories. We will return to this issue in Chapters 7 and 10.
The classical simulation of quantum computing with linear optics was considered by Cerf
et al. (1998), and Adami and Cerf (1999), before it was proved that scalable quantum com-
puting is possible with linear optics, single photons, and photodetection (Knill, Laflamme,
and Milburn, 2001) (klm). See Kok et al. (2007) for a general review on linear-optical
quantum computing with photonic qubits. Many probabilistic two-photon gates have been
proposed, most notably by klm, but also by Ralph et al. (2002a) and Rudolph and Pan
(2001). The general theory of multi-mode unitary gates was developed by Scheel et al.
(2003), Lapaire et al. (2003), and van Loock and Lütkenhaus (2004). Many gates have been
demonstrated experimentally, for example the two-photon cx gate proposed by Ralph et
al. (2002b) was implemented by O’Brien et al. (2003), and a four-photon cluster state was
created by Walther et al. (2005). Many more experiments have since continued to improve
the technology of linear-optical quantum information processing with single photons and
photodetection. The maximum success probability of two-photon gates was studied by Knill
(2003), Scheel and Lütkenhaus (2004), and Eisert (2005). The evolution of linear-optical
quantum computing with single photons can be traced from the klm protocol and the intro-
duction of the fusion gates by Pittman et al. (2001), via Yoran and Reznik (2003), and
Nielsen (2004), to the optical cluster-state generation with fusion gates due to Browne and
Rudolph (2005), and the circuit model due to Gilchrist et al. (2007). Photon loss tolerance
using tree structures in cluster states was introduced by Varnava et al. (2006), and loss
tolerance in the circuit model was constructed by Hayes et al. (2008). Finally, fault-tolerant
thresholds were derived by Dawson et al. (2006), and Raussendorf and Harrington (2007).
7 Atomic quantum information carriers

We have so far spoken almost exclusively of photons and linear-optical elements, and seen
just how powerful those two components can be for information processing. They provide
unbreakable cryptographic tools, and allow for efficient quantum computing. However,
many more possibilities become available when we allow photons to interact with atoms and
solid matter in a quantum mechanical way. In particular, a quantum memory, the principal
difficulty for linear-optical quantum computing, can be created. In this chapter we will take
the first steps towards a full understanding of a photon’s interaction with atoms. We will
show how to describe the interactions within a system consisting of photons and few-level
atoms and show how this interaction can be manipulated and exploited to provide quantum
information processors based on both atomic and photonic qubits. We will also show that
photon emission from atoms can degrade the quantum information contained within atoms,
and we will present a formalism to model this effect. We begin with a general discussion
of atom–photon interactions.

7.1 Atomic systems as qubits

Let us first consider an electron in an isolated atom. It is bound there by the Coulomb
force due to the charge distribution of all the other electrons and the nucleus. The potential
that describes this coupling is given by V (r). The electron will of course also have kinetic
energy, so that the time-independent Schrödinger equation that determines its wave function
ψ(r) takes the form
 
2
H ψ(r) = − ∇ 2 + V (r) ψ(r) , (7.1)
2m
where m is the mass of the electron. We would like to calculate how this atomic electron is
affected by the application of an electromagnetic field. As defined in Eq. (1.1), the electric
and magnetic fields can be described by a vector potential operator A(r, t) and a scalar
potential operator (r, t):

∂A(r, t)
E(r, t) = −∇(r, t) − , (7.2)
∂t
B(r, t) = ∇ × A(r, t) . (7.3)

Given the vectorial character of the electromagnetic field, the Schrödinger equation is no
longer of the form in Eq. (7.1). The momentum operator is modified to include a term
211 7.1 Atomic systems as qubits

proportional to the vector potential operator, −i∇ → −i∇ + eA(r, t), and the potential
V (r) gains a term involving the scalar potential operator V (r) → V (r) − e(r, t). The
Hamiltonian can then be written as
1
He = [−i∇ − eA(r, t)]2 + V (r) − e(r, t) . (7.4)
2m
This Hamiltonian of an electron in a general electromagnetic field is exact. We can simplify
it by choosing a convenient gauge for A and . Since we will be interested in optical
interactions, we choose again the Coulomb gauge, in which ∇ · A = 0 and  = 0. This
leads to
2 ie e2 2
He = − ∇ 2 + A·∇ + A +V , (7.5)
2m m 2m
where we have suppressed the functional dependence of A and V on r and t in our notation,
and A2 ≡ |A|2 .
We will be interested in the regime where the field is not too strong, which allows us to
neglect the term proportional to A2 . In addition, we may use the time-dependent form of
the momentum operator −i∇ → m dr/dt, yielding

2 2 dr
He ≈ − ∇ − e A(r, t) · + V (r) . (7.6)
2m dt
We now make the so-called dipole approximation, i.e., that the electromagnetic field has no
spatial variation across the extent of our atom. Since optical frequencies have wavelengths
between 400 and 700 nm, this is an extremely good approximation for atoms with a typical
size of 0.1 to 1 nm. This assumption allows us to choose a specific form for our vector
potential in the Coulomb gauge
B(t) × r
A(r, t) = . (7.7)
2
The second term in the Hamiltonian in Eq. (7.6) can then be rewritten using
dr d(A(r, t) · r) dA(r, t)
A(r, t) · = − ·r, (7.8)
dt dt dt
which, using Eq. (7.7) becomes
dr dA(r, t)
A(r, t) · =− ·r. (7.9)
dt dt
By definition, the negative time derivative of the vector potential is the electric field, and
our final, approximate Hamiltonian for an electron in an electromagnetic field is

2 2
He = − ∇ + e E(t) · r + V (r) . (7.10)
2m
The electric dipole operator for an electron is defined as p = −er, and so the principal
effect of the application of a field to an atomic electron is the interaction of the electric
dipole with the electric field, which modifies the isolated Hamiltonian through the term

Hd = −E(t) · p . (7.11)
212 Atomic quantum information carriers

In the next section, we will explore the effect of optical radiation on atoms, which can be
calculated by choosing an oscillatory form for E.

7.1.1 Manipulating atomic states with classical light

We now consider the simplest nontrivial atomic system, with only two accessible energy
levels for the electron. Both levels are eigenstates of an isolated atomic Hamiltonian such
as that in Eq. (7.1), and we will label them |g and |e , for ‘ground’ and ‘excited’ state,
respectively. The frequency separation between these states is ωe − ωg = ω0 . In due course
we will interpret such a system as a qubit with |g = |0 and |e = |1 . We are interested
in the situation where the system interacts with an electromagnetic field that oscillates with
(optical) frequency ω. If the optical field is propagating in direction n, then its polarization
ǫ must be perpendicular to n. We can describe the field by

E = E0 ǫ exp(iωt − ik · n r) + ǫ ∗ exp(−iωt + ik · n r]) , (7.12)

where r = |r|, and E0 is the (real) amplitude of the field. Without loss of generality, we
can assume that our two-level system is positioned at the origin: |r| = r = 0. Using our
definition of the dipole p ≡ −er, the coupling matrix element Meg between |e and |g due
to the Hamiltonian in Eq. (7.11) can be written as

Meg = e| Hd |g
= E0 e e| r |g · ǫ exp(iωt) + ǫ ∗ exp(−iωt)
= eE0 reg · ǫ eiωt + eE0 reg · ǫ ∗ e−iωt . (7.13)

Similarly, Mge = Meg ∗ , and since r is an operator with odd parity, the diagonal matrix

elements vanish: Mee = Mgg = 0. Therefore, in matrix form in the basis {|g , |e } we can
write the total Hamiltonian as

−ω0 /2 ∗ · (ǫeiωt + ǫ ∗ e−iωt )

eE0 reg
He (t) = . (7.14)
eE0 reg · (ǫeiωt + ǫ ∗ e−iωt ) ω0 /2

It is difficult to solve the Schrödinger equation exactly for this Hamiltonian, since He (t)
is time-dependent. There is, however, a powerful procedure and approximation that can be
used to remove the time dependence. First, we make a unitary transformation Ũ (t) into a
frame that rotates at the same frequency as the optical field.

eiωt/2 0
Ũ (t) = . (7.15)
0 e−iωt/2

Since there is a time dependence to Ũ (t), we must go back to the Schrödinger equation to
derive the Hamiltonian in this new rotating frame. In the laboratory frame, we would have
written
d
He (t) |ψ(t) = −i |ψ(t) . (7.16)
dt
213 7.1 Atomic systems as qubits

   
Using ψ ′ (t) = Ũ (t) |ψ(t) , or equivalently |ψ(t) = Ũ † (t) ψ ′ (t) , we find
 
†
 ′  † d ψ ′ (t) d Ũ † (t)  ′ 

He (t)Ũ (t) ψ (t) = −iŨ (t) − i ψ (t) . (7.17)
dt dt

Multiplying from the right by Ũ (t) and rearranging yields

   
† d Ũ † (t)  ′  d ψ ′ (t)
Ũ (t)He (t)Ũ (t) + iŨ (t) ψ (t) = −i . (7.18)
dt dt

This equation has exactly the same form as our original Schrödinger equation but now with
the effective Hamiltonian
 
d Ũ †
He′ = Ũ He Ũ † + iŨ , (7.19)
dt

where we have dropped the explicit time dependence for notational simplicity. The
Hamiltonian in Eq. (7.14) is therefore transformed into

−(ω0 − ω)/2 ∗ · (ǫ ∗ + ǫe2iωt )

eE0 reg
He′ (t) = ∗ −2iωt . (7.20)
eE0 reg · (ǫ + ǫ e ) (ω0 − ω)/2

The off-diagonal Hamiltonian elements now have two terms. The first is time-independent
and describes the component of the oscillating field that precesses in the same direction
as the coherence of the atom. The other term is time-dependent and describes counter-
propagation of the two precessions; it therefore oscillates rapidly. We can assume that it has
little effect on the atom dynamics so long as the external field is close to resonance with the
transition from the ground state to the excited state, i.e. when (ω − ω0 ) ≪ ω, and E0 ≪ ω.
This is the ‘rotating-wave approximation’ (rwa), and leads to
 
′ − 2 (ω0 − ω) eE0 (reg · ǫ)∗
He =  . (7.21)
eE0 (reg · ǫ) 2 (ω0 − ω)

We can simplify the notation by defining the ‘detuning’ν ≡ ω0 −ω and the ‘Rabi frequency’
 ≡ 2eE0 (reg · ǫ)/. The Hamiltonian then takes on the standard form

 −ν ∗
He′ (t) = . (7.22)
2  ν

A full justification of the rwa and higher-order corrections to it is made later in this section
using Floquet theory.
Solving the Schrödinger equation for a two-level system in the presence of a detuned
field is now a simple time-independent eigenvalue problem, which we solve in the usual
way. The eigenvalues are
 2
λ± = ± ν + 2 , (7.23)
2
214 Atomic quantum information carriers

with corresponding eigenvectors

θ θ
|λ+ = cos |e + sin |g , (7.24)
2 2
θ θ
|λ− = − sin |e + cos |g , (7.25)
2 2
where the mixing angle θ is defined as


θ = arctan . (7.26)
ν

If the field is resonant with the atomic transition, the detuning becomes zero (ν = 0), and
so θ = π/2. The eigenstates |λ± are then equal superpositions of |g and |e . These states
are important and so are assigned unique symbols, namely

1
|+ = √ (|g + |e )
2
1
|− = √ (|g − |e ) , (7.27)
2

with eigenvalues λ± = ± /2. Compare these states to the eigenstates of the Pauli
operator X in Eq. (2.4) as equal superpositions of |0 and |1 .
We can use the Bloch sphere picture to explore the time evolution, as shown in Fig. 7.1a.
We know that the natural evolution of a quantum system in this picture is a precession around
the axis that connects the two eigenstates. If |g is the North Pole and |e is the South Pole,
then the two states in Eq. (7.27) are on the equator. An initial ground state therefore precesses
towards the equator and eventually all the way to |e . This motion is repeated periodically
and the resultant oscillations, which are depicted to the right of Fig. 7.1, are called ‘Rabi
oscillations’. If the field is slightly off resonance, such that ν = 0, Eq. (7.25) tells us that
the line connecting the eigenstates now tilts slightly away from the equator, as shown in
Fig. 7.1b. In this case the oscillations become incomplete: the population does not go all the
way from |g to |e . The oscillations also have higher frequency, since the energy difference
between eigenstates is larger. Finally, for a highly off-resonant field, the eigenstates start to
approach |g and |e and the oscillations become very shallow and very fast. This situation
is depicted in Fig. 7.1c.
If we now imagine that |g and |e represent qubit state |0 and |1 we can recast the
time evolution under an optical field in terms of single-qubit gate operations. For example,
if the field is resonant with the atomic transition, the atom–field Hamiltonian is simply


He′ = X, (7.28)
2
with X the usual Pauli X operator. In this language, the time-evolution operator of the
system becomes
i  t
U (t) = exp − Xt = UX , (7.29)
 2 2
 215 7.1 Atomic systems as qubits

Fig. 7.1. On the left-hand side are Bloch sphere representations of the |g , |e subspace, with the
eigenstates in each of three cases shown as large grey dots. The populations of ground and
excited states as a function of time are shown on the right in units of . The initial state is the
ground state |g . (a) The resonant case ν = 0; (b) slightly off-resonant situation with ν/  = 0.3;
and (c) far off-resonant case of ν/  = 2.

where UX (θ) is the single-qubit rotation of angle 2θ around the x axis of the Bloch sphere,
which we encountered first in Chapter 2 in Eq. (2.9). The angle θ can straightforwardly be
varied by changing the time for which the laser is applied to the atom. Once the laser is
switched off, there is no time evolution of the qubit.1
In Section 5.1, we found that rotations of any angle around two different axes of the Bloch
sphere are needed to perform an arbitrary single-qubit rotation. The second axis could be

1 Throughout this discussion we implicitly describe the qubits in the rotating frame. In the laboratory frame there
would be a constant build-up of phase between the two states |0 and |1 . However, this phase is always known
and can be taken account of at the end of any calculation.
216 Atomic quantum information carriers

generated simply by detuning the optical field from resonance, but a more practical method
will be explored in the exercise below.

Exercise 7.1: In practice, it can be easier to obtain a second axis by varying the phase of
the optical field rather than its frequency. That is, an extra factor ζ enters Eq. (7.12):

E = E0 ǫ exp(iζ + ωt − ik · n r) + ǫ ∗ exp(−iζ − ωt + ik · n r]) . (7.30)

Show that changing the phase ζ of a resonant pulse rotates the axis connecting eigenstates
in the equatorial plane of the Bloch sphere by an angle ζ . When ζ = π/2, show that the
time evolution of the qubit is equivalent to a rotation around the y axis of the Bloch sphere,
i.e., UY in Eq. (2.9).

A potential control problem is spontaneous emission of a photon from the excited state,
a process we will discuss in Section 7.3. Three-level systems offer an alternative possible
system that can allow us to overcome this difficulty by preventing population of optically
excited states, a topic we will return to later in this section.

7.1.2 Floquet theory and the rotating-wave approximation

In the discussion above, we made the particularly useful rotating-wave approximation,

which allowed us to cast the Hamiltonian of an interacting atom-oscillating field system
in a time-independent form. However, our justification of this step was not rigorous and
we will here show how to put it on a firmer footing, as well as derive corrections to it.
The basis of this approach was developed in the nineteenth century by Gaston Floquet,
a French mathematician who studied the properties of linear differential equations with
periodic coefficients. The Schrödinger equation
d
He (t) ψ(t) = i ψ(t) , (7.31)
dt
with He (t) defined in Eq. (7.14), falls in this class of equation. Floquet showed that this
equation must have solutions of the form

ψ(t) = e−iqt φj (t) , (7.32)
j

where q is a real number and the φj are periodic functions with the same period as that of
the Hamiltonian. The label j runs over each dimension of the Hilbert space we are working
in, and so in our case it can be g or e. The periodic functions can be expanded in a Fourier
series: 
φj (t) = φjn einωt . (7.33)
n
Each matrix element of the Hamiltonian, labelled Hkl , can also be expanded in a Fourier
series 
Hkl (t) = eimωt Hkl
m
, (7.34)
m
217 7.1 Atomic systems as qubits

where k and l again label the dimensions of the Hilbert space. Substituting the forms
Eqs. (7.32), (7.33), and (7.34) into Eq. (7.31) gives
 
 (q − nω)ei(nω−q)t φjn = ei[(m+k)ω−q]t Hjlm φlk . (7.35)
n,j j,l,m,k

Now let us consider one particular term on the left-hand side of the above equation, charac-
′
terized by particular values j ′ and n′ . It has a time dependence ei(n ω−q)t and we can therefore
equate this term with the sum of all the terms on the right-hand side with this same time
dependence. Such terms have m + k = n′ and so
  ′  n′ −k k
 q − n′ ω φjn′ = Hj′ l φl . (7.36)
l,k

The set of equations generated by writing Eq. (7.36) for each value of j ′ and n′ reduces to
the matrix equation
(qÎ − D)φ = He φ , (7.37)
where φ is a vector whose components are labelled by the two indices n′ and j ′ , and which
has a dimension d given by the product of the original Hilbert space dimension with the
number of Fourier components of interest. Here, H is the d × d Hamiltonian matrix, and
D is a diagonal matrix with elements n′ ω. Finding the solutions is an eigenvalue problem:

(He + D) φ = q φ . (7.38)

For the specific case we are interested in, given by Eq. (7.14), the problem simplifies
significantly. There are only two Fourier components on the off-diagonal of the Hamiltonian
(at frequencies ±ω), and only one on the diagonal (the constant zeroth-order component).
Thus, the so-called ‘Floquet Hamiltonian’ HF = He + D takes the following matrix form
⎛ ⎞
.. .. .. .. .. ..
⎜ . . . . . . ⎟
⎜ · · · ωg − ω 0 0 /2 0 0 ··· ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜ ··· 0 ωe − ω /2 0 0 0 ··· ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜ ⎟
F ⎜ ··· 0 ∗ /2 ωg 0 0 /2 ··· ⎟
H = ⎜ ∗ /2 ⎟ , (7.39)
⎜ ··· 0 0 ωe /2 0 ··· ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜ ···
⎜ 0 0 0 ∗ /2 ωg + ω 0 ··· ⎟
⎟
⎜ ··· 0 0 ∗ /2 0 0 ωe + ω ··· ⎟
⎝ ⎠
.. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . .

where the two coupling parameters are defined as  = 2eE0 reg · ǫ/ and = 2eE0 reg ∗ ·

ǫ/. The basis states used to express the Floquet Hamiltonian, which are characterized by
the two quantum numbers j ∈ {g, e}, and the Fourier index s, are ‘Floquet states’ |j, s .
The power of Floquet theory is now evident: we have recast a time-dependent problem
as a time-independent one that looks identical to the eigenvalue problem for solving a
time-independent Schrödinger equation. The transformation is exact. Moreover, all of the
218 Atomic quantum information carriers

methods developed for solving time-independent problems, such as perturbation theory,

time-evolution operators, etc., can be used in this case as well.
The Floquet Hamiltonian has a high degree of symmetry. Indeed, it is clear that its
eigenvalues must fall into two sets, labelled 1 and 2, each of which corresponds to a ladder
of values: q1(2),p = λ1(2) + pω (p integer). We choose the λ1,2 (arbitrarily) to be the two
eigenvalues with the smallest absolute value. The eigenvectors  have a similar symmetry: if
the eigenvector corresponding to eigenvalue qξ ,r is called qξ ,r , then the series of eigenstates
must satisfy
j, s| qξ ,r = j, s + t| qξ ,r+t . (7.40)
Substitution of the eigenstate solutions to the Floquet Hamiltonian back into the full (time-
dependent) form for the wave functions, Eq. (7.32), reveals that there are really only
two inequivalent solutions; each eigenvalue on the same ladder gives a wave function
of identical form. Thus we need consider only the two solutions corresponding to the two
eigenvalues λ1,2 .
We are now in a position to understand the rwa rigourously. If the coupling terms, and
, are small compared to the driving frequency ω of the field, we can use perturbation theory
to simplify Eq. (7.39). Consider the near-resonant case, where the detuning ν ≡ ωe −ωg −ω
is small (≪ ω). Both the detuning and laser couplings can be considered small parameters,
so that the Floquet Hamiltonian splits up into a block diagonal form that is a ladder of
effectively uncoupled two-dimensional matrices. Each matrix gives an equivalent pair of
solutions, which can be found by applying first-order degenerate perturbation theory. We
only need to diagonalize one such matrix, for example in the basis |j, s ∈ {|e, 0 , |g, 1 },
which yields
 ωe 
HF = . (7.41)
2 ∗ ωe − 2ν
Up to a constant factor on the diagonal, this is precisely the same matrix as we found in
Eq. (7.22). Its eigenvalues are

  
λ± = ωe − ν ± ν 2 + 2 , (7.42)
2
with corresponding eigenvectors

θ θ
|λ+ = cos |e, 0 + sin |g, 1 (7.43)
2 2
θ θ
|λ− = − sin |e, 0 + cos |g, 1 , (7.44)
2 2
and θ = arctan(/ν). In order to get a proper time-dependent solution of the Schrödinger
equation back from these solutions we must substitute into Eq. (7.32), using Eq. (7.33).
Thus, |λ+ and |λ− are then equivalent to full wavefunction solutions:

|ψ+ (t) = e−iλ+ t/ (cos θ |e + sin θ eiωt |g ) (7.45)

|ψ− (t) = e−iλ− t/ (− sin θ |e + cos θ eiωt |g ). (7.46)
 219 7.1 Atomic systems as qubits

Fig. 7.2. If the driving strength becomes sufficiently large, the RWA breaks down and the simple Rabi
oscillation picture is no longer accurate. (a) For  = = ω/500 the RWA holds; (b) for
 = = ω/5 the RWA breaks down and higher-frequency oscillations appear.

These are precisely the same as those we obtained from our simpler analysis in Eq. (7.25)
when you take into account that Eq. (7.25) was obtained in the frame rotating at frequency
ω. Our new analysis, however, puts the rwa on a firmer footing and allows us to predict
when it is no longer valid.
If, in Eq. (7.39), the inequality ω ≫ ,  is not satisfied, our simple two-component
solutions are no longer valid. Rather, there will be significant mixing of states with an
energy difference ωg − ωe − ω, and for stronger driving there will be coupling to even more
energetically distant states. This means that our simple, single, Rabi oscillation is no longer
a good description of the behaviour of our two-level atomic system. Extra higher-frequency
oscillations also become important. This is shown in Fig. 7.2.

7.1.3 Three-level systems

We conclude our discussion of classically driven atoms by introducing a third level that
has a similar energy to the ground level, and which can also be excited optically to the
higher energy state |e . The two lower-lying levels might occur in a real system for spin
half electrons, or for an electron coupled to the nucleus through the hyperfine interaction.
We will not discuss their origin here, rather keeping the discussion general, but we will
consider specific systems later in the book.
Let us label our two lower levels as |0 and |1 , in anticipation of their eventual iden-
tification as a qubit. The scheme is depicted in Fig. 7.3a. If both transitions |0 ↔ |e
and |1 ↔ |e are optically active, we have a so-called -configuration; if only one is
optically active, we have an L-configuration. In angular frequency units, the Hamiltonian
for a -system can be written in a matrix form using the basis {|0 , |1 , |e }:
⎛ ⎞
0 0 1 cos ω1 t
H (t) =  ⎝ 0 δ 2 cos ω2 t ⎠ . (7.47)
1 cos ω1 t 2 cos ω2 t ω
 220 Atomic quantum information carriers

Fig. 7.3. (a) The three-level system is coupled as shown with coupling strength 1 and 2 . Each laser is
here detuned by the same amount from the transition that it addresses. (b) When the detuning is
sufficiently large, oscillations between |0 and |1 occur through the coupling to |e , though |e
itself is hardly populated at all. This kind of oscillation is called a ‘Raman transition’. The
parameters here are 1 = 2 = , ν = 20, δ = 10, and ω = 500. A full numerical
calculation of Eq. (7.47) is shown, with an initial state |0 .

Here, ω1 and ω2 are the frequencies of the transitions |0 ↔ |e and |1 ↔ |e , respec-

tively, and 1 and 2 are the respective coupling strengths of the laser addressing the
transitions. We are assuming that each transition can be addressed individually and that
there is no crosstalk between the two. This condition can be achieved through frequency
selectivity or an angular-momentum selection rule (see Chapter 11). We can choose |0 as
the zero energy level, and |1 lies at an energy δ above it. Similarly, the energy associated
with |e is ω.
Let us now make a unitary transformation similar to the one in Eq. (7.15) that took us
into the rotating frame earlier
⎛ ⎞
1 0 0
Ũ (t) = ⎝ 0 e −i(ω 1 −ω2 )t 0 ⎠. (7.48)
0 0 e−iω1 t

Using the Hamiltonian transformation in Eq. (7.19) gives an effective Hamiltonian

⎛ ⎞
0 0 1 (1 + e2iω1 t )

H′ (t) = ⎝ 0 2(δ + ω2 − ω1 ) 2 (1 + e2iω2 t ) ⎠ . (7.49)
2 −2iω
1 (1 + e 1 t ) 2 (1 + e−2iω2 t ) 2(ω − ω1 )

We again make the rwa, which finally gives us the simple, time-independent form of the
Hamiltonian ⎛ ⎞
0 0 1

H′ = ⎝ 0 2(ν1 − ν2 ) 2 ⎠ , (7.50)
2
1 2 2ν1
where ν1 = ω − ω1 and ν2 = ω − ω2 − δ.
Let us consider the situation in which the two lasers are equally detuned from their
respective transitions, i.e., ν1 = ν2 ≡ ν. If we work in the limit where the detunings are
themselves large compared with the coupling strengths, i.e., ν ≫ {1 , 2 }, we can treat the
221 7.1 Atomic systems as qubits

problem using degenerate perturbation theory. The excited state |e remains an approximate
eigenstate, and an effective two-dimensional Hamiltonian can be written for the other two
states, giving
1 21 1 2
H′ ,2D = − . (7.51)
4ν 1 2 22
Straightforward diagonalization yields the two eigenstates that can again be parameterized
by a single angle θ , as in Eq. (7.25). The angle becomes
 
21 2
θ = arctan , (7.52)
22 − 21

and the two eigenstates have energy separation = (21 + 22 )/4ν. This kind of induced
coupling between two levels via a higher third state is called a ‘Raman transition’.
Varying the coupling strengths allows a whole range of values of θ, which allows us to
vary the amplitude and frequency of the Rabi oscillations and so perform arbitrary single-
qubit gate operations. The Rabi frequency when 1 = 2 =  is = 2 /2ν, which is the
situation represented in Fig. 7.3. We conclude that in a -system it is possible to perform
any unitary operation on the qubit subspace {|0 , |1 }, by the fast switching of optical fields
coupling to level |e , even though that level is never really populated. The two-qubit states
need not be coupled directly to each other, and can be chosen to interact only very weakly
with electromagnetic radiation. They can therefore have very low spontaneous-emission
rates and represent a very robust qubit.
Finally, we return to Eq. (7.47), but this time we will analyze the Hamiltonian for the
-system differently. We make the same unitary transformation, Eq. (7.48), as well as the
rwa, and again assume that ν1 = ν2 = ν. This gives
⎛ ⎞
0 0 1
1
H′ = ⎝ 0 0 2 ⎠ . (7.53)
2
1 2 2ν

At this point, instead of considering the limit of large detuning, we make no further approx-
imations and specifically do not use perturbation theory. Since there is no direct coupling
between |0 and |1 , and each has the same diagonal energy, the Hamiltonian in Eq. (7.53)
always has one eigenvector of the form

|ψ(θ ) = cos θ |0 − sin θ |1 , (7.54)

where θ is again a mixing angle.

Exercise 7.2: Convince yourself that the Hamiltonian in Eq. (7.53) must have an eigenvector
of the form of Eq. (7.54). Show that the mixing angle is θ = arctan(1 /2 ).

By varying the ratio R = 1 /2 we can change the relative amplitudes of |0 and |1 in
this eigenstate. Let us imagine a situation in which we begin with both lasers switched off,
and allow the system to relax to its ground state, |0 . We now turn on the second laser slowly,
 222 Atomic quantum information carriers

Fig. 7.4. Full numerical simulation of the Hamiltonian in Eq. (7.47) for the STIRAP protocol. (a) Pulse
sequence for the STIRAP protocol. Both lasers are resonant with the transition that they address
(ν1 = ν2 = 0), and each has the Gaussian amplitude profile shown (max is the same for both
pulses). The 2 pulse is applied first to prepare the eigenstate structure of the Hamiltonian
correctly, and then 1 is increased as 2 decreases. (b) The result of sequence (a) is to transfer
population coherently from |0 to |1 with almost no population ever leaking into |e .

such that 2 = 0, while keeping the first laser off, 1 = 0. Then R = 0 and |0 remains
an eigenstate. Now imagine slowly ramping down the power in the second laser, while
increasing it in the first laser, and causing θ to increase till eventually it becomes θ = π/2
as 2 → 0. At this stage our eigenstate is |1 . If the change in the laser power happens
sufficiently slowly, the state of the system will follow the eigenstate |ψ(θ ) . This process
is called ‘adiabatic following’. Our argument shows that it is possible to coherently move
from |0 to |1 , while never populating |e . This process is known as ‘stimulated Raman
adiabatic passage’ (stirap) and offers an alternative method of single-qubit manipulation
without populating a vulnerable excited state. Fig. 7.4 shows the stirap pulse sequence and
population change. It demonstrates that in contrast to regular Raman coupling the duration
of laser pulses is not critical for performing quantum coherent control using stirap.

7.2 The Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian

We have so far discussed how a classical field interacts with an atom, and we now proceed
with the quantization of the field. We will see that much of the behaviour discussed in the pre-
vious section has a quantum counterpart. In Section 7.1.1, we introduced a monochromatic
electric field
 
E = E0 ǫ exp(i[ωt − k · nr]) + ǫ ∗ exp(−i[ωt − k · nr]) . (7.55)

To quantize this field, we recall from Chapter 1 that a general classical field can be expressed
in terms of the vector potential as follows:
 
 Aλ (k)ǫ λ (k)eik·r−iωk t A∗λ (k)ǫ ∗λ (k)e−ik·r+iωk t
A(x, t) = dk  +  , (7.56)
λ (2π )3 2ωk (2π )3 2ωk
223 7.2 The Jaynes–Cumming Hamiltonian

where Aλ (k) is the complex amplitude of the component with wavevector k and polarization
λ. We assume the free-space dispersion relation c2 |k|2 = ωk2 . From this classical expression,
in Eq. (1.27) we constructed the quantum field

2 
   †

Â(r, t) = dk ǫ λ (k) âλ (k)u(k; r, t) + ǫ ∗λ (k) âλ (k)u∗ (k; r, t) , (7.57)
ε0
λ=1

†
where âλ (k) and âλ (k) are annihilation and creation operators for a photon in the modes
u(k; r, t) and u∗ (k; r, t), respectively. For plane waves, we have

eik·r−iωk t
u(k; r, t) =  , (7.58)
(2π )3 2ωk

where the wave vector is denoted by k and the polarization by λ.

In order to simplify the derivation of the Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian, we will consider
the interaction of a single discrete mode of the field with an atom centred at position
r = 0. From Eq. (7.11) we know that the interaction term in the Hamiltonian in the dipole
approximation is Hd = eÊ · r. Again, E is assumed to be constant over the extent of the
atom and we can use Ê = −∂ t  to calculate it. Since Ê then has explicit time dependence,
Hd is given in the Heisenberg picture. However, we would like to work in the Schrödinger
picture, where the time dependence is contained in the wave functions, not the operators.
We transform to this picture by evaluating the dipole coupling Hamiltonian at t = 0. We
therefore use Ê(t = 0, r = 0) to obtain

2 
 e2 ωk  ∗ †

Hd = dk r · ǫ λ (k) â λ (k) + r · ǫ λ (k) â (k) . (7.59)
2(2π )3 ε0 λ
λ=1

Since we are interested in how a single mode of the field interacts with an atom, we will
now expand our Hamiltonian in a basis of effective Fock states of that single mode. As in
Chapter 1 we first define an effective creation operator for the mode we are considering

b̂† = dk α ∗ (k)↠(k) . (7.60)

The annihilation operator is, as usual, the complex conjugate of the creation operator. To
reduce the notational burden, we assume that the mode has well-defined polarization ǫ.
Using Eq. (1.29), and so long as

dk|α(k)|2 = 1, (7.61)

we satisfy the discrete boson commutation relations:

[b̂, b̂† ] = 1. (7.62)

224 Atomic quantum information carriers

A set of Fock states for mode b is, according to Eq. (1.62), defined by

(b̂† )n
|n = √ |0 , (7.63)
n!
√
where the normalization factor n! can easily be found using n |n = 1 and repeated
application of Eq. (7.62). The free Hamiltonian of the photon field-matrix elements for the
Fock states on mode b are:
 †
α
Hrs = r|Hα |s = dk ωk r|âλ (k)âλ (k) |s . (7.64)
λ

As in Chapter 1, we have removed the infinite energy of the vacuum.

Exercise 7.3: Using relation Eq. (7.60) and the commutation relations in Eq. (1.29), show
that the matrix elements in Eq. (7.64) are given by

Hrsα
= δrs  dkα(k)α ∗ (k)ωk r ≡ δrs ω̄r. (7.65)

Hint: use mathematical induction.

The matrix elements in Eq. (7.65) allow us to write the free Hamiltonian Hα in terms of
our bosonic operators in the following way

Hα = ω̄b̂† b̂, (7.66)

where ω̄ is defined in Eq. (7.65).

We will now consider the joint quantum state of the atom–field system. Our full
state description should include both the Fock basis and the atomic state denoted by
|j ∈ {|g , |e }. We write these joint states as |j, n . First, we express the interaction Hamil-
tonian in Eq. (7.59) in this joint basis. We already know that the dipole operator r, which
acts only on the atom and not the field, connects only different atomic states |j . Different
Fock states are connected by the electric field. We may define the relevant matrix elements
Hd;rs as follows:
e2 
Hd;rs = r|Hd |s = r · Mrs , (7.67)
2(2π )3 ε0
where we have defined
2 
  
√ †
Mrs = dk ωk r| ǫ λ (k) âλ (k) + ǫ ∗λ (k) âλ (k) |s . (7.68)
λ=1

After some algebra, and using an induction method, one can prove that
 
√ √ √ √
Mrs = ǫ ∗ δr,s+1 r dkα ∗ (k) ωk + ǫδr+1,s s dkα(k) ωk
√ √
= ǫ ∗ δr,s+1 rμ∗ + ǫδr+1,s sμ. (7.69)
225 7.2 The Jaynes–Cumming Hamiltonian

, √
where μ = dkα(k) ωk . The vector Mrs has a particularly convenient form. It connects
states with occupation numbers that differ by one, and has a magnitude proportional to the
square root of the lower index of the two connected states. These are exactly the properties
of our bosonic annihilation and creation operators and so we write the electric field operator
in our Fock basis as follows:

  
∗ ∗ †
Ê = μǫ b̂ + μ ǫ b̂ . (7.70)
2(2π )3 ε0

The entire atom–field interaction can now be constructed as

e2   ∗ ∗ †
 
∗

Hd = 3
ǫμb̂ + μ ǫ b̂ · reg |g e| + reg |e g| . (7.71)
2(2π) ε0

Using spin language to describe atomic transitions, |g e| ≡ σ − and |e g| ≡ σ + , we can

rewrite the interaction Hamiltonian as

Hd = g b̂σ+ + g ∗ b̂† σ − + γ b̂σ− + γ ∗ b̂† σ + (7.72)

where we have defined

e2 
g≡ (μǫ · reg ) and (7.73)
2(2π )3 ε0

e2  ∗
γ ≡ (μǫ · reg ). (7.74)
2(2π )3 ε0

It is interesting to compare these coupling constants with those of standard derivations of

the atom–field interaction where the field modes are constructed inside a box of volume
V ∼ L3 . This leads to a discretization of the electromagnetic field energy levels (see e.g.,
Gerry and Knight, 2005). If, in our approach, we impose such a constraint, we would need to
use a distribution function α(k) with an approximate width 1/L in all three dimensions. √
The
normalization condition in Eq. (7.61) then forces the distribution
 height to be of order L.
Consequently, the factor μ above becomes proportional to ω̃/V , with ω̃ some suitably
defined angular frequency. This is exactly the same dependence as found in the more
standard, but less general, approach.
Including the free energies of the atom and the quantum field, we obtain the full
Hamiltonian of the atom–photon system

1
H= ω0 σz + ω̄b̂† b̂ + g b̂σ+ + g ∗ b̂† σ − + γ b̂σ− + γ ∗ b̂† σ + . (7.75)
2

If the cavity mode frequency is close to resonance with the atom, i.e., ω̄ ≈ ω0 , then the final
two terms of the Hamiltonian couple widely off-resonant states. As we will see in more
detail in the next section, this means that for small enough coupling γ can be neglected.
 226 Atomic quantum information carriers

This is equivalent to the rotating-wave approximation for classical fields and leads, finally,
to the ‘Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian’:

ω0
H= σz + ω̄b̂† b̂ + g b̂σ + + g ∗ b̂† σ − . (7.76)
2
The most important and simplifying feature of this Hamiltonian is that it conserves excitation
number. The photon annihilation operator in the interaction is coupled to the atom state-
raising operator, and the photon creation operator is coupled to an atom state-lowering
operator. Since the first two terms merely account for the individual energies of the atom and
field, the dynamics splits into uncoupled subspaces, each characterized by a different number
of excitations. For n excitations we may write a 2 × 2 matrix in the basis {|e, n − 1 , |g, n }
 ω0  √
 2 + (n − 1)ω̄  ng 
Hn = √ ∗ , (7.77)
ng  − ω20 + nω̄

which describes the dynamics of a two-level atom in a quantum field. The energies of the
eigenstates are shown in Fig. 7.5a. When the field is in resonance with the atomic transition,
the diagonal elements are equal.
√ The eigenstates are then entangled states of the atom–photon
system (|e, n − 1 ± |g, n )/ 2. Under such conditions, intializing the system into a single
Fock-atom state leads to oscillations, with energy transferred periodically between the atom
and the field. The frequency of the oscillations depends on the number of photons in the
mode, as shown in Fig. 7.5b.
Since the oscillation frequency is dependent on the number of photons in the mode, it is
obvious that if we start our system in the atomic ground state and a superposition of Fock
states, the subsequent evolution will consist of a combination of several different oscillation
frequencies. For example, if the initial state is a coherent state, the Rabi oscillations decay

Fig. 7.5. (a) Energy level structure of the Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian, close to the resonance condition.
The levels come in pairs, each of which corresponds to one value of the total excitation number.
The levels anticross as a function of the detuning of the mode and atom. (b) Rabi oscillations at
resonance for an initial atom state |g for different numbers of photons in the mode (solid line:
n = 1, dotted line: n = 2, dashed line: n = 3). The population of the atom ground state is shown
as a function of normalized time.
227 7.3 The optical master equation and quantum jumps

altogether as the different component frequencies interfere with one another. Eventually,
the frequencies come back into phase and there is a revival of coherent oscillations.
In contrast to the classical case, we can no longer always regard the atom here as an
isolated qubit and the photon as a simple manipulation tool. The Rabi oscillations described
here are now between states that involve both atom and photon quantum numbers. During
the coherent evolution entanglement is generated between for example, a Fock state and
an atom. Tracing out the photon component leads to loss of atomic coherence: but if both
the atom and photon are regarded as qubits, the Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian means that
simple quantum logic gates can be executed between them. Classical behaviour of the field
is recovered from the quantum description in the case of a coherent state, since it is an
eigenstate of the annihilation operator.
Let us briefly divert our discussion by making a comparison between the classical
and quantum interactions of atoms and electromagnetic fields. Specifically, we write out
some of the full quantum Hamiltonian in Eq. (7.75) in a matrix form, using the basis
{|g, 0 , |e, 0 , |g, 1 , |e, 1 , . . .}:
⎛ ⎞
0 0 0 γ′ 0 0 0 ···
⎜ 0 ω0 g ′ 0 0 0√ 0 ··· ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜ 0 g ′∗ ω̄ 0 0 γ′ 2 0 ··· ⎟
⎜ √ ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜ γ ′∗ 0 0 ω̄ +√ω0 ′
g 2 0 0 ··· ⎟
H = ⎜ ⎟. (7.78)
⎜ 0 0 0√ g ′∗ 2 2ω̄ 0 0
√ ··· ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜
⎜ 0 0 γ ′∗ 2 0 0 2ω̄ + √ω0 g′ 3 · · · ⎟
⎟
⎜ 0 0 0 0 0 g ′∗ 3 3ω̄ ··· ⎟
⎝ ⎠
.. .. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . . .

We have subtracted a constant energy from the diagonal and defined g ′ ≡ g/ and γ ′ ≡ γ /.
The similarity between the quantum mechanical formulation in Eq. (7.78), and the clas-
sical formulation in terms of Floquet states in Eq. (7.39) is compelling. There is a clear
correspondence between our photon-number states and the Fourier series components we
used to expand the Hamiltonian for a sinusoidal classical field. Even though the similarities
are striking, the differences are also telling: in the fully quantized theory the off-diagonal
matrix elements depend on the number of photons in the mode, which gives rise to the
variable Rabi frequency we saw in Fig. 7.5. In the semiclassical theory, the off-diagonal
components are independent of the Fourier component, and so a single-frequency Rabi
oscillation is predicted. For very high photon numbers the two theories do converge and
the correspondence principle holds, since the ratio of successive off-diagonal components
in the quantum field theory tends to unity for large n.

7.3 The optical master equation and quantum jumps

We have seen how an atom can interact with a surrounding electromagnetic field. In
particular, we have shown that an atom can absorb or emit radiation into modes of the
228 Atomic quantum information carriers

electromagnetic field with a suitable energy, and that if one mode dominates the interaction
then energy can flow back and forth between the atom and the mode. However, a com-
mon situation is one in which many modes interact with the atom. In this case, it takes
much longer for energy to flow back to the atom once it has left, since each mode will
couple differently to it. A range of characteristic Rabi frequencies results, which prevents
a focused return of energy. In fact, with a continuum of modes there will no longer be a
two-way exchange of energy, but rather an irreversible process that can destroy the coher-
ence of the atomic state. To describe this process mathematically, we need to introduce the
master-equation technique. This will be useful not only for studying optical decay, but also
for other situations in which a system interacts with an environment with many degrees of
freedom (we will return to this in Chapter 12). We will therefore introduce master equations
in a general way before looking at optical processes specifically.
Consider a small system A (for example an atom) with Hamiltonian HA that exists in an
environment E with Hamiltonian HE . We assume that A and E are quite weakly coupled
through an interaction Hamiltonian HI . We can therefore write the full Hamiltonian in the
form:
H = HA + HE + HI ≡ H0 + HI . (7.79)
We do not expect to be able to keep track of the environment with its many degrees of
freedom, but we are interested in what happens to the system. As we have seen in Chapter
3, we can describe the state of system that interacts with a larger environment by using
the density matrix formalism. In this picture, the Schrödinger equation becomes the von
Neumann equation:
d (S) i
R (t) = − [H, R(S) (t)] (7.80)
dt 
where R(S) is the density matrix in the Schrödinger picture of the combined system and
environment. We can make the transformation to the interaction picture using

i i
R(S) (t) → exp − H0 t R(I) (t) exp H0 t , (7.81)
 
i i
HI → exp − H0 t HI (t) exp H0 t , (7.82)
 

which allows us to recast Eq. (7.80) in a form that does not explicitly involve H0 ,

d (I) i
R (t) = − [HI (t), R(I) (t)] . (7.83)
dt 
We can integrate this equation to obtain
 t
i
R(I) (t) = R(I)
0 − ds[HI (s), R(I) (s)] , (7.84)
 0

(I)
where R0 is determined by the initial conditions. Unfortunately, this is not a closed-form
solution, since R(I) appears on both sides of the equation. We know that the coupling
Hamiltonian should be relatively weak, and so a sensible approach to solving this equation
229 7.3 The optical master equation and quantum jumps

is by successive substitution of this solution into the commutator on the right-hand side.
The resulting exact infinite-series solution is
∞
 n  
(I) i
R(I) (t) = R0 + − Dn t HI , R(I)
0 , (7.85)
 n
n=1

where we have defined

  t  t1  tn−1
Dn t ≡ dt1 dt2 . . . dtn , (7.86)
0 0 0

and      
HI , R(I)
0 ≡ HI (t1 ), HI (t2 ), . . . HI (tn ), R(I)
0 . (7.87)
n
If we assume an initial state of the form R0 = ρ(t = 0) ⊗ ρE , where ρ(t) is the density
matrix of the system at time t, and ρE is the initial environment state, we can write an
equation for the development of the system density matrix as a function of time
∞

ρ(t) = U(t)ρ0 = Un (t)ρ0 , (7.88)
n=0

where U is the time-evolution superoperator for ρ0(I) , and Un is the contribution to U that
involves n terms in HI
 
i n
Un (t) = − TrE Dn t [[HI , ρE ⊗ (·)]]n , (7.89)


where n ≥ 1. For n = 0 we set Un (t) = 1.

Our final aim is to find an equation much like the von Neumann equation for the sys-
tem, but where the environmental interaction is taken into account. Let us therefore recast
Eq. (7.88) into the form
ρ̇(t) = U̇(t)U −1 (t)ρ(t) , (7.90)
which is an equation for the time derivative of ρ in terms of ρ(t), and therefore is of the same
general form as the von Neumann equation. The first-order approximation to Eq. (7.90) can
be written as
 t
i
ρ̇(t) = U̇1 (t)ρ(t) = − TrE dt1 [HI (t1 ), ρE ⊗ ρ(t)] . (7.91)
 0

We can force this term to zero by including a term TrE [HI , R(I) (0)] in the system Hamil-
tonian. This term is a c-number, and it will therefore not survive in the commutator in
Eq. (7.91). We must consider the second-order contribution to obtain the lowest nontrivial
approximation:
 t
1
ρ̇(t) = − dt1 TrE ([HI (t), [HI (t1 ), ρE ⊗ ρ(t)]]) . (7.92)
2 0
230 Atomic quantum information carriers

It turns out that the third-order correction is also zero, so this second-order approximation
is generally quite good. Eq. (7.92) is called the ‘Redfield equation’.
Eq. (7.92) is usually obtained in an alternative way. First, Eq. (7.84) is substituted back
into Eq. (7.83) to give
 t   
1
Ṙ(t) = − ds TrE HI (t), HI (s), RJ (s) . (7.93)
2 0

Two approximations are then made, namely the ‘Born approximation’ and the ‘Markov
approximation’. The Born approximation states that the state of the environment is unaf-
fected by the system evolution, so an initial tensor-product state of the system and the
environment remains separable throughout, i.e., R(I) (s) = ρE ⊗ ρ(s). The Markov approx-
imation states that the time evolution of the system depends only on the present state of the
system, and not on any historical record of the system. This is motivated by the assump-
tion that excitations in the environment decay over a much faster timescale than the typical
timescale of the system dynamics. Thus we make the replacement ρ(s) → ρ(t) in Eq. (7.93),
which leads to Eq. (7.92). Since the two derivations give an identical equation, we conclude
that both the Markov and the Born approximations arise from a second-order cut-off of the
density matrix evolution operator.
Next, we assume that the coupling between the system and environment is linear. The
most general form of such a coupling allows several terms, labelled by the index α:

HI = ϒα ⊗ α , (7.94)
α

† †
where ϒα = ϒα and operates on the system, while α = α and operates on the envi-
ronment. We would like to transform this into the interaction picture, so it is convenient
to write the system operators in the system’s eigenbasis. Let us call the eigenvalues of the
system Hamiltonian ǫ, each of which have a corresponding eigenvector |ǫ . Now using the
projectors Pǫ = |ǫ ǫ|, we can define

ϒα (ω) ≡ δǫ ′ −ǫ,ω Pǫ ϒα Pǫ ′ . (7.95)
ǫ,ǫ ′

With this definition we can rewrite Eq. (7.94) as


HI = ϒα (ω) ⊗ α . (7.96)
α,ω

The interaction Hamiltonian in the interaction picture now assumes a relatively simple
structure

HI (t) = e−iωt ϒα (ω) ⊗ (t) , (7.97)
α,ω

where (t) = eiHE t/ e−iHE t/ . Eq. (7.97) is in a convenient form that allows us to factor
the system and environment parts of the Redfield equation in Eq. (7.92). After some lengthy
231 7.3 The optical master equation and quantum jumps

but straightforward algebra we find

 ′
 
ρ̇(t) = − ei(ω −ω)t γα,α′ (ω) ϒα′ (ω)ρ(t)ϒα† (ω′ ) − ϒα† (ω′ )ϒα′ (ω)ρ(t)
ω,ω′ ,α,α ′

+ H.c. . (7.98)

The reservoir correlation functions are defined by

 t
1 †
γα,α (ω) ≡ 2
′ dt1 eiωt1 α (t) α ′ (t − t1 ) (7.99)
 0
where the angled brackets denote an average over the environment density matrix. Notice
that all terms involving products ϒϒ or ϒ † ϒ † have been dropped from Eq. (7.98) since
they are associated with correlation functions that must be zero.
We have already made the assumption that the environment correlations decay on a much
faster timescale than any system dynamics, and we may therefore take the upper limit on
the integral of Eq. (7.99) to infinity. Further, since the density matrix of the environment
† †
does not depend on time, we know that α (t) α′ (t − t1 ) = α (t1 ) α′ (0) , so
 ∞
1
γα,α ′ (ω) ≡ 2 dt eiωt †α (t) α′ (0) . (7.100)
 0

A further simplifying assumption that we can make in quantum optical systems is that the
non-secular terms in Eq. (7.98), i.e., those with ω = ω′ , can be dropped. We therefore find
  
ρ̇(t) = − γα,α′ (ω) ϒα′ (ω)ρ(t)ϒα† (ω) − ϒα† (ω)ϒα′ (ω)ρ(t) + H.c., (7.101)
ω,α,α ′

−1
which is valid as long as the typical relaxation time of the system, determined by the γα,α ′,
is small compared to the internal system dynamics. The latter occur on a timescale that is
of the order (ω − ω′ )−1 .

7.3.1 The optical master equation

We have developed the theory of the master equation quite generally. We will now apply it
to the specific case of the Jaynes–Cummings model. This will show us how to treat optical
decay when we have no knowledge about the emission time of the photons. Our starting
point is Eq. (7.76). It consists of two terms which, using the notation of Eq. (7.94), we will
label α = {+, −}. However, it makes no sense to consider just an atom interacting with a
single mode if we are to use the technique we have just discussed. The environment must
have many degrees of freedom if its correlations are to fall off much more quickly than
the system dynamics. This situation is often more realistic, since optically active atoms are
not usually inside perfect cavities, where the interaction is mainly between the atom and a
single cavity mode. We therefore extend our model to include many different modes j, with
†
frequencies ω̄j and coupling strengths gj that are generated by the operators b̂j , b̂j .
232 Atomic quantum information carriers

We can now immediately write down the eigenstate-projected forms of the operators that
appear in Eq. (7.96), in the interaction picture, Eq. (7.97). We have

ϒ+ (−ω0 ) = σ + and + (t) = gj b̂j exp(−iω̄j t); (7.102)
j
 †
ϒ− (ω0 ) = σ − and − (t) = gj∗ b̂j exp(iω̄j t). (7.103)
j

We must substitute these specific terms into Eq. (7.98). This leads to quite a complicated
expression if we regard a general state of the environment. However, it is often sufficient
to consider thermal states of the environment, i.e.,

ρE = ρE,1 ⊗ ρE,2 ⊗ . . . ⊗ ρE,j ⊗ . . . (7.104)

where
 ∞
1
ρE,j = exp(−nω̄j β) |n j n| , (7.105)
1 − exp(−ω̄j β)
n=0

with β = (kB T )−1 . For this particular choice of environmental state, we can derive the
relations

b̂k b̂j = 0, (7.106)

† †
b̂k b̂j = 0, (7.107)
†
b̂k b̂j = δkj (1 + N (ω̄j )), (7.108)
†
b̂k b̂j = δkj N (ω̄j ). (7.109)

Here2 , N (ω̄) is the Bose–Einstein occupation number [exp(ω̄β) − 1]−1 . Therefore, only
terms in which α = α ′ survive in Eq. (7.101) and using the forms in Eq. (7.103) we can
write

ρ̇(t) = −γ+,+ σ + ρ(t)σ − − σ − σ + ρ(t)

− γ−,− σ − ρ(t)σ + − σ + σ − ρ(t) + H.c., (7.110)

with
 ∞ |gj |2
γ+,+ = dt ei(ω̄j −ω0 )t N (ω̄j ) , (7.111)
0 2
j
 ∞ |gj |2
γ−,− = dt ei(ω0 −ω̄j )t (1 + N (ω̄j )) . (7.112)
0 2
j

2 For more general environmental states such as squeezed states these relations do not hold and a more complicated
master equation results.
233 7.3 The optical master equation and quantum jumps

We can go further by converting the sum over states to an integral over the density of states
D(ω̄). We need to use  ∞
P
dt exp(±iǫt) = π δ(ǫ) ± i , (7.113)
0 ǫ
where P denotes the Cauchy principal value. By defining parameters

1 |g(ω̄)|2
1 =P d ω̄ D(ω̄) N (ω̄) , (7.114)
ω̄ − ω0 2

1 |g(ω̄)|2
2 =P d ω̄ D(ω̄) , (7.115)
ω̄ − ω0 2

and

|g(ω0 )|2
Ŵ= D(ω0 ) (7.116)
2
we can write the master equation, Eq. (7.110), in the form
+
ρ̇ = i(2 1 + 2 )[σz , ρ] + ŴN (ω0 )(2σ ρσ − − σ − σ + ρ − ρσ − σ + )
+ Ŵ[N (ω0 ) + 1](2σ − ρσ + − σ + σ − ρ − ρσ + σ − ) . (7.117)

The first term is non-dissipative, and corresponds to the equation of motion for a two-level
system with energy separation (2 1 + 2 ). It is therefore an effective energy renormal-
ization called the ‘Lamb shift’. We can absorb it into the bare system Hamiltonian HA and
redo the interaction Hamiltonian transformation, defining the resulting density matrix as ρ̃.
The renormalizing process has no effect on the form of the other terms in Eq. (7.117) and
we can write

ρ̃˙ = ŴN (ω0 )(2σ + ρ̃σ − − σ − σ + ρ̃ − ρ̃σ − σ + )

+ Ŵ[N (ω0 ) + 1](2σ − ρ̃σ + − σ + σ − ρ̃ − ρ̃σ + σ − ) . (7.118)

This equation is our key result, and is called the ‘optical master equation’.
What does the master equation mean? The first group of terms, which are proportional
to ŴN (ω0 ), came from the part of the interaction Hamiltonian whose effect was to raise the
energy of the atom, taking it from state |g to |e , and to simultaneously remove a quantum
of energy from the environment. Since we are unable to track the state of the environment,
which is now a continuum of modes, we are no longer able to give a state vector description
of our atom’s time evolution. Rather, we can use our optical master equation to encapsulate
all the knowledge we can possibly have about our atom’s evolution. This first group of terms
describes the tendency in time of our system to increase its energy by absorbing energy
from the environment. The rate of this absorption is given by ŴN (ω0 ), which makes good
sense: N (ω0 ) gives us the occupation number of the environment states with the energy that
matches the energy which must be gained by the atom. If there are no environment states
occupied, there can be no energy gain. Similarly, the rate depends via Ŵ on the density
of available environment states, D(ω0 ), and the coupling between atom and environment,
234 Atomic quantum information carriers

g(ω0 ). The second collection of terms, which depend on Ŵ[N (ω0 )+1], describe the tendency
of an atom to emit radiation into the environment, and so move from |e to |g . Emission
can always happen if there are available states to decay into. This is the origin of the extra
Ŵ in the rate, which is associated with spontaneous emission. The other part is proportional
to ŴN (ω0 ) and describes stimulated emission.

7.3.2 Monitored decay in the quantum-jump approach

So far, our description of system dynamics in an environment of photons has assumed that
we do not have any knowledge about the environment at all. Rather, we have only been
able to observe the system. However, it is often the case in an experiment that we are
able to detect photons that have previously been emitted by an atom. This gives us some
extra information that may affect our knowledge of the system state. In this case, we must
modify our master equation and make it conditional on the observations we can make of
decay photons.
Let us start by asking how the system changes when we detect a photon due to decay.
The simplest assumption is that if the system has emitted a photon, it must be left in
the ground state. Whatever the state of the system was before the emission, a photon
detection corresponds to a projection into the state ρg = |g g|. We can capture this
process mathematically by defining the decay-jump operator J according to

J ρ = σ − ρσ + . (7.119)

This operator leaves the system in the state e| ρ |e |g g|, i.e., it produces the ground state
we desire, but with the prefactor e| ρ |e = TrJ ρ. This is just the probability that our
system was in the excited state before photon emission. During any given time interval
there is a certain probability that the atom emits a photon, and that this photon is detected.
Every time that such an event occurs we must apply the jump operator to the system, and
renormalize the state. We call a ‘trajectory’ a sequence of intervals that is characterized by
a string of specific detection signatures, one for each interval.
We must ensure that after averaging over many trajectories we recover the (unconditional)
master equation in Eq. (7.118). To do this, let us look at an infinitesimal time interval dt.
We can divide the evolution into two parts. First, if we detect a photon our system will jump
to a state which we will call ρ1 ; if no photon is detected we call the new state ρ0 . We can
use a stochastic variable dN , which can take the value of 0 or 1, to express this in a single
equation:

ρ(t + dt) = ρ0 (t + dt)(1 − dN ) + ρ1 (t + dt)dN

Jρ
= ρ0 (t + dt)(1 − dN ) + dN . (7.120)
Tr(J ρ)

For a decay rate 2Ŵ and a perfect detector, the probability that a photon is detected in dt is
2Tr(J ρ)Ŵ.
235 7.3 The optical master equation and quantum jumps

In practice, photodetectors have a finite-detection efficiency η. In Chapter 4 we have seen

that this can be modelled as a perfect detector, preceded by a beam splitter with transmission
coefficient η in the detected mode. Each photon is lost or detected independently of the
other photons. We can therefore modify the probability of photon detection by multiplying
by η. The expectation value ξ(dN ) of the stochastic variable dN then becomes

ξ(dN ) = 2ηŴ Tr(J ρ)dt , (7.121)

and the average over many trajectories of Eq. (7.120) is given by

ρ(t + dt) = ρ0 (t + dt)[1 − 2ηŴ Tr(J ρ)dt] + 2ηŴ J ρdt

= ρ(t) + Ŵ(2J ρ − Aρ)dt , (7.122)

where the second equation follows from Eq. (7.118), defining the superoperator Aρ =
σ + σ− ρ +ρσ + σ− , and assuming that the temperature is sufficiently low so that N (ω0 ) ≈ 0.
By keeping only terms up to those linear in dt, we may write

ρ0 (t + dt) = ρ(t) + Ŵ {2η Tr[J ρ(t)]ρ(t) + 2(1 − η)J ρ(t) − Aρ(t)} dt , (7.123)

which is more conveniently expressed by the differential equation

dρ0
= Ŵ[2η Tr(J ρ0 )ρ0 + 2(1 − η)J ρ0 − Aρ0 ] . (7.124)
dt
This is an exact differential equation for ρ0 , but rather difficult to solve in this nonlinear
form. However, it can be recast in a linear form that does not preserve the normalization of
the density matrix.

Exercise 7.4: Let ρ0 (t) = f (t)ρ̄0 (t), where f (t) is a normalization factor that depends on
time. Substitute this in Eq. (7.124) and show that the resulting term in f 2 can be eliminated
by choosing f (t) = (Tr[ρ̄0 (t)])−1 . Derive the linear equation for ρ̄0

d ρ̄0
= Ŵ[2(1 − η)J ρ̄0 − Aρ̄0 ] . (7.125)
dt
We now have all we need to simulate a quantum trajectory using Eq. (7.120). For each
time interval we use a random-number generator to determine whether a photon is detected
or not. We make sure that the expectation value, Eq. (7.121), is satisfied by assigning an
appropriate range for when the generated random number corresponds to a detection event.
If a photon is indeed detected, we use the jump operator. If no photon is detected, we use
our linear differential equation in Eq. (7.125) to obtain the new state, which we normalize
by dividing by its trace. It is instructive to look at the form of Eq. (7.125) in the case of a
perfect detector (η = 1). In that case, we can write the equation in a state vector form. It
becomes a Schrödinger equation with a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian:
 
d ψ̄
= −Ŵ |e e| ψ̄ . (7.126)
dt
 236 Atomic quantum information carriers

The solution of this equation has an exponentially reducing amplitude for the excited state.
In other words, as time passes with no photon detected, the observer gains confidence that
the system must be in the ground state, and is incapable of producing a photon, as opposed
to an excited state which has not yet decayed.

7.4 Entangling operations via path erasure

A powerful consequence of the atom–photon interactions we have discussed in this chapter

is the possibility of creating entangled states of atoms by measuring the photons that they
emitted. There have been several proposals for how best to do this in recent years, and we
will here review some of the more promising candidates.

7.4.1 The weak driving limit

The simplest approach to entangling two atoms is to measure decay photons from a weakly
driven transition. Let us consider the set-up that is depicted schematically in Fig. 7.6. We
have two atoms in separate cavities that each have a -configuration, i.e., two low-lying
states labeled |0 and |1 , and a single excited state |e . Both cavities are resonant with
the |e -|1 transition, which must be identical for each atom. We will assume that the only
significant atom–photon decay path is via photons in the resonant cavity mode. We further
assume that one of the cavity mirrors is somewhat more leaky than the other, such that
photons will always be emitted in the direction of that mirror.
Initialize the two atoms (i ∈ {1, 2}) in state |0 , and assume that the temperature is
low enough that thermal excitations are negligible. Each atom is now driven with a laser
resonant with |0 ↔ |e , but only weakly and for a short time. We therefore create only a

Fig. 7.6. (a) The general experimental set-up for entanglement generation through photon path erasure.
Two cavities are depicted at the bottom of the figure, each of which contains an atom. In the weak
driving case, each atom has the level structure shown in (b).
237 7.4 Entangling operations via path erasure

small amplitude for the term |e , and the state of each atom can be written as

|0 + ǫ |e
|ψ i = √ . (7.127)
1 + ǫ2

For simplicity, and without loss of generality, we can choose ǫ real. The state of both atoms
together is then

|00 + ǫ(|e0 + |0e ) + ǫ 2 |ee

| 12 = |ψ 1 ⊗ |ψ 2 = . (7.128)
1 + ǫ2

Next, suppose that detectors Di are set up to detect photons emitted from atom i into mode
ai . When that detector clicks we describe the system evolution with the jump operator
Ji (·) = σi− (·)σi+ . Following a click in detector D1 or D2 , we therefore project into the
atom state |1 1 |ψ 2 or |ψ 1 |1 2 , respectively. Both states are separable. Alternatively, if
we place a 50:50 beam splitter in the path of the two possible photon-emission routes, in the
symmetric way shown in Fig. 7.6, the photon operators after the beam splitter are written as

† †
† iâ1 + â2
b̂1 = √ , (7.129)
2
† †
† â1 + iâ2
b̂2 = √ . (7.130)
2

We know that a photon in mode ai is created via the decay of atom i, and the relevant jump
operator Ji associated with a detector click in Di must therefore be modified as follows:

1 −
J1 (·) = (iσ + σ2− )(·)(−iσ1+ + σ2+ ) , (7.131)
2 1
1
J2 (·) = (σ1− + iσ2− )(·)(σ1+ − iσ2+ ) . (7.132)
2

Applying these operators to our initial state in Eq. (7.128) yields

1
| 1 = [i |01 + |10 + ǫ(i |1e + |e1 )] , (7.133)
2(1 + ǫ 2 )
1
| 2 = [|01 + i |10 + ǫ(|1e + i |e1 )] , (7.134)
2(1 + ǫ 2 )

where | i is the state following in a click in detector Di . The last two terms in these states
involve the excited state |e , and will eventually decay into |11 . This process produces a
photon in the same detector as the first decay, and this happens with a probability ǫ 2 /(1+ǫ 2 ).
If the detector was perfect, we would be able to discount such events, since they produce an
uninteresting product state. However, it is often the case that detectors are unable to count
photons that are emitted in rapid succession. When this is the case, we have to describe the
238 Atomic quantum information carriers

system by a mixed state

1  
2
ρ1 = (i |01 + |10 )(−i 01| + 10|) + 2ǫ |11 11| , (7.135)
2(1 + ǫ 2 )
1  
2
ρ2 = (|01 + i |10 )( 01| − i 10|) + 2ǫ |11 11| . (7.136)
2(1 + ǫ 2 )

When the driving is weak, i.e., ǫ ≪ 1, a single detector click indicates that the atoms are
almost maximally entangled, even though they never interacted with each other directly.
The crucial requirement for this procedure to work is that we detect a photon without
knowing which atom emitted it. In this case, the beam splitter has acted to erase the ‘which
path’ information for the detected photon. By contrast, if there is any way, practical or in
principle, of telling which cavity the detected photon originated from, the state loses its
entanglement, since the jump operators are no longer properly described as a superposition
of atom-decay processes. For example, if the atoms emit photons of different frequency, or
recoil significantly in the decay process, the path-erasure method does not work.
A drawback of the weak driving scheme is that the probability of detecting a photon on
any given round of the protocol is necessarily low, since ǫ must be kept small. For any ǫ,
we can calculate the fidelity of the two-atom state with respect to the maximally entangled
state as
1 − ǫ2
F= ≈ 1 − 2ǫ 2 , (7.137)
1 + ǫ2
for small ǫ, and the success probability (or efficiency) p is

p = 2Ŵ [Tr(J1 ρ) + Tr(J2 ρ)] = 4Ŵǫ 2 . (7.138)

There is a direct trade-off between the fidelity of the entanglement and the success prob-
ability of the entanglement generation. When the procedure fails, the system ends up in a
mixed state which is primarily composed of |00 00| (in the case of perfect detectors the
state of the two atoms is exactly |00 00|). Such a large failure rate does not really matter
if we need to generate only small entangled states of perhaps two or three qubits. However,
failure of the entangling procedure causes the loss of all correlations with any previously
created larger entangled state, and creating large cluster states by repeated applications of
this protocol becomes exponentially costly. We therefore now explore an alternative method
that enjoys an increased probability of success, while keeping the fidelity close to unity.

7.4.2 The double heralding parity gate

We again consider two atoms in separate cavities, where the cavity ensures that photon
emission is predominantly into a particular mode to enhance the photon collection. The
beam splitter and detectors also have the same configuration as in Fig. 7.6. However,
the level structure of the atoms is modified to an L-configuration, as shown in Fig. 7.7a.
The states |1 and |e are coupled by a driving laser and the cavity mode. The coupling
between the levels |0 and |e is highly suppressed, for example by a selection rule. The
 239 7.4 Entangling operations via path erasure

Fig. 7.7. (a) The ‘L’ type level structure needed for the double-heralding gate; (b) the four-level structure
needed for the repeat-until-success protocol. Both |0 and |1 have a corresponding higher level,
each of which decays to give distinct photons.

energy separation of |0 and |1 can be much smaller than the energy to the excited state
|e . We assume that we have single-qubit control over both systems, e.g., using resonant
electromagnetic radiation of much longer wavelength than the optics used in the rest of the
protocol. Alternatively, a stirap or conventional Raman procedure using another excited
level may be used to construct fast single-qubit gates.
We now describe the double-heralding entangling protocol. Both atoms are prepared in
the state
1
|+ = √ (|0 + |1 ) . (7.139)
2
A resonant laser pulse of frequency ω is applied to both atoms such that all population is
transferred from |1 to |e . The joint state of the two atoms then becomes

1
| = (|00 + |0e + |e0 + |ee ) . (7.140)
2
We now wait for all possible decay photons and again assume that our detectors are unable
to count the number of photons. If we have perfectly efficient detectors, a detector click
will occur with a probability 3/4, and depending on which detector clicks, we obtain the
following mixed states after detection:

1
ρ1 = [(|01 + i |10 )( 01| − i 10|) + |11 11|] ,
3
1
ρ2 = [(i |01 + |10 )(−i 01| + 10|) + |11 11|] . (7.141)
3
A trick is now performed to remove the right-most separable term in these mixtures. We use
our single-qubit control to apply a bit-flip to each atomic qubit. The two states then become

1
ρ1 = [(|10 + i |01 )( 10| − i 01|) + |00 00|] ,
3
1
ρ2 = [(i |10 + |01 )(−i 10| + 01|) + |00 00|] . (7.142)
3
240 Atomic quantum information carriers

A second round of excitation now follows. Since the state |00 is unable to produce any
photons, a second detector click must project the two atoms onto the entangled part of the
states in Eq. (7.142). Indeed, in this simplified picture, a successful operation results in a
maximally entangled pure state with a probability of success on the second round of 2/3.
Overall success of the protocol is marked by photon-detection events on both rounds of the
protocol, hence the name ‘double heralding’. In the ideal detector scenario, success happens
with total probability of 3/4 × 2/3 = 1/2. The fidelity of this protocol is insensitive to low
detector efficiency η, though of course this does adversely affect the success probability,
which becomes p = η 2 /2. One mechanism that can degrade the fidelity of the entangling
procedure is false positives, or dark counts, in the photodetectors.

Exercise 7.5: Show that if the same detector clicks in the two successive rounds, the state
of the atoms is
 +
 = √1 (|01 + |10 ) . (7.143)
2
 −

If different detectors click, the state is  .

The double-heralding protocol relies on the detection of two photons, one in each round.
However, it is straightforward to modify the protocol to a single-round procedure. The level
scheme must then be modified to accommodate the generation of two photons in a single 
round, as shown in Fig. 7.7b. Each qubit state |j is coupled to its own excited state ej , and
the photons that are produced by these two transitions must be perfectly distinguishable, for
example in polarization or frequency. A probabilistic optical Bell measurement of the type
described in Section 5.2 can then be used to project the atoms onto a maximally entangled
state. The maximum success probability is again η2 /2, where η is the detection efficiency.
The large probability of success compared to the weak driving scheme makes it possible
to use double heralding to build large cluster states efficiently. To see this, first consider what
happens if we try to extend the length of a linear cluster state. We start with an (N −1)-qubit
linear cluster state
1
|C 2...N =√ (|0 2 + |1 2 Z3 )(|0 3 + |1 3 Z4 ) . . . (|0 N + |1 N) , (7.144)
2N −1
and a separable qubit in the state |+ 1 . Applying a successful double-heralding entangling
operation on qubits 1 and 2 yields the state

1
|C 1...N = √ (|0 1 |1 2 ± |1 1 |0 2 Z3 ) |C 3...N , (7.145)
2

which can always be transformed into the N qubit cluster |C 1...N by the local operation
H1 X2 . If the relative phase in Eq. (7.145) is −1, the Pauli operator Z1 must precede this
correction. When the entangling operation fails, we destroy the entanglement between qubit
2 and the remainder of the cluster, therefore shortening the total length of the cluster by
one. Hence, even in the best-case scenario of 50% success probability there will be no net
growth in the length of the cluster using this method. However, as was shown in Chapter 2,
it is possible to build large clusters efficiently by making use of inefficient off-line creation
241 7.4 Entangling operations via path erasure

of shorter chains, which are then attached to the main cluster. Consider a main cluster of N
qubits and a short linear chain of m qubits that has been made offline. The double-heralding
protocol is performed on the end qubit in each cluster. If the end qubit in the short chain
is then measured in the |± basis, the resulting state is locally equivalent to a N + m − 1
linear cluster. A failure leads to a shrinking of the long cluster by one qubit, i.e., to length
N − 1. The average length of the new cluster therefore becomes

L = p(N + m − 1) + (1 − p)(N − 1) , (7.146)

where p is the success probability of the entangling operation. Therefore as long as p > 1/m
the cluster will grow efficiently.

Exercise 7.6: Show that

|0 1 |1 2 + |1 1 |0 2 Z3 → (|0 1 + |1 1 Z2 )(|0 2 + |1 2 Z3 ) , (7.147)

under the local transformation H1 X2 .

The double-heralding procedure that we have introduced in this section is closely related
to the type-II fusion gate introduced in Chapter 6. Indeed, when the double-heralding pro-
cedure is collapsed into a single-round, two-photon entangling procedure (using the level
structure in Fig. 7.7b), the mathematical identification is exact. The subsequent results for
optical quantum computing with single photons can therefore be translated immediately
to cluster-state quantum computing with atomic qubits. The benefit of using atoms, rather
than photons, is that the latter need to be stored in a quantum memory while the cluster state
is prepared, whereas the atoms are themselves quantum memories.

7.4.3 The broker–client protocol

The double-heralding entanglement procedure works only some of the time. In the previous
section we saw that this does not preclude the growth of cluster states, though the strategy
requires significant offline resources. When the probability of successful entanglement
creation becomes low, this can mean a huge overhead in the time and effort required to
increase the size of a cluster, and may not be the most sensible approach, especially in the
light of naturally occurring decoherence of the qubits in the cluster state.
Before we discuss a different kind of gate that enables the generation of distributed
entanglement without catastrophic failure, we will present a method for using double herald-
ing without the need for large-scale offline cluster-state generation. However, some extra
resources are needed at each cluster-state node, namely one extra qubit. The two qubits
at each local node are assumed to be under complete deterministic control, such that any
two-qubit gate operation can be performed upon them. A system where this may be imple-
mented is a four-level atom, where each level represents one of the two-qubit basis states
{|00 , |01 , |10 , |11 }. The essential idea is that one of the qubits at each node acts as a
‘broker’ and the other a ‘client’. The client qubits hold the main cluster state as it grows.
 242 Atomic quantum information carriers

Fig. 7.8. (a) Each ‘client’ qubit in the main cluster (shown as black circles) has an associated ‘broker’ qubit
(shown as white circles for two of the brokers). The client and broker are part of the same system,
and entangling two-qubit operations can be performed between them in a deterministic fashion.
(b) Entanglement is built up between two brokers through a heralded probabilistic scheme, such
as double heralding. (c) Local two-qubit operations make cluster-state edges between the brokers
and their associated clients. For example, a simple CZ gate could be performed on each pair. (d)
The brokers are measured in the X basis, which rearranges the cluster-state connections in the
manner shown. The result is a new connection in the main cluster, which is held by the clients.

The broker qubits, on the other hand, simply build up entanglement with one or more other
brokers, using a probabilistic but heralded entanglement-generation scheme like the one
presented above. Once created, this entanglement can be passed into the clients determin-
istically without destroying any of the connections already present in the main cluster (see
Fig. 7.8).

7.4.4 Repeat-until-success CX gate

We have seen that it is possible to create cluster states efficiently by erasing the which-
path information for photons emitted by atoms in separate cavities. A successful entangling
operation is heralded, and we have found that high-fidelity entangled states result from
successful operations. The main obstacle to growing large-scale cluster states is that the
success probability of the entanglement operation is bounded by 1/2, and to overcome this
we need large offline resources. An alternative approach is to find a scheme where the failure
of an entangling operation does not destroy any of the entanglement that already exists in
the cluster. Double heralding and weak driving both fail to conserve cluster length if no
photon is detected, since then one qubit is always projected out of the cluster. However,
using detectors with high efficiencies (η ≈ 1) and modest photon-number resolution, it
is possible to devise measurements in so-called mutually unbiased bases that protect the
cluster from failed entangling operations.
243 7.4 Entangling operations via path erasure

Instead of the L-configuration, we use the level structure in Fig. 7.7b to map qubit states
directly to photonic states. Each qubit i = 1, 2 is again encoded in the two ground levels |0
and |1 , each of which is coupled to its own excited state |e0 and |e1 via cavity photons
† †
with creation operators â0,i and â1,i , respectively. Therefore, a π -pulse laser excitation
followed by decay of a general two-qubit initial state yields the combined state of the atoms
and optical modes

|ψ(t0 ) = (c00 |00 + c01 |01 + c10 |10 + c11 |11 ) |0

† † † †
→ c00 |00 â0,1 â0,2 |0 + c01 |01 â0,1 â1,2 |0
† † † †
+ c10 |10 â1,1 â0,2 |0 + c11 |11 â1,1 â1,2 |0 ≡ |ψ(t1 ) , (7.148)

where |0 is the vacuum state of the cavity. The kind of unbiased measurement we need
should not give any information about the coefficients {c00 , c01 , c10 , c11 }. Rather, it should
distinguish only between photon states that are composed of an equal superposition of all
four of the two photon states that appear in each term of Eq. (7.148). Of course, we know
already from Chapter 5 that we cannot project these photons deterministically onto the Bell
basis, and this result ensures that we cannot construct a deterministic entangling operation.
However, there is still the possibility of constructing a probabilistic entangling gate such
that the failure channel leads to a known local operation on the qubits. This allows us to
correct for these local operations, and leave the entanglement of the atomic qubits intact.
We can then repeat the procedure until the entangling operation succeeds. This is called
‘repeat-until-success’ (rus).
We implement rus as follows. Suppose that the two different photon modes for each qubit
in Fig. 7.7b are of the same frequency but have orthogonal polarization, e.g., horizontal
H and vertical V . A photon from each cavity impinges on a 50:50 beam splitter, with two
polarization-sensitive detectors placed in the output modes. This allows the following states
to be distinguished:
† †
âH ,1 âH ,2 |0 : two H in the same detector,
† †
âV ,1 âV ,2 |0 : two V in the same detector,
1 † † † †
√ (âV ,1 âH ,2 − âH ,1 âV ,2 ) |0 : H in one detector, V in the other,
2
1 † † † †
√ (âV ,1 âH ,2 + âH ,1 âV ,2 ) |0 : H and V in the same detector. (7.149)
2

Such a measurement basis is still biased, but if we perform the following simple polarization
rotation operations on the photons before they impinge on the beam splitter, we can make
the required unbiased measurement:

1  † †

U1 = √ âH ,1 (âH ,1 + âV ,1 ) + âV ,1 (âH ,1 − âV ,1 ) , (7.150)
2
1  † †

U2 = √ âH ,2 (âH ,2 + âV ,2 ) − iâV ,2 (âH ,2 − âV ,2 ) , (7.151)
2
244 Atomic quantum information carriers

where 1 and 2 label the two beam-splitter input ports. Notice the extra factor i in Eq. (7.151).

Exercise 7.7: Using U1 and U2 , show that making the same measurement after the beam
splitter allows us to distinguish the following four photon states:

 
1,2 = 1 (↠↠∓ i↠↠± i↠↠− ↠↠) |0 , (7.152)
2 H ,1 H ,2 H ,1 V ,2 V ,1 H ,2 V ,1 V ,2

1 † † † † † † † †
|3 = (âH ,1 âH ,2 + âH ,1 âV ,2 + âV ,1 âH ,2 + âV ,1 âV ,2 ) |0 , (7.153)
2
1 † † † † † † † †
|4 = (âH ,1 âH ,2 − âH ,1 âV ,2 − âV ,1 âH ,2 + âV ,1 âV ,2 ) |0 . (7.154)
2
The first two states |1 and |2 in Exercise 7.7 are maximally entangled states, while
|3 and |4 are separable states. We can now write the combined state |ψ(t1 ) of the two
qubits and the two modes in Eq. (7.148) in terms of the two-photon states |i , and a basis
of four two-qubit states |i in the Schmidt decomposition

4
1
|ψ(t1 ) = | i | i , (7.155)
2
i=1

with
π   π
| 1 = eiπ/4 UZ,1 UZ,2 − cz |ψ(t0 ) , (7.156)
2 2
 π π 
| 2 = eiπ/4 UZ,1 − UZ,2 cz |ψ(t0 ) , (7.157)
2 2
| 3 = |ψ(t0 ) , (7.158)
| 4 = −iUZ,1 (π)UZ,2 (π) |ψ(t0 ) . (7.159)
 
Measurement outcomes 1 and 2, associated with the photon state 1,2 , induce a cz gate on
the two qubits up to local rotations around the Z axis. Measurement outcome 3 does nothing
to the qubit states, and outcome 4 induces two known local qubit rotations UZ,1 (π) and
UZ,2 (π). These latter two measurement outcomes therefore do not destroy the entanglement
that may already be present between qubit 1 or 2 and the rest of the cluster. The operation
can therefore be repeated on the same two qubits, until success is recorded. Therefore, if the
protocol is used to grow cluster states, at each step the size of the cluster either increases
or remains constant.
The rus procedure effectively allows us to create atomic cluster states for quantum
computing in a deterministic fashion, based on two-photon detection signatures. However,
as shown in Eq. (7.149), it requires photon detectors that can distinguish between zero, one,
and two photons. Furthermore, when detection efficiencies are low, sometimes only one
photon, or even zero photons will be detected. These are failure modes, and lead again to
shortening of the cluster-states and low cluster-state fidelities. A combination of double-
heralding techniques and rus that produces large success probabilities (> 1/2) with realistic
detectors was proposed by Lim et al. (2006).
245 7.5 Other entangling gates

7.5 Other entangling gates

We have seen how to use measurements of photons emitted by atoms placed in two dif-
ferent cavities to create entanglement between the atoms. However, these are not the only
techniques that can be used to entangle two atoms for the purposes of quantum computing.
In this section we discuss two alternative strategies, namely the intra-cavity entangling
operation, where both atoms reside in the same cavity for the duration of the entangling
operation, and a gate that takes advantage of the Zeno effect. The latter is a true two-photon
gate mediated by atomic transitions.

7.5.1 Intra-cavity entangling operations

Let us first imagine a three-level atom coupled to a cavity mode, as depicted in Fig. 7.9. The
cavity decay rate will be κ, but let us ignore that for the moment. We assume a maximum
of one photon in the cavity at any time, so the available Fock states are |0 and |1 . We
will see later that this is justified by a leaky cavity in which photons quickly escape after
populating the cavity mode. If the system is initially in a superposition of ground levels |0
and |1 , the dynamics of the system are restricted according to the following Hamiltonian:


H = ν |e, 0 e, 0| + g |1, 1 e, 0| + |1, 0 e, 0| + H.c. , (7.160)
2

where g is the cavity–atom coupling,  the coupling of a classical laser and ν the detuning
of both cavity and laser from the |1 -|e transition. Let us further make the assumptions that

ν ≫ κ, , g/ . (7.161)

This set of conditions implies that the level |e, 0 is never populated significantly and we can
eliminate it using second-order degenerate perturbation theory. Defining eff = g/2ν
and ν1 = 2 /(4ν) and ν2 = g 2 /(2 ν), the effective Hamiltonian becomes

H = ν1 |1, 0 1, 0| + ν2 |1, 1 1, 1| + eff (|1, 0 1, 1| + H.c.) . (7.162)

The result of running in the regime described by conditions in Eq. (7.161) is that an effective
coupling is induced between two states involving the same low-lying state of the atom (|1 ),
but with one or zero photons in the cavity. By avoiding significant population of the excited
atomic state |e the probability of emitting photons into modes other than the desired cavity
mode is suppressed.
Let us now take the leakage rate of the cavity into account. Defining â and ↠as the
respective annihilation and creation operator for the photon in the cavity, the escape of the
photon can be described using the usual optical master equation

i
ρ̇ = − [H, ρ] + κ(2âρ ↠− ↠âρ − ρ ↠â) , (7.163)

 246 Atomic quantum information carriers

Fig. 7.9. (a) Entangling atoms via intra-cavity operations. (b) The energy-level scheme for a three-level
atom coupled to a cavity photon. The three atomic levels are labelled |0 , |1 , and |e and we
allow a maximum of one photon in the cavity. The cavity decay is κ, the atom–cavity coupling g,
and the optical driving strength is .

where ρ is the density matrix of the system, which can be written in a basis involving the
three levels |0, 0 , |1, 0 , and |1, 1 . For a sufficiently large κ it is obvious that the level
|1, 1 is hardly populated, and can be eliminated from the dynamical equations (this is called
‘adiabatic elimination’). The result is a master equation for the reduced density matrix ρ̃,
which can be expressed in the basis {|0, 0 , |1, 0 }. Since the photon quantum number is
always zero we omit it from the state description, and can write the dynamical equation as

i κeff
ρ̃˙ = − [Heff , ρ̃] + (2P1 ρ̃P1 − P1 ρ̃ − ρ̃P1 ) (7.164)
 2

where κeff = 2eff /κ. We have made use of the projector P1 = |1 1| and

Heff = ν1 P1 . (7.165)

This can be rewritten as

i †
ρ̃˙ = − (Hcond ρ̃ − Hcond ρ̃) + κeff P1 ρ̃P1 , (7.166)

with Hcond = Heff − iP1 κeff /2. The final term on the right-hand side describes a quantum
jump, which occurs every time a photon is emitted from the cavity. The relevant jump
operator is the density matrix projector J (·) = P1 (·)P1 , and by detecting the decay photons
using efficient detectors we know exactly when each jump occurs. The first term on the
right-hand side describes the non-Hermitian evolution that occurs when a photon is not
emitted and we can rewrite our unconditional master equation as a stochastic conditional
equation, as we discussed in Section 7.3.2.

J1 ρ
ρ(t + dt) = ρ0 (t + dt)(1 − dN ) + dN , (7.167)
Tr(J1 ρ)
 247 7.5 Other entangling gates

Fig. 7.10. Quantum trajectories for the measurement scheme discussed in the text. (a) The result of the
measurement is state |0 and no detector clicks are observed. (b) The result is state |1 and this
time a stream of detector clicks, a fluorescence signal, is observed.

and the expectation value of dN is

ξ(dN ) = κTr(J1 ρ)dt . (7.168)

Between  jumps
 the dynamics can be written as  an
 evolution of an  (unnormalized)
 state
vector ψ̄ using a Schrödinger-like equation d ψ̄ /dt = −iHcond ψ̄ /.
Importantly, the jump operator projects the system into the |1 state, which is precisely
the state from which a jump is more likely to come in the first place. Moreover, the dynamics
between jumps does not transfer the system between |1 and |0 ; it only acts to increase the
population of |0 if no decay photons are ever emitted. Thus, we expect a stream of photons,
or a macroscopic fluorescence signal, if the system is measured in state |1 , and no light
otherwise. Examples of quantum trajectories corresponding to both cases are displayed in
Fig. 7.10.
The kind of projective measurement described here differs from our usual detection
signatures in that it yields a macroscopic signal. However, with two atoms in the cavity
we can go further and create entanglement by measuring such macroscopic signals. If the
two atoms are identical, and couple with the cavity in the same way, it is straightforward to
extend the analysis above.

Exercise 7.8: By following the same procedure as in the single-atom case, systematically
eliminating barely populated states, show that the correct master equation for a two-atom
density matrix ρ2 is:

i †
ρ̃˙2 = − (Hcond,2 ρ̃2 − Hcond,2 ρ̃2 ) + κeff (P01 + P10 )ρ̃2 (P01 + P10 ) + 4κeff P11 ρ̃2 P11 .

(7.169)
The two-atom projectors are defined as Pij = |ij ij|. The conditional Hamiltonian is now

Hcond,2 = (ν1 − iκeff /2)[P10 + P01 ] + (2ν1 − 2iκeff )P11 . (7.170)

 248 Atomic quantum information carriers

Equations (7.169) and (7.170) show that the fluorescence rate is equal for |10 and |01 ,
but the rate for |11 is four times higher than either of these. Therefore, a measurement of
zero, weaker, or stronger fluorescence will determine the total number of atoms in state |1 as
either zero, one, or two, respectively. The most interesting case is a measurement of ‘weaker
fluorescence’, which results in a quantum jump that is a parity projection P10 + P01 . As we
have already discussed (in Section 7.4.2), it is possible to efficiently, and probabilistically,
build a cluster state from this kind of projective measurement.

7.5.2 The Zeno effect as a two-photon interaction

As a final topic in this chapter on atomic qubits, we consider an entangling gate that can
be used to replace the beam splitter in path-erasure protocols for entangling atoms, or it
can be used directly on single-photon qubits. It is the so-called Zeno gate. We discuss it
here, because it relies critically on atom–photon interactions. A schematic of the physical
implementation of the Zeno gate is shown in Fig. 7.11. It is a spliced optical fibre that is
doped with atoms. The relevant level structure of the atoms is shown in the inset of Fig. 7.11.
Without the doped atoms, a spliced fibre acts as a beam splitter. An optical fibre typically
consists of a ‘core’ region of high refractive index surrounded by ‘cladding’ of lower refrac-
tive index. A light beam is guided along the core because total internal reflection occurs
at the fibre surfaces for an angle of incidence far enough from the normal to the interface.
This happens since Maxwell’s equations show that the wave solution in the cladding has an
imaginary wave vector, i.e., it exponentially decays, and for a thick-enough cladding only
negligible field intensity is emitted from the fibre. This is usually referred to as an ‘evanes-
cent’ wave. For our beam-splitter device, we use a so-called dual-core fibre, in which the
two cores are placed close enough to couple to each other via the evanescent waves. This
allows the field amplitude to slowly tunnel from one core to the other. By bringing the cores
of two fibres into a dual core and then splitting the cores again, we can set the length of

Fig. 7.11. The apparatus required for a Zeno-effect gate consists of a dual-core optical fibre filled with atoms
with a strong two-photon absorption line.
249 7.5 Other entangling gates

the interaction region and change the amount of inter-fibre coupling. Individual photons
entering the interaction region will generally be put in a superposition of the two output
modes. Another way to understand the spliced fibre as a beam splitter is as follows: we have
a device with two input modes and two output modes. Assuming that the mode functions
are not distorted in the fibre, and using the fact that the fibre does not retain a memory of
the transmitted photons, this must be a two-mode unitary transformation. As we have seen
in Chapter 1, any such device can be modelled using a single beam splitter and additional
single-mode phase shifters.
We now return to the Zeno gate. Let us assume that the (still empty) fibres are set such
that the following unitary transformation takes place between input modes a1 and a2 , and
output modes b1 and b2

† † †
b̂1 = cos θ â1 + i sin θ â2 , (7.171)
† † †
b̂2 = i sin θ â1 + cos θ â2 , (7.172)

which is equivalent to Eq. (1.146), with ζ = θ and ϕ = 0. For simplicity, we identify the
photon number with the qubit states, since we can map the atomic state |0 to zero photons
|0 , and |1 to one photon |1 in an L-configuration. If we examine what happens to qubit
states defined by zero or one photons in each input mode, we find

|00 → |00 , (7.173)

|01 → cos θ |01 + i sin θ |10 , (7.174)
|10 → i sin θ |01 + cos θ |10 , (7.175)
i sin 2θ
|11 → cos 2θ |11 + √ (|20 + |02 ) , (7.176)
2

where 0, 1, and 2 denote the photon-occupation number of the mode. Equation (7.176) is not
a satisfactory two-qubit state, since the output from |11 involves doubly occupied modes.
In order to circumvent this problem, the two cores of the fibres in the interaction region
are filled with a linear array of N atoms that have a strong two-photon absorption and a
negligible single-photon absorption. The spacing between the atoms is such that over the
length of the fibre between two adjacent atoms the beam-splitter evolution parameter is
θ = δ.
The presence of the atoms means that every time a state with two photons encounters
an atom, it absorbs the photons and spontaneously emits them into another, uninteresting,
mode. The atom effectively ‘measures’ the number of photons in the state and distinguishes
between finding ‘two photons’ and ‘less than two photons’. The observer does not, however,
know which of the two outcomes occurs. To understand how this affects the state evolution,
we look at the problem using the povm formalism, first introduced in Chapter 3, to describe
the different measurement outcomes. Let us consider the ideal case where the two-photon
absorption is perfect, and there is no single-photon absorption (or loss). In general, an
250 Atomic quantum information carriers

arbitrary input state ρ will evolve according to

 †
ρ → ρ̃ = L(ρ) ≡ Ak ρAk , (7.177)
k=1,2

where the Ak are the Kraus operators (or ‘effects’) that define the effect of the measurement
on the state. Each measurement outcome is represented by a specific Ak . Since we discard
the measurement outcomes in our Zeno gate, we need to sum over all k. The two Kraus
operators for the two possible measurements are

A1 = |00 00| + |01 01| + |10 10| + |11 11| = Î01 , (7.178)

the identity on the two-mode subspace spanned by zero and one photons in each mode, and

A2 = |00 ( 02| + 20|) . (7.179)

The latter Kraus operator induces the two-photon absorption. We apply the super-operator
L(ρ) to both modes every time an atom is encountered. For the single-photon states, the
Kraus operator is the identity operator and the evolution is a series of N rotations over
angle δ. We may write this as

|01 → cos N δ |01 + i sin N δ |10 , (7.180)

|10 → i sin N δ |01 + cos N δ |10 . (7.181)

If we arrange the fibre length such that the final mixing angle is N δ = π/2, then |01 →
i |10 and |01 → i |10 .
The situation for the initial |11 state is more complicated. Just before the encounter with
the first atom, the beam-splitter evolution in Eq. (7.176) gives

1 2
ρ = cos2 2δ |11 11| + sin 2δ (|20 + |02 ) ( 20| + 02|) (7.182)
2
i
+ √ cos 2δ sin 2δ [(|20 + |02 ) 11| − |11 ( 20| + 02|)] . (7.183)
2

Following the interaction with the first atom, we describe the new state using Eq. (7.179) as
 †
ρ̃ = Ak ρAk = cos2 2δ |11 11| + sin2 2δ |00 00| . (7.184)
k

The term |00 00| is invariant under both the beam-splitter evolution and the two-photon
absorption, and so does not change during the remainder of the gate. The |11 11| term
will again undergo the evolution in Eq. (7.184). After the full length of the joined fibre
(involving all N atoms), the evolution must be

|11 11| → cos2N 2δ |11 11| + (1 − cos2N 2δ) |00 00| . (7.185)
251 7.6 References and further reading

Using δ = π/(2N ), the |11 term becomes cos2N (π/N ). We can now suppress the two-
photon absorption altogether by choosing N very large, and in the limit of N → ∞ we
obtain
|11 11| → |11 11| . (7.186)
This is an instance of the Zeno effect in quantum mechanics, where a continuous measure-
ment effectively freezes the quantum state of the system and inhibits the normal unitary
evolution of the system. Hence the name ‘Zeno gate’ for this device.
We may summarize the action of the Zeno gate as the following unitary matrix in the
computational basis {|00 , |01 , |10 , |11 }:
⎛ ⎞
1 0 0 0
⎜0 0 i 0⎟
UZeno =⎜
⎝0
⎟, (7.187)
i 0 0⎠
0 0 0 1
√
which is a maximally entangling two-qubit gate, closely related to the swap gate. In the
present discussion we have analyzed the Zeno gate for the ideal case of perfect two-photon
absorption and no single-photon absorption, using Kraus operators. When the situation is
not ideal (e.g., in the case of survival of the |20 and |02 terms and photon loss), the Kraus
operators need to be modified and the calculation will generally become much harder.
Alternatively, the problem can be formulated in terms of a master equation, which can then
be solved using standard techniques. For a detailed analysis of the lossy Zeno gate, see
Leung and Ralph (2007).

7.6 References and further reading

Much effort has been devoted in this chapter to the development of quantum optical tech-
niques describing the interaction of light with atoms. There are many excellent quantum
optics books available, and here we mention Gerry and Knight (2005) as a very good
introduction, and the second edition of Walls and Milburn (2008) as an excellent advanced
textbook. The quantum-jump formalism was developed by Carmichael (1999). For the
entangling operations based on path erasure we refer the reader to the primary literature.
The concept of path erasure was introduced by Cabrillo et al. (1999), and further devel-
oped for atoms in cavities by Bose et al. (1999a). Entangling atoms in the weak driving
limit was proposed by Browne et al. (2003), the double-heralding procedure is due to Bar-
rett and Kok (2005), and the rus scheme is due to Lim et al. (2005). The broker–client
protocol was conceived by Benjamin et al. (2006). Single-round double heralding was
demonstrated experimentally by Moehring et al. (2007). The intra-cavity entangling oper-
ation was proposed by Metz et al. (2006). Finally, the Zeno gate was proposed by Franson
et al. (2004).
 PART III

QUANTUM INFORMATION IN
MANY-BODY SYSTEMS
 Quantum communication with
8 continuous variables

Qubits are not the only information carriers that can be used for quantum information pro-
cessing. In this chapter, we will focus on quantum communication with ‘continuous quantum
variables’, or continuous variables for short. In the context of quantum information process-
ing we will also call continuous variables ‘qunats’. We have seen in Chapter 2 that a natural
representation of a continuous variable is given by the position of a particle. The conjugate
continuous variable is then the momentum of the particle. Unfortunately, the eigenstates of
the position and momentum operators are not physical, and we have to construct suitable
approximations to these states that can be created in the laboratory.Any practical information
processing device must then take into account the deviation of the actual states from the ideal
position and momentum eigenstates. Rather than the position and momentum of a particle,
we will consider here the two position and momentum quadratures of an electromagnetic
field mode. These operators obey the same commutation relations as the canonical position
and momentum operators, but they are not the physical position and momentum of field exci-
tations. Approximate eigenstates of the quadrature operators can be constructed in the form
of squeezed coherent states. We define a quantum mechanical phase space for quadrature
operators, similar to a classical phase space for position and momentum. Probability dis-
tributions in the classical phase space then become quasi-probability distributions over the
quadrature phase space. We will develop one of these distributions, namely the Wigner func-
tion, and identify certain phase-space transformations of the Wigner function with linear-
optical and squeezing operations. After this brief introduction, we discuss the creation and
detection of continuous-variable entanglement, which will lead us to quantum teleportation
and entanglement swapping. We conclude this chapter with a discussion on entanglement
distillation and purification, and quantum cryptography using continuous variables.

8.1 Phase space in quantum optics

In this section we introduce phase space and the Wigner function. We give the relation
between the pure (but unphysical) continuous-variable quantum states and their squeezed-
state approximations, and determine the language for later chapters. Finally, we explore
how to measure single-mode optical continuous variables.
The creation and annihilation operators of a single optical mode a with sharply peaked
frequency ω can be combined to define operators q̂ and p̂ according to
 
   ω  
q̂ = â + ↠and p̂ = −i â − ↠. (8.1)
2ω 2
 256 Quantum communication with continuous variables

Fig. 8.1. Phase space of an optical mode with polarization.

The commutation relation between q̂ and p̂, given [â, ↠] = 1, then becomes

q̂, p̂ = i, (8.2)

which means that q̂ and p̂ form a pair of canonical position and momentum operators. We
can then formally define a phase space (see Fig. 8.1) that corresponds to a single optical
mode. Just as in classical physics, the state of the system (the optical mode) can be described
in terms of its behaviour in phase space. The essentials of this behaviour are captured by
the Wigner function. In the remainder of this chapter, we consider the rescaled position and
momentum quadratures

     
√  p̂ 
q̂ → ω q̂ = â + ↠and p̂ → √ = −i â − ↠, (8.3)
2 ω 2

which is very convenient when all optical modes have the same (central) frequency. The
commutation relations for the new q̂ and p̂ remain the same as in Eq. (8.2).

8.1.1 The Wigner function

Classically, the Wigner function W (q, p) over phase space is a probability distribution, and
the evolution of the system is given by the change of the probability distribution over time.
In the quantum mechanical phase space, the Wigner function is no longer a probability
distribution, but rather a quasi-probability distribution. The reason for this is related to
the impossibility of assigning sharp values to both the position and momentum of a single
system in quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, we can require that the ‘marginals’ of W (q, p)
are proper probability distributions:

 +∞  +∞
W (q, p) dp = P(q) and W (q, p) dq = P(p). (8.4)
−∞ −∞
257 8.1 Phase space in quantum optics

The evolution of the system is still described by a change in the Wigner function over time.
Normalization of P(q) and P(p) requires that
 +∞  +∞
dp dp W (q, p) = 1. (8.5)
−∞ −∞

Note that q and p are real numbers, while q̂ and p̂ are operators. Since we are dealing with
quantum mechanical systems, the probability distributions over q and p must be given by
the Born rule
P(q) = Tr(ρ |q q|) and P(p) = Tr(ρ |p p|), (8.6)
where the state of the optical mode is denoted by the density operator ρ, and |q , |p are
position and momentum eigenstates, respectively.1
Next, we will derive the explicit form of the Wigner function associated with an arbi-
trary density operator. To this end, we exploit certain transformation properties of the
marginals P(q) and P(p), and W (q, p). We also make use of the Fourier transforms of these
distributions. First, consider a pure rotation in phase space over an angle θ (see Fig. 8.1):

q′ (θ) = cos θ q + sin θ p and p′ (θ) = − sin θ q + cos θ p. (8.7)

We can think of this either as a rotation of the coordinate system in phase space, or as an
active rotation of ρ. Let us define

ρθ = R(θ) ρ R† (θ), (8.8)

where the unitary transformation R implements the rotation of Eq. (8.7). The expectation
value of the rotated state must again be a probability distribution
   
Pθ (q) ≡ Tr R(θ) ρ R† (θ) |q q| = Tr ρR† (θ) |q q| R(θ)
 ! 
= Tr ρ q′ (−θ) q′ (−θ ) , (8.9)
 
where we have used the cyclic property of the trace. Note that the state q′ (θ) is an eigenstate
of neither q̂, nor p̂, but of the rotated quadrature q̂′ . In terms of the Wigner function, this
rotation corresponds to the rotation of the variables q and p according to Eq. (8.7), and we
therefore require
 +∞
Pθ (q) = W (cos θ q − sin θ p, sin θ q + cos θ p) dp. (8.10)
−∞

Second, we take the Fourier transform of both W (q, p) and Pθ (q):

 +∞  +∞
W(u, v) = W (q, p)e−iuq−ivp dqdp, (8.11)
−∞ −∞

1 We will label |q and |p with indices q and p when ambiguity would otherwise arise in the notation.
258 Quantum communication with continuous variables

and
 +∞
−ζ q
Pθ (ζ ) = Pθ (q)e dq
−∞
 +∞  +∞
= W (q′ , p′ )e−iζ q dqdp
−∞ −∞

= W(ζ cos θ , ζ sin θ ), (8.12)

where the last equality follows from a coordinate change (q, p) → (q′ , p′ ). The func-
tion W(u, v) is called the ‘characteristic function’ of the Wigner function. Note that
since Pθ (ζ ) = W(ζ cos θ , ζ sin θ ), we can use Pθ (ζ ) for all θ to reconstruct the full
two-dimensional characteristic function W, and hence the Wigner function itself.
Third, we calculate
  
Pθ (ζ ) = q| U (θ)ρ U † (θ) |q e−iζ q dq = Tr ρ U † (θ)e−iζ q̂ U (θ)
 
= Tr ρ e−iq̂ζ cos θ −ip̂ζ sin θ . (8.13)

Identifying u = ζ cos θ and v = ζ sin θ , we can write the characteristic function as

  
W(u, v) = Tr ρ e−iq̂u−ip̂v = q| ρ e−iq̂u−ip̂v |q dq

−iuv /2
=e q| ρ e−iuq̂ |q + v dq

= e−iux x − v/2| ρ |x + v/2 dx, (8.14)

where we have made the substitution q = x − v/2. Finally, taking the Fourier transform
back to W (q, p) then yields the standard form for the Wigner function
 ∞
1
W (q, p) = eipx/ q − x/2| ρ |q + x/2 dx. (8.15)
2π −∞

The manipulations we have performed have given us the Wigner function for ρ, which is an
operator associated with the state of a system. However, we can define the Wigner function
for an arbitrary operator that has its support in the same Hilbert space as ρ. In particular,
we can construct Wigner functions WA (q, p) for observables  by making the substitution
ρ → Â. We will find later in this chapter that this has important benefits.
From Eq. (8.15) it is clear that any density operator ρ gives rise to a Wigner function.
However, there is a special class of states that is important for optical quantum information
processing with continuous variables. These are the so-called Gaussian states, which are
uniquely defined by the means q and p , and their variances q and p. Examples of
Gaussian states are the vacuum, coherent states, and squeezed coherent states. Fock states
are not Gaussian states.
259 8.1 Phase space in quantum optics

Exercise 8.1: Show that taking the Fourier transform of W(u, v) gives the required result
of Eq. (8.15).

Wigner functions are particularly useful for calculating expectation values of symmetri-
cally ordered functions of q̂ and p̂. Consider symmetric functions S(q̂n p̂m ) of q̂ and p̂, where
S(·) indicates the symmetrized form of the argument. For example, S(q̂p̂) = (q̂p̂ + p̂q̂)/2
and S(q̂2 p̂) = (q̂2 p̂ + q̂p̂q̂ + p̂q̂2 )/3. It can be shown that the expectation value of S(q̂n p̂m )
is given by 
n m 1
Tr ρ S(q̂ p̂ ) = dq dp W (q, p)qn pm . (8.16)
2π
Alternatively, one may wish to calculate normal-ordered or anti-normal-ordered products
of the creation and annihilation operators that constitute q̂ and p̂. In these cases, one should
use the P-representation or the Q-representation, respectively, instead of the Wigner func-
tion. However, the discussion of these alternative quasi-probability distributions is beyond
the scope of this book, and the reader is referred to Leonhardt (1997) or Barnett and
Radmore (1997) for comprehensive introductions to quasi-probability distributions and
their characteristic functions.

8.1.2 Transformations in phase space

There exists a one-to-one correspondence between the evolution of the quantum state of an
optical mode and the transformations of the corresponding quasi-probability distribution in
phase space. In this section, we consider three basic transformations in phase space, namely
translations, rotations, and squeezing operations. We will show that these correspond to
the evolution of quantum states due to coherent displacements D(α), phase shifts e−iθ n̂ ,
and single-mode squeezers S(ξ ). The operators D(α) and S(ξ ) are in fact named after their
effect on the Wigner function in phase space.

Translations in phase space

Translations in phase space correspond to the displacement operator that was introduced
in Chapter 1:
D† (α) â D(α) = â + α, (8.17)
where α is a complex number. We can apply this operator to the quadrature operators q̂ and
p̂, and obtain the transformed position quadrature
√
D† (α) q̂ D(α) = q̂ + 2 Re(α), (8.18)

and the transformed momentum quadrature

√
D† (α) p̂ D(α) = p̂ + 2 Im(α). (8.19)

The expectation values of q̂ and p̂ are displaced by an amount dependent upon the argu-
ment of the displacement operator. The variances q and p are unaffected by these
displacements. In fact, any higher-order moments of q̂ and p̂ are unaffected.
 260 Quantum communication with continuous variables

Fig. 8.2. Translations of the Wigner function correspond to the displacement operator D(α).

Exercise 8.2: Show that the higher-order moments of q̂ and p̂ are unaffected by the
displacement operator D(α).

It is now convenient to change to so-called ‘photon-number units’, in which  = 1/2. In

this way, the value of α corresponds directly to the translation in phase space. The effect of
the displacement operator on a position eigenstate becomes

D(α) |q = e 2iqIm(α) |q + Re(α) . (8.20)

We will use this convention in the remainder of this chapter and the next. The Wigner
function can then be written as
 ∞
1
W (q, p) = dx e2ipx q − x/2| ρ |q + x/2 , (8.21)
π −∞

and the transformed Wigner function Wα (q, p) is obtained by substituting the transformed
density operator D(α)ρD† (α) into ρ:
 ∞
1
Wα (q, p) = dx e2ipx q − x/2| D(α)ρD† (α) |q + x/2
π −∞
 ∞
1
= dx e2ipx e−2ixIm(α) q − Re(α) − x/2| ρ |q − Re(α) + x/2
π −∞

= W (q − Re(α), p − Im(α)). (8.22)

In other words, the displacement operator D(α) of an optical mode corresponds to a trans-
lation of the Wigner function in the quadrature phase space (see Fig. 8.2), which shows up
as the opposite translation (−α) in the coordinate system (q, p).
The translations form a group of transformations in phase space, since the combination of
any two translations α1 and α2 forms a third translation α3 = α1 + α2 , and every translation
α has an inverse −α. The group identity corresponds to α = 0. These group properties
follow directly from the definition of D(α), and are useful in many calculations.
 261 8.1 Phase space in quantum optics

Rotations in phase space

We derived the explicit form of the Wigner function in Eq. (8.15) by requiring that a rotation
in phase space corresponds to a counter-rotation of the quadratures according to Eq. (8.8):

ρθ = R(θ) ρ R† (θ). (8.23)

This means that R transforms the quadrature operators according to

R† (θ) q̂ R(θ) = cos θ q̂ + sin θ p̂

R† (θ) p̂ R(θ) = − sin θ q̂ + cos θ p̂. (8.24)

It is straightforward to prove that the number operator is the generator of these rotations

R(θ) = e−iθ n̂ . (8.25)

Rotations of the Wigner function therefore correspond to phase shifts of the optical mode
(see Fig. 8.3). These phase-space transformations form a simple two-dimensional rotation
group, which can be proved directly from Eq. (8.25). The transformation of the Wigner
function then becomes

Wθ (q, p) = W (cos θ q − sin θ p, sin θ q + cos θ p), (8.26)

which is the counter-rotation corresponding to Eq. (8.24).

Exercise 8.3: Prove Eq. (8.25), and show that the number state |n is represented by a
rotationally invariant phase-space distribution.

Squeezing in phase space

We can formally write the phase-space squeezing operation shown in Fig. 8.4 as a
transformation  p
W (q, p) → W (q′ , p′ ) = W q , , (8.27)

Fig. 8.3. Rotations of the Wigner function correspond to the phase shift e−iθ n̂ .
 262 Quantum communication with continuous variables

Fig. 8.4. Squeezing of the Wigner function corresponds to the single-mode squeezing operator S(ξ ). We
have defined = er .

where is real and positive. It is clear that such a transformation leaves volumes in phase
space invariant, since is a simple scale factor of position and momentum, and q′ p′ = qp.
This is a necessary requirement for keeping the marginal probability distributions normal-
ized. When > 1 the distribution is squeezed in the q direction (i.e., the distribution
becomes narrower in the q direction), and when < 1 the squeezing occurs in the p direc-
tion. Squeezing in other directions can be implemented by rotating W (q, p) over the desired
angle θ , squeezing in the q (or p) direction, and rotating W again over an angle −θ .
The quadrature operators q̂ and p̂ transform under the single-mode squeezing operator

â2 â†2
S(ξ ) = exp ξ ∗ −ξ (8.28)
2 2

with ξ = reiφ . If we assume ξ = r is real, and either positive or negative (meaning φ = 0

or φ = π ), we obtain

p̂
S(r) q̂S † (r) = q̂ e+r ≡ q̂ and S(r) p̂S † (r) = p̂ e−r ≡ . (8.29)

From this, we can establish the effect of a squeezing operation on a position eigenstate:

S(r)q̂ |q = S(r)q |q = q [S(r) |q ]

= S(r)q̂S † (r)S(r) |q = e+r q̂ [S(r) |q ] . (8.30)

Defining |ψ = S(r)  |q  , we deduce from this that |ψ is proportional to the rescaled

position eigenstate qe−r . When we normalize |ψ , we find that

  1
S(r) |q = e−r/2 qe−r = √ |q/ . (8.31)
263 8.1 Phase space in quantum optics

The squeezing of a state ρ → S(r)ρ S † (r) therefore leads to the Wigner function

1
Wr (q, p) = dx e2ipx q − x/2| S(r)ρ S † (r) |q + x/2
π

1 !   
= dx e2ipx er er (q − x/2) ρ er (q + x/2)
π

1 −r !   
= dy e2ipye qer − y/2 ρ qer + y/2
π
 
= W qer , pe−r

= W (q , p/ ), (8.32)

where we have used S † (r) = S(−r), and we have changed the integration variable from
x to y = xer in the third line. This transformation has the same form as Eq. (8.27), and
the rescaling of q and p by is therefore equivalent to single-mode squeezing in the
q and p directions. Squeezing in arbitrary directions ξ can be derived by using S(ξ ) =
R† (φ)S(r)R(φ).

Exercise 8.4: Prove the normalization of the state S(r) |q in Eq. (8.31).

We have shown that the translation, rotation, and squeezing operations in phase space
correspond to the state evolution that is generated by linear and quadratic Hamiltonians
of the single optical mode. These are the ‘linear’ mode transformations, because the mode
operators are transformed into a linear function of themselves:

â → u â + v ↠+ w and q̂ → r q̂ + s p̂ + t, (8.33)

and so on. They are known from Chapter 1 as the Bogoliubov transformations. This raises the
question: what geometric transformations correspond to nonlinear mode transformations?
We will not discuss this in detail, but merely state that each nonlinear optical transformation
has a well-defined operation on the Wigner function. This must be true, since the Wigner
function is a complete representation of a quantum state. Next, we consider the Wigner
function of a number of quantum states that play an important role in continuous-variable
quantum information processing.

8.1.3 Vacuum, coherent, and squeezed coherent states

From the correspondence between the simple phase-space operations with optical mode
transformations we now find a straightforward recipe for finding the Wigner function of
coherent states, squeezed vacuum, and squeezed coherent states. We first determine the
Wigner function of the vacuum state, and create the other states by displacements, rotations,
and squeezing. The wave function of the vacuum state in the one-dimensional position
quadrature space can be defined as

ψ0 (q) = q|0 . (8.34)

264 Quantum communication with continuous variables

Since â |0 = 0, we can write

  ∂
q|â |0 = q| q̂ + ip̂ |0 = q + ψ0 (q) = 0, (8.35)
∂q

where we have again chosen  = 1/2. Furthermore, we have used the commutation relation
between q̂ and p̂, which allows us to write p = −i∂/∂q. The normalized solution to this
differential equation is given by
  
2
exp −q2 .
4
ψ0 (q) = (8.36)
π

Substituting this into Eq. (8.15) yields

2  
W0 (q, p) = exp −2q2 − 2p2 , (8.37)
π

which is the Wigner function for the vacuum state of a single optical mode.
In order to find the Wigner function of a coherent state, we translate the Wigner function
of the vacuum in Eq. (8.37) along α ≡ qα + ipα , where qα and pα are the real and imaginary
parts of α, respectively. We then obtain

Wα (q, p) = W0 (q − qα , p − pα )
2  
= exp −2(q − qα )2 − 2(p − pα )2 . (8.38)
π

Similarly, the Wigner function of the squeezed vacuum state can be found immediately
using Eq. (8.27):

W (q, p) = W0 ( q, p/ )
2 2 2 2p2
= exp −2 q − 2
. (8.39)
π

Plots of the Wigner functions for the vacuum and the squeezed vacuum with = 2 are
given in Fig. 8.5. Combining the squeezing and translation operations, we obtain the Wigner
function for the squeezed coherent state
 
2 2 2 2(p − pα )2
Wα, (q, p) = exp −2 (q − qα ) − 2
. (8.40)
π

Note that we have applied the squeezing operator first, followed by the phase-space transla-
tion. This agrees with the definition of the squeezed coherent states in Chapter 1. It should
also be clear that changing the order of squeezing and displacement gives rise to a different
Wigner function.

Exercise 8.5: Verify that the integral of Wα, (q, p) over phase space is 1.
 265 8.1 Phase space in quantum optics

Fig. 8.5. Wigner functions of the vacuum and the squeezed vacuum ( = 2). The peaks are centred around
the origin; we have shifted the vertical axis for clarity.

8.1.4 Multi-mode Wigner functions

The extension of the Wigner function to describe multi-mode fields is immediate. For two
modes in (separable) states ρ1 and ρ2 , the Wigner function of the combined system is the
product of the individual systems

W (q1 , p1 ; q2 , p2 ) = W1 (q1 , p1 )W2 (q2 , p2 ), (8.41)

where we have defined


1 !   
Wj (qj , pj ) = dx e2ipj x qj − x/2 ρj qj + x/2 (8.42)
π

for j = 1, 2. We can now define transformations that mix the quadratures of mode 1 with
the quadratures of mode 2.
The most widely considered optical transformation that couples two modes is the beam
splitter. The general beam-splitter rule of Eq. (1.147) in Chapter 1 leads to the following
transformations for the quadratures of mode 1

q̂1 → cos θ q̂1 + sin θ (sin ϕ q̂2 + cos ϕ p̂2 )

p̂1 → cos θ p̂1 − sin θ (cos ϕ q̂2 − sin ϕ p̂2 ), (8.43)

and to the transformations of mode 2

q̂2 → cos θ q̂2 + sin θ (− sin ϕ q̂1 + cos ϕ p̂1 )

p̂2 → cos θ p̂2 − sin θ (cos ϕ q̂1 + sin ϕ p̂1 ). (8.44)

The phase ϕ can be used to choose which quadratures are mixed in the beam splitter. We
usually take ϕ = π/2, such that position and momentum quadratures do not mix. To find
the transformed Wigner function, we invert the operator transformation, remove the hats
from the operators, and use the resulting relations as substitution rules.
 266 Quantum communication with continuous variables

In practice, squeezing can be obtained by pumping a medium that has a χ (2) nonlinearity,
which can be written as a Hamiltonian that is quadratic in the annihilation (creation) oper-
ators. The quadratic operators correspond to linear-optical elements such as beam splitters,
polarization rotations, and phase shifters. Consequently, we have a complete (linear) optical
description for creating and manipulating continuous quantum variables. Next, we show
how continuous variables can be measured with homodyne detection.

8.1.5 Homodyne detection

The Wigner function determines, via its marginals, the probability of finding outcome xζ
when measuring the x̂ζ quadrature of an optical mode in a state ρ. The next natural question
is how to implement such measurements. The answer is that quadratures of optical fields
are measured by ‘homodyne detection’. Consider a 50:50 beam splitter with input modes a1
and a2 , and output modes b1 and b2 (see Fig. 8.6). The intensity difference (measured with
photocurrent detectors) in the output modes can be written in terms of the input modes:

† † † †
I = b̂1 b̂1 − b̂2 b̂2 = â1 â2 − â2 â1 . (8.45)

Next, we assume that mode a1 is the signal mode (whose quadrature we wish to measure),
and the field in mode a2 is a strong local oscillator, i.e., a bright coherent state. We can then
†
replace the operators â2 and â2 with the complex amplitude αe±iζ of the (now classical)
field:
- −iζ .
√ e â + eiζ â†
I = ↠αeiζ + αe−iζ â = 2α √ . (8.46)
2
√
Therefore,√ up to a known scaling factor 2α, the intensity difference I measures (e−iζ â1 +
†
eiζ â1 )/ 2, which is the quadrature x̂ζ . We can choose which quadrature we measure by
adjusting the phase of the local oscillator. Clearly, the local oscillators of the homodyne
detectors in a set-up must have a well-defined phase relationship with the signal modes. In
practice, this often means that both the local oscillators and the signals must derive their
phase relationship from a master laser that serves as a clock.
How do we describe homodyne detection in terms of the Wigner function? To establish
this, recall that we can write down the Wigner function for an operator. We first give the

Fig. 8.6. Homodyne detection: the detectors record the difference of the intensities.
267 8.2 Continuous-variable entanglement

overlap formula for two Wigner functions WA and WB of operators A and B, respectively:
 ∞  ∞
π
Tr(AB) = dq dp WA (q, p) WB (q, p), (8.47)
8 −∞ −∞

where A and B do not have to be Hermitian. This formula thus allows us to calculate
expectation values of operators. The expectation value of the position quadrature is then
 ∞  ∞
π
Tr(ρ q̂) = dq dp q W (q, p), (8.48)
8 −∞ −∞

which agrees with our result in Eq. (8.16) above. A particular outcome q′ of the homodyne
detection can then be implemented by using the Wigner function for the position eigenstate
(or its regularized
 squeezed
!  coherent-state approximation) instead of the operator q̂. The
probability Tr(ρ q′ q′ ) is of course zero for ideal position eigenstates, but this technique
can still be used to determine the evolution of a system based on specific homodyne-
detection outcomes of some subsystems. The trace is then interpreted as the partial trace.

Exercise 8.6: Prove the overlap formula in Eq. (8.47), and calculate the Wigner function
for the single-mode displacement, rotation, and squeezing operators.

The finite-detection efficiency η of a detector can be described using the beam-

splitter model introduced in Chapter 4 (see Fig. 4.1). The quadrature operators transform
according to
√
q̂ → q̂′ = 1 − η q̂v
η q̂ +
√ 
p̂ → p̂′ = η p̂ + 1 − η p̂v , (8.49)

where q̂ and p̂ are the quadratures of the measured mode, and q̂v and p̂v are the quadratures
of the (vacuum) input mode of the beam splitter.
In the next section, we study how to produce entanglement in optical continuous variables,
and how to establish quantum communication.

8.2 Continuous-variable entanglement

One of the main operations in quantum information processing is the creation of entangle-
ment, and by extension, the detection of entanglement. In this section, we describe how to
perform these tasks with optical continuous variables. We first consider the ideal case of
entangling position and momentum eigenstates, and then we show that in terms of optical
operations, this corresponds to a two-mode squeezing operator. In addition, we show how
the same entangling procedure can be implemented using only linear-optical transforma-
tions, such as a 50:50 beam splitter. Reversibility of optical elements then leads directly to
a method for entanglement detection.
268 Quantum communication with continuous variables

For discrete d-level systems, the generalized Bell states are given by

d−1
1  2πink/(d−1)
|nm = √ e |k, k ⊕ m . (8.50)
d k=0

It is easily verified that for d = 2 these states reduce to the familiar Bell states for qubits.
We can take the continuum limit, where k, n, and m become the continuous variables q, u,
and v, and the sum is replaced with an integral:

1
|(u, v) = dq e−iuq |q, q + v q, (8.51)
N

with N a normalization constant. For these states, the following expectation values hold:

q̂1 − q̂2 = −v and p̂1 + p̂2 = u, (8.52)

and the variances are

Var(q̂1 − q̂2 ) = 0 and Var(p̂1 + p̂2 ) = 0, (8.53)

which means that both the positions and momenta of the two systems are perfectly cor-
related. Therefore, they form an ideal ‘Einstein–Podolski–Rosen’ (epr) pair. The states
|(u, v) are the continuous-variable versions of the Bell states. Using the cx gate for con-
tinuous variables in Eq. (2.98), we can write |(u, v) in terms of position and momentum
eigenstates |v q and |u p :

1  
|(u, v) = dq e−iuq exp −2iq̂1 p̂2 |q, v q
N

1
= cx dq e−iuq |q q |v q = cx |u p |v q. (8.54)
N

We now have to find a realistic (meaning approximate) optical implementation for this state.
First of all, we note that we can again use squeezed coherent states as approximate
eigenstates of the position and momentum operators. The cx gate in Eq. (8.54) can be
written in terms of creation and annihilation operators, which reveals that it is a two-mode
squeezing operator:

 

1 
† † † †
cxij = exp −2iq̂i p̂j = exp − âi âj − âi âj + âi âj − âi âj . (8.55)
2

This is completely analogous to the creation of two-qubit entanglement, where first a

Hadamard gate is applied to the control qubit, and then a cx is applied. However, the large
amounts of squeezing needed for the continuous-variable cx gate are hard to implement
in practice. We will therefore investigate whether we can entangle two squeezed coherent
states with passive linear-optical elements, such as phase shifters and beam splitters.
269 8.2 Continuous-variable entanglement

It turns out that this is indeed possible: consider two separate Wigner functions W1 (q1 , p1 )
and W2 (q2 , p2 ), corresponding to two squeezed coherent states. Suppose that these are
position and momentum squeezed coherent states, respectively:
 
2 2(p1 − pα )2
W1 (q1 , p1 ) = exp −2 2 (q1 − qα )2 − 2
, (8.56)
π
 
2 (q2 − qα )2 2 2
W2 (q2 , p2 ) = exp − − 8 (p 2 − p α ) . (8.57)
π 2 2
We write the Wigner function of the combined system as the product of W1 and W2 ,
W (q1 , p1 ; q2 , p2 ), and apply a rotation in phase space. This yields

W (q1 cos θ + q2 sin θ , p1 cos θ + p2 sin θ ; q2 cos θ − q1 sin θ , p2 cos θ − p1 sin θ ).

(8.58)
If we set θ = π/2, the rotated Wigner function W = W (q1′ , p1′ ; q2′ , p2′ ) becomes
 √ √ 
4 ((q1′ − q2′ )/ 2 − qα )2 2((p1′ + p2′ )/ 2 − pα )2
W = 2 exp − −
π 2 2 2
 2 2

′ ′ ′ ′
2 q1 + q2 2 p1 − p2
× exp −2 √ − qα − 8 √ − pα , (8.59)
2 2

where
q1 + q2 q2 − q1 p1 + p2 p2 − p1
q1′ = √ , q2′ = √ , p1′ = √ , p2′ = √ (8.60)
2 2 2 2
are the rotated coordinates. In the limit of infinite squeezing 2 → ∞, the Wigner function
reduces to a product of two delta functions δ(q1′ − q2′ − qα ) δ(p1′ + p2′ − pα ), which means
that the difference of positions is sharply peaked around qα , and the total momentum is
sharply peaked around pα . These approach the epr correlations in Eqs. (8.52) and (8.53).
Since the entangled squeezed coherent state has a sharp position difference as well as a sharp
total momentum, we should be able to perform a simultaneous measurement of q̂1 − q̂2 and
p̂1 + p̂2 . Indeed, it is straightforward to show that these two operators do commute.
The remaining question is how to induce the rotation of the Wigner function. From
Eq. (8.58) we find that

q1 q1′ cos θ sin θ q1

→ = , (8.61)
q2 q2′ − sin θ cos θ q2

and similarly
p1 p1′ cos θ sin θ p1
→ = . (8.62)
p2 p2′ − sin θ cos θ p2
This is the same as a rotation of the corresponding operators q̂i and p̂i , which can be
translated immediately to a rotation of the creation and annihilation operators:

â1 â′1 cos θ sin θ â1

→ = . (8.63)
â2 â′2 − sin θ cos θ â2
270 Quantum communication with continuous variables

However, a rotation acting on two annihilation operators is generated by the quadratic

† †
Hamiltonian â1 â2 − â1 â2 , which we identified in Chapter 1 with the interaction Hamiltonian
of a beam splitter. Therefore, if we are given two states that are squeezed in orthogonal
directions, we can use a 50:50 beam splitter to create two entangled squeezed modes.
In order to perform a complete Bell measurement, we mix modes a1 and a2 on a 50:50
beam splitter

b̂1 + b̂2 b̂1 − b̂2

â1 → √ and â2 → √ . (8.64)
2 2
The position difference is then transformed into

    √
1 † † †
q̂1 − q̂2 = â1 + â1 − â2 − â2 → √1 b̂2 + b̂2 = 2q̂2′ , (8.65)
2 2

that is, the position observable in mode b2 . We can measure this using homodyne detection.
Similarly, the total momentum is transformed to

i  † †
 i  †
 √
p̂1 + p̂2 = − â1 − â1 + â2 − â2 → − √ b̂2 − b̂2 = 2p̂1′ , (8.66)
2 2

the momentum observable of mode b1 . The quadratures p̂1′ and q̂2′ can be measured simul-
taneously, since they pertain to different modes. It should not come as a surprise that
the detection of continuous-variable Bell states involves a 50:50 beam splitter. After all,
we used the same beam splitter to create the entanglement from single-mode squeezed
coherent states in the first place. The second beam splitter merely reverts the entangling
operation.
At this point, the reader may notice a striking difference between the creation and detec-
tion of entanglement for single-photon qubits and for continuous variables. Indeed, we
found in Chapter 6 that it is impossible to deterministically create and detect two-qubit
entanglement when those qubits are represented by single-photon states. Here, we have
seen that entanglement between the squeezed quadratures of two field modes is created
deterministically by a single 50:50 beam splitter. This is one of the attractive features of
continuous-variable quantum information processing. However, we will see later in this
Chapter that the use of continuous variables introduces other difficulties.
Finally in this section, we ask: how much entanglement is contained in a two-mode
squeezed vacuum state, such as the one prepared above? One measure of entanglement that
can be used here is the von Neumann entropy of the state of one of the parties. To calculate
this, we need to express the state in the Schmidt basis. The Wigner function is not so useful
for this, and we therefore recall the state of the two-mode squeezed vacuum expressed in
the number basis in Eq. (1.235)

∞
1  inφ
|(r, φ) 12 = e tanhn r |n 1 |n 2 , (8.67)
cosh r
n=0
 271 8.2 Continuous-variable entanglement

where r is the squeezing parameter and φ determines the squeezing orientation via ξ = reiφ .
This description of the state is manifestly in the Schmidt basis, in this case the photon-number
basis. Tracing out one subsystem, say system 2, yields the mixed state

∞

1
ρ1 = Tr2 |(r, φ) 12 (r, φ)| = tanh2n r |n 1 n| . (8.68)
cosh2 r n=0

The von Neumann entropy of the subsystem, in other words the entanglement of the
combined system, is then given by

∞

 
E(r) = −Tr ρ1 log2 ρ1 = − λn log2 λn , (8.69)
n=0

where λn are the eigenvalues of ρ1 . Using Eq. (8.68), the entanglement of the two-mode
squeezed vacuum is

E(r) = cosh2 r log2 cosh2 r − sinh2 r log2 sinh2 r. (8.70)

The entanglement increases asymptotically linearly with the squeezing parameter r, shown
in Fig. 8.7. Calculating this measure of entanglement for other Gaussian states is also pos-
sible, but in general this can be done only numerically. A general procedure was developed
by Parker et al. (2000).

Exercise 8.7: Show that E(r) is given by Eq. (8.70).

Fig. 8.7. The von Neumann entropy for two-mode entangled squeezed vacuum, with squeezing
parameter r.
272 Quantum communication with continuous variables

8.3 Teleportation and entanglement swapping

In this section we will describe how to use continuous variables in teleportation and entan-
glement swapping, and how to build quantum repeaters for long-distance communication.

8.3.1 Quantum teleportation

In Chapter 2 we saw that teleportation allows the transfer of the quantum state of a qubit from
one system to another, using entanglement. In this section we describe quantum teleportation
with optical continuous variables, which was introduced by Braunstein and Kimble (1998).
We first give the protocol in terms of ideal position and momentum states, and then we
describe the approximate, but physically realistic, protocol.
The arbitrary pure state of system 1, which we wish to teleport, is up to a normalization

|ψ 1 ∝ dq ψ(q) |q q , (8.71)

where we have used the notation ψ(q) = q|ψ . Second, the ideal epr states |(u, v) on
two systems are

1
|(u, v) = dq e2πivq |q, q + u q . (8.72)
N
We use the epr state |(0, 0) 23 in the teleportation protocol, but in principle any u and v
can be used. Next, we follow the usual teleportation procedure: we project systems 1 and
2 onto the Bell basis, which will produce a pair of continuous variables u and v. Hence
systems 1 and 2 are now in the state |(u, v) , for some u and v. The output state is then
evaluated as
12 (u, v)| ψ 1 |(0, 0) 23 = Z(v)X (u) |ψ 3. (8.73)
The operators X (u) and Z(v) were defined in Eqs. (2.79) and (2.82) as the displacement and
phase operators, respectively. They depend on the measurement outcome u and v. Owing
to the linearity of quantum mechanics, this protocol still works when the input state is a
mixed state.

Exercise 8.8: Prove Eq. (8.73).

With squeezed coherent states as approximations of the position and momentum eigen-
states, the teleportation protocol also becomes approximate. Using the techniques of the
previous section, we can calculate the Wigner function of the output state, given an arbi-
trary input state. However, rather than calculating the Wigner function at each stage of the
teleportation protocol, we can determine the transformation rules of the qi and pi , and sub-
stitute their inverse into W (qi , pi ). We have seen in the previous section that this is a valid
approach. This will lead us to evaluate first the transformation of the quadrature operators
in the Heisenberg picture. We will recall the operator transformations of the single-mode
 273 8.3 Teleportation and entanglement swapping

Fig. 8.8. Quantum teleportation with continuous variables. The labels on the horizontal lines correspond to
the indices of the quadratures, which have time dependence t = t0 , t1 , t2 , t3 . Before the initial
squeezing operation we set t = 0.

squeezer and the beam splitter, and then we will proceed with the step-wise teleporta-
tion protocol shown in Fig. 8.8. We explicitly state the time dependence of the quadrature
operators in order to avoid confusion.
First, recall from Eq. (8.29) that the squeezing S(ξ ) of the quadrature operator with real
ξ = r leads to the transformation of the quadrature operators at time t = 0 to operators at
time t:

q̂(t) = S(r)q̂(0) S † (r) = q̂(0) e+r = q̂(0) ,

p̂(0)
p̂(t) = S(r)p̂(0) S † (r) = p̂(0) e−r = , (8.74)

where, again, we have set = e+r .

Second, the beam-splitter transformations derived in Eqs. (8.43) and (8.44) for the special
choice of ϕ = π/2 and θ = π/4 can be written as

q̂j (0) + q̂k (0) q̂j (0) − q̂k (0)

q̂j (t) = √ and q̂k (t) = √ (8.75)
2 2

for the position quadratures of modes j and k. Similarly, the transformation rule for the
momentum quadratures is given by

p̂j (0) + p̂k (0) p̂j (0) − p̂k (0)

p̂j (t) = √ and p̂k (t) = √ . (8.76)
2 2

Note that these beam splitters are asymmetric (there is a phase factor of −1 associated with
transmission of mode k).
274 Quantum communication with continuous variables

We will now use these transformations to implement the squeezers and beam splitters
in the teleportation protocol in Fig. 8.8. We can straight away make the following identi-
fications: q̂1 (t1 ) = q̂1 (t0 ) = q̂1 (0) and p̂1 (t1 ) = p̂1 (t0 ) = p̂1 (0), and q̂3 (t1 ) = q̂3 (t2 ) and
p̂3 (t1 ) = p̂3 (t2 ). These will become useful in the derivation below.

Step 1: We squeeze the vacuum state in modes 2 and 3 in momentum and position,
respectively. This will induce the transformation

q̂2 (0)
q̂2 (t0 ) = q̂2 (0) and q̂3 (t0 ) = ,
q̂2 (0)
p̂2 (t0 ) = and p̂3 (t0 ) = q̂2 (0) . (8.77)

Step 2: The 50:50 beam splitter in modes 2 and 3 creates the approximate epr pair necessary
for teleportation, and this induces the quadrature transformations

q̂2 (t0 ) + q̂3 (t0 ) q̂2 (t0 ) − q̂3 (t0 )

q̂2 (t1 ) = √ and q̂3 (t1 ) = √ . (8.78)
2 2

There are similar transformations for the momentum quadratures. We will concen-
trate on the position quadratures in the remaining steps, and leave the momentum
quadratures as an exercise for the reader.
Step 3: The beam splitter for the continuous-variable Bell measurement induces the
transformations
q̂1 (t1 ) − q̂2 (t1 ) q̂1 (0) q̂2 (t0 ) + q̂3 (t0 )
q̂1 (t2 ) = √ = √ −
2 2 2
q̂1 (t1 ) + q̂2 (t1 ) q̂1 (0) q̂2 (t0 ) + q̂3 (t0 )
q̂2 (t2 ) = √ = √ + , (8.79)
2 2 2

where we have used the identification q̂1 (t1 ) = q̂1 (0), and have substituted
Eq. (8.78). Notice the orientation of the beam splitter. Using the squeezing
transformations from Step 1, this leads to the relation
√ q̂3 (0)
q̂2 (t0 ) = −2q̂1 (t2 ) + 2q̂1 (0) − . (8.80)

We can now write the position quadrature q̂3 (t2 ) = q̂3 (t1 ) as
√
√ 2 q̂3 (0)
q̂3 (t2 ) = q̂1 (0) − 2q̂1 (t2 ) − . (8.81)

Similarly, the momentum quadrature p̂3 (t2 ) becomes

√
√ 2 p̂2 (0)
p̂3 (t2 ) = p̂1 (0) − 2p̂2 (t2 ) + . (8.82)
275 8.3 Teleportation and entanglement swapping

Step 4: Alice
√ measures the position quadrature q̂1 (t2 ) in mode 1, yielding the outcome
u/ 2, and she √
measures the momentum quadrature p̂2 (t2 ) in mode 2, yielding
the outcome v/ 2. These outcomes allow Bob (who holds mode 3) to apply the
displacements
   
X (u) = exp −2iu p̂3 and Z(v) = exp 2iv p̂3 . (8.83)

These displacements lead to the output quadratures

√ √
2 q̂3 (0) 2 p̂3 (0)
q̂3 (t3 ) = q̂1 (0) − and p̂3 (t3 ) = p̂1 (0) + . (8.84)

In this protocol, the quadrature operators of mode 3 are transformed into the quadrature
modes of mode 1 at time t = 0 plus an extra part that is proportional to the squeezing of
mode 3. In other words, the input quadratures are teleported to the output quadratures up to
a factor. In the limit of perfect squeezing → ∞, the teleportation protocol is perfect.

Exercise 8.9: Verify Eq. (8.82).

We can now construct the Wigner function of the teleported state, given the Wigner
functions of the unknown input state and the (approximate) epr pair. Suppose that the input
state is in an arbitrary state Win [q1 (0), p1 (0)], and the form of Win is unknown to Alice and
Bob. The input is then described as a maximally mixed state

dq1 dp1 Win (q1 , p1 ). (8.85)

The Wigner function of the epr pair is written as

Wepr [q2 (t1 ), p2 (t1 ); q3 (t1 ), p3 (t1 )] .

Using the beam-splitter transformation in Eq. (8.79) of Alice’s continuous-variable Bell

measurement, this becomes
 
q2 (t2 ) − q1 (t2 ) p2 (t2 ) − p1 (t2 )
Wepr → Wepr √ , √ ; q3 (t2 ), p3 (t2 ) . (8.86)
2 2

In addition, Alice’s measurement can be incorporated in the Wigner function by including

two delta functions with the measurement outcomes q1 (t2 ) and p2 (t2 ). Given the beam-
splitter transformations of Eq. (8.79), these become
   
q1 (t2 ) + q2 (t2 ) p1 (t2 ) + p2 (t2 )
δ √ − q1 (0) and δ √ − p1 (0) . (8.87)
2 2
276 Quantum communication with continuous variables

The Wigner function W = W [q1 (t2 ), p1 (t2 ); q2 (t2 ), p2 (t2 ); q3 (t2 ), p3 (t2 )] of the entire three-
mode system then becomes

W = dq1 (0) dp1 (0) Win [q1 (0), p1 (0)]
 
q2 (t2 ) − q1 (t2 ) p2 (t2 ) − p1 (t2 )
× Wepr √ , √ ; q3 (t2 ), p3 (t2 )
2 2
   
q1 (t2 ) + q2 (t2 ) p1 (t2 ) + p2 (t2 )
×δ √ − q1 (0) δ √ − p1 (0) . (8.88)
2 2
Since Alice detects q1 (t2 ) and p2 (t2 ), we can integrate over the conjugate variables p1 (t2 )
and q2 (t2 ), and evaluation of the delta functions then gives

W ′ = dq2 (t2 ) dp1 (t2 ) W [q2 (t2 ), p2 (t2 ); q3 (t2 ), p3 (t2 )]

= dq1 (0) dp1 (0) Win [q1 (0), p1 (0)]
 √ √ 
× Wepr q1 (0) − 2q1 (t2 ), 2p2 (t2 ) − p1 (0); q3 (t2 ), p3 (t2 ) . (8.89)

Bob’s displacement after Alice’s classical communication (u, v) induces the transformation

q3 (t2 ) → q3 (t3 ) − u and p3 (t2 ) → p3 (t3 ) − v, (8.90)

which leads to

W ′′ = dq1 (0) dp1 (0) Win [q1 (0), p1 (0)]

× Wepr [q1 (0) − u, v − p1 (0); q3 (t3 ) − u, p3 (t3 ) − v] . (8.91)

The Wigner function of the teleported state in mode 3 is then found by integrating over
u and v, since the teleportation procedure should be independent of the actual values of u
and v. The integration can be performed explicitly using Eq. (8.59), resulting in the Wigner
function of the teleported state Wtel (q3 , p3 )
2   
Wtel (q3 , p3 ) = dq dp Win (q, p) exp − 2 (q − q3 )2 − 2 (p − p3 )2 , (8.92)
π
where we have suppressed the argument (t3 ) of q3 and p3 . We can write the teleported
Wigner function more compactly as a convolution of the input state with a Gaussian noise
function

Wtel (q3 , p3 ) = dq dp G (q3 − q, p3 − p) Win (q, p)

= G ◦ Win , (8.93)

where
2  
2
G (q, p) = exp − (q2 + p2 ) . (8.94)
π
 277 8.3 Teleportation and entanglement swapping

The teleportation procedure therefore works for any input state, not just Gaussian states.
This is clear from the derivation of Eq. (8.93), where we made no assumptions about Win ,
other than that it is a reasonably well-behaved function.

Exercise 8.10: Show that in the limit of → ∞, teleportation is perfect.

8.3.2 Entanglement swapping

In continuous-variable teleportation, as in teleportation of discrete systems, the teleported

state may have been part of an entangled system. The teleportation operation then results
in entanglement swapping. We can repeat the arguments of the previous section to find the
quadrature operators in the Heisenberg picture and the Wigner function of the entangled
system. Here, we introduce two generalizations to the teleportation protocol: first we include
a ‘gain factor’ g ∈ [0, 1] in the phase-space displacements. Second, we introduce the
efficiency of the photodetectors in the continuous-variable Bell measurement.
A schematic of entanglement swapping with continuous variables is shown in Fig. 8.9.
Alice and Bob initially each create an approximate epr pair locally, and then each feed
one half of their pair into a swapping station. A Bell measurement is performed at the
swapping station and the outcome is communicated with Bob, but it could just as well
have been communicated with Alice, or indeed partly with Alice and partly with Bob. The
result is shared entanglement between Alice and Bob, the nature of which we will now
calculate.

Fig. 8.9. Entanglement swapping. Modes 1 and 2 are measured in a ‘swapping station’, and the
measurement outcomes are sent to Bob. After the Bell measurement, Alice and Bob share
entanglement.
278 Quantum communication with continuous variables

We assume that modes 0 and 1 are squeezed by an amount 1 in conjugate quadratures,

and similarly that modes 2 and 3 are squeezed by an amount 2 in conjugate variables. The
position quadratures of the four input modes can then be written as
 
1 q1 ˆ(0)
q̂0 (t1 ) = √ 1 q̂0 (0) + ,
2 1
 
1 q1 ˆ(0)
q̂1 (t1 ) = √ 1 q̂0 (0) − ,
2 1
 
1 q3 ˆ(0)
q̂2 (t1 ) = √ 2 q̂2 (0) + ,
2 2
 
1 q3 ˆ(0)
q̂3 (t1 ) = √ 2 q̂2 (0) − , (8.95)
2 2

with similar expressions for the momentum quadratures, keeping in mind that j → −1
j for
the momentum. The Bell measurement in the swapping station induces the transformation
q̂1 (t1 ) − q̂2 (t1 ) q̂1 (t1 ) + q̂2 (t1 )
q̂1 (t2 ) = √ and q̂2 (t2 ) = √ , (8.96)
2 2
just as before in Eq (8.79). Using the identifications q̂0 (t1 ) = q̂0 (t2 ) and q̂3 (t1 ) = q̂3 (t2 ),
we write the quadratures of modes 0 and 3 as
√
q̂0 (t2 ) = q̂2 (t1 ) + q̂0 (t1 ) − q̂1 (t1 ) + 2q̂1 (t2 ),
√
p̂0 (t2 ) = p̂2 (t1 ) + p̂0 (t1 ) + p̂1 (t1 ) − 2p̂2 (t2 ),
√
q̂3 (t2 ) = q̂1 (t1 ) − q̂2 (t1 ) − q̂3 (t1 ) − 2q̂1 (t2 ),
√
p̂3 (t2 ) = p̂1 (t1 ) + p̂2 (t1 ) + p̂3 (t1 ) − 2p̂2 (t2 ). (8.97)

Using the relations in Eq. (8.95), we obtain

√
2 q̂1 (0) √
q̂0 (t2 ) = q̂2 (t1 ) + + 2q̂1 (t2 ),
2
√
2 p̂1 (0) √
p̂0 (t2 ) = p̂2 (t1 ) + − 2p̂2 (t2 ),
2
√
2 q̂3 (0) √
q̂3 (t2 ) = q̂1 (t1 ) − − 2q̂1 (t2 ),
2
√
2 p̂3 (0) √
p̂3 (t2 ) = p̂1 (t1 ) + − 2p̂2 (t2 ). (8.98)
2

We can now apply Bob’s displacements based on the measurement outcomes of the
swapping station, namely
√ √
q̂3 (t3 ) = q̂3 (t2 ) + g 2 q̂1 (t2 ) and p̂3 (t3 ) = q̂3 (t2 ) + g 2 p̂2 (t2 ), (8.99)
279 8.3 Teleportation and entanglement swapping

where we have used the gain factor g. After some algebra, we find that the quadrature
operators in modes 0 and 3 become
 
1 q̂1 (0)
q̂0 (t2 ) = √ 1 q̂0 (0) + ,
2 1
 
1 p̂1 (0)
p̂0 (t2 ) = √ p̂
2 0 (0) + ,
2 2
 
1 q̂1 (0) q̂3 (0)
q̂3 (t2 ) = √ g 1 q̂0 (0) − g − (g − 1) 2 q̂2 (0) − (g + 1) ,
2 1 2
 
1 p̂0 (0) p̂2 (0)
p̂3 (t2 ) = √ g − g 1 p̂1 (0) − (g − 1) − (g + 1) 2 p̂3 (0) . (8.100)
2 1 2

We can now compare the swapped entanglement with the initial entanglement. Recall that
a perfect epr pair on modes 1 and 2 has correlations q1 − q2 = 0 and p1 + p2 = 0.
For the squeezed entanglement in modes 0 and 1 considered above, the corresponding
observables are
√ √
2 q̂1 (0) 2 p̂0 (0)
q̂0 (t1 ) − q̂1 (t1 ) = and p̂0 (t1 ) + p̂1 (t1 ) = . (8.101)
1 1

Similar relations hold for the entanglement in modes 2 and 3, with 1 → 2 . In order
to compare the swapped entanglement with the initial entanglement, we calculate Q ≡
q̂0 (t3 ) − q̂3 (t3 ) and P ≡ p̂0 (t3 ) + p̂3 (t3 ):
 
g−1 g + 1 q̂1 (0) q̂3 (0)
Q= √ 1 q̂0 (0) − 2 q̂2 (0) − √ + ,
2 2 1 2
 
g−1 g + 1 p̂0 (0) p̂2 (0)
P= √ 2 p̂3 (0) − 1 p̂1 (0) + √ + . (8.102)
2 2 1 2

It is clear from these relations that perfect entanglement swapping is possible only if g = 1
and either 1 or 2 (or both) tend to infinity. When both 1 and 2 are finite, there are
situations where it may be advantageous to use a reduced gain g. For example, Van Loock
and Braunstein (2000) show, using the swapped entanglement for the teleportation of a
coherent state, that the fidelity attains its optimum for

g = tanh(r1 + r2 ), (8.103)

which is smaller than one for finite r1 and r2 , and i = eri . The optimal fidelity then
becomes
 
cosh(2r1 − 2r2 ) + 1 −1
F = 1+ . (8.104)
cosh 2r1 + cosh 2r2
The classical boundary occurs when either one of the pairs has vanishing squeezing (r1 = 0
or r2 = 0). This leads to a fidelity threshold of F = 1/2 that truly quantum entanglement
swapping must surpass.
 280 Quantum communication with continuous variables

8.4 Entanglement distillation

In discrete entanglement swapping, the measurement outcomes can be used to purify or distil
entanglement, such that the reduced density matrices held by Alice and Bob have larger von
Neumann entropy. This is not the case for continuous-variable entanglement swapping. To
see why, recall that in the discrete case described in Chapter 5, entanglement distillation
is possible due to the rejection of swapped entanglement based on certain outcomes in the
Bell measurement. However, the teleportation protocol for continuous-variable quantum
states is deterministic, and each measurement outcome is completely equivalent to any
other in the swapping protocol. This means that there is no rule according to which we
can reject swapped pairs based on measurement outcomes. Combined with the fact that
perfect entanglement (and consequently perfect teleportation) is impossible for continuous
variables, we must conclude that entanglement swapping with continuous variables always
decreases the entanglement.
In general, it is possible to modify the entanglement swapping protocol to construct
quantum distillation and purification protocols for Gaussian states. However, an important
theorem states that it is impossible to construct a distillation protocol using arbitrary local
Gaussian unitary operations, homodyne detection, and classical feed-forward. We therefore
have to include some non-Gaussian operations in the distillation protocol. This was derived
independently by Eisert et al. (2002), Fiurášek (2002), and Giedke and Cirac (2002).
There are several protocols of this nature, and most include a form of photon detection
since it is the most accessible non-Gaussian operation. Here we briefly outline the distillation
protocol of Browne et al. (2003), shown in Fig. 8.10. The protocol consists of four steps:

Step 1: Two sources (1 and 2) of weakly entangled pure Gaussian states each send one
mode to station A, and the other to station B. In each station, the two input modes
are combined on a 50:50 beam splitter.
Step 2: In each station, one of the output modes is sent into a bucket detector, which will
determine whether or not there were photons in that output mode.
Step 3: If either detector registers photons, the undetected output modes are discarded; when
both detectors do not detect photons (i.e., they are projections onto the vacuum), the
output modes are more entangled than the states produced by source 1 and source 2.
Step 4: Repeat steps 1 to 3 for distilled output modes to increase the entanglement even
further.

Fig. 8.10. A distillation protocol for Gaussian states. The detectors are bucket detectors, without number
resolution.
281 8.5 Quantum cryptography

Since there is a probabilistic element into the protocol, namely the detection outcomes, we
have a mechanism for rejecting unwanted outcomes. This also means that the protocol is not
always successful, and it is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive that the success probability
can be quite high. However, the success probability decreases with each iteration, and there
will be an optimal number of iterations given an ensemble of sources.
The protocol still works when the detectors have finite efficiency, but now the decision
mechanism allows false positives. If the losses are too big, the protocol will actually degrade
the entanglement with respect to the sources. The minimum allowable detector efficiency
generally depends on the amount of entanglement in the source: the more entanglement is
present in the sources, the easier it is to degrade it with imperfect detectors. Given a fixed
detector efficiency, there will be an optimal number of iterations, beyond which no more
entanglement is distilled. For more details, see Eisert et al. (2004).
Finally, an entanglement distillation protocol can be used in the construction of a quantum
repeater. It is fairly straightforward to find a parameter regime in which the distillation
outperforms the degradation due to entanglement swapping, and a combination of the two
protocols can then be used to distribute entangled qunats over increasingly large distances.
However, the distillation protocol relies on a comparison between two detector outputs that
are typically far away from each other. We therefore need a storage mechanism for the
qunats, or a quantum memory. We will return to this in Chapter 10.

8.5 Quantum cryptography

In quantum communication with discrete systems, the possibility of cryptography follows

directly from the no-cloning theorem. At first glance, the reader may suspect that cryptogra-
phy with continuous variables is therefore impossible, since continuous-variable quantum
states typically have a large average photon number, and also a large variation in the photon
number. This may allow an eavesdropper to gain information about the state via an ordinary
beam-splitter attack. Surprisingly, this turns out not to be the case. Due to the inevitable
addition of noise in an eavesdropper attack, secure key distribution is possible with con-
tinuous variables. Indeed, this is an example of imperfect copying of continuous-variable
quantum states, again due to the no-cloning theorem. Below, we describe the extension of
the BB84 protocol to continuous variables due to Hillery (2000). This will provide us with
some physical insight why the protocol is likely to be secure. Subsequently, we will give
the outline of a security proof of this protocol following Gottesman and Preskill (2001).

8.5.1 Transmission of squeezed coherent states

Cryptographic schemes based on continuous variables have two important advantages over
quantum cryptography with single photons: first, there is no need for single-photon sources,
and only a relatively small amount of squeezing suffices to attain security of the protocol
(approximately 2.51 dB of squeezing is required, which is well below the current achiev-
able level of 10 dB). Second, cryptography with continuous variables requires homodyne
 282 Quantum communication with continuous variables

Fig. 8.11. Quantum cryptography with continuous variables. Alice sends a sequence of squeezed coherent
states to Bob.

detection, which is generally easier to perform with high efficiency than the detection of
single photons.
As in the discrete version of quantum cryptography, the main aim of quantum crypto-
graphy with continuous variables is for Alice and Bob to establish a shared random key
with absolute security. The key may subsequently be used to encode a message. Alice sends
a string of N squeezed coherent states to Bob, with each state squeezed either in the q or
the p direction. Furthermore, the choice of q or p is made randomly for each transmission
of a single squeezed coherent state. The expectation values of the squeezed quadrature (the
narrow direction in Fig. 8.11) are denoted by xi , with i running from 1 to N . The expectation
value of the other quadrature is yi . The preparation procedure for the ith squeezed coherent
state is therefore

1. Alice randomly chooses a quadrature q or p to squeeze, and applies the corresponding

squeezing operator to the vacuum:

W0 (q, p) → Wq ( q, p/ ) or Wp (q/ , p), (8.105)

where = er is the strength of the squeezing.

2. She displaces the squeezed vacuum state along xi in the squeezing direction, and along
yi in the anti-squeezed direction
 
p + yi
Wq ( q, p/ ) → Wq (q + xi ),
 
q + yi
Wp (q/ , p) → Wq , (p + xi ) . (8.106)

Bob receives these squeezed coherent states and makes a homodyne measurement on each
received state. He and Alice have previously established a shared reference frame for q and
p (e.g., by means of a shared local oscillator), and he chooses his quadrature measurement
randomly in the q or p direction. About fifty per cent of the time, Alice and Bob respectively
prepare and measure the squeezed coherent state in the same quadrature. The number of
matching measurements is M .
283 8.5 Quantum cryptography

When Alice and Bob prepare and measure in the same quadrature, and Alice’s dis-
placement value was xi , Bob will generally not find the measurement result xi , but rather
something close to xi . This is due to the finite squeezing of the state. The consequence of this
is that Alice cannot send exact continuous variables xi to Bob using this protocol. Instead,
we can divide the position and momentum axes in phase space in units of size d. When
Alice sends a squeezed coherent state with expectation value xi , the probability that Bob
measures a value in an interval di of size d around xi can be made arbitrarily large. Rather
than having Alice communicate a string x = (x1 , . . . , xM ) to Bob, Alice communicates a
string of intervals d = (d1 , . . . , dM ). Each interval di is then associated with a code word,
or a letter in a specified alphabet. The simplest example of such an alphabet is a binary
system, i.e., the logical value is 0 when the bin is even, and 1 when the bin is odd.
There are now two considerations we need to address: first, we want a good transmission
fidelity, and second, we want to protect the message from the eavesdropper Eve. Good
transmission means that, in the squeezed direction, the probability of measuring a value for
the quadrature outside the bin is very small. Roughly, this means that the bin size d must
be larger than the variance of the squeezed coherent state. More accurately, the probability
that the quadrature measurement yields a value in the interval di is calculated using the
Error function. The marginal distribution for Bob’s measurement outcome is given by the
integration of the Wigner function over the quadrature coordinate that is the canonical
conjugate with respect to the measured quadrature:
  
2 ∞ 2 2 2(y − yi )2
P(x, xi ) = dy exp −2 (x − xi ) − 2
π −∞
  
2
= exp −2 2 (x − xi )2 . (8.107)
π
The probability that the measurement outcome lies in the interval di = [xi − d/2, xi + d/2)
is then given by
 xi +
di  d√
2 2 2 d
P(di ) = dx P(x, xi ) = √ du exp[−u2 ] = Erf √ , (8.108)
d
xi − 2i π 0 2
√
where we have made the change of variable u = 2 (x − xi ), and Erf(x) is the Error
function. It can be determined numerically, and if we require a transmission fidelity of
1 − P(di ) < 10−3 , we find the relation between the size of the bin d and the amount of
squeezing = er as
d  5 −1 , (8.109)
which must be satisfied if transmission errors are to be less than one in a thousand.
Any cryptographic protocol must be suitably protected from eavesdroppers. There are
several aspects to this: first, measuring the squeezed coherent state in the wrong quadra-
ture must not reveal any information about di . This requirement is satisfied automatically,
because the expectation value in the wrong quadrature is yi , which is not correlated to xi . A
measured value close to yi may lead Eve to guess that the code word Alice sent corresponded
to the bin di′ = [yi − d/2, yi + d/2). Furthermore, for appreciable amounts of squeezing
 284 Quantum communication with continuous variables

≫ d, which means that the wrong quadrature measurement gives a large spread over
bins. When the number of code words is much less than the number of available bins,
the transmitted signal is essentially random. This randomness can be increased by Alice
when she chooses the displacements yi randomly. This removes all information about the
correctness of the choice of Eve’s quadrature measurement.
Second, whatever Eve does between Alice and Bob (as long as it is allowed by the laws
of quantum physics), she must not be able to gain any information about the code words di
that Alice tries to communicate to Bob, without being detected. We consider two possible
strategies for Eve:

1. Measure and resend;

2. partial measurement, or beam-splitter attack.

It is clear that the first strategy will reveal the presence of Eve: when she measures the
wrong quadrature she will also send the wrong squeezed coherent state to Bob, who will
now see a much larger transmission error.

Exercise 8.11: Show that d < 1/2 must be satisfied in order to foil the ‘measure and resend’
strategy.

The beam-splitter attack is a more subtle strategy, but it will also reveal the presence of
Eve. In this attack, Eve places a beam splitter in the transmission mode between Alice and
Bob, and ‘siphons off’ a small amount of the field amplitude. She can then perform any
operation she desires on the reflected mode. If the reflectivity is low enough, Alice and Bob
may interpret the reduced amplitude as signal loss in the transmission line. Nevertheless,
this attack by Eve also turns out not to work.
As we will show shortly, placing a beam splitter in the transmission line between Alice and
Bob will alter the Wigner function of the state sent by Alice to Bob. Generally, the Wigner
function will become broader, and this is detectable statistically by Alice and Bob (this has
the same effect as losses). Therefore, Eve must keep the reflectivity of the beam splitter
as small as possible in order to escape detection. On the other hand, she cannot choose
the reflectivity arbitrarily small because that would not give her enough field amplitude
to extract information about di , which is her ultimate goal. To make this precise, we now

Fig. 8.12. Transformation of the Wigner functions due to a beam splitter with reflectivity coefficient R.
285 8.5 Quantum cryptography

calculate the Wigner function of a squeezed coherent state that is sent through a beam
splitter with arbitrary reflectivity, and with a vacuum input on the secondary port.
The Wigner function of the vacuum and the squeezed coherent state in, say, the q
quadrature is given by

W (q, p; q0 , p0 ) = W (q, p) W0 (q0 , p0 ), (8.110)

with  
2
W0 (q0 , p0 ) =exp −2q02 − 2p02 (8.111)
π
the Wigner function of the vacuum state, and
 
2 2 2 2(p − yi )2
W (q, p) = exp −2 (q − xi ) − 2
(8.112)
π

the Wigner function of the squeezed coherent state. We apply the beam-splitter transforma-
tion between q̂ and q̂0 (and p̂ and p̂0 ) according to the substitution rule
√ √ √ √
q → √T q1 + √R q2 and q0 → √R q1 − √T q2
p → T p1 + R p2 and p0 → R p1 − T p2 , (8.113)

where R is the reflection coefficient and T the transmission coefficient, and R + T = 1. This
leads to a transmitted Wigner function, which is received by Bob:
 √ √ 
2 2 (q1 − T xi )2 2(p1 − T yi )2
W1 (q1 , p1 ) = N exp − − , (8.114)
T +R 2 T 2+R

where N is the normalization constant

π 1 
N −1 = √ ( 4 + 1) − ( 2 − 1)2 (R2 + T 2 ). (8.115)
2 2

In the case of perfect transmission (R → 0, T → 1), this Wigner function reduces to

the Wigner function in Eq. (8.112). The reflected state, collected by Eve, has the Wigner
function
 √ √ 
2 2 (q2 − R xi )2 2(p2 − R yi )2
W2 (q2 , p2 ) = N exp − − . (8.116)
T 2+R T + 2R

Again, the Wigner function reduces to that of the vacuum state when R → 0 and T → 1.
The marginal probability distributions over q1 and q2 for Bob and Eve, respectively, are
 ∞
PBob (q1 ) = dp1 W1 (q1 , p1 )
−∞
  √ 
2 2 − T xi )2
2 (q
1
=√ exp − (8.117)
T +R 2 π T +R 2
 286 Quantum communication with continuous variables

and
 ∞
PEve (q2 ) = dp2 W2 (q2 , p2 )
−∞
  √ 
2 2 2 (q
− R xi ) 2
2
=√ exp − . (8.118)
T 2 +R π T 2+R

√is clear from Eq. (8.117) that the beam splitter rescales the expectation value xi by a factor
It
T , and as a√
consequence Bob’s marginal probability distribution over q1 is shifted by an
amount (1 − T )xi , and broadens by a factor T + R 2 > 1. This will lead to transmission
errors between Alice and Bob. Similarly, when Eve decides √to measure the same quadrature
as Bob (q2 ), her distribution has shifted by an amount R xi , and it has narrowed by a
factor T + R/ 2 < √ 1. In order for Eve to extract some information about xi from her state,
the minimal shift Rd of her distribution must be comparable to the reduced width of the
distribution:
T 2+R 1
≈ Rd 2 or R ≈ . (8.119)
2 2 1 + 2d 2 − −2
At the same time, the shift in Bob’s marginal distribution must be smaller than the width of
the distribution:
 √ 2 T +R 2
d2 1 − T < , (8.120)
2 2
As shown in Fig. 8.13, this is consistent with the requirement that
d
R< . (8.121)

From Eqs. (8.119) and (8.121) we see that the competing requirements of Eve’s sufficient
resolution and Bob’s inability to detect her are incompatible: when squeezing is large

Fig. 8.13. The reflectivity must be smaller than a specific value if Bob is not to detect the presence of Eve in
his measurement statistics. Curve (a) is the requirement in Eq. (8.121), while curve (b) is given by
Eq. (8.120). Both curves are in units where d = 1.
287 8.5 Quantum cryptography

( ≫ 1), and the code-word bins are small d ≪ 1, Eq. (8.119) shows that R must be
close to 1, while according to Eq. (8.121) R must be smaller than a very small number. The
stronger the squeezing (i.e. the larger is), the smaller the bin size d can be, and therefore
the larger the discrepancy between the two requirements.
The physical reason why Eve cannot extract information about di without being detected
(for large squeezing), is that the beam splitter adds vacuum noise both to Eve’s state, and to
the state that is transmitted to Bob. Eve can try to reduce noise by squeezing the vacuum in
the unused input port of her beam splitter. However, she must choose a quadrature for this
squeezing, and when she chooses incorrectly, she adds even more noise to the system. Alice
and Bob can detect this statistically. Of course, since we have only shown that Eve cannot
gain information about the key while remaining undetected for this specific strategy, this is
not a security proof. Such a proof will be given later in this section.

8.5.2 Sharing approximate EPR pairs

Next, we describe quantum cryptography using shared epr pairs, or approximate epr pairs
in the practical limit. Similar to our approach in Section 5.4, we construct an ideal protocol
(using the non-physical exact quadrature eigenstates) that is provably secure, and then
we modify this protocol by allowing for approximate epr pairs, and finally reducing the
entanglement-based protocol to a version that closely resembles the above protocol by
Hillery. To this end, we use the quantum code for encoding a qubit in a continuous variable
that was introduced towards the end of Chapter 2. For the moment, we consider general
continuous variables. In particular, we do not restrict ourselves to optical states. Later in
this section we will specifically return to the optical implementation.
In order to encode a qubit in a continuous variable we need a stabilizer for the continuous-
variable state that leaves room for a qubit degree of freedom. Following Gottesman and
Preskill (2001), consider the following stabilizer generators:
 √   √ 
S(q) = exp i2 π q̂ and S(p) = exp −i2 π p̂ . (8.122)
√
These operators commute, due to the special value of α = π in the exponent, where α
was defined in Eq. (2.113) as the spacing in the gkp code.

Exercise 8.12: Show that [S(q), S(p)] = 0.

√
The eigenvalues of S(q) and S(p) are +1 if the values of q and p are s π , with s ∈ Z.
The corresponding eigenstates are then the gkp code states introduced in Chapter 2:
+∞
 +∞

   √  √ 
0̄ ∝ 2s π ∝ s π
q p
s=−∞ s=−∞
+∞
 +∞

   √  √ 
1̄ ∝ (2s + 1) π ∝ (−1)s s π p , (8.123)
q
s=−∞ s=−∞

where the subscripts q and p indicate whether the states are position or momentum eigen-
states, respectively. We can formally construct single-qubit Pauli operators in this code
288 Quantum communication with continuous variables

space according to
               
X̄ : 0̄ → 1̄ , 1̄ → 0̄ and Z̄ : 0̄ → 0̄ , 1̄ → − 1̄ . (8.124)

We can write these operators explicitly as

 √  √ 
X̄ (0) = exp −i π p̂ and Z̄(0) = exp i π q̂ , (8.125)

where we have added the argument (0) because we will generalize these operators in a
   
moment. The eigenstates of the operator Z̄(0) are 0̄ and 1̄ , and the eigenstates of X̄ˆ (0) are
       
  0̄ + 1̄   0̄ − 1̄
+̄ = √ 
and −̄ = √ . (8.126)
2 2
   
Given that the states 0̄ and 1̄ were constructed as eigenstates of S(q) and S(p) with
eigenvalues +1, a measurement of position or momentum must always give an outcome
√
that is a multiple of π . If an actual outcome (after some noisy transmission, for example)
√
differs slightly from a multiple of π , we can choose the nearest value, and recover the
√
encoded value. The code therefore protects against small translations (< 12 π ) in q and p.
This code can be generalized to states with different stabilizer-generator eigenvalues, for
example

S(q) |ψ = exp(2πiσq ) |ψ and S(p) |ψ = exp(−2πiσp ) |ψ , (8.127)

where σq and σp take arbitrary values in the interval [−1, 1]. The eigenstates of these
stabilizer generators are translated with respect to the eigenstates of the +1 eigenvalue
stabilizers. The state defines a different code, which we shall denote by (σq , σp ). The code
(0, 0) is then our original +1 eigenvalue code. This means that we also need to generalize
the Pauli operators, which now become
√  √ 
X̄ (σp ) = exp −i π p̂ − σp π (8.128)

and
√  √ 
Z̄(σq ) = exp i π q̂ − σq π . (8.129)
The need for an argument for X̄ and Z̄ is now clear, and for the (0,0) code the Pauli operators
reduce to those in Eq. (8.125).

Exercise 8.13: Show that X̄ (σp ) and Z̄(σq ) are the Pauli operators for the (σq , σp ) code.

Establishing encoded Bell pairs

Next, we construct a secure quantum key distribution protocol using entanglement. Assume
that Alice and Bob share a number of epr pairs. In particular, the pairs are stabilized by
√  
SA (q) ⊗ SB−1 (q) = exp 2i π q̂A − q̂B (8.130)
289 8.5 Quantum cryptography

and
√  
SA (p) ⊗ SB (p) = exp −2i π p̂A + p̂B . (8.131)

The states with +1 eigenvalues of these stabilizers uniquely define the epr pair with

qA − qB = pA + pB = 0, (8.132)

that is, perfect position correlation, and perfect momentum anti-correlation. Different eigen-
values of the stabilizer generators define epr states where qA − qB and pA + pB differ from
zero. The stabilizer generators for the ideal epr pair are constructed from the stabilizer gen-
erators in Eq. (8.122), which defined the continuous-variable code for a qubit in Eq. (8.123).
Alice can therefore perform a measurement of SA (q) and maintain a potentially perfect cor-
relation with Bob’s measurement statistics (should Bob measure SB (q)). Her measurement
outcome will be an eigenvalue exp(2π iσq ), for some value of σq . Note that this is not the
same as measuring the stabilizer generator in Eq. (8.130), since Bob is still free to choose
whatever observable he wants to measure. Since we are not confining our discussion to
optical states, we assume that the measurement does not destroy the quantum system. Alice
continues by measuring the second stabilizer generator SA (p), obtaining the outcome σp .
She is allowed to do this, since the stabilizers SA (q) and SA (p) commute. She thus obtained
two values σq and σp that characterize the state shared by Alice and Bob.
We now make an important observation: the initial (ideal) epr pair is also an eigenstate
of the operators
X̄A (σp ) ⊗ X̄B (σp ) and Z̄A (σq ) ⊗ Z̄B−1 (σq ). (8.133)

This means that Alice’s measurement has projected the state of the initial epr pair onto the
maximally entangled encoded qubit state
       
 +  0̄σ A 0̄σ B + 1̄σ A 1̄σ B
|epr → 
¯ ≡ √ (8.134)
2

in the (σq , σp ) encoding, where

+∞
 +∞

   √   √ 
0̄σ ∝ (2s + σq ) π ∝ (s + σp ) π
q p
s=−∞ s=−∞
+∞
 +∞

   √   √ 
1̄σ ∝ (2s + 1 + σq ) π ∝ (−1)s (s + σp ) π p . (8.135)
q
s=−∞ s=−∞

       
The eigenstates of Z̄(σp ) are 0̄σ and 1̄σ , and the eigenstates of X̄ (σp ) are +̄σ and −̄σ .
Alice’s two measurements are a form of ‘distillation’ that takes an epr pair with arbitrary qA
and qB = qA , and pA and pB = −pA to an entangled pair in which position and momentum
√
are multiples of π (up to a shift σq and σp ). The crucial point is that Alice’s measurement
does not project onto a single state (in which case any entanglement between her and Bob
would be destroyed), but rather onto an infinite dimensional subspace.
290 Quantum communication with continuous variables

At this point, Alice may (publicly) announce to Bob her measurement outcomes σq and σp ,
which allows Bob to measure his stabilizer generators SB (q) and SB (p) with measurement
outcomes τq and τp , and determine the quantities

exp[i(σq − τq )] and exp[−i(σp + τp )].

These form the syndrome of the correlated measurements, and they will differ from 1 if
the transmission of the state from Alice to Bob induced translations in q and p. Based on
the syndrome, Bob can adjust the position and momentum of his system  (that is, perform
error correction) such that he and Alice share a near-perfect state 
¯ + in the (σq , σp ) code
space.
Alice and Bob have now established a shared entangled qubit pair, encoded in a
continuous-variable quantum system. They can use this in a qkd protocol that is prov-
ably secure (see Section 5.4). Furthermore, the entire discussion in this section can be
generalized for d-level (qudit) systems.

Reduction to practical QKD

The above discussion was framed in terms of ideal epr pairs, which are of course non-
physical states, and can never be created by Alice in her lab. We therefore need to investigate
how this protocol is affected when Alice creates approximate epr pairs. When she chooses a
Gaussian approximation to an epr pair, we can describe the entangled state with the Wigner
function

2 2  
2
W (qA , pA ; qB , pB ) = exp −2 (qA − qB )2 − 2 2
(pA + pB )2
π
 
2(qA + qB )2 2(pA − pB )2
× exp − 2
− 2
. (8.136)

Note that we are still considering general continuous-variable systems. In particular, we

assume that we can still perform ‘quantum non-demolition’ (qnd) measurements. The cor-
relation between the position and momentum found by Alice and Bob will be imperfect.
However, we will assume that the approximation is sufficiently good that the position and
momentum correlations are perfect to an accuracy of m bits. The protocol then proceeds as
follows:

1. Alice prepares her approximate epr state, and sends one part to Bob;
2. each measures the stabilizer generators Si (q) and Si (p) to an accuracy of m bits (i = A, B);
3. Alice broadcasts her measurement outcomes for σq and σp , which requires 2m bits;
4. Bob uses Alice’s broadcast to correct their state for transmission errors;
5. the state has been distilled to a two-qubit Bell state based on a continuous variable with
m-bit accuracy;
6. the entanglement-based qkd protocol commences.
291 8.5 Quantum cryptography

Note that this protocol still requires qnd measurements. In addition, Alice and Bob need to
store their systems in perfect quantum memories. In the remainder of this section, we will
eliminate these requirements, which leads to Hillery’s protocol of the previous section. We
will establish the minimum amount of squeezing required for its optical implementation.
The entanglement-based qkd protocol  is essentially
 the Ekert91 protocol, in which Alice
and Bob share n Bell pairs in the state + . Alice measures randomly in the X̄ or Z̄ basis,
and sends information about her choice of bases to Bob in the form of a bit string. Bob then
measures his qubits in the bases that were indicated by Alice, and they establish a random
shared bit string as a result.
We first observe that Alice can measure her qubits at any time, since at no point does she
have to operate on her qubits based on information she receives from Bob. In particular,
this means that she can measure her qubits before she sends the entangled partners to Bob.
However, now the ‘measure and send’ procedure is indistinguishable from sending Bob
unentangled qubits that are randomly chosen from a set of four states. To anyone but Alice,
these states are highly mixed (and therefore constitute a ‘proper mixture’, as discussed in
Chapter 3). The qkd protocol is now modified as follows:
1. Alice chooses a random m-bit value for the eigenvalues e2πiσq and e−2πiσp , a random basis
X̄ or Z̄, a random
 bit to send
 to Bob,
 and
 she prepares the corresponding (approximate)
encoded state 0̄σ , 1̄σ , +̄σ , or −̄σ for Bob;
2. after transmission of the system to Bob, Alice broadcasts the m-bit stabilizer eigenvalues,
and her choice of basis X̄ or Z̄;
3. Bob measures S(q) or S(p) to m-bit accuracy, depending on Alice’s choice of basis Z̄ or
X̄ , respectively;
√
4. he then subtracts Alice’s m-bit value, and corrects to the nearest multiple of π to correct
for any translation errors in the transmission of the quantum system;
√
5. the shared bit is determined whether the multiple of π is even or odd.
In this protocol, there is no longer any need for qnd measurements, since the systems held
by Alice and Bob are measured only once. Previously, the systems were measured twice:
once for entanglement distillation, and a second time for the qkd protocol. However, Bob
still needs a near-perfect quantum memory, because he needs to wait for Alice’s broadcast
before he knows in which basis he needs to measure his system. Another difficulty with
this protocol is that the state Alice sends to Bob is very difficult to make. We will therefore
simplify the protocol further.
If Alice tells Bob to measure the stabilizer generator S(q), she does not need to tell him
the value of σp . Likewise, if she tells him to measure the stabilizer generator S(p), she
does not need to broadcast the value of σq . Therefore, Alice does not send the unnecessary
information. This does not compromise the security of the protocol,becauseAlice
 broadcasts
less information than before. Moreover, if Alice decided to send 0̄σ without information
about σp , Bob and any present eavesdropper must average over σp and will describe the
state of the system as
+∞
  √  ! √ 
ρ0 (σq ) ∝ (2s + σq ) π (2s + σq ) π  . (8.137)
q
s=−∞
292 Quantum communication with continuous variables

 
Similarly, if Alice decides to send the state 1̄σ without information about σp , the state of
the system as described by Bob (and Eve) would become

+∞
  √  ! √ 
ρ1 (σq ) ∝ (2s + 1 + σq ) π (2s + 1 + σq ) π  . (8.138)
q
s=−∞

If in addition we also average over σq (which would be the correct procedure for Bob and
Eve to establish the state without knowledge of σq ), the state becomes a random-position
eigenstate. Likewise, if Alice chose the eigenbasis of X̄ to send her bit, the state averaged
over σq and σp is a random-momentum eigenstate. Therefore, the protocol may be modified
such that Alice sends a random position or momentum eigenstate. Bob’s measurement
reduces to a measurement in the position or momentum basis.
In addition, Bob may circumvent the need for a quantum memory by making his mea-
surement in either the position or momentum basis, and hoping that his choice of basis
coincides with that of Alice. If it doesn’t, that particular run will be discarded, and they
will try again. Since not using a transmitted state for the qkd protocol cannot yield any
information about the key, no eavesdropper can benefit from this modification, and the
protocol is still secure to within the m-bit accuracy.
With these modifications, we can state the protocol in terms of an optical implementation.
The position and momentum operators become the corresponding quadratures, and their
approximate eigenstates become squeezed coherent states. The protocol is then

1. Alice randomly chooses a quadrature q̂ or p̂ and again randomly picks a corresponding

continuous variable q or p over a broad range;
2. she prepares a squeezed coherent state centered around q or p and sends it to Bob;
3. Bob randomly chooses a quadrature measurement q̂ or p̂ and finds the measurement
outcome qA or qB ;
4. Alice and Bob publicly compare their choice of quadratures, and keep the measurement
data for coinciding quadrature measurements;
√
5. if their quadratures coincide, Alice broadcasts the m-bit value q or p modulo π (thus
not revealing whether it is an even or odd multiple, which constitutes her random bit),
and Bob subtracts this from his measurement outcome qA or qB ;
√
6. Bob corrects the difference to the nearest multiple of π , and the shared bit has value
0 or 1, depending on whether the multiple is even or odd.

This protocol is not quite identical to the protocol by Hillery (when the code-word alphabet
is binary), but the differences are merely cosmetic. The security of this protocol therefore
implies the security of that of Hillery.
How good must the approximation to quadrature eigenstates be for this protocol to be
secure? In Section 5.4 we mentioned that the security proof of BB84 employs css codes to
demonstrate that the maximum error rate for which the protocol is still secure is about 11%.
The same proof applies here since we use continuous variables to define a qubit code space,
and we therefore also limit the error rate due to finite squeezing and transmission losses to
11%. This corresponds to a squeezing strength that exceeds 2.51 dB. Current experimental
293 8.6 References and further reading

levels of squeezing are about 10 dB, which means that practical qkd with squeezed states
is possible.
Finally, we must stress again that these qkd protocols are not authentication protocols.
In other words, we assume that Alice and Bob are already confident that they are commu-
nicating with each other, and not with some impostor. Authentication is a different problem
from key distribution.

8.6 References and further reading

For an introduction to Wigner functions in quantum optics we refer to the excellent texts by
Leonhardt (1997), and Barnett and Radmore (1997). Dedicated books on general quantum
information with continuous variables were edited by Braunstein and Pati (2003) and Cerf
et al. (2007).Areview article by Braunstein and van Loock (2005) gives a complete overview
of the literature. Quantum teleportation of qunats was demonstrated experimentally by
Furusawa et al. (1998). For more information on entanglement distillation and purification
protocols for Gaussian states we refer to Duan et al. (2000a, 2000b), Browne et al. (2003),
Fiurášek et al. (2003), Heersink et al. (2006), and Fiurášek et al. (2007). Finally, quantum
cryptography for continuous variables was introduced by Hillery (2000), Ralph (2000), and
Cerf et al. (2002), and investigated experimentally by Lodewyck et al. (2007) and Zhang
et al. (2008).
 Quantum computation with
9 continuous variables

In the previous chapter we have discussed some important quantum information processing
techniques based on continuous variables, or ‘qunats’. In this chapter, we describe methods
for extending these techniques to quantum computation with optical qunats. We will first
show in Section 9.1 how the optical qunat states are initialized using single-mode squeezing,
and we give optical implementations of some of the most important single-qunat gates, such
as the Heisenberg–Weyl operators and the Fourier transform. In Section 9.2, we study the
theory of two-mode Gaussian operations, and we construct a general optical circuit that can
implement any two-mode Gaussian operation. In Section 9.3, we introduce the stabilizer for-
malism for qunats, and use it to derive a Gottesman–Knill theorem. This leads to the general
requirement of nonlinear gates for qunats, and their optical implementation will be discussed
in Section 9.4. Having thus established the optical implementation of universal quantum
computing with continuous variables, we extend this to the one-way model in Section
9.5, where we introduce cluster states for continuous variables. Finally, in Section 9.6, we
discuss various quantum error-correction techniques for qunat quantum computing.

9.1 Single-mode optical qunat gates

We have already seen in Chapter 2 that the single qunat gates are fundamentally different
from qubit gates. In the context of optical implementations, this difference arises due to the
complementary nature of qubits and qunats: qubits that are represented by single photons
can be considered particles, whereas qunats are encoded in the wave properties of the optical
field. In this section, we will show how to create the optical qunat by squeezing the vacuum,
and give optical implementations of the phase-space displacements (the Heisenberg–Weyl
operators), the Fourier transform, and the phase gate.

9.1.1 Initializing the qunat states

One of the most important operations in qunat quantum information processing is the
creation of the squeezed states that are to become the approximations to the (unphysical)
position and momentum eigenstates. This is accomplished with the single-mode squeezing
operation. We have developed the mathematical description of this operation in Chapter 1
and in the previous chapter, and we saw in Chapter 4 how it describes photon-pair production.
Here we will describe how quadrature squeezing can be implemented in the laboratory.
 295 9.1 Single-mode optical qunat gates

Using Eq. (1.200), the single-mode squeezing of a mode a can be written in terms of the
mode operators as
â2 â†2
S(ξ ) = exp ξ ∗ − ξ . (9.1)
2 2
We will now show that this operation can be implemented using a material with a so-called
χ (2) nonlinearity. Such a material can be described by the Hamiltonian in the rotating-wave
approximation  
H = ω ↠â + ωP b̂† b̂ + iχ (2) â2 b̂† − â†2 b̂ , (9.2)

where χ (2) is the strength of the nonlinear interaction of the light with the medium. In the
parametric approximation, we set b̂ → βe−iωP t and up to an irrelevant constant term the
Hamiltonian then becomes
 
Hp = ω ↠â + iχ (2) â2 β ∗ eiωP t − â†2 βe−iωP t . (9.3)

We can remove the first term by going to the interaction picture, and find
 
HI = iχ (2) â2 β ∗ ei(ωP −2ω)t − â†2 βe−i(ωP −2ω)t . (9.4)

When we select the modes where ωP = 2ω, and we exponentiate the Hamiltonian to obtain
the corresponding unitary operation, we find the squeezing operator
i  
S = exp − HI t = exp χ (2) tβ ∗ â2 − χ (2) tβ â†2 . (9.5)


Since the strength of the nonlinearity χ (2) is a real number, as is the interaction time t,
we can define ξ = 2χ (2) tβ, and the pumped second-order nonlinear medium acts as the
squeezing operator in Eq. (9.1). A schematic of the set-up is shown in Fig. 9.1. For an
in-depth treatment of nonlinear optical media, we refer the reader to Boyd (2003).
Experimentalists typically measure squeezing in decibels. If we write ξ = reiφ and s is
the amount of squeezing in dB, we define
 
s = 10 log10 e2r ≈ 8.69 r . (9.6)

Achievable levels of optical squeezing currently stand at about 10 dB, or r ≈ 1.15. Even
though higher values of ξ can in principle be obtained by choosing β sufficiently large, any
source of imperfection in the system will cause s to deteriorate, and increasing the amount
of squeezing further is a challenging task.

Fig. 9.1. A bright coherent state with frequency ωP pumps a nonlinear medium χ (2) . The mode a with
frequency ω = ωP /2 is squeezed, and the two modes are separated with a dichroic mirror (DM).
 296 Quantum computation with continuous variables

9.1.2 The Heisenberg–Weyl operators

Next, we consider two basic logic gates for qunat quantum information processing, namely
the Heisenberg–Weyl operators. They are defined as

i i
X (q) = exp − qp̂ and Z(p) = exp pq̂ , (9.7)
 

which using  
   ω  
†
q̂ = â + â and p̂ = −i â − ↠(9.8)
2ω 2
can be written in terms of the creation and annihilation operators, leading to the expressions
   
ω  † ip  †
X (q) = exp q â − â and Z(p) = exp √ â + â . (9.9)
2 2ω
These can be interpreted as displacement operators
 
D(α) = exp α ↠− α ∗ â , (9.10)

such that 
ω ip
X (q) = D q and Z(p) = D √ . (9.11)
2 2ω
In other words, X (q) is a displacement along the real axis in phase space, and Z(p) is
a displacement along the imaginary axis. The question is then how we implement the
displacement operator with optical elements.
Consider the optical set-up shown in Fig. 9.2. According to Eq. (1.146), the Hamiltonian
for a beam splitter on modes a and b with ϕ = 3π/2 can be written as
 
H = −iζ ↠b̂ − âb̂† . (9.12)

The beam-splitter transformation of mode a is then given by

â → cos ζ â − sin ζ b̂ . (9.13)

Fig. 9.2. Optical implementation of a displacement operator D(α).√The displacement is ideal in the limit
where the reflection coefficient R vanishes and β = − α/ R.
297 9.1 Single-mode optical qunat gates

We can now use the same trick that we used in our description of parametric downconversion.
When mode b is in a bright coherent state β, produced by a laser operating far above
threshold, the transformation becomes

â → cos ζ â − sin ζ β . (9.14)

Next, we assume that ζ ≪ 1, so we can approximate cos ζ ≃ 1, and sin ζ ≃ ζ . Furthermore,

if we define α ≡ −ζβ, we find
â → â + α , (9.15)
which, according to Eq. (1.186), is the transformation of the annihilation operator due to
a displacement α. The reflection coefficient of the beam splitter must therefore be small
(R = ζ 2 ) and the coherent input state must be |β with large β. We can understand this
behaviour physically by noting that a beam splitter generally entangles the modes it operates
on, except in special cases (such as the vacuum or coherent states). Therefore, if the state
of the input mode is e.g., a squeezed coherent state, and the reflected mode will be traced
over, the entanglement induced by the beam splitter will cause the reduced density matrix
of the (displaced) output mode to become mixed. The lower the reflectivity, the smaller
this mixing effect, and the better this system approximates a displacement operator. In the
teleportation experiment by Furusawa et al. (see Section 8.3), the reflectivity was R = 0.01.

9.1.3 The Fourier transform

The next logic gate for qunats that we consider here is the Fourier transform F of mode a.
This transformation can be written as
 
iπ 2 p̂2
F = exp ωq̂ + . (9.16)
4 ω

Using Eq. (9.8) we can write this as

  
iπ † iπ † iπ
F = exp â â + â↠= exp â â exp . (9.17)
4 2 4

This is a simple phase shift in the optical mode (up to an overall phase, which can be
ignored). The Fourier transform can therefore be implemented either via a delay line or a
material with a linear index of refraction and low losses.
We could have guessed that the Fourier transform is related to a phase shift, since it
transforms position eigenstates into momentum eigenstates, and vice versa:

p̂
F q̂ F † = and F p̂ F † = −ωq̂ . (9.18)
ω
In phase space, these eigenstates are rotated over π/2 with respect to each other, and we
have already seen in the previous chapter that rotations in phase space are equivalent to
phase shifts.
 298 Quantum computation with continuous variables

The Fourier transform F transforms the Heisenberg–Weyl operators into each other, but
it also introduces factors of ω
 p p
FX (q)F † = Z(ωq) and FZ(p)F † = X − = X −1 . (9.19)
ω ω

Since the Heisenberg–Weyl operators are implemented by the displacement operator, we

calculate the effect of F on D(α):

F D(α) F † = D(iα) . (9.20)

It therefore turns real displacements into imaginary displacements and vice versa. This can
be understood as a rotation over π/2 in phase space.
Finally, the Fourier transform of the single-mode squeezer gives the inverse squeezing
operator
FS(ξ )F † = S(−ξ ) = S(ξ )−1 . (9.21)
Again, this is easily understood as a rotation in phase space.

Exercise 9.1: Verify Eq. (9.21).

9.1.4 The phase gate

The final single-qunat gate we consider here is the phase gate (θ ). It can be written as

iθ
(θ ) = exp ωq̂2 . (9.22)
2

In Fig. 9.3 we show the effect of this gate on the Wigner function of the vacuum state for
three values of θ . The phase gate is a combination of single-mode squeezing and a rotation
of the quadratures. It can therefore be implemented using a pumped second-order nonlinear
material and a phase shift.

Fig. 9.3. The effect of the phase gate (θ) on the Wigner function of the vacuum state. Notice how the
squeezing angle increases with increasing θ.
299 9.2 Two-mode Gaussian qunat operations

This gate immediately suggests another phase gate P (θ) that is generated by the
momentum quadrature
i θ p̂2
P (θ) = exp . (9.23)
2 ω
It is related to (θ ) via a Fourier transform

P (θ) = F (θ ) F † , (9.24)

and is therefore implemented optically with a second-order nonlinear material and phase
shifts as well.
Exercise 9.2: Show that the phase gates can be decomposed into single-mode squeezing
and a quadrature rotation.

9.2 Two-mode Gaussian qunat operations

The quadratic operators in q̂ and p̂ of the previous section form a group of Gaussian operators
on a single optical mode. However, any quantum computation requires entanglement, and we
can obtain this only with multi-mode operations, as shown in Chapter 8. In this section, we
consider a special case of multi-mode operations, namely two-mode Gaussian operations.
We ask which sets of basic one- and two-mode Gaussian operators are sufficient to efficiently
simulate any other Gaussian operator, and we will describe an optical implementation that
can be used to implement any two-mode Gaussian operator.
Rather than the unitary transformations U , we will study the Hamiltonians H that give
rise to U = exp(−iHt/). We can do this without loss of generality. Following Kraus et
al. (2003), and setting ω = 1, we define the local Hamiltonian Hjℓ
 
Hjℓ (φ) = φ q̂j2 + p̂j2 , (9.25)

that is, a phase shift φ on mode aj . We assume that we can apply gates like these instanta-
neously. While this is obviously not true in general, we can adjust the optical path length
from one gate to the next such that these local phase shifts are implemented without addi-
tional cost in time. In addition, we define the two-mode ‘interaction’ Hamiltonian on modes
a1 and a2
H = cqq q̂1 q̂2 + cpp p̂1 p̂2 + cqp q̂1 p̂2 + cpq p̂1 q̂2 . (9.26)
Alternatively, this can be written as

q̂2 cqq cqp

H = (q̂1 , p̂1 ) M with M = . (9.27)
p̂2 cpq cpp
The matrix M has singular values λ1 and λ2 , and we define

s 1 = λ1 and s2 = sign(det M ) λ2 , (9.28)

as the restricted singular values of M .

300 Quantum computation with continuous variables

Next, consider the Hamiltonian evolution given by

i ′ ′ (N ) (N ) i i (1) (1) i (0) (0)
e−  H t = U1 U2 e−  HtN · · · e−  Ht2 U1 U2 e−  Ht1 U1 U2 , (9.29)

where the local unitary transformations

 
(k) i
Uj = exp − Hjℓ (φk ) (9.30)


are the single-mode phase shifts. We say that H simulates H′ efficiently if Eq. (9.29) holds
(k)
true for some choice of phase shifts Uj and

t′ = t ≡ tk , (9.31)
k

where we assumed that the phase shifts are implemented instantaneously. It turns out that
H′ can be simulated efficiently by H if and only if

s1 + s2 ≥ s1′ + s2′ and s1 − s2 ≥ s1′ − s2′ , (9.32)

where sj and sj′ are the restricted singular values of H and H′ , respectively. The proof is
given by Kraus et al. (2003).
We now give two examples of this theorem: consider the cz gate described by the Hamil-
tonian Hcz = q̂1 q̂2 . The restricted singular values are s1 = 1 and s2 = 0. Can this
Hamiltonian simulate the Hamiltonians of the beam splitter

HBS = q̂1 p̂2 − p̂1 q̂2 , (9.33)

and the two-mode squeezer

HS2 = q̂1 q̂2 − p̂1 p̂2 ? (9.34)
For the beam-splitter Hamiltonian, the restricted singular values are s1′ = 1 and s2′ = 1. We
then find immediately that s1 +s2 = 1 and s1′ +s2′ = 2. Therefore, the requirement s1 +s2 ≥
s1′ + s2′ is violated and the cz Hamiltonian cannot efficiently simulate the beam-splitter
interaction Hamiltonian. Similarly, the restricted singular values of the two-mode squeezing
Hamiltonian are s1′ = 1 and s2′ = −1. These values violate the requirement s1 −s2 ≥ s1′ −s2′ ,
and the Hcz cannot efficiently simulate the two-mode squeezing Hamiltonian.
In our definition of efficient simulation, we required that the total time of the two unitary
transformations t ′ and t is equal. If H′ cannot be simulated by H efficiently, we may still
be able to simulate H′ with H in time t > t ′ . The minimum time tmin needed to simulate
H′ is given by
/ 0
tmin = min t : (s1 + s2 )t ≥ (s1′ + s2′ )t ′ , (s1 − s2 )t ≥ (s1′ − s2′ )t ′ . (9.35)
t

Since each Hamiltonian is characterized by two real parameters s1 and s2 , this behaviour
can be represented graphically as shown in Fig. 9.4. Each point (s1 , s2 ) in the (s1′ , s2′ ) plane
corresponds to a class of Hamiltonians H(s1 , s2 ). We can restrict our discussion to the region
s1′ ≥ |s2′ |, because we can always apply single-mode phase shifts such that H lies in this
 301 9.2 Two-mode Gaussian qunat operations

Fig. 9.4. The set of Hamiltonians H′ that can be simulated efficiently with H is represented by the shaded
rectangle. As the interaction time of H increases, the point (s1 , s2 ) moves out along the dashed
line (see Kraus et al., 2003).

quadrant. From Fig. 9.4 it is easily seen that, except in the special cases of Hamiltonians on
the lines s2′ = |s1′ |, any H of the form in Eq. (9.26) can simulate any other, given local phase
shifts and sufficient time. The beam splitter and the two-mode squeezer both lie on the lines
s2′ = |s1′ |, which can be understood as follows: the beam splitter has a bilinear Hamiltonian
in which each term is a product of a creation and an annihilation operator. No matter how
this is combined with single-mode phase shifts, this can never produce squeezing, where the
Hamiltonian contains products of two creation (annihilation) operators. Similarly, a pure
squeezing Hamiltonian cannot simulate the action of a beam splitter.

Exercise 9.3: Show that every Hamiltonian given by Eq. (9.26) can be described by a point
(s1 , s2 ) in the quadrant s1′ ≥ |s2′ |.

The second question we address in this section is how we can construct any Gaussian
operation with a restricted set of gates. We explicitly include single-mode quadratic terms
in this construction. These were excluded from our previous discussion.
First, we recall from Chapter 1 that, according to the Bloch–Messiah reduction, we can
write any linear Bogoliubov transformation of a set of modes as a passive interferometer
(beam splitters and phase shifters), followed by a collection of single-mode squeezers,
followed by another passive interferometer. The Bogoliubov transformation is generated
by a bilinear Hamiltonian; see Eq. (1.172). We will now translate the general two-mode
interferometric set-up, including the two single-mode squeezers, into a sequence of passive
two-mode interferometers and two-mode squeezers.
In Chapter 1 we wrote the Bloch–Messiah reduction in terms of creation and annihilation
operators ↠and â, whereas here we consider the quadrature operators q̂ and p̂. To fix
our terminology, consider a unitary transformation U on N modes generated by a bilinear
Hamiltonian H:

N
1  
H= q̂j Ajk q̂k + p̂j Bjk p̂k + q̂j Cjk p̂k + p̂j Djk q̂k , (9.36)
2
j,k=1
302 Quantum computation with continuous variables

with Hermitian matrices A, B, C, and D, such that

i
U (t) = exp − Ht . (9.37)


When the unitary operator is used to transform the quadrature operators U (t)q̂j U † (t), the
mode transformations can be written as

qout qin
=K , (9.38)
p out pin

where q = (q̂1 , . . . , q̂N ), etc., and the matrix K obeys

 
T 0 ÎN
K K =  with = . (9.39)
−ÎN 0

Matrices with this property are ‘symplectic’, and their form ensures that the output quadra-
tures again obey the canonical commutation relation [q̂j , p̂k ] = iδjk . The matrix K can be
diagonalized using two orthogonal symplectic matrices O and R, and the resulting singular
value decomposition for two modes yields
⎛ ⎞
er+s 0 0 0
⎜ 0 e−(r+s) 0 0 ⎟
K = ODRT with D=⎜ ⎟, (9.40)
⎝ 0 0 er−s 0 ⎠
0 0 0 e−(r−s)

where r and s are real. We wrote D in this way because it allows us to further decompose
it into a product of two matrices Dr and Ds , obeying
⎛ r ⎞ ⎛ s ⎞
e 0 0 0 e 0 0 0
⎜0 e−r 0 0 ⎟ ⎜0 e−s 0 0⎟
Dr = ⎜
⎝0
⎟ and Ds = ⎜
⎝0
⎟. (9.41)
0 er 0 ⎠ 0 e−s 0⎠
0 0 0 e−r 0 0 0 es

Next, we show that these matrices can be generated with unitary transformations such as
those generated by HBS and HS2 . We define the following four Hamiltonians

HBS = q̂1 p̂2 − p̂1 q̂2 and H̃BS = −(q̂1 q̂2 + p̂1 p̂2 )
HS2 = q̂1 q̂2 − p̂1 p̂2 and H̃S2 = q̂1 p̂2 + p̂1 q̂2 , (9.42)

which generate the unitary transformations UBS (t), ŨBS (t), US2 (t), and ŨS2 (t), respectively.
The two-mode squeezers Dr and Ds are then produced by
†
Dr : ŨBS (π/4) US2 (r) ŨBS (π/4)
†
Ds : UBS (π/4) ŨS2 (s) UBS (π/4). (9.43)
 303 9.3 The Gottesman–Knill theorem for qunats

Fig. 9.5. Any two-mode Gaussian operator can be constructed from five elementary operations. The shaded
boxes are arbitrary two-mode operations, consisting of four single-mode phase gates and a beam
splitter. The elements indicated by t2 and t4 are two-mode squeezers. The interaction times ti
determine the strength of the gates.

Let’s choose r = t2 and s = t4 . If we put all the components in the right order, the most
general two-mode Gaussian operation G can then be written as
(5) (5) (4) (4) (3) (3)
G = U1 U2 UBS (t5 ) U1 U2 US2 (t4 ) U1 U2 UBS (t3 )

× U1(2) U2(2) US2 (t2 ) U1(1) U2(1) UBS (t1 ) U1(0) U2(0) , (9.44)

which is shown in Fig. 9.5.

The two entangling gates that we are particularly interested in are the cx gate and the cz
gate. From Chapter 2, Eqs. (2.97) and (2.100), we infer that

i i
cxij = exp − q̂i p̂j and czij = exp q̂i q̂j . (9.45)
 

The cz gate is related to the cx gate via two Fourier transforms on the target system,
indicated by j, since F p̂j F † = −q̂j (recall that we set ω = 1).

Exercise 9.4: Construct the optical implementation of the cz gate. How much squeezing
does it need?

When the object is to create (approximate) epr pairs, however, we have seen in the
previous chapter that we can circumvent the need for two-mode squeezing and send two
single-mode squeezed vacuum states into a 50:50 beam splitter. The two vacuum states
must be squeezed in orthogonal directions. This is therefore not an actual implementation
of a cz gate. Rather, it is a way to create entanglement. Later in this chapter we will see how
this can be used to construct a measurement-based model of computation on qunat cluster
states.

9.3 The Gottesman–Knill theorem for qunats

So far, we have considered only Gaussian operations. We explicitly discussed two-mode

Gaussian operations, which can be extended to multi-mode Gaussian operations in a straight-
forward manner, according to Eq. (9.36). In this section we will show that if we restrict
304 Quantum computation with continuous variables

our qunat quantum computation to Gaussian operations on squeezed coherent states, and
include feed-forward based on (perfect or lossy) homodyne detection, then we can effi-
ciently simulate the computation on a classical computer. This is the Gottesman–Knill
theorem for continuous variables. We will again use the stabilizer formalism in order to
explicitly construct such an efficient classical description.
First, recall that the cx gate, the cz gate, the Fourier transform F, and the phase gate
(θ ) transform the operators X (q) and Z(p) into each other. The Fourier transform acts as

F X (q) F † = Z(q) and F Z(p) F † = X −1 (p) , (9.46)

and the phase gate yields

i
(θ ) X (q) −1 (θ) = X (q)Z(θq) exp θ q2
2
(θ ) Z(p) −1 (θ) = Z(p) . (9.47)

Under the cx operation the Heisenberg–Weyl operators transform as

X1 (q) → X1 (q)X2 (q) and Z1 (p) → Z1 (p)

X2 (q) → X2 (q) and Z2 (p) → Z1−1 (p)Z2 (p) . (9.48)

Finally, the cz gate produces the transformation

X1 (q) → X1 (q)Z2 (q) , (9.49)

which is analogous to the transformation of Pauli operators for qubits. These four operators
are exponents of quadratic functions in the quadrature operators and, together with X (q)
and Z(p), they efficiently generate all possible quadratic operations on N modes.

Exercise 9.5: Calculate the remaining transformations of X (q) and Z(p) under cz, not
shown in Eq. (9.49).

Next, we note that the above operators can be combined to construct single-mode squeez-
ers. When applied to the vacuum, these operators create the required initial states for the
computation. If we want to construct an efficient description using the stabilizer formalism
of a quantum computation based on Gaussian operations, we need to construct the stabilizer
Vj of the vacuum state of mode aj . This can be achieved by exponentiating the annihilation
operator âj
  
ω i
Vj |0 = exp(c âj ) |0 = exp c q̂j + √ p̂j |0 = |0 . (9.50)
2 2ω
The inclusion of  and ω makes this notation rather cumbersome, and their presence is
not essential to the stabilizer formalism. We assume that all modes have the same discrete
frequency, and we adopt photon-number units in which  = 1/2. This yields the stabilizer
generator for the vacuum
 
Vj |0 = exp c q̂j + ip̂j |0 = |0 . (9.51)
305 9.3 The Gottesman–Knill theorem for qunats

Clearly, the vacuum is the +1 eigenstate of the operator Vj for arbitrary c ∈ C. When we
restrict ourselves to pure states, this stabilizer generator determines the vacuum uniquely.
Even though â is not a Hermitian operator, and Vj is therefore not unitary, the stabilizer
generator Vj is linear in q̂ and p̂, and is therefore a Gaussian operator.
The input states of an optical qunat quantum computer are squeezed coherent states. We
will now construct the stabilizer generators for these states. First, the vacuum is squeezed
via a single-mode squeezing operator, for example in the q̂ quadrature when r > 0
 
Sq (r) = exp ir q̂p̂ + p̂q̂ . (9.52)

Under the influence of this operator, the stabilizer generator evolves according to ( = er )

icp̂
Vj → Vj ( ) ≡ Sq (r) Vj Sq† (r) = exp c q̂ + . (9.53)

When the vacuum is squeezed in the p̂ quadrature with Sp (r) = Sq (−r), the stabilizer
generator becomes

cq̂
Vj → Vj ( −1
) ≡ Sp (r) Vj Sp† (r) = exp + ic p̂ . (9.54)

These stabilizer generators are again Gaussian functions.

Exercise 9.6: Verify the evolution of Vj under Sq (r) and Sp (r).

The stabilizer generator Vj transforms under the Heisenberg–Weyl operators X (q) and
Z(p) according to
X (q) Vj X −1 (q) = exp c(q̂ + q) + icp̂ , (9.55)
and
Z(p) Vj Z −1 (p) = exp cq̂ + ic(p̂ + p) , (9.56)
which are also Gaussian operators. When we have N qunats, the N -mode vacuum input
state is stabilized by the set of N stabilizer generators {Vj } with j = 1, . . . , N . To prepare
the input states for a quantum computation, each mode is squeezed in the q̂ quadrature,
and displaced using the operators Xj (qj )Zj (pj ). The stabilizer generator for mode aj then
becomes

Sj = Xj (qj )Zj (pj ) Vj ( ) Zj−1 (pj )Xj−1 (qj )

 
ic(p̂j + pj )
= exp c (q̂j + qj ) +

ic  c  c2 icpj
= Zj − Xj − exp + c qj + . (9.57)
2 2 4

Therefore, up to a complex exponential factor related to the displacement (qj , pj ) and the
squeezing strength = er , the stabilizer generator Sj is a product of Heisenberg–Weyl
306 Quantum computation with continuous variables

operators. This leads to the following stabilizer generators for the squeezed vacuum:
 c  c
Sj = Xj − Zj . (9.58)
2 2i

When r → +∞ the operator X tends towards the identity operator, and a choice of c = 2i
means that the stabilizer generator for the squeezed vacuum in the quadrature q̂ is the
operator Zj ( ). Similarly, when r → −∞ and c = −2, the squeezing occurs in the
quadrature p̂, and the state is stabilized by the operator Xj ( −1 ).

Exercise 9.7: Derive the stabilizer generator for the squeezed coherent state.

A quantum computation based solely on Gaussian operations UG , generated by the

Hamiltonian in Eq. (9.36)
⎡ ⎤
N

i  
UG = exp ⎣− q̂j Ajk q̂k + p̂j Bjk p̂k + q̂j Cjk p̂k + p̂j Djk q̂k  , (9.59)
2
j,k=1

formally transforms the Heisenberg–Weyl operators as

N
#    
† (X ) (X )
UG Xj (qj ) UG ∝ Xk qj Fjk Zk qj Gjk
k=1
N
#    
† (Z) (Z)
UG Zj (pj ) UG ∝ Xk pj Fjk Zk pj Gjk , (9.60)
k=1

(l) (l)
up to exponential factors that also depend on Fjk and Gjk , which in turn depend on the
matrices A, B, C, and D. In order to keep track of the computation, we need to keep track
(l) (l)
of the numbers Fjk and Gjk . Each one of them is a matrix with N 2 elements, and there
are four of them. The total number of real parameters we need to track in order to describe
the computation is therefore 4N 2 . This is a polynomial in the size of the input, and if the
computer takes a polynomial number of steps (which is necessary for the computation to
be efficient), then the classical description is also efficient.
Implicit in the above discussion is our assumption that the final readout is done in a
quadrature basis for all the qunats. Without loss of generality, we can assume that the readout
takes place in the position quadrature for all variables. This is implemented by homodyne
detection. In practice, homodyne detection is performed with lossy photodetectors, and it
is a priori not clear that this can be described as a Gaussian operation as well. However,
we have seen in the previous chapter that loss can be modelled with a beam splitter of
transmittance η. The beam splitter is a Gaussian operation, and therefore lossy homodyne
detection is included in the Gottesman–Knill theorem for qunat quantum computing.
Similarly, we can include a large class of feed-forward operations in the theorem. Feed-
forward is defined as a measurement of one or more qunats, the outcome of which is used
to choose a new operation. It is well known that any feed-forward operation can formally
307 9.4 Nonlinear optical qunat gates

be written as a controlled operation with the measurement postponed to the end of the com-
putation. If this controlled operation is again a controlled Gaussian, the Gottesman–Knill
theorem holds. Thus we have arrived at a very large class of operations that can be simulated
efficiently on a classical computer by keeping track of the stabilizer. Consequently, for a
quantum computer based on qunat computation to offer a fundamental speed-up, we need
to include non-Gaussian operations.

9.4 Nonlinear optical qunat gates

An intuitive reason that Gaussian operators lead to a Gottesman–Knill theorem for qunats
is that they are at most quadratic in their interaction Hamiltonians, and the commutator
of two quadratic functions of the quadrature operators is again a quadratic function of the
quadrature operators:

[q̂2 , p̂2 ] = i(q̂p̂ + p̂q̂) , [q̂2 , p̂q̂] = iq̂2 , (9.61)

and so on. When we determine the operator evolution in the Heisenberg picture, we evaluate
repeated commutators according to the Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relation

μ2
eμA B e−μA = B + μ[B, A] + [B, [B, A]] + · · · (9.62)
2!
When repeated commutators of A and B do not increase the order of the polynomial in the
quadrature operators, we cannot create arbitrary polynomials with A and B. We therefore
need operators that are higher-order polynomials in the quadrature operators.
To make this more concrete, we consider the so-called single-mode Kerr nonlinearity
introduced in Chapter 2:
HK = (q̂2 + p̂2 )2 , (9.63)
which leads to the unitary transformation
 
2
iκ † 1
K(κ) ≡ exp (−2iHK κ) = exp − â â + . (9.64)
2 2

When we take the commutator between HK and linear or quadratic Hamiltonians, we obtain,
for example,

[HK , q̂] = −i(q̂2 p̂ + p̂q̂2 + 2p̂3 )

[HK , p̂] = i(p̂2 q̂ + q̂p̂2 + 2q̂3 )
[HK , q̂p̂ + p̂q̂] = 4i(q̂4 − p̂4 ) . (9.65)

These commutators are polynomials of order 3 and 4. We can now prove by induction that
a polynomial of any degree can be constructed with linear and quadratic Hamiltonians and
the Kerr Hamiltonian.
308 Quantum computation with continuous variables

Exercise 9.8: Show that any polynomial term q̂n p̂m can be constructed with the Kerr
Hamiltonian and linear plus quadratic Hamiltonians.

In order to find out how we can create optical elements that are properly described by
the Kerr Hamiltonian, we first investigate the effect of HK on a single optical mode. It
is convenient to perform this calculation for the mode operators â and ↠, rather than the
quadrature operators q̂ and p̂. The mode transformation becomes
† â †
K(κ) â K † (κ) = â e−2iκ â = e−2iκ ââ â . (9.66)

This is equivalent to an intensity-dependent phase shift in mode a (called ‘self-phase mod-

ulation’), and can be implemented with a lossless and dispersionless nonlinear medium.
Classically, the optical response of such a medium can be expressed as a power series in
the electric field of the polarization field in the medium:

P(t) = χ (1) E(t) + χ (2) E(t)2 + χ (3) E(t)3 , (9.67)

where P(t) = k P(ωk )e−iωk t + c.c. and E(t) = n E(ωn )e−iωn t + c.c. are multi-mode
expansions of the polarization and electric field. Here, we are particularly interested in the
third-order term P (3) (t) = χ (3) E(t)3 . The polarizability and the electric fields are of course
vector fields with three spatial components, and in general we should write
(3)
 (3)
Pi (t) = χijkl Ej (t)Ek (t)El (t) . (9.68)
jkl

(3)
The nonlinear susceptibility χijkl is then a fourth-rank tensor with 81 independent compo-
nents. However, most materials are highly symmetric, and the actual number of independent
components is far less. Here, we take χ (3) to be independent of the orientation of the fields,
and treat the electric field and the polarization as scalar quantities.
Suppose that the incoming wave is a monochromatic field E(t) = E0 e−iωt + E0∗ eiωt . It
is straightforward to show that the polarization field then becomes

P(t) = χ (1) E(t) + χ (3) E(t)3

   
= χ (1) + 3χ (3) |E0 |2 E(t) + χ (3) E0 e−3iωt + E0∗ e3iωt , (9.69)

where |E0 |2 is the intensity of the incoming beam. The nonlinear polarizing (χ (3) ) medium
produces a second wave with frequency 3ω. The amplitude of the incoming wave is modified
by a factor χ (1) + 3χ (3) |E0 |2 . The index of refraction for the wave with frequency ω in this
material then becomes  
n2 = 1 + 4π χ (1) + 3χ (3) |E0 |2 . (9.70)
Since phase shifts can be implemented using materials with a refractive index that is different
from the refractive index of the propagating medium, the intensity-dependent phase shift
can be implemented using an optical medium with a χ (3) nonlinearity. The unwanted wave
at frequency 3ω must be filtered out (Fig. 9.6).
 309 9.5 The one-way model for qunats

Fig. 9.6. An optical medium with a χ (3) nonlinearity. The incoming wave with frequency ω experiences an
intensity-dependent phase shift, and a secondary wave of frequency 3ω is created.

From Eq. (9.66) we can calculate the transformation of the quadrature operators due to
a Kerr Hamiltonian:

q̂ → q̂ cosh φ − ip̂ sinh φ

p̂ → p̂ cosh φ + iq̂ sinh φ, (9.71)

where

φ(q̂, p̂) ≡ K(q̂p̂ − p̂q̂ − iq̂2 − ip̂2 ). (9.72)

This is a highly nonlinear transformation.

Exercise 9.9: Verify the quadrature transformations in Eq. (9.71).

In principle, we now have all the ingredients for optical quantum computing with qunats:
we have single-mode Gaussian gates, such as the Heisenberg–Weyl gates, the Fourier trans-
form, and the phase gates; we also have two-mode entangling gates such as the cx and the
cz gates, and we have a non-Gaussian gate based on a Kerr nonlinearity that makes the set
of gates universal for quantum computing. Nevertheless, putting all these gates together
in a practical quantum computer is extremely challenging, with many in-line squeezing
elements and potentially noisy Kerr nonlinearities. Once again, we would like to invoke
the Bloch–Messiah reduction and execute all squeezing in advance followed by passive
linear interferometry, but this time the Kerr nonlinearities get in the way, and the reduction
is generally not possible. However, we may be able to circumvent this problem if we can
defer the use of Kerr nonlinearities to the final stage, just before the measurement of the
optical modes. This approach leads to the one-way model for qunats.

9.5 The one-way model for qunats

Now that we have constructed a universal set of gates for quantum computing with qunats,
we consider the one-way model of quantum computation. We first give a description
of generalized cluster states for qunats, and show how to perform a universal set of
measurements.
310 Quantum computation with continuous variables

9.5.1 Qunat cluster states

Recall that cluster states (or graph states) are stabilizer states that act as the entanglement
resource for a quantum computation. Here we consider the optical implementation of qunat
cluster states, including finite squeezing. We have already seen in Chapter 2 that we can
extend the qubit teleportation circuit to qunats, so we expect that we can also create cluster
states for quantum computing with qunats.
We saw in the previous section that the stabilizer generator for finite squeezing in the
q̂ quadrature was given by Eq. (9.58). When we squeeze in the p̂ quadrature and choose
c = −2, the stabilizer for the momentum-squeezed state becomes

−1
Sj = Xj ( )Zj (i ) (9.73)

with = er . The states defined by these stabilizer generators are approximate momentum
quadrature eigenstates with eigenvalue p = 0, in the limit of large squeezing → ∞.
These states are the building blocks for qunat cluster states, and we apply the cz gates to
construct the desired cluster state. The effect of the gate czjk on the stabilizer Sj is

† † †
Sj′ = czjk Sj czjk = czjk Xj ( )czjk czjk Zj (i −1
)czjk
−1
= Xj ( )Zj ( )Zk (i ). (9.74)

In other words, the evolution of the stabilizer generator is identical to that of the ideal qunat
states and qubit states, up to an operator Zj (i −1 ) = exp(−2q̂/ ) that becomes the identity
operator in the limit of infinite squeezing → ∞. Cluster states can then be constructed
in the same way as for qubits, except that each stabilizer has the extra factor Zj (i −1 ). The
cluster is then completely determined by the stabilizer generators
#
−1
Sj = Xj ( j) Zk ( j )Zj (i j ), (9.75)
k∈n(j)

with j = 1, . . . , N , and each mode j may be squeezed by a different amount j . The symbol
n(j) again denotes the set of all neighbours of mode j.
Unlike the Pauli operators in the qubit case, the Heisenberg–Weyl operators for qunat
systems are exponentials of linear functions in q̂k and p̂k . It is therefore more economical
to consider only the argument of the exponential. When we write the stabilizer generator Sj
in Eq. (9.75) as a single exponential, we have
⎡ ⎛ ⎞ ⎤
 2q̂j
Sj = exp ⎣−2i j ⎝p̂j − q̂k ⎠ − . (9.76)
j
k∈n(j)

Given that for a cluster state |C we have Sj |C = |C , the argument of the exponential
must be zero. Consequently, in the limit of large squeezing the term q̂/ vanishes, and the
311 9.5 The one-way model for qunats

correlation between modes j and k can be compactly written as


p̂j − q̂k → 0 . (9.77)
k∈n(j)

There are N such relations, which completely specify the correlations in the qunat cluster
state. In vector notation, this can be summarized as

p̂ − Aq̂ → 0 , (9.78)

where q = (q̂1 , . . . , q̂N ), p = (p̂1 , . . . , p̂N ), and A is the adjacency matrix that determines
which qunats are neighbours. Any multi-mode Gaussian state that obeys Eq. (9.78) in the
limit of large squeezing is a cluster state. The variance of the correlation in Eq. (9.78),
denoted by Var(p̂ − Aq̂), is called the ‘excess noise’ in the cluster. The excess noise of a
single qunat j in the cluster is given by Var(p̂j − k q̂k ), where k runs over all the neighbours
of j, or k ∈ n(j).

Exercise 9.10: Using the stabilizer generators Sj , show that in the absence of squeezing no
entanglement is generated.

In practice, passive linear-optical elements for which the photon number is invariant
are easier to implement than squeezing operations. It is therefore worthwhile investigating
to what extent we can create squeezed states first, and create entanglement via passive
linear optics such as beam splitters and phase shifters. It is clear that this is always possible
by using the Bloch–Messiah reduction presented in Chapter 1: any multi-mode Gaussian
operation can be decomposed into a passive linear interferometer, followed by single-mode
squeezers, followed by another passive interferometer. The construction of the cluster state
we described above fits in this category. We can therefore apply the single-mode squeezing
first, followed by passive linear-optical elements (the passive interferometer acting on the
vacuum can be omitted). An explicit construction was given by Van Loock et al. (2007). A
note of caution: the standard construction of cluster states based on momentum-squeezed
vacuum and cz gates allows us to grow the cluster locally. In particular, the construction
procedure is independent of the graph we wish to create. This is no longer the case when
all squeezing is performed in advance, since the amount of squeezing for a single vertex in
the cluster state depends on the number of edges of that vertex. This is in itself not a show-
stopper, although the state-preparation procedure may become more complex. However,
in the next section we will encounter a more serious problem when we wish to use the
Bloch–Messiah reduction.

9.5.2 Information propagation and processing

How does the quantum information propagate through a linear qunat cluster state? As
in the qubit case, propagation of information through the cluster state is driven by local
teleportation. In the previous chapter we saw that the teleportation of qunats is imperfect,
and that the teleported Wigner function is a convolution of the Wigner function of the
312 Quantum computation with continuous variables

input state with a Gaussian distribution. In the case of infinite squeezing, this Gaussian
distribution becomes a Dirac delta function, and teleportation becomes perfect.
The fidelity of information propagation in qunat cluster states is also imperfect when
squeezing is finite. Suppose that we wish to propagate the state

|ψ = dq ψ(q) |q q (9.79)

through the cluster. The local teleportation circuit for qunats is then

ψ F† s

0 p ψ = X (s)F ψ .

To demonstrate that this corresponds to information propagation, we outline the teleportation

procedure for an ideal (and unphysical) ancilla state |0 p . After the cz gate, the state can be
written as

1 ′  
cz |ψ |0 p = √ dq dq′ ψ(q)e2iqq q, q′ q . (9.80)
π
†
Applying the Fourier transform F1 on qunat 1, and projecting it onto the position eigenstate
|s s| is equivalent to projecting straight onto the momentum eigenstate |s p s|, which then
yields the teleported state

 ′  
ψ = 1 ′
dq dq′ ψ(q)e2iq(q −s) q′ q . (9.81)
π

We will now prove that this state is identical to X (s)F |ψ by showing that we retrieve the
input state |ψ when we first apply X † (s) = X (−s) followed by F † . The X (−s) operator
yields

  1 ′  
X (−s) ψ ′ = dq dq′ ψ(q)e2iq(q −s) q′ − s q , (9.82)
π
and the inverse Fourier transform turns this state into

  1 ′ ′′  
F † X (−s) ψ ′ = dq dq′ dq′′ ψ(q)e2i(q −s)(q−q ) q′′ q
π

 
= dq dq′′ ψ(q)δ(q − q′′ ) q′′ = |ψ . (9.83)

In the derivation of the last line we made a change of variables of integration y = q′ − s, and
integration over y yielded the delta function. Since we used the unnormalizable position
and momentum eigenstates, the teleportation protocol has perfect fidelity.
What happens when we use normalizable, imperfectly squeezed states? The input state is
still represented by |ψ , but the auxiliary state |0 p is no longer a perfect zero-momentum
quadrature eigenstate. Instead, we can write this state as a squeezed coherent state peaked
313 9.5 The one-way model for qunats

around p = 0 with squeezing . A natural distribution is the Gaussian distribution with

width −1 , which gives

2  +∞
4 4 2 2
|0 p = dp e−2p |p p
π −∞
 +∞
4 4 2 2 2 +2ipq
= dp dq e−2p |q q
π3 −∞

1 +∞ q2
= √ dq exp − |q q . (9.84)
4
π 2 −∞ 2 2

In the second line we wrote the momentum eigenstate as a Fourier transform of position
eigenstates. Using this normalizable ancilla state, instead of the infinitely squeezed state
|0 p , and following the same protocol as in the case of perfect squeezing, results in a
convolution of the input state with a Gaussian distribution

2  +∞
4 4 2 u2 −2ius
|ψtel = du dq e−2 ψ(q + u) |q q ≡ G (s) |ψ , (9.85)
π −∞

where G (s) is a Gaussian convolution operator

 +∞  
2 2
G (s) = dq du exp −2 u − 2ius |q q + u| . (9.86)
−∞

In the limit of infinite squeezing ( → ∞) this becomes the identity operator. The phase in
the convolution operator depends on the measurement outcome s, and can therefore not be
predicted beforehand. This means that we cannot cancel this type of noise at the preparation
stage of the cluster state, and other noise-reduction methods have to be found. We will return
to this issue in Section 9.6.

Exercise 9.11: Verify that measurement-based propagation of qunat quantum information

through a cluster state is described by the convolution in Eq. (9.85).

Now we consider the implementation of gates in a qunat cluster state. The circuit for a
two-qunat cluster state that implements a gate U is given by
ψ U F† s

0 p ψ = X (s)F U ψ ,

where U is a single-qunat gate that commutes with the cz gate, meaning U = exp[if (q̂)]
for an arbitrary polynomial function f of q̂. The measurement basis can then be interpreted
as the eigenbasis of the operator U † p̂U . Measuring in this basis has the effect of teleporting
U into the propagation of |ψ . This is completely analogous to the qubit case.
This analogy also means that U is not a general single-qunat gate: it is generated by a
polynomial f (q̂) that does not depend on p̂. We therefore need to adopt a technique similar
314 Quantum computation with continuous variables

to the qubit case, where we apply several gates Uj in a row in order to implement a general
gate. The Fourier transform in the output state can then be used to introduce gates generated
by the momentum quadrature p̂. Consider the three-qunat linear cluster state

GFED
@ABC
U1 U2 GFED
GFED
@ABC @ABC

that gives rise to the output state

|ψout = X (s2 )F U2 X (s1 )F U1 |ψin . (9.87)

Just as in the qubit case, we would like to move the operator X (s1 ) to the left, since we
can then postpone the corrective Heisenberg–Weyl operations and keep track of them in a
classical register. However, X (s1 ) and U2 do not commute (except when s1 is zero, and the
probability for this outcome is vanishingly small). For a general U = exp[if (q̂)] and s, we
can write
UX (s) = X (s)U ′ (s) , (9.88)
where U ′ is a modified gate dependent on s. Using the relation

X (−s) UX (s) = X (−s) exp if (q̂) X (s)

= exp if (X (−s)q̂X (s)) = exp if (q̂ − s) , (9.89)

we find that
U (q̂) X (s) = X (s) U (q̂ − s) , (9.90)
where we have included the dependence of U on q̂, since it allows us to show how U
changes. Remember, this is valid only for gates that are generated by polynomials of the
position quadrature. The output state in Eq. (9.87) then becomes

|ψout = X (s2 )Z(s1 )F U2′ (s1 )F U1 |ψin , (9.91)

where we have also used FX (q) = Z(q)F. As an example, consider U = exp(iuq̂3 ): we

have  
U (q̂)X (s) = X (s) exp iu(q̂ − s)3 = X (s)e3iuq̂s(s−q̂) U (q̂) , (9.92)

up to an overall phase factor that can be ignored.

What types of gate can we perform with qunat cluster states and measurements? To
answer this question, it is convenient to define three different classes of U , namely the
linear, quadratic, and order n > 2 polynomials in q̂ and p̂, denoted by U (1) , U (2) , and U (n) ,
respectively. The linear class consists of the Heisenberg–Weyl operators and phase shifts,
and the operators in the quadratic class include the Fourier transform, the phase gate, etc. It
is straightforward to show that for any Heisenberg–Weyl operator V = exp(2ipq̂ − 2iqp̂),
a quadratic operator U (2) obeys

U (2) V = V ′ U (2) , (9.93)

315 9.5 The one-way model for qunats

where V ′ is again a Heisenberg–Weyl operator. This is a special case of the relation in

Eq. (9.88) where the operator U (2) remains unchanged under the conjugation operation.
Mathematically, both the quadratic operators and the linear Heisenberg–Weyl operators
generate a (continuous) group. The latter plays the role of the Pauli group for qunats, and
the group of quadratic operators can therefore be considered an extended Clifford group.
With these definitions, we can turn our attention to the construction of arbitrary single-qunat
gates.
We will now discuss what types of measurement must be performed in order to execute
the different gates in measurement-based quantum computing. First we will consider the
Heisenberg–Weyl operators. An arbitrary linear gate U (1) = exp(2ipq̂ − 2iqp̂) can be
decomposed into a product of X (q) and Z(p) up to a global phase. Since Z(p) = exp(2ipq̂),
this gate can be performed with a single measurement of the observable Z(−p)p̂Z(p) =
p̂ + p. In other words, a homodyne detection of the quadrature p̂ with the addition of p to the
measurement outcome. The operator X (q) must be applied with the second measurement.
The Fourier transforms in Eq. (9.91) allow us to implement a gate Ũ = exp[−2iqp̂]:

X (s2 )Z(s1 )F U2′ F U1 = X (s2 )F F † Z(s1 )F F F † U2′ F U1

= X (s2 )Z(s1 )F Ũ2′ U1 . (9.94)

The gate Ũ2′ = F † U2′ F must now be equal to X (q). When U2′ = Z(−q), this condition is
fulfilled, and the gate can again be implemented with a homodyne detection.
Next, we discuss how quadratic gates can be implemented with measurements. A
quadratic gate from the extended Clifford group U (2) can be written as
  
U (2) = exp 2iuq̂2 + 2iv p̂2 + 2iw q̂p̂ + p̂q̂ , (9.95)

where we ignored the linear contribution for simplicity. Using a Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff

relation (see Appendix 1 on how to derive such relations) this can be written as
     
U (2) = exp 2iu′ q̂2 exp 2iw ′ q̂p̂ + p̂q̂ exp 2iv ′ p̂2 , (9.96)

for some choice of u′ , v ′ , and w ′ . First, we show what measurement we need to make to
implement the phase gate (u′ ) = exp(2iu′ q̂2 ). From this, the gate exp(2iv′ p̂2 ) follows
immediately by sandwiching between Fourier transforms. Finally, we construct the gate
exp[2iw′ (q̂p̂ + p̂q̂)], which is a squeezing operation. The quadratic gate in q̂ commutes
with the cz operator, and can therefore be implemented immediately. The observable to be
measured is
′ 2 ′ 2
e−2iu q̂ p̂ e2iu q̂ = p̂ + u′ q̂ , (9.97)
a linear combination of quadrature operators. Introducing the parameterization u′ = − tan θ ,
this can be written as a rotation over an angle θ with an overall scaling factor cos θ . Similarly,
the phase gate in the momentum quadrature exp(2iv ′ p̂2 ) can be implemented on the second
measurement round due to the appearance of the Fourier transforms
       
F exp 2iv q̂2 F exp 2iuq̂2 = F 2 exp 2iv p̂2 exp 2iuq̂2 . (9.98)
316 Quantum computation with continuous variables

When u = v, we can write this as

2 2 2 2
F e2iuq̂ F e2iuq̂ = F 2 e2iup̂ e2iuq̂
2 +p̂2 ) 2
= F 2 e2iu(q̂ e2iu (q̂p̂+p̂q̂) + O(u2 ) , (9.99)

which, to lowest order and up to a rotation, is a single-mode squeezing operation with

r = 4u2 . We can remove the rotation by repeating this operation for the value −u. This
yields
2 2 2 2 2
F 2 e−2iup̂ e−2iuq̂ F 2 e2iup̂ e2iuq̂ = e4iu (q̂p̂+p̂q̂) + O(u3 ) . (9.100)
This corresponds to a single-mode squeezing operator for reasonably low values of u (see
Van Loock, 2007). We can therefore implement Gaussian, or extended Clifford operations
such as rotations and squeezing using homodyne measurements. Notice that the Gaussian
operations do not rely on feed-forward of the measurement result. This is a general property
of extended Clifford operators.

Exercise 9.12: Show that vertical connections in a cluster, together with momentum
quadrature measurements, can be used to implement a cz gate.

The Gottesman–Knill theorem for qunat quantum computing tells us that homodyne mea-
surements and Gaussian operations are not sufficient for implementing efficient quantum
computing. More precisely, if the operation of the quantum computer is restricted to the
vacuum, extended Clifford operations, and homodyne detection, we can always simulate
the quantum computation efficiently on a classical computer. Therefore, we need another
type of measurement, for example measuring an observable that leads to the cubic gate
 
U (3) = exp iθ3 q̂3 , (9.101)

where θ3 is the strength of the induced gate (see Gu et al., 2009). In particular, we wish to
implement the cluster-state computation that is symbolically written as

@ABC @ABC
GFED GFED
θ3 @ABC .
GFED

In standard circuit-model language, this can be written as

ψ in p̂
0 p U (3)† p̂ U (3)
0 p ∝ U (3) ψ in

where |ψin is the input state to this part of the computation (most likely mixed), p̂ denotes
homodyne detection of the momentum quadrature, and U (3)† p̂ U (3) indicates the measure-
ment that leads to the implementation of U (3) , up to some corrective operations. We are
done if we have an optical implementation for this particular measurement. However, it is
317 9.5 The one-way model for qunats

not straightforward to find an optical implementation for this measurement, and we have
to be a bit more resourceful.
Since U (3) commutes with the cz operation, we can bring U (3) to the left-hand side, and
write the circuit as
ψ in p̂

U (3) 0 p p̂

0 p ∝ U (3) ψ in

where both measurements are now implemented with regular homodyne detection. The
question is then how to create the state U (3) |0 p . In cluster-state language, this state can
itself be created via the teleportation of the gate U (3) , and the cluster we need to create
becomes
@ABC
GFED
A

GFED
@ABC
1 GFED
@ABC
2 GFED
@ABC
3

where we have labelled the qunats such that a measurement of the (as of yet unspecified)
observable A creates a cubic gate U (3) |0 p acting on qunat 2. In general, A yields unpre-
dictable measurement outcomes n, and will therefore not create the gate U (3) with the
required strength θ3 directly. Instead, it will create a gate U (3) with some strength γ (n). In
order to correct this gate, we need to implement the transformation

θ3
γ (n) q̂3 → θ3 q̂3 or q̂ → 3
q̂ ≡ tn q̂ . (9.102)
γ (n)

This is a rescaling of q̂, which can be implemented optically with a squeezing operation

q̂ → S † (tn ) q̂ S(tn ) . (9.103)

In other words, we need to apply two squeezing operators, one before the measurement of
qunat 2, and one after. Therefore, we must measure A before we measure qunats 1, 2, and
3, which will then allow us to implement the two corrective squeezing operations tn and
−tn . The corresponding subgraph then becomes

GFED
@ABC
‘n’

GFED
@ABC
tn @ABC
GFED @ABC
GFED
−tn

These squeezing operations may require multiple qunat systems, as shown in Eq. (9.100).
This necessary time ordering of the non-Clifford part determines the temporal direction of
the computation.
318 Quantum computation with continuous variables

Finally, how do we implement a measurement of the observable A with optics? It was

shown by Gottesman et al. (2001) that a good approximation to the cubic gate U (3) can
be implemented using photon-number measurements. Adapted to cluster-state quantum
computing, this leads to the measurement of the observable

A = X † (r) n̂ X (r) , (9.104)

where the displacement r is much larger than the typical squeezing parameter in the qunats,
r ≫ ln . The measurement outcome n is related to the cubic gate strength via

1
γ (n) = √ . (9.105)
6 2n + 1

This is an approximate cubic gate, and the errors introduced by this gate are analyzed
by Gottesman et al. (2001). In particular, this gate requires photon-number counting with
1
a precision n that is much smaller than n̂ 3 . For large squeezing, this is extremely
challenging to achieve with realistic photodetectors.

9.6 Quantum error correction for qunats

In the final section of this chapter we consider the optical implementation of several error-
correction protocols for qunat quantum computing. We have already seen in Chapters 2
and 8 that we can encode qubits (and more generally qudits) in a qunat via the Gottesman–
Kitaev–Preskill (gkp) code. This code protects against small phase-space displacements.
We will present a protocol for the state preparation of such codes based on a cross-Kerr
nonlinearity. Next, we present another error-correction code that can be implemented
entirely with passive linear-optical elements such as beam splitters and phase shifters.
Finally, we will present a cluster-state code that allows us to correct for the accumulated
noise in the information propagation through qunat clusters that are constructed with finite
squeezing.

9.6.1 State preparation of GKP codes

How can we create the encoded states of the Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill (gkp) code? It is
not possible to prepare these states from squeezed coherent states with linear optics alone.
Following Pirandola et al. (2004), we briefly sketch how to create these states with coherent
input states, a cross-Kerr nonlinearity, and homodyne detection. These optical operations are
similar to the ones we introduced in the construction of qunat quantum computing, except
that here we require a cross-Kerr nonlinearity, rather than a single-mode Kerr nonlinearity.
The physical implementation of cross-Kerr nonlinearities is discussed in Chapter 10 and
Appendix 3.
 319 9.6 Quantum error correction for qunats

Fig. 9.7. Schematic for creating approximate gkp code states. The input modes to the cross-Kerr region κ
are prepared in coherent states, and output mode b1 is measured with homodyne detection,
yielding outcome q1 . The state in mode b2 is an approximate gkp code state |1̃ .

Consider two modes, a1 and a2 , that are coupled via a cross-Kerr nonlinearity described
by the interaction Hamiltonian

† †
HK = κ â1 â1 â2 â2 , (9.106)

shown in Fig. 9.7. When the two modes are in coherent states |α 1 and |β 2 , the interaction
produces an output state that can be written as

∞
2 /2  α2  
|ψout 12 = e−|α| √ |n 1 β e−inκt 2 . (9.107)
n=0
n!

We can make the following approximation: since κt is very small in practice, we assume
that |α|2 κt ≪ 1, which allows us to write β e−inκt = β(1 − inκt). If we also displace the
phase-space coordinate for mode a2 such that â2 → â2 + β, we can write this state as

∞
2 /2  α2
|ψout 12 = e−|α| √ |n 1 |−inβκt 2 . (9.108)
n=0
n!

This state can be regarded as the output state of an interaction due to the Hamiltonian

  √
† † †
H′ = βκ â1 â1 â2 + â2 = 2βκ â1 â1 q̂2 , (9.109)

which is analogous to the Hamiltonian of a ponderomotive force. The approximate code

words are now created in mode a2 by performing a homodyne measurement of the quadrature
q̂1 in mode a1 , and recording the outcome q1 . The state in mode a2 then becomes

∞
2 /2 α2
|ψout 2 = e−|α| √ q1 |n |−inβκt 2 ≡ |1̃ , (9.110)
n=0
n!

where |1̃ is an approximation to the gkp code state |1̄ . The output state |0̃ corresponding
to the gkp code state |0̄ is obtained by a regular displacement X ( 14 ).
 320 Quantum computation with continuous variables

Fig. 9.8. The probability distribution of finding measurement outcome q and p for the
√ wavefunctions ψ(q)
and (p), respectively. The amplitude of the coherent state is α = 2, and 2βκt = 3.

We can calculate the wavefunction ψ(q) = q|1̃ and its Fourier transform (p) =
p|0̃ = p|1̃ as
∞
 
 α n Hn (q1 ) α 2 + q12 q2 √
ψ(q) = N √ exp − − + in 2βκtq
2n n! 2 2
n=0
∞
 
 α n Hn (q1 ) α 2 + q12 1 √ 2
(p) = N √ exp − − p − n 2βκt , (9.111)
2n n! 2 2
n=0

where N is a normalization constant

∞  
α n+m Hn (q1 )Hm (q1 ) 2 2 β 2κ 2t2 2
N = √ exp −(α + q1 ) − (n − m) , (9.112)
2n+m n!m! 2
n,m=0

and the Hn (q1 ) are Hermite polynomials. The corresponding probability distributions for
position | q|1̃ |2 = |ψ(q)|2 and momentum | p|1̃ |2 = |(p)|2 are shown in Fig. 9.8. The
output states are also well behaved when we consider the wavefunctions for | q|±̃ |2 and
| p|±̃ |2 . For more details, see Pirandola et al. (2004).

Exercise 9.13: Show that in the limit of κ → 0 the wave functions ψ(q) and (p) reduce
to coherent states.

9.6.2 Qunat error correction with linear optics and squeezing

So far we have considered gkp codes, which encode a qubit (or, more generally, a qudit)
in a continuous variable such that its value is protected from small displacements in the
position and momentum quadratures. Now we will describe an error-correction code that
protects a qunat from (arbitrary) displacements in phase space. Remarkably, this code uses
only linear-optical elements, including squeezing.
 321 9.6 Quantum error correction for qunats

Fig. 9.9. A tritter T : the top input mode is evenly distributed over the three output modes. The fractions
indicate the reflection coefficients.

We consider the nine-qunat code introduced by Braunstein (1998a, 1998b), which is the
continuous-variable extension of the nine-qubit Shor code. It is a concatenation of two
majority codes, one for position errors, and one for momentum errors. These codes rely
critically on the fact that we can distribute a single non-zero qunat q over three modes
according to
 .
 q q q
|q, 0, 0 →  √ , √ , √ . (9.113)
3 3 3
This
√ is not possible with discrete systems, since qudit values cannot be divided by a factor
3. Here, |0 is the position eigenstate with eigenvalue zero, not the vacuum state. Note
that this distribution is not the same as cloning, since we can define this procedure in one
basis only (the position basis, in this case). The distribution can be implemented with a
three-mode beam splitter, called a ‘tritter’ T , shown in Fig. 9.9 as a combination of two
beam splitters. In other words, the tritter is a balanced 3-port that acts on the three quadrature
operators according to
⎛ ⎞
1 1 1
1
T = √ ⎝1 ̟ 2 ̟ 4 ⎠ , (9.114)
3 1 ̟4 ̟8

with ̟ ≡ exp(iπ/3).
To gain an intuition about the nine-qunat code, we now show in some detail how this three-
 √ √ √ +
qunat code can correct displacement errors. Consider an encoded state q/ 3, q/ 3, q/ 3 .
Since
1 + ̟2 + ̟4 = 1 + ̟4 + ̟8 = 0 , (9.115)
applying the inverse tritter T † to the encoded state retrieves the input state
√ |q, 0, 0 . Now
consider that one of the transmitted modes experiences a displacement δ/ 3 in the position
quadrature. For definiteness, suppose the displacement occurs in mode a2 . The state after
decoding then becomes
⎛ ⎞⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞
 . 1 1 1 q q + δ/3
 q q+δ q 1
T  √ , √ , √ = ⎝1 ̟ 2 ̟ 4 ⎠ ⎝q + δ ⎠ = ⎝ ̟ 2 δ/3 ⎠ . (9.116)
3 3 3 3
1 ̟4 ̟8 q ̟ 4 δ/3
 322 Quantum computation with continuous variables

Fig. 9.10. The optical implementation of a nine-qunat encoder.

The ideal measurement outcomes in modes a2 and a3 are then δ/3, since ̟ 2 and ̟ 4 are
pure phases (i.e., displacements in the momentum quadrature). These outcomes √ tell us to
displace the position quadrature of the undetected mode by an amount −δ/ 3.
This code does not protect against displacements in the momentum quadrature, and we
therefore concatenate this code with a similar code for the momentum. We apply the Fourier
transform  ∞
1 i
F |q = √ dx e  xq |x , (9.117)
2π −∞
on the three output modes of the tritter, and couple each mode to two new modes in the
position eigenstates with eigenvalue zero, again using the tritters defined above. The total
operator for the encoding of a single qunat in nine qunats is

Êq = T̂789 T̂456 T̂123 F7 F4 F1 T̂147 , (9.118)

†
and the decoding device is described by the operator D̂q = Êq . The state after the encoding
procedure then becomes
 x x x y y y z z z +
1 i 
|qenc =  dx dy dz e  (x+y+z)q  , , , , , , , , . (9.119)
(2π )3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

The input modes are denoted by aj , and the output modes by bj . In the full nine-qunat code,
we perform eight position-quadrature measurements on modes b2 to b9 . The measurement
outcomes are used to determine the total displacement in the position and momentum
quadratures we need to apply to the undetected output mode b1 .

Exercise 9.14: Show that the nine-qunat code can correct for arbitrary phase-space
displacements.

As we have seen in Section 9.1, the Fourier transform can be implemented with a simple
phase shift, and therefore the entire encoder can be implemented using passive linear optics
acting on highly squeezed states in the position quadrature. Consequently, the decoder can be
 323 9.6 Quantum error correction for qunats

Fig. 9.11. The nine-qunat code in action. The corrective displacement D depends on the syndrome provided
by the measurement outcomes of the eight homodyne detections.

implemented with passive linear optics and homodyne detection. The entire quantum error-
correction code for an optical qunat is shown in Fig. 9.11. The measurement outcomes of the
eight auxiliary modes form a list of eight real numbers q = (q2 , . . . , q9 ), which constitute
the syndrome.
We now introduce three types of noise. First, we have to take into account the fact that
any optical implementation can achieve only finite squeezing in the auxiliary modes. This
will add a small random number to the outcomes of the homodyne measurements. Second,
the homodyne detection will make use of photodetectors with  finite efficiency η, and this
will result in a vacuum noise component proportional to η−1 − 1 in the measurement
outcomes. Finally, there is the transmission noise of the channel that we want to correct. The
first two sources of noise are strictly due to the physical limitations of the error-correction
procedure itself, and have nothing to do with the transmission noise. Clearly, the amount
of squeezing in the auxiliary modes and the efficiency of the homodyne detection must be
such that the error in the undetected output mode is smaller than the error that would have
been accumulated without error correction.
Suppose that a small transmission error occurs in mode ak . The measurement outcome
of a detector in mode bj can be decomposed into contributions from the different types of
noise. The ideal syndrome is denoted by qj(id) , which is the measurement outcome for perfect
squeezing and ideal homodyne detection. Added to this are the fluctuating components due
(sq) (vac)
to finite squeezing, denoted by ql , and the vacuum fluctuation qj

9
 
(syn) (id) (sq) (vac)
qj = qj + cjlk ql + η−1 − 1 qj . (9.120)
l=2

The coefficients cjlk take into account how the squeezing parameter l of the auxiliary input
−1
mode al contributes to mode aj . Each cjlk
is proportional to l . In the simplest case, where
all auxiliary input modes are squeezed by the same amount , the Wigner function of the
output will be a convolution of the input Wigner function and the noise function G

Wout (q, p) = G ◦ Win ≡ dq′ dp′ G(q − q′ , p − p′ )Win (q′ , p′ ) , (9.121)
 324 Quantum computation with continuous variables

where the noise function G is given by

 
1 q2 + p2
G(q, p) = exp − . (9.122)
2π2 ( 2 + η−1 − 1) 22 ( 2 + η−1 − 1)

In the limit of infinite squeezing and perfect homodyne detection, the noise function
becomes a delta function, and error correction becomes ideal.
In practice, this code will cause small amounts of noise in the qunat, and multiple invo-
cations of this error-correction protocol will have a cumulative effect on the noise. In this
sense, the gkp codes are more robust against small errors, since a measurement of the optical
mode yields a real number that is used to decide which qubit state was detected. The dis-
creteness of qubits (or qudits) ensures that the gkp codes do not accumulate errors. However,
currently it seems that high-fidelity gkp are also much harder to create experimentally.

9.6.3 Propagation errors in cluster states

Finally, we discuss an error-correction protocol for qunat cluster states due to Van Loock
et al. (2007). In Section 9.5 we have seen that we can construct optical cluster states with
qunats, but that the finite squeezing induces errors in the local teleportation protocol that is
used for information propagation. In fact, as will be clear from the previous section as well,
detector efficiencies in homodyne measurements will also contribute to the degradation of
information propagation.
The error-correction protocol works as follows. The quadratures of mode a4 associated
with qunat 4 in Fig. 9.12a after the momentum measurements on modes a1 , a2 , and a3 with
outcomes s1 , s2 , and s3 must be corrected with the operator

F † X (−s1 ) F † X (−s2 ) F † X (−s3 ) , (9.123)

acting on mode a4 . The first operator X (−s3 ) transforms the quadratures of mode a4
according to
q̂4 (t1 ) = q̂4 (t0 ) − s3 and p̂4 (t1 ) = p̂4 (t0 ) , (9.124)
and the subsequent Fourier transform produces

q̂4 (t2 ) = p̂4 (t1 ) = p̂4 (t0 ) and q̂4 (t2 ) = −q̂4 (t1 ) = −q̂4 (t0 ) + s3 . (9.125)

Fig. 9.12. A redundant encoding protecting information propagation.

325 9.6 Quantum error correction for qunats

Repeating this procedure for the remaining corrective operators yields

q̂4 (t6 ) = −p̂4 (t0 ) + s2 and p̂4 (t6 ) = q̂4 (t0 ) − s3 + s1 . (9.126)

Next, we replace s1 , s2 , and s3 by the corresponding correlations

s1 = p̂1 (t0 ) + q̂2 (t0 ) , s2 = p̂2 (t0 ) + q̂1 (t0 ) and s3 = p̂3 (t0 ) , (9.127)

which leads to the quadratures of the output mode:

q̂4 (t6 ) = q̂1 (t0 ) + p̂2 (t0 ) − q̂3 (t0 ) − p̂4 (t0 ) − q̂3 (t0 )
p̂4 (t6 ) = p̂1 (t0 ) − p̂2 (t0 ) − q̂2 (t0 ) − q̂4 (t0 ) . (9.128)

When the squeezing and homodyne detection is perfect, the cluster correlations p̂3 − q̂2 − q̂4 ,
p̂2 − q̂3 , and p̂3 − q̂2 tend to zero, and we recover ideal propagation

q̂4 (t6 ) = q̂1 (t0 ) and p̂4 (t6 ) = p̂1 (t0 ) . (9.129)

When the squeezing is imperfect, the cluster correlations are imperfect and contribute
a non-zero variance to the excess noise. For the linear cluster, this added noise can be
calculated as

−2
Var (p̂2 − q̂3 ) − (p̂3 − q̂2 ) = 2
−2
Var p̂3 − q̂2 − q̂4 = , (9.130)

where = er is the squeezing parameter, and we assume that all modes have equal
squeezing.
Next, consider the diamond-shaped cluster in Fig. 9.12b. The quadratures of the fifth
qunat in mode a5 must be corrected by the operator

1
F † X (−s1 ) F † X (−s2 ) F † X (− (s3 + s4 )) , (9.131)
2
which leads to quadrature operators
   
q̂5 (t) = q̂1 + p̂2 − q̂3 − q̂4 − p̂5 − q̂3 − q̂4
1  1 
p̂5 (t) = p̂1 − p̂3 − q̂2 − q̂5 − p̂4 − q̂2 − q̂5 , (9.132)
2 2
where we suppressed the initial time dependence (t0 ) and wrote t6 = t for clarity. These
expressions lead to the excess noise
   
Var p̂2 − q̂3 − q̂4 − p̂5 − q̂3 − q̂4 = 2 −2
  −2
1  1 
Var p̂3 − q̂2 − q̂5 − p̂4 − q̂2 − q̂5 = . (9.133)
2 2 2
326 Quantum computation with continuous variables

The variance of the position quadrature remains unchanged, but the variance of the momen-
tum quadrature is reduced by a factor two. We can generalize this result to the situation in
Fig. 9.12c, where we find that the variance of the position quadrature remains unchanged
    −2
Var p̂2 − q̂3 − q̂4 − p̂N − q̂3 − · · · − q̂N −1 = 2 , (9.134)

but the variance in the momentum quadrature

  −2
p̂3 − q̂2 − q̂N p̂4 − q̂2 − q̂N p̂N −1 − q̂2 − q̂N
Var − − ··· − = (9.135)
N −2 N −2 N −2 N −2

is reduced by a factor N − 2. This is not a general error-correction code, because it does not
affect the accumulation of errors in the position quadrature. Nevertheless, this procedure
may be beneficial when the quantum information is encoded such that errors in the position
quadrature affect the computation much less than errors in the momentum quadrature.
Since the variance of the position quadrature does not deteriorate, it seems likely that this
procedure can be repeated with the position and momentum quadratures exchanged. This
would completely counteract the propagation of errors through the cluster state.

9.7 References and further reading

The concept of quantum computing with continuous variables was first introduced by Lloyd
and Braunstein (1999). For a recent review of quantum information with continuous vari-
ables, see Braunstein and van Loock (2005), and the book by Braunstein and Pati (2003).
Cluster-state quantum computing with qunats was introduced by Menicucci at al. (2006),
and Zhang and Braunstein (2006). Other important results for qunat cluster states were
derived by van Loock at al. (2007), Zhang (2008a, 2008b), and Gu at al. (2009). An
implementation of cluster-state quantum computing in an optical frequency comb was pro-
posed by Flammia et al. (2009). Quantum error correction for qunats was introduced by
Braunstein (1998a), Lloyd and Slotine (1998), and Gottesman et al. (2001). The nine-qubit
error-correction code by Braunstein was recently demonstrated experimentally byAoki et al.
(2008). Finally, it was proved by Niset et al. (2009) that it is impossible to design a protocol
based on Gaussian (Clifford) operations, homodyne detection, and classical feed-forward
that corrects arbitrary Gaussian errors.
 Atomic ensembles in quantum
10 information processing

In Chapter 7 we discussed the interaction between atoms and photons. We found that the
coupling between a single atom and a single photon is rather weak, unless the atom and the
photon are contained within a small cavity. The only way to significantly affect a free atom
with light is to use a state of light with many photons, and in particular we showed how to
use classical laser fields to prepare particular atomic states. However, there is another way
of enhancing the interaction in a useful way. We can use many atoms rather than a single one.
In this chapter, we will show that the interaction between a single photon and an ensemble of
atoms can be greatly increased through the phenomenon of collective enhancement. We will
show that this gives an atomic ensemble a relatively large susceptibility, and that multilevel
atoms can be used to generate large optical nonlinearities. These offer the possibility of
slowing, and even stopping, a beam of light; a phenomenon that goes hand in hand with
electromagnetically induced transparency. We will discuss how a quantum state of light can
be stored in and retrieved from an ensemble of atoms, and how the states of different atomic
ensembles can be entangled with one another. We will show that collective states of atoms
can even be used as a single qubit or several qubits, and finally, we will show that atomic
ensembles can be use to mediate a photon–photon interaction.

10.1 An ensemble of identical two-level atoms

In this section, we extend the description of a two-level atom interacting with an optical
field to an ‘ensemble’ of identical two-level atoms. Much of the argument in this section
and the next follows Beausoleil et al. (2004). We treat the electromagnetic field first as a
classical field, and then we consider the quantized field. The main aim of this section is to
give a fully quantum mechanical derivation of the susceptibility of the ensemble, including
its frequency dependence and the induced losses. In the next section, we will use these
results to discuss electromagnetically induced transparency.
Consider an atom with the level structure shown in Fig. 10.1. The density matrix of
this atom is ρ(t), the ground state is |g , and the excited state is |e . The frequency of the
transition between the ground and excited state is ω0 . The system dynamics are as usual
described by a master equation (see Chapter 7 for the derivation):
i
ρ̇(t) = − [H, ρ(t)] − Ŵ[ρ(t)]. (10.1)

The Hamiltonian H describes our two-level atom, which has a transition dipole reg driven
by an electric field E = E0 ǫ cos(ωl t). In the frame rotating at frequency ωl , and using the
 328 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

Fig. 10.1. Level structure of a two-level atom.

‘rotating-wave approximation’ (rwa, see Chapter 7), the Hamiltonian takes the form of
Eq. (7.22), i.e.,
 −ν ∗
H= , (10.2)
2  ν
where we define the Rabi frequency  ≡ 2ereg · ǫE0 /, and ν ≡ ω0 − ωl is the detuning
between the frequency of the transition and that of the field.
We include dissipation in the master equation via the term Ŵ[ρ(t)], which can be written
in the form first introduced in Eq. (7.101):

1  † 
Ŵ[ρ(t)] = γm [ρLm , Lm ] + [L†m , Lm ρ] . (10.3)
2 m

This gives rise to a master equation in so-called Lindblad form (after Lindblad, 1976), and
the operators Lm are Lindblad operators. We will include two dissipative processes in a
phenomenological way, as opposed to looking at a specific microscopic Hamiltonian for
the system–environment interaction. This allows the theory to be applied generally to a
range of environmental processes. The first process to be included is spontaneous emission,
which from the arguments of Chapter 7 has an associated operator Lm = σ − . The second is
pure dephasing (Lm = σz ), which can only change the coherence between |e and |g , not
their populations. The two processes have rates γs and γd , respectively. With these Lindblad
operators we derive three coupled differential equations:

ρ̇gg (t) = Im[ρeg (t)∗ ] + γs ρee (t), (10.4)

∗
ρ̇ee (t) = −Im[ρeg (t) ] − γs ρee (t), (10.5)

ρ̇eg (t) = −(γT + iν)ρeg (t) + i [ρee (t) − ρgg (t)], (10.6)
2

where γT is the combined dissipation rate γT = γd + γs /2. The first two differential
equations are not really independent, since ρgg (t) + ρee (t) = 1 by virtue of the trace
property of density operators.
To proceed, we assume that our system is initially in the ground state. Equations (10.5)
to (10.6) can be solved using a ‘bootstrapping’ approach in which we use the fact that,
after some fast initial changes, the value of ρ̇eg (t) becomes rather small in comparison
329 10.1 An ensemble of identical two-level atoms

with the magnitude of terms on the right-hand side of Eq. (10.6). The element ρeg (t) then
adiabatically follows the population difference [ρgg (t) − ρee (t)]:

ρeg (t) = ρ̃eg [ρgg (t) − ρee (t)] = ρ̃eg [2ρgg (t) − 1]. (10.7)

with

ρ̃eg = − . (10.8)
2(ν − iγT )
We can now rewrite Eq. (10.4) as

ρ̇gg (t) = −Ŵ1 ρgg + Ŵ2 , (10.9)

with

Ŵ1 = γs − 2Im[ρ̃eg ∗ ], (10.10)
Ŵ2 = γs − Im[ρ̃eg ∗ ]. (10.11)

Therefore
Ŵ2 Ŵ2
ρgg (t) = + 1− exp(−Ŵ1 t). (10.12)
Ŵ1 Ŵ1
Substituting this closed form into Eq. (10.6) yields
 
2Ŵ2 2Ŵ2
ρeg (t) = [1 − exp(−(γT + iν)t]ρ̃eg −1+ 2− exp(−Ŵ1 t) . (10.13)
Ŵ1 Ŵ1

If |Im[ρ̃eg ∗ ]| ≪ γs , then the excited state is only rarely populated, and we can assume
that ρgg ≈ 1 and ρee ≈ 0. In this case the coherence soon stabilizes to a steady-state value
of ρ̃eg .
Next, we calculate the absorption coefficient of the atom via its linear susceptibility. With
our original definition of the atom–photon coupling in Chapter 7, we can define a linear
atomic susceptibility by the relation

ǫ0 E0
p ≡ −χa(1) (−ωl , ωl ) ǫ + c.c., (10.14)
2
where ǫ is the polarization of the driving field, and p is the steady-state induced dipole

p = e Tr ρ(reg |e g| + H. c.) = e(ρ̃ge reg + ρ̃eg rge ). (10.15)

Here, reg is the transition dipole matrix element between states |e and |g . From this, we
obtain
2ǫ ∗ · rge
χa(1) (−ωl , ωl ) = − ρ̃eg (10.16)
ǫ0 E0
and so
||2
χa(1) (−ωl , ωl ) = . (10.17)
2E02 ǫ0 (ν − iγT )
330 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

Both the field and polarization oscillate with the frequency ωl back in the original (non-
rotating) reference frame, and hence we include this frequency as an argument in our
susceptibility function. Since the Rabi frequency  is proportional to the field amplitude
E0 , this expression does not depend on E0 . Nonetheless, we choose to leave our expression
in this form since then it only has a dependence on parameters that are directly accessible
in experiments.

Exercise 10.1: Derive Eq. (10.17).

What we have described is an exceedingly weak response that is difficult to measure

directly. However, two things can enhance the interaction and make the response readily
observable. First, in Chapter 7 we exploited the possibility of the atom being placed in
a cavity, which greatly increases the atom–light interaction since each photon effectively
makes several cavity ‘round trips’before being emitted. Second, we can increase the number
of atoms, and make them all interact with the same field. This is the approach we describe
in this chapter.
First, we simplify the description of light interacting with an ensemble of identical two-
level atoms and assume that a gas of atoms is confined such that the spatial variation of the
light is negligible in that region. We label the state with atom i in its excited state |e i , and all
other atoms in the state |g j=i as |wge,i . The state of all atoms in the ground level will be called
|g . The Hamiltonian may now be written in the basis {|g , |wge,1 , |wge,2 , . . . , |wge,N } as
⎛ ⎞
−ν ∗ ∗ . . . ∗
⎜ ν 0 ... 0 ⎟ ⎟
⎜⎜ 0 ν ... 0 ⎟
H= ⎜ ⎟. (10.18)
2 ⎜ .. .
. .
. . . .
.
⎟
⎝ . . . . . ⎠
 0 0 ... ν

This matrix has a particularly symmetrical form, and it is straightforward to show that it has
(N −1) degenerate eigenvalues ν. The eigenvectors λj , with j = 1 to N −1, corresponding
to these eigenvalues ν, are all linear combinations of states
 involving one atomic excitation,
and have no |g component. Furthermore, all the λj must be orthogonal to the symmetric
linear combination (the W state)
 + 1   e,i +
N
 e
Wg ≡ √ wg . (10.19)
N i=1

We may therefore
 + simplify our calculation significantly by rewriting the Hamiltonian in the

basis {|g , Wge , |λ1 , . . . , |λN −1 }, such that
⎛ √ ⎞
−ν ∗ N 0 ... 0
⎜√N ν 0 ... 0⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜ 0 0 ...
⎟
0⎟ .
H= ⎜ ν (10.20)
2⎜
⎜ .. .. .. .. .. ⎟
⎟
⎝ . . . . .⎠
0 0 0 ... ν
331 10.1 An ensemble of identical two-level atoms

The closed Hamiltonian dynamics of a system intialized in the state |g are thereforecom- +
  
pletely decoupled from all of the states λj , and the only state that couples to |g is Wge .
Even if we allow each atom i to decay (with rate γd ) and dephase (with rate γs ) as our
single
+ atom did in the preceding discussion, we find that there is no coupling from |g and
 e
Wg to the λj states, and we can therefore ignore them completely in a calculation of the
susceptibility. In fact, we can derive equations completely analogous to Eqs. (10.4)–(10.6)
but with modified decay constants:
√
ρ̇gg (t) = Im[ρwg (t) N ] + γs′ ρww (t) (10.21)
√
ρ̇ww (t) = −Im[ρwg (t) N ] − γs′ ρww (t) (10.22)
√
′  N
ρ̇wg (t) = −(γT + iν)ρwg (t) + i [ρww (t) − ρgg (t)], (10.23)
2

where we have defined

γs′ = γs , (10.24)
N +3
γd′ = γd , (10.25)
4
γ′
γT′ = s + γd′ . (10.26)
2

In order to calculate the susceptibility of the ensemble, we may again make the weak
driving approximation,
 +so that the population is primarily in the ground state, with very little

excitation to state Wge . We obtain an expression analogous to Eq. (10.8) for steady-state
coherence:
√
 N
ρ̃wg = − . (10.27)
2(ν − iγT′ )
It is straightforward to find the polarization of the entire ensemble:
  
p=e Tr ρrei g |ei g| + H.c. (10.28)
i

=e ρ̃eg rge + c.c. (10.29)
i
√
= e N ρ̃wg rge + c.c. (10.30)
∗
eN reg
= − + c.c.. (10.31)
(ν − iγT′ )

We then find that that the susceptibility per unit volume is

(n ) na ||2
χV a (−ωl , ωl ) = , (10.32)
2E02 ǫ0 (ν − iγT′ )
 332 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

where na = N /Va is the number density of atoms in the ensemble which is assumed to
(n ) (1)
occupy a volume V . Notice that χV a approaches na times χV only if the pure dephasing
rate γd′ of the atomic ensemble is much smaller than the spontaneous decay rate γs′ .
From classical electromagnetism, it is well known that the real part of the volume suscep-
tibility gives a polarization in phase with the applied field, and so affects the refractive index.
On the other hand, the imaginary part of χV(1) corresponds to an out-of-phase polarization
which leads to a dissipation of energy, i.e., absorption. The mathematical relations are:
 
η2 (ωl ) = 1 + Re χV(1) (−ωl , ωl ) , (10.33)
ωl  
κ(ω1 ) = Im χV(1) (−ωl , ωl ) , (10.34)
η(ωl )c

where η is the refractive index and κ the absorption coefficient.

In Fig. 10.2 we display the typical dependence of both η and κ on the detuning parameter
ν. A refractive index less than unity implies a phase velocity larger than the speed of light
in vacuum c. The group velocity is a measure of the speed of a wave packet and is given by

dω c
vg = = . (10.35)
dk dη
η+ ω
dω
Close inspection reveals that vg can also be greater than c. This happens when the gradient
of the curve in Fig. 10.2 is steeply positive (since dη/dω = −dη/dν). How can this result
be reconciled with the theory of special relativity? This question has been debated for many
years, and was thoroughly addressed by Brillouin (1960). Importantly, the effect here occurs
in a region of high dispersion, where the phase velocities for the Fourier components of a
wave packet are all different. In addition, there is strong absorption in the regions where the
group velocity becomes superluminal. These factors mean that the shape and amplitude of a
wave packet changes as it passes through the medium and so it is no longer straightforward to

Fig. 10.2. (a) Absorption coefficient and (b) refractive index for a gas of atoms in a weak optical field. The
following parameters were used: n = 1019 m−3 , reg · ǫ = 0.1 nm, γT′ = 1 GHz, ω0 = 5 × 1015 Hz.
333 10.1 An ensemble of identical two-level atoms

define what is meant by its velocity. The group velocity might most accurately be regarded
as the velocity of the maximum amplitude of the packet, which can of course exceed c
without violating causality when the shape of the packet changes (i.e., if the peak moves
forward relative to the rest of the packet). One definition of the signal velocity, proposed by
Brillouin, is based on the speed of the front of the wave, i.e., the first wavelike disturbance
associated with the light pulse. This is a good definition for ‘analytic’ pulses whose shape is
described by a well-behaved mathematical function. In this case, all the information about
the packet is transferred once any part of it is detected. This velocity will never exceed the
speed of light in vacuum, and causality is assured.

10.1.1 The interaction of atomic ensembles with quantized fields

The analysis presented so far has been for classical fields. However, later in the chapter we
will be concerned not only with classical concepts such as the susceptibility, but also with
photon interactions with the atomic ensembles. We therefore show next how the results
obtained thus far transfer to an atomic ensemble in a quantized field.
We found in Chapter 7 that the Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian in the rotating-wave
approximation couples combined states of a single atom and a single mode with the same
total excitation number. An atom in state |g with a quantized field of n photons, which we
will label |g, n , will have an interaction Hamiltonian matrix element with state |e, n − 1 ,
as shown in Eq. (7.77). In the absence of decoherence, it is not necessary to consider
any dynamics outside this two-dimensional Hilbert space, and the Hamiltonian can be
written as √
ωl (n − 12 ) − 21 ν g∗ n
H= √ . (10.36)
g n ωl (n − 12 ) + 21 ν
Here, ν is again the detuning of the field and the atomic transition ν ≡ ω0 − ωl , where
ωl is now the frequency of the quantized field mode. The coupling constant g was defined
in Eq. (7.73). Apart from an unimportant constant energy on the diagonal, this quantized
Hamiltonian for the subspace characterized by n field excitations is identical to the earlier
√
classical Hamiltonian in Eq. (10.2) if we choose n ≡ 2g n/. The unitary evolution is
therefore identical in the two cases.
However, decoherence does complicate this direct mapping. Spontaneous-emission pro-
cesses from |e cause photons to populate environmental modes that are different from
the single mode we have so far considered. It is therefore necessary to append an extra,
third, quantum number to our state description to take account of the number of pho-
tons emitted into the environment. Following spontaneous emission, the state |e, n − 1, 0
therefore becomes |g, n − 1, 1 , and the total excitation number of our single mode–atom
system is reduced by one. Further decay events could of course take place until eventually
there would be no photons remaining in the mode. At first glance, this seems to compli-
cate things enormously, since the dynamics can now traverse vastly more levels. However,
we can make an important simplification: since we are interested only in high-fidelity
dynamics for quantum computing applications, even a single photon-emission process
should be unlikely. It therefore suffices to restrict ourselves to only the three coupled levels
334 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

{|g, n, 0 , |e, n − 1, 0 , |g, n − 1, 1 } with the Hamiltonian

⎛ √ ⎞
ωl (n − 12 ) − 21 ν g∗ n 0
√
H=⎝ g n ωl (n − 12 ) + 21 ν 0 ⎠. (10.37)
3 1
0 0 ωl (n − 2 ) − 2 ν

We now include decoherence processes analogous to the single-atom case. First, spon-
taneous emission with the rate γs is described by the operator |g, n − 1, 1 e, n − 1, 0|.
Second, pure dephasing with rate γd corresponds to the same σz operator as before, acting
in the subspace spanned by |g, n, 0 and |e, n − 1, 0 . The dynamics is then described by
equations similar to those for the classical field:
 √ 
ρ21 (t)g ∗ n
ρ̇11 (t) = 2Im ,

 √ 
ρ21 (t)g ∗ n
ρ̇22 (t) = −2Im − γs ρ22 (t),

√
g n
ρ̇21 (t) = −(γT + iν)ρ21 (t) + i [ρ22 (t) − ρ11 (t)],

ρ̇33 (t) = γs ρ22 (t), (10.38)

where the indices run over the basis {|g, n, 0 , |e, n − 1, 0 , |g, n − 1, 1 }. We do not explic-
itly write the equation for ρ31 since it is not needed in our subsequent calculations. A similar
bootstrapping approach to the one we considered for the classical case may also be used
here. Again assuming the weak driving limit, ρ11 (t) ≫ ρ22 (t) for all t we find:

ρ11 (t) = exp(−Ŵt),

ρ21 (t) = [1 − exp(−(iν + γT )t)]ρ̃21 (n) exp(−Ŵt),
Ŵ
ρ22 (t) = [e−Ŵt − e−γs t ], (10.39)
γs − Ŵ
with √
g n
ρ̃21 (n) = − , (10.40)
(ν − iγT )
and √
2Im[ρ̃21 g ∗ n]
Ŵ=− . (10.41)

The expressions in Eq. (10.39) have much in common with the semiclassical density matrix
elements, derived at the beginning of this Section. The essential difference is that all three
of these elements now eventually decay to zero. This is a consequence of the fact that we
explicitly include the field in our description of the quantum state, and it is possible for a
photon to be scattered from the coherent mode with which we excite the system. With an
ensemble of N atoms, the rate of absorption of the field is
   
2N |g|2 n 1 2 1
R = NŴ = Im = N | n | Im . (10.42)
2 ν − iγT 2(ν − iγT )
335 10.1 An ensemble of identical two-level atoms

Similarly, the mean energy of the system is altered according to:

√
E(t) = N Tr[H, ρ] = −N Re[ρ21 (t)g ∗ n], (10.43)

where we have used a minus sign in the definition of the energy shift for consistency with
the absorption-rate definition. Following the decay of initial transients and before the slow
absorption of the field becomes dominant, this is given in frequency units by
 
E √ 1
= −N Re[ρ̃21 g ∗ n] = N |n |2 Re . (10.44)
 2(ν − iγT )

The right-hand sides of Eqs. (10.42) and (10.44) are the real and imaginary parts of the
same quantity, a sort of complex energy shift whose imaginary part corresponds to field
absorption. This is important for the subsequent discussion of the susceptibility.
In order to define a susceptibility in this fully quantized model, we need to relate the
coupling constant g in n to an electric field strength. To make the connection between the
phase behaviour of a classical field and a quantum field it is most convenient to consider a
coherent state. It is defined in terms of Fock states |n by

∞
1 α n (t)
|α(t) = exp |α(t)|2 √ |n , (10.45)
2 n!
n=0
√
where α(t) = n exp(iωl t). In Chapter 7, Eq. (7.70), we used the following operator for
a single-mode electric field
Ê = ξa (ǫ â + ǫ ∗ ↠), (10.46)
where we have defined a new constant


ξa = μ. (10.47)
2(2π )3 ε0

It is also useful to relate ξa to an effective mode volume for the field, which would arise
from a simple box-normalization picture. We define

8π 3 ωl
V≡ , (10.48)
μ2

such that
ωl
ξa = . (10.49)
2ε0 V
The amplitude of the electric field is given by the expectation value of Ê for the coherent
state
α(t)| Ê |α(t) = ξa (ǫα(t) + c. c.). (10.50)
Referring back to our original definition of g in Eq. (7.73), and using Eq. (10.47) we
find that
g = eξa (ǫ · r). (10.51)
336 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

To find the susceptibility, we need to determine the polarization of the sample under illu-
mination by a coherent state. After initial transients, but before the long, slow decay of
polarization, we know that the coherence between states |g, n and |e, n − 1 is given
by ρ̃21 (n)ρ11 (t = 0). Therefore, the polarization of the atom following coherent-state
excitation is
√ √
 g n+1 α n α n+1 g n
p = −er12 exp(−|α|2 ) √ = −er12 . (10.52)
n
(ν − iγT ) n!(n + 1)! (ν − iγT )

The single-atom susceptibility is therefore given by:

√
(ǫ · r)∗ g n 2coh
χ (1) = 2e √ = , (10.53)
ǫ0 ξa n (ν − iγT ) 2ǫ0 n ξa2 (ν − iγT )
√
where we have used the definition coh = 2g n / for the effective Rabi frequency of a
coherent state. This equation is entirely analogous to the one we found for a classical field,
in Eq. (10.17). The extension to na atoms follows as before, from which we can find the
volume susceptibility:

na |coh |2 na |coh |2 V
χ (na ) = ′ = . (10.54)
2ǫ0 n ξa2 (ν − iγT ) ωl n (ν − iγT′ )

Expressions for refractive index and absorption coefficient follow in the same way as
before.

10.1.2 Phase shift of a single mode

In the previous discussion, we saw that the phase of the electric field follows the phase
of the coefficient α(t). If the field mode volume is V and the ensemble occupies a small
relative volume V , we expect a modification in the frequency of the mode, since the wave
vector of the mode is fixed by the physical constraints of the cavity

V V 1
ω′ = 1 − ωl +  ωl = ωl − W . (10.55)
V V 1 + χ (n)

The susceptibility χ (na ) has real and imaginary parts, which correspond to a phase shift of
the mode, and a decay in amplitude, respectively. The shift W is then

V N |coh |2 1
W = ωl χ (n) = . (10.56)
2V n 2(ν − iγT′ )

The fundamental connection between energy shift and absorption is now clearly seen, and
this leads to a fuller appreciation of the very similar pair of expressions we obtained for
Fock states in Eqs. (10.42) and (10.44).
 337 10.2 Electromagnetically induced transparency

10.2 Electromagnetically induced transparency

In this section, we will discuss the optical properties of ensembles of three- and four-level
atoms. In particular, we will show how an ensemble of identical atoms becomes opaque
for certain frequencies of light, but that a strong ‘control’ laser of a different frequency
can open up a transparent window in this absorption line. This is the phenomenon of
‘electromagnetically induced transparency’, or eit.

10.2.1 Three-level systems

Let us now consider the three-level system that we first encountered in Chapter 7, which
is the simplest system that can exhibit eit. The level structure and parameter definitions are
displayed in Fig. 10.3. The idea is to apply a strong field that is close to resonance to one
arm of a system and then to probe the system with a weak field applied to the other arm.
The Hamiltonian in this situation, with two applied laser fields, was introduced in Eq. (7.47)
⎛ ⎞
0 0 ∗1 cos ω1 t
H (t) =  ⎝ 0 δ ∗2 cos ω2 t ⎠ . (10.57)
1 cos ω1 t 2 cos ω2 t ω

In Chapter 7, we went on to use a rotating frame and made the rotating-wave approximation
to remove the time dependence. We found in Eq. (7.50) that
⎛ ⎞
0 0 1

H = ⎝0 2(ν1 − ν2 ) 2 ⎠ . (10.58)
2
1 2 2ν1

Fig. 10.3. The atomic energy-level structure required for observation of electromagnetically induced
transparency. Assuming that all of the population is initially in state |g , the control pulse opens a
window in the absorption spectrum of the probe.
338 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

In addition to the Hamitonian dynamics, let us also take into account some forms of dis-
sipation. Specifically, we assume that the highest-lying level |e can decay to both lower
levels |g and |i . To do this we introduce Lindblad operators σeg − and σ − , which are the
ei
usual Pauli σ − operators acting on the subspace of |e and |g or |i . The decay rates are
eg
γs and γsei , respectively. Without complicating matters, we may also allow pure dephasing
gi eg gi eg
terms on all three pairs of levels, {σz , σz , σzei }, with rates {γd , γd , γdei }.
The master equation becomes a set of nine differential equations, some of which are
coupled. However, we are not interested in evaluating all density matrix elements; we are
concerned only with those leading to expressions for the susceptibility. We can also make
some approximations by assuming that the atom is initially in its ground state |g and
the probe field is sufficiently weak, and the decay rate from |e sufficiently strong that
eg
population in the other two levels is always negligible (i.e. 1 ≪ γs ). Then ρgg ≈ 1,
ρii ≈ 0, and ρee ≈ 0. It follows that ρei ≈ 0. We may then find relatively simple differential
equations for the two remaining density matrix elements

i∗2
ρ̇ig (t) = −[Gig + i(ν1 − ν2 )]ρig (t) − ρeg (t), (10.59)
2
i2 i1
ρ̇eg (t) = −[Geg + iν1 ]ρeg (t) − ρig (t) − , (10.60)
2 2

with

ig eg
Gig = γd + 41 (γd + γdei ) (10.61)
eg ig
Geg = γd + 14 (γd + γdei ) + 12 (γseg + γsei ). (10.62)

Following the decay of all the transients (ρ̇ig (t) = 0 and ρ̇eg (t) = 0), we settle to a steady-
state solution (ρig (t) = ρ̃ig , ρeg (t) = ρ̃eg ). Since the probe field addresses the transition
between |g and |e , the susceptibility is proportional to ρeg . We therefore obtain

21 2[(ν1 − ν2 ) − iGig ]

χa(1) (−ωl , ωl ) = , (10.63)
2E02 ǫ0 4[(ν1 − ν2 ) − iGig ][ν1 − iGeg ] − |2 |2

for the susceptibility of a single three-level atom in the -configuration.

The extension of our calculation to the case of N atoms follows along similar lines to
that of a two-level atomic ensemble in the  previous
+ section. We first notice that only the
 e − 12 e,j
symmetric combination of excited states Wg = N j |wg couples to the state |g in
e,j
which all the atoms are in the ground state. Each state |wg couples via 2 to the state with
i,j
atom+ j in state |i and all the other atoms in state |g . We label this state |wg . The state
 e i,j
Wg can couple only to the symmetric combination of states |wg

 + 1   i,j +
N
 i
Wg ≡ √ wg . (10.64)
N j=1
339 10.2 Electromagnetically induced transparency

 +  +
 e,j 
The (N − 1) linear combinations of wi that are orthogonal to Wgi have no coupling to
 +
 e
Wg , and cannot be accessed. We may therefore write the Hamiltonian in the reduced basis
 +  +
 
{|g , Wgi , Wge } as

⎛ √ ⎞
0 0 1 N
⎝
H = 0√ 2(ν1 − ν2 ) 2 ⎠ . (10.65)
2
1 N 2 2ν1

It is reasonably straightforward to show that the decay constants become

′ N + 3 ig 1 eg
Gig = γd + (N γd + γdei ) (10.66)
4 4
′ N + 3 eg 1 ig 1
Geg = γd + (N γd + γdei ) + (γseg + γsei ), (10.67)
4 4 2
and finally we obtain
′ ]
21 2[(ν1 − ν2 ) − iGig
χa(na ) (−ωl , ωl ) = ′ ][ν − iG ′ ] − | |2 . (10.68)
2E02 ǫ0 4[(ν1 − ν2 ) − iGig 1 eg 2

Again, the relation χa(na ) = na χa(1) is satisfied only if the decoherence of each atom is
dominated by spontaneous-emission processes, and in the following discussion we will
assume that this is indeed the case. This will allow us to use a one-atom model to explain
the phenomena we will encounter.
We can use Eqs. (10.34) to relate the refractive index and absorption coefficients to
the atomic susceptibility, and an example is shown in Fig. 10.4. There are two important
qualitative differences with ensembles of two-level atoms, as we shall now discuss.
The first effect is that a window opens up in the absorption spectrum that becomes larger
for a larger 2 . This is the famous eit effect. In order to get a better insight into why this
phenomenon occurs, let us first consider the effect of the strong field without a probe field
present. Setting 1 = 0 and rewritingthe  single-atom Hamiltonian in Eq. (10.57)  in
 terms
of a new time-dependent state vector i′ = eiω2 t |i , we obtain in the basis {|g , i′ , |e }
⎛ ⎞
0 0 0
⎝
H = 0 2(ω − ν2 ) 2 ⎠ , (10.69)
2
0 2 2ω

where we have again made use of a rotating-wave

 ′ approximation. We see that two of the

eigenstates are now linear combinations of i and |e , and that these have energies


ǫ± = ω − ν2 ± 2 + ν22 , (10.70)
2

above the energy of state |g . We therefore expect the absorption spectrum to be a doublet of
lines, equally spaced around the energy ω − ν/2. A probe field with this energy is therefore
 340 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

Fig. 10.4. (a) Absorption coefficient and (b) refractive index for a gas of atoms with a structure. One arm
of the is addressed by a relatively strong field characterized by Rabi coupling 2 . A weak optical
field applied to the other arm is then used to probe the structure and its absorption and refractive
index are displayed here for different strengths of the strong field. The following parameters were
used: n = 1019 m−3 , reg · ǫ = 0.1 nm, Geg = 1 GHz, Gig = 0, ω0 = 5 × 1015 Hz, ν2 = 0.

not absorbed, so long as the two absorption lines are not too broad, i.e., for a sufficiently
coherent system. For the case ν2 = 0 the expected transparency window lies at exactly the
energy of the original transition between |g and |e . This is shown in Fig. 10.4.
Second, there is a strong modulation of the refractive index near ν1 = 0 in Fig. 10.4.
Indeed, the derivative of the refractive index with respect to the frequency becomes large and
positive, and therefore the group velocity, as defined by Eq. (10.35), can become very small.
A pulse of light is therefore expected to slow down in an electromagnetically transparent
medium, and this ‘slow light’ effect has been observed experimentally in several systems.
We can also interpret eit in terms of the stirap protocol discussed in Chapter 7. From the
discussion in Section 7.1, we know that for equal detuning of the control and probe fields
there is always a dark eigenstate of the form

|ψ(θ ) = cos θ |g − sin θ |i , (10.71)

with the mixing angle related to the coupling strengths by tan θ = (1 /2 ). With the strong
control field applied, and before application of the weak probe field, |g is an eigenstate.
Now imagine applying a finite pulse of the weak field. When the forward tail of the pulse
enters the ensemble, the amplitude of the field increases slowly. This does not move the
system from the dark state; it merely introduces a very small admixture of the |i level. The
pulse then passes through the gas, and the amplitude slowly reduces towards the tail of the
pulse. This causes all the atoms to return to the state |g . The speed of the probe beam is
reduced while it is interacting with the gas, because a portion of the information contained
in the pulse is transferred to the atoms in the gas, whose average velocity is zero. We will
 341 10.2 Electromagnetically induced transparency

Fig. 10.5. The four-level atomic system described by the Hamiltonian in Eq. (10.72).

see later in the chapter that it is possible to transfer all of the information contained in a
weak light pulse to the atoms in the ensemble.

10.2.2 Four-level systems

Next, we explore the possibilities offered by four-level atomic systems, of the type displayed
in Fig. 10.5. Let us again first look at the single-atom dynamics; by simple extension
of the analysis presented in the previous section we find the Hamiltonian in the basis
{|g , |i , |e , |f }:
⎛ ⎞
0 0 1 0
 ⎜ 0 2δ1 2 3 ⎟ ⎟,
H = ⎜ (10.72)
2 ⎝1 2 2ν1 0 ⎠
0 3 0 2δ2
where δ1 ≡ ν1 − ν2 and δ2 ≡ ν1 − ν2 + ν3 . We can again allow for pure dephasing processes
between any pair of levels k and l at rate γdkl . In addition we admit decay processes between
excited levels |e and |f and low-lying levels |g and |i with rates γsab , where a = e, f and
b = g, i. Following the methods presented earlier, and using the assumption that |g is the
only level which is significantly populated we may, once again, find the steady-state value
ρ̃eg of ρeg

41 (iGig − δ1 )(δ2 − iGfg ) + 1 23

ρ̃eg = , (10.73)
2(δ2 − iGfg )[4(ν1 − iGeg )(δ1 − iGig ) − 22 ] − 2(ν1 − iGeg )23

where, as before, we have combined the total decay rates for each pair of levels k and l into
parameters Gkl .
We may also straightforwardly extend our analysis to N atoms in a completely analogous
way to the three-level system, by defining the symmetric excited state for the fourth level
|f , i.e.
 + 1   f ,j +
N
 f
Wg ≡ √ wg . (10.74)
N j=1
 342 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

 +  +
 
Recalling that the states Wge and Wgi were similarly defined symmetric excitation states
involving
+ |e and |i respectively, we find that the coherence between the collective |g and
 e
Wg in this four-level system is

′ − δ )(δ − iG ′ ) +  2
4N 1 (iGig
(N ) 1 2 fg 1 3
ρ̃eg = ′ )[4(ν − iG ′ )(δ − iG ′ ) − 2 ] − 2(ν − iG ′ )2
, (10.75)
2(δ2 − iGfg 1 eg 1 ig 2 1 eg 3

where the new collective rates are equal to the corresponding individual decay rates
only if spontaneous decay dominates. Assuming this to be true, we find that the volume
(N )
susceptibility depends linearly on the number density of atoms na via ρ̃eg

1 (N )
χa(na ) (−ωl , ωl ) = − ρ̃eg . (10.76)
2E02 ǫ0

(n )
In the strictest sense, this is no longer a linear susceptibility, since χa a has a strong
dependence on the quantities 22 and 23 , which are themselves proportional to the intensities
of two different laser sources. We can therefore expect strongly nonlinear effects. The
refractive index and absorption for the laser coupling levels |g and |i will depend on the
intensities of the other lasers. An example of the profound effect of the laser in the third
arm is shown in Fig. 10.6. The relevant parameters in this plot are exactly as they were for
the three-level case discussed above, for 2 = 0.1 GHz. When the third laser is turned off,
a transparency window is evident in the frequency dependence of the absorption spectrum.
However, increasing the value of 3 quickly leads to closure of this window, an effect that

Fig. 10.6. (a) Absorption coefficient and (b) refractive index for a gas of atoms with the four-level structure
displayed in Fig. 10.5. The relevant parameters are the same as for the three-level figure with
2 = 0.1 GHz, i.e. n = 1019 m−3 , reg · ǫ = 0.1 nm, G′eg = 1 GHz, G′ig = 0, ω0 = 5 × 1015 Hz,
ν2 = 0. The effect of increasing the coupling parameter 3 of a resonant (ν3 = 0) laser in the third
arm is displayed. The new decay rate G′fg is set equal to G′eg .
 343 10.2 Electromagnetically induced transparency

Fig. 10.7. (a) Amplitude loss rate and (b) energy shift for a photon interacting with a gas of atoms with the
four-level structure displayed in Fig. 10.5. The photon is resonant with the transition connecting
states |0 and |e and has effective Rabi coupling  ˜ n1 =1 = 0.2 GHz. A classical laser, with coupling
strength 2 = 0.2 GHz resonantly couples states |e  and |1 . A second single photon, with

n3 =1 = n1 =1 is also present and couples |1 and f . All of the transitions are weakly driven, so
that Ge0 = Gf0 = 1 GHz. Only 100 atoms are assumed to be present in the ensemble. The plots
display the dependence on ν3 , the detuning of the second single photon from resonance.

can be exploited in optical switching. A recent experimental demonstration of the closure

of the window is described in Bason et al. (2009).1
More significant is the effect of taking the third laser 3 off resonance. The loss rate
and the frequency shift are displayed in Fig. 10.7. The transparency is quickly restored by
increasing ν3 , but the refractive index does not return immediately to unity. One would
therefore expect the third laser to induce a significant change in the velocity of the probe
beam, without any substantial absorption. A change in velocity is translated into a change
in the phase of the probe beam.
Can we describe the interaction of the modes (call them a1 and a3 ) that support the
classical fields 1 and 3 as a quantum cross-Kerr nonlinearity for two photons? In order
to answer this question, we must again switch to a quantum description of fields 1 and 3,
while assuming that the field in mode a2 remains in a classical (or coherent) state. The
number of quanta in field mode a1 will be n1 , while a3 contains n3 photons. For simplicity,
let us take ν1 = ν2 = 0, and Gig = 0. Using the results of the discussion of Section 10.1,
we can write the steady-state value of the coherence ρ̃eg in this quantized field case as

N i ˜ n3 |2
˜ n 1 |
ρ̃eg = − , (10.77)
˜ 2n |
2 |2 |2 (Gfg + iν3 ) + Geg |
3

1 In this study, the authors in fact observe a very narrow absorption line as a function of probe detuning, much
narrower than is predicted in the theory we present here. The reason for this is the Doppler effect, which means
that atoms travelling with different velocities with respect to the light beam have a modified detuning.
344 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

where  ˜ ni = gi √ni /. Equations (10.42) and (10.44) allow us to relate ρ̃eg to a quantity
κ, whose real and imaginary parts correspond to the absorption rate and frequency shift of
the field, respectively.

N ˜ n 1 | 2 |
i| ˜ n3 | 2
˜ n1 =
κ = −2ρ̃eg  . (10.78)
2 |2 |2 (Gfg + iν3 ) + Geg | ˜ 2n |
3

The values of κ are shown in Fig 10.7. Importantly, we find that significant energy shifts
can be generated, even when the rate of field absorption is rather small. Moreover, the
form in Eq. (10.78) shows that the interaction between photons in modes a1 and a3 is of a
cross-Kerr form, since the energy shift is directly proportional to the product of n1 and n3 .
The reduced Hamiltonian for modes a1 and a3 then assumes the familiar form
† †
HK = κ â1 â1 â3 â3 , (10.79)

that is, the four-level atomic ensemble can be used to construct a cross-Kerr nonlinearity.
† †
Moreover, the self-phase modulation due to terms (â1 â1 )2 and (â3 â3 )2 in the Hamiltonian
is strongly suppressed.
One might think that the cross-Kerr nonlinearity discussed here could be used to entangle
pairs of photons. Indeed, the size of the parameter κ would certainly not preclude this
possibility. However, we have not taken into account the time dependence of any photon
wave packet. This turns out to be critical: as we show in Appendix 3, it is impossible
to produce a strong cross-Kerr nonlinearity under any circumstances. Nonetheless, the
nonlinearity here can be used to build up small phases between photons and this can be
used in a practical way, as we discuss in Section 10.5.

10.3 Quantum memories and quantum repeaters

We have seen that atomic ensembles can be used to store a pulse of light. In this section,
we explore the possibilities this behaviour offers for quantum information processing. In
particular, we will consider atomic ensembles as single-photon memories, and we discuss
the possibility of creating quantum repeaters for photonic quantum communication.

10.3.1 Quantum memories

We return to an ensemble of N three-level atoms, shown in Fig. 10.8. Instead of the two
classical fields discussed in Section 10.2.1, let us imagine that the probe field is in fact a
single-mode quantum field, initially populated by a single photon. We follow the methods
presented in Section 10.2 for deriving the Hamiltonian of an ensemble of N atoms, and
for converting classical fields into quantum fields.
 + Recall
 +that the symmetric collective
 i 
excitation states involving levels |i and |e are Wg and Wge , respectively. In the extended
 345 10.3 Quantum memories and quantum repeaters

Fig. 10.8. Energy levels and couplings for the quantum-memory protocol. One arm of the three-level system
of each atom is now coupled to a quantized field mode, while the other is addressed by a classical
laser of coupling . We depicted the effective level scheme before a transformation is carried out
to move the system to a frame rotating with the classical laser frequency. Following this and a
rotating-wave approximation, the Hamiltonian is given by Eq. (10.80).

 +  +
 
basis {|1, g , 0, Wgi , 0, Wge }, where the first entry in the ket refers to the number of photons
in the mode, we can write down the Hamiltonian
⎛ √ ⎞
0 0 2g N /
⎝
H=H = √0 2(ν1 − ν2 )  ⎠. (10.80)
2
2g N /  2ν1

In Chapter 7, we found an essentially identical stirap Hamiltonian for a single atom, and
described how it always has an eigenstate of the form
 +

|ψ(θ , 1) ≡ cos θ |1, g − sin θ 0, Wgi (10.81)

when ν1 = ν2 . We have defined √

2g N
tan θ = . (10.82)

 +

The state |ψ(θ , 1) does not have any 0, Wge component and is therefore immune to spon-
taneous emission from the level |e . Furthermore, |ψ(θ , 1) is a coherent superposition of
an excitation in the quantum field and an excitation in the atomic ensemble. It is often
called a ‘dark state polariton’. These can be interpreted as quasi-particles, and are of utmost
importance for single-photon quantum memories.√
Imagine that initially we have  ≫ g N /, i.e., we arrange our system such that a
strong control laser is present when our single photon enters the ensemble. The system is
in the eigenstate |1, g . The intensity of the control laser is adiabatically
+ reduced, and the
 i
system follows state |ψ(θ, 1) until it eventually becomes 0, Wg . We have now transferred
a single photon into a single excitation of the atomic ensemble! Moreover, this excitation is
346 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

quite stable, since it only involves a collective mode of the metastable atomic state
 +|i with

a suppressed decay rate (see Fig. 10.3). Second, the ensemble is in a W state Wgi , which
has the desirable property that decoherence of a single atom hardly affects the fidelity of
the state of the ensemble. Notice also that the energy of the photon no longer resides in the
atomic ensemble. It has been carried away coherently by the classical laser field .
The stored photon can be recovered at any time by increasing the control laser intensity
once again. Adiabatic switching means that state |ψ(θ, 1) is followed back to |1, g . In
principle, the spatiotemporal mode shape of the outgoing photon can be made identical
to that of the incoming photon, since both processes couple to the same optical mode.
This is essential if the photons are subsequently used in second-order interference experi-
ments, such as the quantum information processing described in Chapter 6. If the photon
carries a qubit degree of freedom, two quantum memories must be used to store the qubit
value: one for the mode associated with qubit state |0 , and one for the mode associated
with |1 .
The quantum-memory protocol can be extended to Fock states with more than one photon.
We must first define a series of multiply excited collective states. For example, a two-
excitation symmetric state involving atomic state |e is

 + 2  N N

 2e g1 , g2 , . . . , ej , . . . , ek , . . . , gN .
Wg = (10.83)
N (N − 1)
j=1 k>j

There are 21 N (N −1) different

 +
states with the form in the summation, hence the normalization
 2i
factor. A similar state Wg can of course be defined for two collective excitations of
the atom state |i . A combination involving one excitation of |i and one of |e will also
be accessible, and the distinguishability of these two states leads to a slightly modified
definition:

 + 1  N N

 e+i g1 , g2 , . . . , ej , . . . , ik , . . . , gN .
Wg = (10.84)
N (N − 1)
j=1 k =j

Starting with a two-photon Fock state, and all atoms in their ground states, the levels
and coupling scheme are as shown in Fig. 10.9. The coupling matrix elements are found
using the definition of the states given in the above equations, together with the Jaynes–
Cummings Hamiltonian and properties of bosonic operators. The Jaynes–Cummings
coupling Hamiltonian for N atoms interacting with an extended field mode a is

HJC = [g âσj+ + g ∗ ↠σj− ], (10.85)
j

where σj+ and σj− are the raising and lowering operators connecting the two states |g and
|e on atom j.
 347 10.3 Quantum memories and quantum repeaters

Fig. 10.9. Energy levels and couplings for the quantum-memory protocol.

 +

Exercise 10.2: Show that the matrix element of HJC between states |2, g and 1, Wge is
√
2, g| HJC |1, Wge = g 2N . Similarly, show that

1, Wge | HJC |0, Wg2e = g 2(N − 1). (10.86)

The full Hamiltonian for the six levels displayed in Fig. 10.9 consists of six coupling
terms, which are most clearly written in the basis
 +  +  +  +  +
    
{|2, g , 1, Wgi , 0, Wg2i , 1, Wge , 0, Wge+i , 0, Wg2e },

yielding the Hamiltonian

⎛ √ ⎞
0 0 0 g 2N 0 0
⎜ 0 √ ⎟
⎜ 0 0 /2 g N√− 1 0 ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎜ 0 0 0 0 / 2 0 ⎟
H=⎜ √ √ ⎟,
⎜g 2N /2 0√ ν 0 g 2(N − 1)⎟
⎜ √ ⎟
⎝ 0 g N −1 / 2 0 ν /2 ⎠
√
0 0 0 g 2(N − 1) /2 ν
(10.87)
where we set ν1 = ν2 ≡ ν. By inspection, such a Hamiltonian must have one eigenvector,
with eigenvalue zero, that is a linear
 combination
+  of+ the first three levels in our basis
 
set, i.e., of the form c1 |2, g + c2 1, Wgi + c3 0, Wg2i . The coefficients can be found by
multiplying the matrix above with the general form of the expected eigenvector, leading to
two simultaneous equations:
⎛ ⎞
√ c1
g 2N /2 0√ ⎝c2 ⎠ = 0.
√ (10.88)
0 g N − 1 / 2
c3
348 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

This yields the dark state

√  +  +
 
|ψ(θ, 2) = cos2 θ |2, g − 2 sin θ cos θ 1, Wgi + sin 2 θ 0, Wg2i , (10.89)

with θ given by Eq. (10.82). We see that by varying θ in the same way as before it is possible
to move a state of two photons into a state of two excitations of the atomic ensemble, and
vice versa.
Indeed, such an argument can be extended to any number of photons, as long as it is
less than the total number of atoms in the ensemble. There are a family of dark states
corresponding to different numbers of excitations n, which take the form:

n
 n!  +

|ψ(θ , n) = (−1)k sinn θ cosn−k θ n − k, Wgki , (10.90)
k!(n − k)!
k=0

where |Wgki is the symmetric superposition of k excited atoms in the state |i , with the
remaining atoms in the ground state |g . Superpositions of different numbers of Fock states
can also be converted into superpositions of different numbers of atomic excitations, since
the dynamics of each component exists in an independent Hilbert subspace, and θ does not
depend on n. Even a travelling wavepacket can be stopped and stored in a gas of atoms, as
long as the amplitude of the packet does not change so quickly that adiabaticity conditions
are violated. This means that the atomic ensemble of identical three-level atoms can also
be used as a memory for the optical qunats discussed in Chapters 8 and 9.

10.3.2 Quantum repeaters

In practical quantum-communication protocols using optical fibres, the losses put a limit
on the attainable distance for quantum communication. This is due to the fact that quantum
information cannot be cloned, and we therefore cannot amplify the single-photon signal
without losing the quantum mechanical behaviour of the information carriers. One way to
circumvent this is to construct a ‘quantum repeater’ using the quantum memories discussed
above. Our aim is to first create high-fidelity maximal entanglement between two atomic
ensembles. In particular, we distribute a single excitation coherently over two ensembles
A1 and A2 . We repeat this procedure with two other ensembles B1 and B2 , and then use
entanglement swapping between A2 and B1 to create entanglement in A1 and B2 . Assuming
that A1 and A2 are a distance L apart, and so are B1 and B2 , we can in principle create
entanglement spanning a distance 2L. We will find, however, that the entangling procedure
is probabilistic, and some care must be taken in characterizing the scaling of the quantum
repeater.
We return once more to the three-level system shown in Fig. 10.8, except that here the
quantum and classical fields are exchanged. In Chapter 7, we discussed Raman transitions
and described how effective Rabi oscillations can be induced between two uncoupled levels
through virtual optical transitions with an intermediate level. The effective Rabi frequency
is proportional to the product of coupling matrix elements between the intermediate state
349 10.3 Quantum memories and quantum repeaters

and each of the other two states, and inversely proportional to the detuning of both coupling
lasers. We have exactly this situation in our atomic-ensemble system. When the ensemble is
initially in the ground state with zero photons, we expect oscillations between levels |0, g
and |1, Wgi with the effective Rabi frequency given by
√
g N
R = . (10.91)
ν
The effective Hamiltonian for the system becomes
* 

H = R |0, g 1, Wgi  + H.c.. (10.92)

If a short pulse of the classical coupling laser with a duration τ is applied to the ensemble,
the state becomes
√  +
|φ = |0, g + i pc 1, Wgi + O(pc ), (10.93)
where pc ≪ 1 is the excitation probability
√
√ g N τ
pc = . (10.94)
ν
The terms of order pc in |φ are components with more than one excitation, but we will
assume that these are negligible. Two ensembles A1 and A2 that are similarly excited then
have the joint state |φ1 ⊗ |φ2 .
The creation of entanglement between A1 and A2 is closely related to the distributed
schemes for entanglement by measurement discussed in Chapter 7. Here, we follow the weak
driving protocol, but any other entangling protocol can also be adapted for our purposes.
Again, the operation depends on measuring the photons emitted from the ensembles. We
can assume that the ensembles are contained in optical cavities2 with leakage rates κ1 and
κ2 . The paths of emitted photons are arranged such that they meet on a beam splitter, and
are detected by a pair of detectors D1 and D2 (see Fig. 10.10). The photons that trigger these
detectors are related to the two input modes by (see Section 7.4)
† † † †
† iâ1 + â2 † â1 + iâ2
b̂1 = √ and b̂2 = √ . (10.95)
2 2
We can use the quantum-jump formalism developed in Section 7.4 to calculate which
atomic-ensemble states exist following a single click in either detector. The relevant jump
† †
operators are J1 (·) = b̂1 (·)b̂1 and J2 (·) = b̂2 (·)b̂2 . Following a jump (i.e., a detection
event) we may therefore describe the system in the pure state
 ± 1  +  + √
  i 
A
= √ |g A1 Wg ± i Wgi |g A2 + O( pc ), (10.96)
1 A2
2 A2 A1

where the relative phase is determined by which detector clicks. The probability of obtaining
a click in any given round is, of course, only pc . Nonetheless, with a small pc a high-fidelity

2 This is not a necessary condition, but it increases the photon-collection efficiency.

 350 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

Fig. 10.10. (a) Schematic diagram for the experimental set-up required to entangle two atomic ensembles.
(b) Diagram of the relevant energy levels in each ensemble.

entangled state of the two ensembles results from a successful operation. Moreover, the
entangled state is again quite stable since it involves the metastable states |i , rather than
the excited state |e .
Using an atomic ensemble, as opposed to a single atom in a cavity, for this kind of entan-
glement-generation scheme makes sense when one calculates the proportion of photons
emitted into the monitored cavity mode, as opposed to spontaneously emitted photons into
other environmental modes. We can easily work out this figure of merit using methods
which we developed earlier in this chapter. We append the state of a third system, namely
the environmental mode, to our basis of the ensemble and the optical mode. We now have an
effective three-level system. Cavity decay may now be modelled using the master equation
given in Eq. (10.1), with Lindblad operator Lm = |0, Wgi , 1 1, Wgi , 0| and corresponding
rate κ. We analyzed a system with exactly this form before, when we discussed the interac-
tion of a quantized field with a two-level system. We may therefore carry over the results
we derived in Eqs. (10.37) to (10.41), making sure that the relevant parameters take on
their new definitions. If we take the ‘bad cavity limit’, in which κ ≫ 1 , we find that the
population P ending up in state |0, Wgi , 1 is

P = 1 − exp(−Ŵτ ) ≈ Ŵτ , (10.97)

with
8|R |2 8g 2 N ||2
Ŵ= = . (10.98)
κ 2 ν 2 κ
On the other hand, the number of spontaneously emitted photons is given by the probability
Q that the collective state |Wgi is populated during the short pulse, multiplied by the optical
decay rate γ , that is,
||2 γ τ
Q= . (10.99)
ν2
 351 10.3 Quantum memories and quantum repeaters

The figure of merit is then

P 8g 2 N
= 2 . (10.100)
Q  κγ
The improved figure of merit for larger N is a consequence of ‘collective enhancement’ and
achieving this is the essential purpose of using atomic ensembles for quantum processing,
rather than single atoms in a cavity.
So far, we have shown how to create entanglement between two ensembles A1 and A2 . The
entanglement procedure involved a path-erasure procedure for photons, and so the limiting
distance between ensembles over which the procedure works is determined by photon
loss. Let L be this maximum distance between A1 and A2 . There is a way of increasing this
maximum distance over which entanglement can be generated, by first creating a second pair
of entangled ensembles B1 and B2 , and then using the principle of entanglement swapping
to create entanglement
  between
  A1 and B2 . The joint state of the four ensembles before
swapping is  ± A A ⊗  ± B B . The swap can be performed by again exploiting the
1 2 1 2
principle of photon-path erasure.
First the atomic excitation states |Wgi in A2 and B1 are excited by a classical laser,
slightly detuned from the |Wge level. The quantum field then couples back to |g . In effect,
by reversing the quantum and classical fields, any atomic-ensemble excitation is converted
back into a photon that can be measured. Emitted photons from A2 and B1 are again passed
through a beam splitter, thus removing the ‘which path?’ information that they contain. We
leave it as an exercise below to show that an entangled state between A1 and B2 results
from measuring a single photon in either detector placed downstream of the beam splitter.
Since a successful entanglement swap depends on detecting a single photon, this is also a
probabilistic procedure, and successful generation of long-range entanglement also requires
the techniques developed in Chapters 5, 6, and 7.

Exercise 10.3: Show that the above protocol can indeed swap the entanglement from pairs
{A1 , A2 } and {B1 , B2 } to entanglement in the pair {A1 , B2 }.

Fig. 10.11. Two rounds of path erasure probabilistically entangles ensemble A1 with B2 over an extended
distance 2L.
352 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

Once long-range entanglement is established between distant ensembles, it is possible

to perform a variety of quantum-communication tasks. In particular, both quantum cryp-
tography and quantum teleportation, which were introduced in Chapters 5 and 8, can be
performed efficiently. Notice that this quantum repeater works for the single-rail encoding,
i.e., when the degree of freedom is in the photon number. We can in fact double the size
of the repeater to accommodate the dual-rail encoding. In the next section, we move on to
consider how an atomic ensemble can be used as a single qubit.

10.4 The atomic ensemble as a single qubit

In the previous section, we demonstrated how to entangle a pair of atomic ensembles. We

used the method of weak excitation to prevent the creation of more than one collective
excitation, and so restrict the accessible Hilbert space of the system to that of a two-
level system. We could therefore regard the states |g and |Wgi as a single qubit. This
representation of a qubit has rather attractive properties, including fast manipulation through
collective enhancement and long coherence times (since the state |Wgi is a collective mode
of metastable states). However, the weak excitation method for preventing departures from
the restricted Hilbert space greatly constrains the family of single-qubit operations that can
be performed in one step. In this section, we will discuss a particular type of excited atom,
the Rydberg state, and show how this difficulty can be overcome.
Rydberg states are highly excited electronic states of an atom. Such states resemble
atomic hydrogen, since one electron occupies a state with very high principal quantum
number and the other electrons screen the nucleus, giving it an effective charge of one.
The excited electron also has a very large orbit, and the transition dipole matrix element
pab between two different Rydberg states |a and |b is therefore much larger than that of
transitions between lower-lying levels. Such large transition dipoles can lead to signifi-
cant atom–atom interactions. To see this, consider the situation shown in Fig. 10.12, which
shows the energy level structure of two atoms j and k, each with Rydberg states |a , |r ,
and |b . The wave functions of each Rydberg state are such that of the three states, only
|r has allowed dipole transitions to the low-lying storage levels |g and |i . In addition,
|a and |r are coupled, with a large transition dipole element, as are |r and |b . More-
over, the levels |a and |b are symmetrically disposed about |r so that the joint state
|r j |r k is resonant with |a j |b k and |b j |a k . Such a scenario leads to resonant energy
transfer between the atoms, mediated by the dynamic dipole–dipole interaction that leads
to microwave photon exchange. It has much in common with the Förster interaction, which
we will introduce in Chapter 11. The coupling strength depends on the distance Rjk between
each atom pair and is given by κjk = par prb R−3 jk . The relevant Hamiltonian for the whole
ensemble is

N 
  
H= κjk |r j |r k a|j b|k + b|j a|k + H. c.. (10.101)
k=1 j>k
 353 10.4 The atomic ensemble as a single qubit

Fig. 10.12. The dipole blockade mechanism. Left: if two atoms j and k are excited into a Rydberg level |r then
the large spatial wavefunction leads to strong interactions κ. Right: such interactions shift the
two-level eigenstates such that the optically active states, here shown as solid lines, are shifted.

Consider now the doubly excited states |Wg2r , which are defined in an analogous way to
those introduced in Eq. (10.83)

 + 2  N N

 2r g1 , g2 , . . . , rj , . . . , rk , . . . , gN .
Wg = (10.102)
N (N − 1)
j=1 k>j

In the presence of the interaction Hamiltonian of Eq. (10.101), the terms in the superposition
|Wg2r are no longer valid eigenstates. Therefore |Wg2r may no longer be regarded as an
addressable energy level. Rather, the correct collective states must become a superposition
of eigenstates of the Hamiltonian in Eq. (10.101), namely

 + N 
   
 a+b g1 , . . . , aj , bk , . . . , gN + g1 , . . . , bj , ak , . . . , gN ,
Wg ∝
j=1 k>j

 + N 
   
 a−b g1 , . . . , aj , bk , . . . , gN − g1 , . . . , bj , ak , . . . , gN ,
Wg ∝
j=1 k>j
 ±  +  +
W ≡ √1 W 2r ± W a+b , (10.103)
g g
2
1
where the normalization of the first two states is [2/N (N − 1)] 2 . The state |Wga−b has no
coupling to the storage levels of the ensemble, so we need not consider it further. On the
other hand, the levels |W ± will couple to the ground state |g and the state i
√ |Wg . However,
the dipole–dipole interaction shifts their energies by an amount ±κ 2. Therefore, the
collective states involving two excitations must also necessarily have an energy shift of
order ±par prb /V , where V is the volume of the ensemble. As a consequence, a laser tuned
354 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

to the transition between the ground state |g and the single-excitation Rydberg state |Wgr
cannot create more than one excitation, since the first excitation will move the collective
state off resonance. This is called the ‘dipole
√ blockade effect’, and it requires√that the
collectively enhanced driving strength  N is smaller than the energy shift κ 2.
The dipole blockade allows for the preparation and storage of an arbitrary single-qubit
state in an atomic ensemble. The qubit states are defined by
 +

|0 ≡ |g and |1 ≡ Wgi . (10.104)

If a laser is tuned to the transition between |g and |Wgr , the dipole blockade means that the
quantum dynamics is restricted to this two-level system, and varying the length of the laser
pulse allows the preparation of any superposition of the two levels. Furthermore, since Ryd-
berg states are highly excited and fragile states, once a qubit state has been prepared, we drive
the system from the state |Wgr to the qubit state |Wgi in such a way that |g remains unaf-
fected. This can be accomplished with a π pulse on the transition between |Wgr and |Wgi .
Any single-qubit operation is also easily implemented using this method. The qubit is
first transferred from the qubit state |1 to the Rydberg level |Wgr , while leaving the state
|0 untouched. Single-qubit manipulations are then carrried out by varying the length and
phase of the laser that is resonant with the transition between |g and |Wgr .

Quantum computing with atomic ensembles

A number of proposals exist for scaling up from a single qubit to the many qubits needed
to perform quantum algorithms. This is very much an active area of research and we will
only briefly touch on some of the main ideas.
First, an ensemble of atoms may have a reasonably large number p of stable levels, which
can be used as a small-scale quantum information processor. A single system with p levels
can generally represent only log2 p qubits, but in an ensemble the encoding can be much
more efficient. To see this, let us label the collective state associated with one atom in level
|u with u = {1, . . . , p}, and all others in the ground level |g , as |Wgu . It is also possible to
define symmetric states involving more excitations. For example, one atom in the state |u ,
another in |v (with v = {1, . . . , p}), and all others in the ground state |g can be written as
the collective state

 + 1  N N

 u+v g1 , . . . , uj , vk , . . . , gN .
Wg = (10.105)
N (N − 1)
j=1 k =j

Naturally, so long as the number of atoms exceeds the number of levels in one atom, this
argument can be extended to anything up to p − 1 different excitations. We might therefore
express a general state as |Wgn , with n the (p − 1)-tuple (n1 , . . . , nu , . . . , nv , . . . , np−1 ).
For each nu we have nu ∈ 0, 1, which means that the level u is occupied (nu = 1) or not
(nu = 0). The state in Eq. (10.105), for example, would have nu = nv = 1, and all other ni
zero. With this encoding, the number of available qubits becomes p − 1. Using the dipole
 355 10.5 Photon–photon interactions via atomic ensembles

Fig. 10.13. A pair of atomic ensembles can be entangled using a Mach–Zehnder interferometer with
single-photon input states.

blockade effect, both single- and two-qubit operations are possible in this system. For more
details, see Brion et al. (2007).
Second, atomic ensembles can be used to generate cluster states efficiently. To this end,
we need to construct a robust entangling procedure. The essence of the idea is summarized
in Fig. 10.13. Each atomic ensemble has a pair of storage levels |g = |0 and |Wgi =
|1 . Furthermore, |g is coupled to a Rydberg state |Wgr via a quantized field mode. The
entangling procedure now works as follows: the ensembles may be prepared in their ground
states |g . Two identical single photons |1 are incident on a 50:50
√ beam splitter. The Hong–
Ou–Mandel effect ensures that the output state is i(|20 +|02 )/ 2. Each output mode of the
beam splitter interacts with an atomic ensemble. When there are two photons in the mode,
one photon will create a Rydberg excitation, and the dipole blockade mechanism renders the
ensemble transparent to the second photon. The joint state of the ensemble–photon system
therefore becomes +  + 
i  
√ g, Wgr |0, 1 + Wgr , g |1, 0 . (10.106)
2
The second beam splitter induces path erasure of the transmitted photons, and the joint state
of the ensemble–photon system becomes

1  +  + 1  +  +
 
g, Wgr + Wgr , g |1, 0 + g, Wgr − Wgr , g |0, 1 . (10.107)
2 2
After detection of a single photon, and driving the Rydberg atom in |r to the storage state
|i , the ensembles are in the Bell state
 ±
 = √1 (|01 ± |10 ) . (10.108)
2

This scheme can be scaled up to generate larger cluster states by appropriate measurements,
described by Zwierz and Kok (2009). Moreover, it can be made robust against detector
inefficiencies and photon losses using the techniques presented in Chapters 6 and 7. An
alternative scheme is presented in Barrett et al. (2008).

10.5 Photon–photon interactions via atomic ensembles

In Section 10.2, we saw that the atomic ensemble can be used to implement a cross-
Kerr nonlinearity between two modes a1 and a2 , governed by the interaction Hamiltonian
† †
HK = κ â1 â1 â2 â2 . Furthermore, we have seen in Section 6.2 that such an interaction,
356 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

if sufficiently strong, can be used in a coherent photon switch. In turn, this switch can be
reformulated as a cz gate for photonic qubits. Unfortunately, due to the finite spatiotem-
poral structure of the photonic wavepackets, a large Kerr nonlinearity unavoidably induces
noise, which reduces the fidelity of the cz gate (see Appendix 3). A Kerr-mediated photon–
photon interaction therefore cannot be used for coherent quantum information processing
(see again Appendix 3). However, instead of a direct interaction between photons, we may
use weaker cross-Kerr nonlinearities to couple single photons to a macroscopic field mode.
In this section we will study such mediated photon interactions.

10.5.1 Weak Kerr nonlinearities

We investigate how we can create a deterministic two-photon entangling operation by

coupling each photon to an auxiliary mode in a coherent state. Before we construct the
full entangling gate, we will describe the core interaction between a single photon and a
coherent state, by means of a weak interaction. Using |α 0 as the auxiliary bright coherent
state in mode a0 , we write
∞
 †k
2 /2 α k â 0 †
|1 1 |α 0 = e−|α| â1 |0, 0 10
k!
k=0
∞
 †
2 /2 α k (â eiθ n̂1 )k
0 †
→ e−|α| â1 eiθ n̂0 |0, 0 10
k!
k=0
∞
 †k
−|α|2 /2 (αeiθ )k â 0
 
=e |1, 0 10 = |1 1 αeiθ 0 , (10.109)
k!
k=0

where θ ≪ π is the interaction strength of the cross-Kerr nonlinearity. Note that the
interaction appears as a phase shift of the coherent state, rather than a global phase shift on
the product state.
Now that we have established the core interaction, we will use this to create a deterministic
parity projection for two photonic qubits. Consider two single-photon polarization qubits,
in modes 1 and 2, each of which are coupled to the auxiliary coherent mode |α 0 with
coupling strengths θ1 and θ2 , respectively. The input state is given by

(c00 |00 + c01 |01 + c10 |10 + c11 |11 ) |α .

The interaction of both qubits with the coherent state turns this into

c00 |00 |α + c01 |01 |αeiθ2 + c10 |10 |αeiθ1 + c11 |11 |αei(θ1 +θ2 ) . (10.110)

Next, we can choose θ1 = −θ2 ≡ θ, which means that the output state can be written as

(c00 |00 + c11 |11 ) |α + c01 |01 |αeiθ + c10 |10 |αe−iθ . (10.111)

The coherent state is clearly entangled with the photonic qubits, and we can disentangle it by
performing a measurement of the coherent auxiliary mode a0 . We want to project the qubits
 357 10.5 Photon–photon interactions via atomic ensembles

Fig. 10.14. Parity projection using weak nonlinearities. (a) The distribution in phase space; (b) the projection
on the quadrature q; and (c) the Wigner function of the coherent mode.

onto the even or odd parity subspace (given by |00 00| + |11 11| and |01 01| +
|10 10|, respectively). This means that the measurement outcomes must  distinguish
  
between input states |α and αe±iθ , but must not distinguish αe+iθ and αe−iθ .
We assume without loss of generality that α is real, and the quasi-probability distribution
in phase space (the Wigner function) for the three possibilities is shown in Fig. 10.14a.
If we perform a measurement of the quadrature q̂, then we can obey the measurement
requirements above. If the separation between the peaks is sufficiently large, a high-fidelity
deterministic parity projection can be implemented.
We treat the measurement of q̂ as a von Neumann measurement with outcome q. The
two-qubit output state is therefore projected onto the state

q|α (c00 |00 + c11 |11 ) + q|αe−iθ c01 |01 + q|αe−iθ c10 |10 . (10.112)

We have to find q|α and φ(q). From Chapter 1, we find that for arbitrary α
 
1 1 √ 2 1 ∗
q|α = √ exp − q − 2α + α(α − α ) . (10.113)
4
π 2 2

When α is real, we have

 
1 1 √ 2
q|α = √
4
exp − q − 2α
π 2
 
iθ 1 1 √ 2 √
q|αe = √ 4
exp − q − 2α cos θ + i sin θ 2q − α cos θ
π 2
 
1 1 √ 2 √
q|αe−iθ = √
4
exp − q − 2α cos θ − i sin θ 2q − α cos θ . (10.114)
π 2
358 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

We can write this in terms of the real functions f0 (q) and fθ (q)

q|α ≡ f0 (q) and q|αe±iθ = | q|αeiθ | e±iφ(q) ≡ fθ (q) e±iφ(q) , (10.115)

√
with φ(q) = sin θ( 2q − α cos θ ). The two-qubit output state can therefore be written as
 
f0 (q) (c00 |00 + c11 |11 ) + fθ (q) e−iφ(q) c01 |01 + eiφ(q) c10 |10 , (10.116)

that is, the even parity state has amplitude f0 (q) and the odd parity state has amplitude fθ (q).
In addition, the odd parity state requires a corrective phase shift of 2φ(q) on the photonic
qubit in mode a2 .
The functions f0 (q) and fθ (q) are Gaussians, and we obtain good discrimination in the
measurement only when the overlap of the two functions with respect to the measurement
outcome q is very small. In other words, we must choose θ and α such that f0 and fθ form
clearly separate peaks (see Fig. 10.14b). The width of (the real part of) these distributions is
of order one. We can distinguish the two peaks (and correspondingly obtain a high fidelity)
when the distance between the peaks is larger than 2:
√ √
2α − 2α cos θ > 2. (10.117)

Solving this for α and θ , we obtain the distinguishability criterion

√
αθ 2 > 2 2. (10.118)

The parity projection thus obtained is practically deterministic if the peak separation is big
enough. In turn, the parity projection can be used to deterministically create cluster states
for quantum computing.

Exercise 10.4: Calculate the fidelity of the weak Kerr parity projection.

Fig. 10.14 shows that the parity gate based on weak Kerr nonlinearities is based on the
definite separation of the coherent-state distributions in phase space: the two peaks must
be clearly distinguishable in order to obtain a high-fidelity parity projection. However,
the clear separation along the quadrature q (in Fig. 10.14b) occurs for much larger θ than
the clear separation of the peaks in the complete phase space (that is, in Fig. 10.14a). An
obvious question is therefore whether we can improve the distinguishability criterion in
Eq. (10.118).
First, we note that the smallest angle θ for which separation of the phase-space distribu-
tions occurs is in the radial direction from the distribution on the horizontal axis. Second,
we can displace the entire distribution by means of the operator D(−α), which amounts to
a translation along the coordinate q. After such a displacement, the largest of the ‘blobs’
in Fig. 10.14a is centered on the origin. The two satellite blobs are at equal distance from
the origin. A measurement of the photon number, or distance from the origin, then distin-
guishes between the distribution at the origin, but not between the satellite distributions.
This is exactly what we need for the parity gate to work. The displaced state after the weak
359 10.5 Photon–photon interactions via atomic ensembles

nonlinear interaction becomes

   
(c00 |00 c11 |11 ) |0 + c01 |01 α(1 − eiθ2 ) + c10 |10 α(1 − eiθ1 ) . (10.119)

Using the general result α| n̂ |α = |α|2 we evaluate the separation of the expectation
values as
!   
α(1 − e±iθ ) n̂ α(1 − e±iθ ) − 0| n̂ |0 = 2α 2 (1 − cos θ ). (10.120)

This must again be larger than the added variances:

2α 2 (1 − cos θ ) > 1 or for θ ≪ 1: αθ > 1. (10.121)

Compared to Eq. (10.118), this is a much improved distinguishability criterion.

The second improvement we can make is via squeezing. If the squeezing occurs in
the quadrature q, the variance is multiplied by a factor e−r . Consequently, the original
distinguishability criterion in Eq. (10.118) becomes
√
αθ 2 er > 2 2. (10.122)

Similarly, we can apply number-phase squeezing in the displaced protocol, which yields

αθer > 1. (10.123)

A note of caution however: one must make sure that the squeezing is perfectly aligned with
the quadrature, otherwise the increased uncertainty will show up in the measurements. This
may be very challenging in practice.

10.5.2 Intensity coupling to matter qubits

We have described the implementation of a deterministic parity projection by coupling

qubits to a coherent state. Other than the phase shift the qubits impart on the coherent state,
the physical nature of the qubits is immaterial. This means that the above protocol works not
only for photonic qubits, but any physical system that can be used to generate a conditional
phase shift in a coherent state.
In particular, the phase shift can be generated by any Hamiltonian of the type:
†
HI = ν σz â0 â0 . (10.124)

†
Here, σz is the diagonal Pauli operator of the qubit, and â0 â0 is the number operator for
the object, called a ‘bus’, we use to couple the qubits. In the specific case of the cross-Kerr
nonlinearity, the bus is the coherent state. If the fragile quantum state of the bus can be
maintained in transportation, we can use this technique for distributed quantum computing.
For more details about bus-based quantum computing, see Munro et al. (2005).
360 Atomic ensembles in quantum information processing

10.6 References and further reading

Multi-level atoms and electromagnetically induced transparency is reviewed in detail

in Fleischhauer et al. (2005). Applications of coherent population transfer to quantum
information processing are discussed in Beausoleil et al. (2004). Specific experimental
demonstrations of slow light were described in an atomic vapour in Kasapi et al. (1995)
and in a solid in Bigelow et al. (2003). Dark state polaritons and their applications to quan-
tum memories were introduced in Fleischhauer and Lukin (2000) and expanded upon in
Fleischhauer and Lukin (2002) and Lukin (2003). Dipole blockade for quantum information
processing was first discussed in Brennen et al. (1999), and Jaksch et al. (1999). Lukin et al.
(2001) show how to use the blockade in atomic ensembles to perform quantum logic gates.
For specific details of how to implement repeater protocols in atomic ensembles, as well as
how to overcome potential errors, we refer to Duan et al. (2001).
11 Solid-state quantum information carriers

In this chapter we will discuss solid-state quantum computing, concentrating on systems

where qubit manipulation, initialization or readout is performed optically. We will begin
with a discussion of crystals with a periodic lattice and derive Bloch’s theorem, which sets
constraints on the form of electronic wave functions in crystals. We will then introduce
semiconductor heterostructures and show that these have a discrete energy-level structure
with transitions corresponding to the optical region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The
discrete levels can be used as several different kinds of qubit, and we will discuss two
that can be manipulated optically, namely an electron spin and an exciton. We will touch
upon crystal defects and their importance in optical quantum computing. The emphasis
will be on the NV− centre in diamond, which has produced some of the most impor-
tant experimental results in recent years. Towards the end of the chapter, we will discuss
specific implementations of single- and two-qubit gates in solid-state structures, before
concluding with some methods for scaling up a solid-state device to a full-scale quantum
computer.

11.1 Basic concepts of solid-state systems

In order to understand the optical characteristics of semiconductors, we must first review

some basic concepts from solid-state physics. In particular, we will need the form and
properties of the electronic wave functions in a periodic crystal structure. Unfortunately,
the calculation of electronic states in a solid is impossible to do exactly. This is due to
the vast number of electrons in a solid, all of which are subject to Coulomb interactions
with each other and with the nuclei in the crystal. In addition, the overall wave function
of each many-electron state must obey Fermi–Dirac statistics, such that it is antisymmetric
under the exchange of two single-electron parts. These factors lead to a highly correlated
wavefunction that depends on a macroscopic number of variables and whose energy contains
terms that arise from the wavefunction antisymmetry. It is impossible to represent such a
wavefunction in an efficient way.
Fortunately, we do not need exact solutions: a great deal of insight into the behaviour of
electrons in solids can be gained by making use of the ‘one-electron approximation’. Here,
solutions ri |ψi = ψi (ri ) are calculated by first constructing the potential function for a
single electron moving under the influence of all of the nuclei and other electrons, and then
by solving the appropriate Schrödinger equation. The single-electron solutions can then be
combined together in a total wavefunction (r1 , . . . , rN ) that ensures antisymmetry. This
362 Solid-state quantum information carriers

form is given by the ‘Slater determinant’

 
 ψ1 (r1 ) ψ2 (r1 ) ··· ψN (r1 ) 

 .. 
 ψ (r ) . ψN (r2 ) 
(r1 , . . . , rN ) =  1 . 2 ..  . (11.1)
 .. ψi (rj ) . 

ψ (r ) ψ (r ) ··· ψN (rN )
1 N 2 N

The procedure of using combinations of self-consistent single-electron solutions is known

as ‘Hartree–Fock theory’. We now explore the single-electron solutions in more detail.

11.1.1 Bloch’s theorem

First, we introduce some basic definitions. Since crystal lattices are periodic, the single-
electron potential must also be periodic. We can always define three primitive lattice-
translation vectors, {a1 , a2 , a3 }, that when combined in the form

Ti = n1 a1 + n2 a2 + n3 a3 , with {n1 , n2 , n3 } ∈ Z , (11.2)

can connect any lattice point to any other. The index i is a vector, consisting of the three
numbers {n1 , n2 , n3 }, that characterizes one particular lattice-translation vector. As well as
the real lattice, we can also define an orthogonal ‘reciprocal lattice’, whose three primitive
vectors satisfy bi · aj = 2πδij . The reciprocal lattice is a very useful tool when performing
calculations of electronic structure in crystals.
To proceed, we write the periodic crystal potential V (r) = V (r + Ti ). The Schrödinger
equation for the wavefunction ψ(r) is then

2 2
H(r)ψ(r) = − ∇ + V (r) ψ(r) = Eψ(r). (11.3)
2m

We can use the periodic symmetry of the crystal lattice to make an assertion about the form
of the functions ψ(r). To see this, let us first define the translation operator Ti

Ti g(r) = g(r + Ti ). (11.4)

Applying this operator to our Schrödinger equation we obtain

Ti H(r)ψ(r) = H(r + Ti )ψ(r + Ti ). (11.5)

Using the periodicity of the potential function we find H(r + Ti ) = H(r) and therefore Ti
commutes with H:
Ti H(r)ψ(r) = H(r) Ti ψ(r). (11.6)
The ψ(r) are therefore eigenstates of Ti as well as H. Let us define the eigenvalue of Ti as
α(Ti ):
Ti ψ(r) = α(Ti )ψ(r). (11.7)
363 11.1 Basic concepts of solid-state systems

If we apply two translations Ti and Tj to our wavefunction, it makes no difference whether

we apply Ti first or Tj first. Therefore

Ti Tj = Tj Ti = Ti+j , (11.8)

which implies that the α(Ti ) are exponential functions. We can decompose each translation
operator into three primitive translations, T1 , T2 , T3 , that correspond to each of the three
vectors a1 , a2 , a3 :
Ti = T1n1 T2n2 T3n3 . (11.9)
We can make the exponentiation explicit, so T1 = e2iπx1 , etc. Then Ti = eik·Ti , with
k = x1 b1 + x2 b2 + x3 b3 . We have therefore proved that the electron eigenstates in a crystal
must satisfy
ψ(r + Ti ) = eik·Ti ψ(r) , (11.10)
and this is known as ‘Bloch’s theorem’. Another way to put this is that the wavefunction of
an electron in a crystal must take the form

ψ(r) = eik·r Unk (r), (11.11)

where the Unk (r) is a function, called the Bloch function, that takes the periodicity of the
crystal lattice.

Exercise 11.1: Verify that the two forms for electron wavefunctions in a periodic crystal
lattice in Eq. (11.10) and Eq. (11.11) are equivalent.

An important consequence of Bloch’s theorem in Eq. (11.10) is that a reciprocal lattice

vector defined by G = p1 b1 + p2 b2 + p3 b3 (with p1 , p2 , and p3 integers) can always be
added to the wave vector k without affecting the form of the wavefunction. Therefore, k
describes distinct states only within a restricted zone, called the ‘Brillouin zone’, around
the origin of reciprocal space: points outside the zone can be translated into the zone by the
addition of a particular choice of G.

11.1.2 Wannier functions

To understand how a light field interacts with electrons in a solid, we will need to be more
explicit about the nature of the periodic Bloch functions. In order to do this, let us start
by considering a collection of well-separated single atoms, and then work out how their
wavefunctions are modified as we bring them together and introduce interactions between
them, eventually forming a fully periodic crystal. Let us start our discussion around the
best-known semiconductor, silicon (Si). A free silicon atom has fourteen electrons in the
electronic configuration 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p2 . When silicon atoms are bought together into
a crystal, it is the outer or ‘valence’ electrons 3s2 3p2 that begin to overlap most strongly.
The other electrons are tightly bound to the nucleus and for the purposes of this discussion
we can ignore them. All of the single-electron states are of course eigenstates of the atomic
 364 Solid-state quantum information carriers

Hamiltonian of silicon, Hat . For example, an s electron with wavefunction χs satisfies

Hat χs = Es χs .
When two (identical) silicon atoms are put together, the wavefunctions of the individual
atoms start to overlap. The primitive unit cell of a silicon crystal, which is the smallest
repeating unit in the lattice, contains two atoms called a ‘basis’ and we will consider this
first. Since the atoms overlap, the two atomic s-state wavefunctions χs1 and χs2 are no longer
eigenstates of the two-electron Hamiltonian H2 . If the p states are sufficiently distant√in
energy, then the s states form two new eigenstates of the form χ± = (χs1 ± χs2 )/ 2.
These are called the ‘bonding’ and ‘antibonding’ orbitals, where the bonding orbital has
lower energy. A similar effect occurs with the p states, although their three-fold degeneracy
complicates matters slightly. Fig. 11.1 shows the new ordering of energy levels once the two
atoms become closer to each other. Eight electrons must be accommodated in the new level
structure: the two-fold spin degeneracy means that all of these can be accommodated in the
lower-energy bonding levels. Importantly, the highest occupied states have p character, and
the lowest unoccupied states have s character.
Using this knowledge, how can we take account of the larger crystal structure of silicon?
We can extend our argument in a similar way to when we moved from one atom to two
atoms, and use the knowledge that our extended crystal wavefunctions must satisfy Bloch’s
theorem. Assume first that the crystal potential has such a dilute spacing that each localized
bonding orbital χ+ (r + Ti ) is still an eigenstate of the system (i.e., it does not overlap with

Fig. 11.1. The ordering of electronic energy levels for one and two silicon atoms. For a single atom, the
valence states are 3s and the triply degenerate 3p. When two atoms are brought together, bonding
and antibonding orbitals form as the valence electrons are able to overlap. The highest occupied
level in crystalline silicon has p character, while the lowest unoccupied level has s character.
365 11.1 Basic concepts of solid-state systems

neighbouring lattice sites). Any linear combination of these is of course also an eigenstate,
so we can construct functions that satisfy Bloch’s theorem

ψ(r) = eik·Ti χ+ (r + Ti ). (11.12)
Ti

As might be expected, we find that the periodic part of the wavefunction is essentially a
sum of the bonding orbitals.
Of course, we have made a gross approximation here: that the wavefunctions are non-
overlapping. In this limit all of the eigenstates, Eq. (11.12), are degenerate regardless of k.
In reality, the wavefunctions between unit cells do overlap, but we can still describe the
crystal eigenstates using a similar form to that in Eq. (11.12)

ψ(r) = eik·Ti φ(r + Ti ) . (11.13)
Ti

The functions φ(r + Ti ) are now slightly modified from the original atomic eigenstates,
and are called ‘Wannier functions’. The Wannier functions can be found using perturbation
theory: the atomic states are good approximations in the limit of a weak perturbation. More-
over, the states in Eq. (11.13) do now depend on k since neighbouring Wannier functions
will generally overlap with each other.
The wave vector k is restricted to certain allowed values that are defined by the boundary
conditions imposed by the crystal edges: essentially a whole number of wavelengths must
‘fit’ within the crystal. If one dimension of a crystal is L, then possible wave vectors are
spaced by 2π/L in that dimension, and if the typical lattice spacing between atoms is a,
then physically distinct wave vectors in that dimension only exist up up to a maximum of
2π/a.1 Hence, there are N = (L/a)3 distinct ks, in a crystal of N unit cells. This means
that the ground state of a crystal like silicon has 6N completely filled states with p-type
Wannier functions, with the first empty states being of s type.

11.1.3 Conduction and valence bands

The onset of optical absorption in semiconductors is determined by the difference in energy

between the highest occupied electron states and the lowest unoccupied electron states. Let
us now look specifically at these, and develop our theory further. For silicon we found that
the highest filled states are p-like, and there are six different Wannier functions (three orbital
p states each with double spin degeneracy). The highest unoccupied states are s-like, and
there are two Wannier functions in that case (a single orbital with spin degeneracy). This is
true for a broad class of semiconductors. In particular, gallium arsenide (GaAs, an example
of a III–V material) also has this type of structure, and for reasons we will come to later is
used much more widely in optical semiconductor technology.
Let us expand our Hamiltonian in Eq. (11.3) in the three p orbitals (px , py , and pz ), and
the one s-like orbital. All of these must have the Bloch form of Eq. (11.11). We will deal

1 This is another statement of the restriction that all distinct ks lie in the Brillouin zone.
366 Solid-state quantum information carriers

with spin later; for now let us denote the four different orbital wavefunctions as:

ψj (r) = Uj (r) exp(ik · r) ≡ j| r , (11.14)

with j ∈ {s, px , py , pz }. We have neglected the k dependence of the Bloch functions, which
is a good approximation near the edges of the bands. The matrix elements are then
 
Hij = ψi | H ψj

† 2 2 2 2 k 2
= dr Ui (r) − ∇ −i k·∇ + + V (r) Uj (r) . (11.15)
2m0 m0 2m0
By definition, the functions Uj are orthonormal, and have definite parity. They are the
correct eigenstates for k = 0, and therefore satisfy an eigenvalue equation

2 2
− ∇ + V (r) Ui (r) = Ei0 Ui (r) . (11.16)
2m0
This leads to an expression for the Hamiltonian

2 k 2  †
Hij = δij + Ei0 + k· dr Ui (r) p̂ Uj (r) , (11.17)
2m0 m0

where the momentum operator p̂ ≡ −i∇ has been used. Using the parity properties of the
functions Uj , we find that the integral in this equation is zero, unless one of the U s is an s
state and the other a p state. In the basis {s, px , py , pz } the Hamiltonian becomes
⎛ ⎞
2 k 2
⎜Es + 2m Pkx Pky Pkz ⎟
⎜ 0
2 2
⎟
⎜  k ⎟
⎜ P ∗ kx Ep + 0 0 ⎟
⎜ 2m ⎟
H=⎜ ⎜ 0 ⎟, (11.18)
2
 k 2 ⎟
⎜ P∗k 0 Ep + 0 ⎟
⎜ y
2m0 ⎟
⎜ ⎟
⎝ 2 k 2 ⎠
∗
P kz 0 0 Ep +
2m0
where we have defined Es0 ≡ Es . We also assume that the bare p states are degener-
ate: {Epx 0 , Epy 0 , Epz 0 } ≡ Ep . Furthermore, by rotational symmetry of the s state, and the
directional symmetry of the three p states, we have


P≡ dr Up†x (r) p̂ Us (r)
m0


= dr Up†y (r) p̂ Us (r)
m0


= dr Up†z (r) p̂ Us (r) . (11.19)
m0
The energy difference between the s and p states, ≡ Es − Ep , is typically much larger
than the off-diagonal elements of the above matrix. The s and p states therefore do not mix
367 11.1 Basic concepts of solid-state systems

strongly, and we can use perturbation theory to separate them. The s state is isolated and
therefore a good eigenstate with an energy Es′ = Es + 2 k 2 /2m0 − |P|2 |k|2 / , which is
correct to second order. Importantly, the energy of the state depends on the magnitude of
the wave vector k, which results in a set of very closely spaced energy levels in reciprocal
space that is called a ‘band’. For the electrons we have considered here, the ‘band edge’
is the state with lowest energy, i.e., it corresponds to |k| = 0. As we discussed earlier,
the values of k are restricted to the Brillouin zone, so the band has a finite width. The
theory we have developed here is strictly valid only close to the |k| = 0 band edge, where
the energy depends quadratically on |k|. Since a free electron would also have an energy
proportional to |k|2 , an electron close to the band minimum behaves like a free particle but
with a modified mass, the ‘effective mass’.
The p bands are, of course, more complicated. Nonetheless, using second-order perturba-
tion theory, we can make some progress by eliminating the s state. In the {px , py , pz } basis,
we have
⎛ ⎞
2 k 2 |P|2 kx2 |P|2 kx ky |P|2 kx kz
E
⎜ P + + ⎟
⎜ 2m0 ⎟
⎜ 2k k 2k 2 |P| 2k 2 2k k ⎟
⎜ |P| x y  y |P| y z ⎟.
Hp = ⎜ EP + + ⎟
⎜ 2m0 ⎟
⎝ 2
|P| kx kz 2
|P| ky kz 2
 k 2 |P| kz ⎠
2 2
EP + +
2m0
(11.20)
The eigenvalues are EP +2 k 2 /2m0 (with multiplicity two) and EP +2 k 2 /2m0 +|P|2 k 2 / .
We find again that parabolic bands are predicted, each with its own effective mass. There
are three bands, and all three are degenerate at |k| = 0.
As we mentioned above, in the ground state of the crystal the three p bands are occupied,
whereas the s band is unoccupied. A band gap separates the highest occupied p band from
the s band, and electrical conduction can occur only if electrons are promoted across this
gap. It is common therefore to refer to the s band as the ‘conduction band’ and the p bands
as the ‘valence bands’.
One way of promoting electrons across the gap is for them to absorb a photon, and when
this happens a state in the valence band is left unoccupied. It is straightforward to show
that the behaviour of a band with one electron missing is equivalent to that of a band with a
particle present, with energy, momentum, spin and charge opposite to the missing electron
(see for example Kittel, 2005). This particle is called a ‘hole’. In what follows we will work
using an electron picture, except where explicitly stated. We next complete our description
of single-particle states with the introduction of electron spin.

11.1.4 Spin

For the conduction band, the introduction of spin is trivial. Only s-like orbital states in the
conduction band are populated, and these have zero angular momentum. The addition of
the spin degree of freedom therefore leads to a doubly degenerate band corresponding to
the two spin sublevels. These are usually labelled α and β, corresponding to ms = ± 21 ,
368 Solid-state quantum information carriers

respectively:
    1 1
|sα ≡  12 , 12 c and sβ ≡  , −
2 2 c . (11.21)

For the valence band, we have p-like orbital symmetry, and so have an angular momentum
of . In this case the nuclei within the crystal cause the electrons to experience a magnetic
field, which can interact with the spin of the electron. This is called ‘spin–orbit coupling’,
and it gives rise to an interaction Hamiltonian

Hso = λ L · S . (11.22)

Here, L and S are the orbital and spin angular-momentum operators, respectively, and to
understand the spin-orbit effect we therefore switch from {px , py , pz } to eigenstates of the
angular-momentum projection operator Lz = L · ẑ
   
|px + i py |px − i py
|⇑ = √ , |⇓ = √ , and | = |pz . (11.23)
2 2

These states correspond to the eigenvalues Lz = +1, −1, and 0, respectively. The inclusion
of spin then leads to six different valence states, and Hso has two sets of degenerate eigen-
states corresponding to total angular momentum of J = L + S = 32 (four degenerate states)
and J = L + S = 12 (two degenerate states); the two sets are split by an energy 32 λ.
The four states in the degenerate J = 23 manifold can be written in a basis corresponding
to eigenstates of the Jz operator as follows:
3 3 3 3  
 , and  ,− 
2 2 v = |⇑α 2 2 v = i ⇓β , (11.24)

and
3 1 i   √  3 1 1  √  
 , = √ ⇑ β − 2 | α and  ,− = √ |⇓ α + 2 β . (11.25)
2 2 v 2 2 v
3 3

1
In the degenerate J = 2 manifold, the two Jz eigenstates are

1 1 i  √   1 1 1   √ 
 ,
2 2 v = √ |α + 2 ⇑β and  ,−
2 2 v = √ β − 2 |⇓α . (11.26)
3 3

The J = 21 states are typically lower in energy than the J = 32 states. They are
sometimes
     called   ‘split-off’
 states, and we need not consider them further. In the basis
{ 23 ,  12 , − 12 , − 32 }, the J = 23 Hamiltonian reads

⎛ ⎞
hhh g1 g2 0
⎜ g∗ hlh 0 g2 ⎟
H=⎜
⎝ g∗
1 ⎟, (11.27)
2 0 hlh −g1 ⎠
0 g2∗ −g1∗ hhh
369 11.1 Basic concepts of solid-state systems

with

λ 2 k 2 |P|2 2
hhh = EP + + + (kx + ky2 ), (11.28)
2 2m0 2
λ 2 k 2 |P|2  2 
hlh = EP + + + kx + ky2 + 4kz2 , (11.29)
2 2m0 6
|P|2
g1 = −i √ (kx − iky )kz , (11.30)
3
|P|2
g2 = √ (kx − iky )2 . (11.31)
2 3
This is the well-known Luttinger–Kohn Hamiltonian. In fact, it is slightly simplified from
its most general form, since we have here considered a highly symmetrical system. Systems
with lower symmetry are easy to treat in the same way, and this results in slightly more
complicated parameter expressions.
There are now two pairs of degenerate bands of states, with eigenvalues

λ 2 k 2
E1 = E P + +
2 2m0
λ 2 k 2 2|P|2 k 2
E2 = E P + + + . (11.32)
2 2m0 3

Again, under the approximations we have used, parabolic bands are found and the effective-
mass approximation can be used. There are two different effective masses for the two bands,
one ‘light’ and one ‘heavy’. In real systems, we have to take into account the different
degeneracy splitting of the p states along different crystal axes (as shown in Fig. 11.1). This
typically means that the heavy band is often dominated by the Jz = ± 23 angular-momentum
states, whereas the light band has predominantly Jz = ± 21 character. The dependence of
the energy on |k| is shown in Fig. 11.2.
We can now explain why silicon is not often used in optical quantum-computing exper-
iments. The discussion here centred on the electronic properties near k = 0 in both
conduction and valence bands, and predicts a minimum band gap at k = 0. In silicon,
however, the behaviour of the bands far from k = 0 is complex and leads to a conduc-
tion band minimum at the edge of the Brillouin zone, rather than in the middle of it. This
complicates the optical properties of silicon, since the lowest possible energy transition
across the band gap involves a change in k. Silicon is therefore known as an ‘indirect gap’
semiconductor. GaAs, on the other hand, has no such problems and most of our following
discussion of semiconductors will concentrate on GaAs.

11.1.5 Heterostructures and the envelope-function approximation

We have developed a picture of the electronic structure of semiconductors at or near the

top of the valence band and bottom of the conduction band. Such materials in their bulk
 370 Solid-state quantum information carriers

Fig. 11.2. In a bulk semiconductor, the optical properties are primarily determined by the electronic
structure of the valence and conduction bands. The figure shows the wave vector dependence of
the energy of these bands near the band edges. The conduction band has s-symmetry and this
gives rise to one approximately parabolic band with spin J = 12 . The valence electrons have
p-symmetry and this gives three bands, one of which is split off by spin-orbit coupling and
characterized by J = 12 . The other two have J = 23 character and are degenerate at the |k| = 0
point. Their different curvatures give us the names ‘light’ and ‘heavy’.

form are hard to use as qubits since they form a continuous spectrum of states. However, it
is possible to create semiconductors with discrete energy states: this requires two or more
types of semiconductor to be put together in a single ‘heterostructure’.
A typical example material consists of GaAs, which has a band gap of 1.42 eV and InAs,
whose band gap is 0.35 eV. If a layer of InAs is surrounded above and below by GaAs,
then it is possible for electrons to be in certain energy states in the InAs that cannot exist in
GaAs. The electrons then see a potential profile, as sketched in Fig. 11.3, and the states that
can only exist in the InAs region are ‘quantum confined’. These states can no longer be of
the delocalized Bloch function form in Eq. (11.11). However, a simple procedure allows us
to construct suitable eigenfunctions in this case.
We know that the bulk-dispersion relation for both electron states near the band edges is
approximately parabolic – and therefore like a free particle – but with a modified mass, the
effective mass m∗ . Such states satisfy a Schrödinger equation:

2 2
− ∇ + V0 ξ(r) = Eξ(r) , (11.33)
2m∗

where V0 is the energy corresponding to the band edge. The solutions are of the form
ξ(r) ∝ exp(−ik · r), which coincide with the first factor on the right-hand side of the
general solution for an electron in a periodic potential, given in Eq. (11.11).
 371 11.1 Basic concepts of solid-state systems

Fig. 11.3. (a) A two-dimensional quantum well structure; (b) the band gap, shown as the shaded regions, is
modulated in one dimension when a narrow band gap material is sandwiched between two
regions of wider band gap material. It gives rise to an effective confinement potential V (r) in
both conduction and valence bands, shown as the thick black line. This leads to confined states e1 ,
e2 , above the Fermi level, and hh1 , hh2 , and lh1 below it.

In the case of a quantum heterostructure, we can find the form of ξ(r) by keeping track
of how the band edges vary in space by modifying the potential term in the Schrödinger
equation:
2
− ∇ 2 + V (r) ξ(r) = Eξ(r) . (11.34)
2m
A quantum well is a sandwich structure where a uniform layer of InAs is the ‘filling’
and GaAs the ‘bread’. The potential profile is modulated along, say, the z axis, shown in
Fig. 11.3. The modulation creates a finite quantum well in both the conduction and valence
bands. The solution to Eq. (11.34) for states in both bands is then a product of delocalized
wavefunctions in the x and y directions, and a confined wavefunction in the z direction

ξ1D (r) ∝ ξz (z) exp(ikx x + iky y). (11.35)

The ξz (z) are simply the solutions of the finite square well, which can be found in any
undergraduate textbook on quantum mechanics. It can be shown that there always exists at
least one confined state. The full solution must of course also include the Bloch function
Un (r), and it is convenient to define the normalization such that the square of both functions
on the right-hand side each separately integrates to unity over all space. We therefore have
√
ψ(r) = V ξ1D (r)Un (r) , (11.36)

with V the volume of the crystal. The energy eigenvalues of the states defined in
Eq. (11.35) are
2 2
E(kx , ky , nz) = V0 + (k + ky2 ) + Enz . (11.37)
2m∗ x
372 Solid-state quantum information carriers

The Enz represent the discrete energy eigenvalues of the finite square well problem and V0
is the energy at the band extremum. Modulation in one direction therefore gives us a set of
‘sub-bands’, each corresponding to one value of nz, and each of which has a continuous set
of energy eigenvalues corresponding to different values of kx and ky .
To define a qubit, we require discrete levels, and to achieve this we must have confinement
in all three dimensions. We require a semiconductor with a small band gap to be completely
surrounded by a material of larger band gap. Such structures are routinely produced and are
called ‘quantum dots’. The general solutions of the Schrödinger equation become:
√
ψ(r) = V ξ3D (r)Un (r) , (11.38)

where ξ3D (r) is now a function that describes completely localized states. It usually varies
more slowly than Un (r), and is called the ‘envelope function’.2
The finite square model is awkward to solve in three dimensions: a potential function
describing such a box cannot be written as a sum of three potentials describing the variation
in each spatial dimension, and so the Schrödinger equation cannot be solved using the
separating of variables technique. A harmonic potential is often employed instead, since it
can be written in separable form.
The discrete energy level structure of a quantum dot can be tuned in several ways, and
such nanostructures are therefore often termed ‘artificial atoms’. Different materials alter the
sizes of the confinement potential, and shape and size can also be varied. Such tunability is
useful for a variety of applications, for example in quantum-dot lasers. It also makes them
extremely versatile candidate materials for quantum information processing technology,
including for optical quantum computing. In the next section we explore the consequences
of the electronic structure of quantum dots for their optical properties.

11.1.6 Optical selection rules

An electron in a valence state can be promoted across the band gap to a conduction state
by absorption of an optical field. However, certain selection rules apply, which limit the
number of possible transitions, and we will calculate them here.
In Chapter 7, we derived a Hamiltonian for an interaction of a two-level atom and a
classical field. In a basis of the two-atom states |g and |e we found

 ω − ω0 2eE0 (reg · ǫ)∗ /

H(t) = , (11.39)
2 2eE0 (reg · ǫ)/ ω0 − ω

where E0 , ǫ, and ω are the amplitude, polarization, and frequency of the field, respectively.
The frequency of the atomic transition is denoted by ω0 , and reg is the transition dipole
matrix element between the two-atom states. In order to calculate optical selection rules

2 The argument we have described is quite simplistic, since we have completely decoupled the periodic part
of the wavefunction from the envelope function. This is an approximation, called the ‘envelope-function
approximation’. For a detailed discussion see Burt (1999).
373 11.1 Basic concepts of solid-state systems

for our quantum-dot system, we must in principle evaluate the transition dipole between
many-electron states of the form Eq. (11.1). However, it turns out that all the electrons
that are not involved in the transition do not enter the calculation; they have the same
states before and after the transition, so those parts of the many-body wavefunction do not
affect the transition matrix elements. We assume that the electron involved in the transition
has a wavefunction given by Eq. (11.36) and we will calculate interband transition matrix
elements, since these typically correspond to optical frequencies. Denoting the interband
transition dipole operators as rcv , we have

rcv = V dr ξc∗ (r)Uc∗ (r) r ξv (r)Uv (r) . (11.40)
space

Using the Wannier functions defined earlier, we can write

1 
Up ≡ √ φp (r + Ti ) , (11.41)
N i
√
where p = c, v, and N is the number of unit cells in the crystal. The 1/ N factor is included
so that the Wannier functions are properly normalized.
Next, rewrite Eq. (11.40) as

rcv = V dr ξc∗ (r)φc∗ (r + Ti ) r ξv (r)φv (r + Ti ) , (11.42)
i space

where V is the unit cell volume. Hence


r cv = V dr ξc∗ (r − Ti )φc∗ (r)(r − Ti )ξv (r − Ti )φv (r) . (11.43)
i space

The functions φp are defined only within the unit cell centred on r = 0, and each integral can
therefore be restricted to this cell. Furthermore, we can assume that our envelope functions
ξp (r) vary slowly over each unit cell, and can be replaced by their average value. Therefore
 
∗
rcv = V ξc,i ξv ,i φc∗ (r)(r − Ti )φv (r)dr (11.44)
i cell

where the ξi now represent the average values of the envelope functions over cell i. Since φc
and φv come from different bands, they are orthogonal to each other, which means, finally,
that 
r cv = tcv dr ξc∗ (r)ξv (r) . (11.45)
space
Here we have defined the function

tcv = dr φc∗ (r) r φv (r) , (11.46)
cell

which depends only on the periodic part of the wavefunctions.

 374 Solid-state quantum information carriers

Table 11.1. Selection rules for valence and conduction band transitions.

Valence Jz Conduction Jz ǫL ǫR

3/2 1/2 0 r
3/2 −1/2 0 0
−3/2 1/2 0 0
−3/2 −1/2 ir 0
1/2 1/2 0 0√
1/2 −1/2 0 ir/ 3
√
−1/2 1/2 r/ 3 0
−1/2 −1/2 0 0

11.1.7 Selection rules in quantum dots

The easiest way of showing how selection rules arise in quantum dots is by constructing
an example. Let us suppose that we have circularly √ polarized light propagating in the z
direction. Its polarization vector is ǫ R = (x̂ − iŷ)/  2. If the frequency of this optical
 field
is tuned to the transition between the valence state  32 , 32 v and the conduction state  12 , 21 c ,
the field creates an electron in the conduction band, and leaves a hole in the valence band.
For this transition tcv becomes

    1  
tcv  23 , 32 v →  12 , 12 c = √ rpx x̂ + irpy ŷ (11.47)
2

with
 
 
ri =  φi∗ (r) r φs (r) dr , (11.48)
cell

for i ∈ {px , py , pz }. Using the symmetry of the p states as before means that rpx = rpy =
   
rpz ≡ r. We therefore find that ǫ R · tcv ( 32 , 32 v →  12 , 12 c ) = r.
If we had instead used left-handed circularly polarized light ǫ L , the coupling matrix
element of these two states would have been zero. We can think of this as a consequence
of conservation of angular momentum: ǫ L and ǫ R polarized light have angular momentum
values of +1 and −1, respectively. An electron in a Jz = 32 state must lose one unit of
angular momentum to be promoted into a Jz = 12 state, and it can do this only by combining
with ǫ R light. We can also conclude that it is impossible to promote the Jz = 23 electron to
the Jz = − 21 conduction band state, at least up to the dipole approximation. Using the same
method allows us to calculate all of the matrix elements between valence and conduction
band states. These are summarized in Table 11.1 and Fig. 11.4.
 375 11.2 Definition and optical manipulation of solid-state qubits

Fig. 11.4. Schematic drawing showing the allowed transitions between electronic states in a semiconductor
quantum dot whose symmetry axis is along z. Transitions allowed in L and R circularly polarized
light are shown.

11.2 Definition and optical manipulation of solid-state qubits

Having discussed in some detail the character of electronic states in solid-state nanostruc-
tures and their optical transition selection rules, we now discuss the possible representations
of a qubit in such systems. In this section we consider excitonic qubits and spin qubits in
quantum dots, and spin qubits in crystal defects.

11.2.1 Exciton qubits

An obvious way of representing one of the two-qubit basis states is to use the ground
state of a quantum dot, where all the valence states are full and all the conduction states
empty. A second, excited state must then be found to complete the qubit basis. The simplest
optical implementation is to take the state that results when an electron is promoted from
one of the highest-lying valence states (which usually correspond to Jz = ± 32 ) to one of
the lowest-lying conduction states. A useful way of describing this excited state is as a
composite particle, the ‘exciton’, consisting of an extra conduction electron and a missing
valence electron (i.e., the hole). Remembering that the hole has opposite spin to the missing
electron, we can select the spin of the exciton by choosing the polarization of the light we
use, as shown in Fig. 11.4. Light propagating in the z direction with polarization ǫ L or ǫ R
produces an exciton with net Jz = 1 or −1, respectively.
Exciton qubits can be manipulated using pulsed  lasers.
 As an example,
 let us consider a
qubit defined by |0 , the ground state and |1 ≡  12 , 21 c,e ⊗  32 , − 32 v,h where we have now
376 Solid-state quantum information carriers

added the labels e and h to denote the electron and the hole. The laser is resonantly tuned
to the transition and is ǫ R polarized. Let us also assume for generality that it has an extra
fixed phase of θ and that the quantum dot lies in the z = 0 plane. The field acting on the
quantum dot is then:

E = E0 ǫ exp(i[ωt + θ ]) + E0 ǫ ∗ exp(−i[ωt + θ ]) . (11.49)

After moving to the rotating frame and making the rotating-wave approximation as before,
we find our single-qubit Hamiltonian:
 
H = eE0 r e−iθ |0 1| + eiθ |1 0| . (11.50)
√
The eigenstates are (|0 ± eiθ |1 )/ 2, with energies ±eE0 r. The natural evolution of an
arbitrary state is therefore a rotation about an axis in the xy plane of the Bloch sphere with
azimuthal angle θ , at the Rabi frequency  = 2eE0 r/. If the laser is pulsed for a time
τ the total angle of rotation is $R = τ . This angle could be varied in the laboratory by
changing τ , but in practice it is easier to change the intensity of the pulse, therefore altering
. The value of θ can also be varied, and by combining two independent rotations any
single-qubit manipulation can be executed (see Section 5.1).

11.2.2 Electron spin

Exciton qubits are straightforward to define and easy to manipulate. However, they suffer
from some serious drawbacks. In particular, they can decay through the same mechanism
they were created by: the emission of a photon. The uncontrolled process can be devastating
when it comes to preserving quantum information. For example, the coherence times of
excitons in a InAs/GaAs system is only about 600 ps (see Borri et al. [2001]). Therefore,
an alternative qubit representation is often called for.
The most successful of these to date is the electron spin. A single quantum dot can have an
extra electron introduced into it, usually by growing a diode structure around the quantum
dot. Under appropriate bias conditions, this results in a movement of the Fermi energy such
that a single extra electron is introduced to the lowest-lying conduction state. This extra
occupied state means that the quantum-dot system as a whole now has a net spin Jz = ± 21 ,
and therefore constitutes a well-defined qubit. The most severe decoherence mechanism
for the electron spin in the InAs/GaAs structure is usually the interaction with the nuclear
spins of the atoms constituting the crystal, which is much weaker than the exciton–photon
interaction. The electron spin then has a much longer coherence time than an exciton,
typically over one microsecond (see for example Greilich et al., 2006).
Single-qubit operations are a little less obvious to implement for this spin qubit. We could
appeal to electron spin resonance methods to provide us with a direct way of performing
the required manipulations. Applying a controlled microwave pulse that is resonant with
the difference in the energies of the spin eigenstates in a magnetic field allows controlled
rotations in exactly the same way as light does with exciton qubits. However, such manip-
ulations tend to be much slower than optical methods, and any advantage gained in going
 377 11.2 Definition and optical manipulation of solid-state qubits

Fig. 11.5. The Pauli blocking effect. A qubit is defined by the spin of an electron in the conduction state of a
quantum dot. When the structure is illuminated with resonant ǫ L light, a trion can only be created
from the qubit |1 state. In this figure, the valence-state angular momentum labels refer to the
spin of an electron state, and not the hole created when the electron is removed.

to a long-lived species may be lost. Fortunately, we can couple an optical field to the spin
degree of freedom, using the ‘Pauli blocking
 1 effect’,
 which we will now discuss.
 1
Consider a spin qubit in state |0 ≡ 2 , − 2 c,e that is illuminated with ǫ L polarized
light with the correct energy to create a heavy-hole exciton in the quantum dot.  Angular-

momentum conservation dictates that the only exciton that could be created is  21 , − 12 c,e ⊗
3 3
 ,
2 2 v ,h. However, our spin qubit is already occupying the state | 1 , − 1 c,e , and Pauli’s
2 2
exclusion
 principle
 therefore forbids this possibility. On the other hand, if the qubit state is
|1 ≡  21 , 21 c,e the exciton can be created, and together with the qubit forms a ‘trion state’
|Th , consisting of two electrons and one heavy hole. This is shown in Fig. 11.5.
Using the derivation of Eq. (11.50) for guidance, this behaviour can be captured through
the three-state Hamiltonian (after transforming to the frame rotating with the frequency of
the qubit–trion transition):
  −iθ 
H= e |1 Th | + eiθ |Th 1| . (11.51)
2
The spin selective trion creation can then be exploited to give an arbitrary phase gate on
the qubit. If our initial state is |ψ = α |1 + β |0 , and we apply a laser pulse for a time
τ = π/, the result is the state |ψ(τ ) = −ieiθ α |Th + β |0 . This kind of pulse, where
all the population in one state is completely transferred onto another, is called a π pulse.
Applying another such pulse with a different phase θ ′ completes the cycle back into the
′
computational basis states, giving the state |ψ(2τ ) = −ei(θ −θ ) α |1 + β |0 .

Exercise 11.2: Verify that the above sequence of two π/2 pulses with different phases θ
and θ ′ allows any Z-rotation of the spin qubit.

The other required Bloch-sphere rotation presents more of a challenge. The trick of
exciting the system from one of the qubit states into a higher level and then back again will
always preserve the populations of the two-qubit states, and so can never do more than a
Z-rotation. In order to move population between levels optically, the two-qubit states have
to be coupled indirectly through the trion level, i.e., Raman-type transitions must be used.
 378 Solid-state quantum information carriers

Table 11.2. Selection rules for transition between valence band states and conduction band states using
linearly polarized light with polarization axis along the symmetry axis of the crystal z

Valence Jz Conduction Jz Matrix Element

√
1/2 1/2 −i 2/3r
1/2 −1/2 0
−1/2 1/2 0
√
−1/2 −1/2 2/3r

In the picture we have presented, it is impossible to couple either of the heavy-hole states to
both possible electron-spin states optically, since one of these transitions will always involve
an angular-momentum change of two units, which cannot be carried by photon polarization.
However, light-hole trions, consisting of two electrons and a light-hole, present a viable
alternative. The hole can have spin up or down and therefore we denote the two possible
↑ ↓
light-hole trion states as |Tl and |Tl . We already know that using circularly polarized
light creates an exciton of particular spin. If we combine equal components of left and right
circularly polarized light (making horizontal polarization, for example), then |0 couples to
|Tl↑ and |1 couples to |Tl↓ .
We can complete a pair of Raman transitions by providing a laser that can couple the
other spin state to each trion, and we can do this using z polarized light. Referring back to
the decomposition of light holes into the angular-momentum eigenstates, Eq. (11.25), it is
straightforward to find the matrix elements for z polarized light for the light-hole excitons,
and these are summarized in Table 11.2.
√
Let us absorb the 2/3r factors, together with the electric field strength, into a single
parameter that describes the exciton–laser coupling . We also include the horizontally
polarized component of coupling strength Ŵ to our light field. Assuming that the laser is
detuned by an amount from resonance, and after moving to the rotating frame and making
the rotating-wave approximation, we obtain:
↑ ↓ ↓ ↑
H = Ŵ (|0 Tl | + i |1 Tl |) + (−i |0 Tl | + |1 Tl |)
↓ ↓ ↑ ↑
+ (|Tl Tl | + |Tl Tl |) + H.c. . (11.52)
2
Exercise 11.3: Assuming that Ŵ ≪ and ≪ and using second-order degenerate
perturbation theory show that the dynamics of the spin qubit can be represented by the
effective Hamiltonian:
2 − Ŵ2 2Ŵ
Heff = (|0 0| − |1 1|) − (|0 1| + |1 0|) . (11.53)
√
If Ŵ = then the eigenstates are approximately (|0 ± |1 ) / 2, with eigenvalues
±2 Ŵ/ . The evolution of the qubit is therefore an X -rotation in the Bloch sphere, with
a frequency 4 Ŵ/ . By varying the polarization and intensity of the light fields it is then
379 11.2 Definition and optical manipulation of solid-state qubits

possible to achieve any single-qubit rotation, satisfying one of the requirements for universal
quantum computing. In Section 11.3 we will show how to complete the universal gate set
by exploiting interactions between qubits to perform two-qubit entangling gates.
Finally in this section we briefly mention that spin-selective optical transitions can be
used for optical spin readout. The principle is illustrated as follows. If an ǫ L optical π pulse
is applied to a qubit in state α |1 + β |0 , then we know that we achieve the superposition
α |Th +β |0 . If we now simply leave the system, there is an |α|2 probability that it will emit
a photon. If we can detect this photon, we have performed a projective measurement of the
qubit, with no photon detection corresponding to a projection into the |0 state. This works
only with perfect detectors, but we can apply another π pulse after waiting for the first decay,
and this gives us another shot at detection, improving the measurement fidelity. In fact, we
can keep on doing this and supply a train of π pulses to improve the fidelity arbitrarily
(assuming no other effects such as detector dark counts). Examples of experiments where
spin readout has been achieved using optical techniques in quantum dots are Atatüre et al.
(2007) and Berezovsky et al. (2008) .

11.2.3 Crystal defects

Our discussion of optical readout leads naturally to a discussion of another very important
class of solid-state qubit implementation: the crystal defect. There are a myriad different
types of defect in crystals. The simplest examples include single-atom substitutions within
the lattice, extra atoms that position themselves at interstitial sites in the lattice, and missing
atoms or ‘vacancies’. However, one defect in particular has caught the attention of quantum
information scientists in recent years, due to its exceptional spin and optical properties. It
is the NV− centre in diamond. It consists of two imperfections that lie side by side in the
lattice. One of the carbon atoms of the lattice is replaced by a single nitrogen atom, and
next to it is a vacant site. The structure is shown in Fig. 11.6.
The NV− centre has six valence electrons: five from the nitrogen and a single extra
electron that gives the centre its overall negative charge. Two of these electrons are imme-
diately taken up by filling the two 2s orbitals in the nitrogen atom. This leaves four electrons,
three of which associate themselves with the three carbon atoms nearest the vacancy. The
remaining electron then goes into a singlet with one of the carbon electrons, leaving two
unpaired spins which line up as a triplet, by Hund’s rules. There are of course three possible
singlet pairings and the lowest energy configuration becomes a superposition of all three.
Since each component in the superposition is itself a triplet, the ground-state superposition
remains a triplet.
Excited states are a singlet pairing of the two unpaired electrons, and other orthogonal
superpositions of the unpaired triplet states. The level structure is sketched in Fig. 11.7.
The ground level has a so-called A character in group notation,3 and as mentioned above

3 Crystallographers use group theory to characterize crystals and defect structures; for a discussion of the the-
ory and terminology see Atkins and Friedman (2005), and Kuzmany (1998). The NV− has C3v point group
symmetry. The symmetries of the six orbitals in the lowest energy configuration are usually denoted by a21 a′2 2
1e .
 380 Solid-state quantum information carriers

Fig. 11.6. The crystal structure of the NV− centre in diamond.

Fig. 11.7. The energy-level structure of a single NV− centre. The exact structure still causes controversy, but
most of the features in this scheme are accepted. See Rogers et al. (2008) for more details.

is a triplet with S = 1. A corresponding A singlet lies somewhat higher in energy. This

triplet is split by the crystal field into a degenerate doublet (corresponding to the ms = ±1
Zeeman sublevels), and a single state (corresponding to the ms = 0 sublevel). When linear
polarized light is applied to the system with an energy greater than 1.95 eV (corresponding
to a wavelength less than 637 nm), electrons can be promoted to the 3E manifold. The

The collection of single electron levels in the NV− centre then gives us combined states with overall symmetry
3A , 1A , and 1E . The next lowest energy configuration of a2 a′ e3 provides combined states with symmetry
2 1 1 1 1
representation 3E and 1E.
381 11.3 Interactions in solid-state qubit systems

structure of this set of energy levels is quite complex and not all that well understood; in
particular, there are vibronic levels associated with both the 3E and the 3A which complicate
the structure. However, experimental evidence suggests that electrons promoted to the 3E
level decay quickly to the lowest level in that manifold and, importantly, after this series of
transitions have the same spin as they had when they were in the ground level. The spin-
preserving optical transition is the essential feature that makes the NV− centre so attractive
as a solid-state qubit.
In order to define a qubit, we need to find two computational basis states |0 and |1 in
the NV− centre. One of the qubit states can be chosen as ms = 0. The second state can be
chosen as either ms = 1 or ms = −1. However, these states are degenerate, which may
cause addressability problems. To remove the degeneracy, a magnetic field is often applied
to the centre in the z direction, which splits the ms = ±1 doublet. Then one of these together
with the ms = 0 state forms the qubit. Initialization proceeds by optical pumping. Spin is
preserved on excitation, but not always when the system decays back to the ground state.
In particular, there is a small probability that the ms = ±1 state will decay via the singlet
levels to the ms = 0 state in a so-called intersystem crossing. This is depicted as the dotted
line in Fig. 11.7; the lowest singlet level is long lived and metastable. Pumping for long
enough can lead to a spin polarization beyond 80%. See Jelezko and Wrachtrup (2006) for
a more detailed discussion.
The asymmetric intersystem crossing also provides a mechanism for optical spin readout.
Since there is a strong possibility that electrons in ms = ±1 are ‘shelved’ in the singlet state
soon after excitation, the fluorescence signal from the ms = 0 state is around three orders
of magnitude larger than for the ms = ±1 state, which makes the NV− system perfect for
spin readout, and for observing optically detected magnetic resonance. Perhaps the most
promising method for scaling up the NV− centre qubit to many qubits is to use distributed
quantum computing, which we will return to in Section 11.5.

11.3 Interactions in solid-state qubit systems

Controlled interactions between quantum bits lead to the possibility of two-qubit gate oper-
ations. In this section, we will describe two of the principal interactions that can exist
between solid-state qubits: exciton–exciton and spin–spin coupling. Later, in Section 11.4
we will show that both of these can be exploited to generate quantum entanglement using
only optical control.

11.3.1 Exciton–exciton interactions

Many solid-state optical implementations of quantum gates exploit the interactions between
exciton-like states in some way. There are several different mechanisms that can be used,
and here we will discuss two of the most important: the static dipole–dipole interaction and
the transition dipole–dipole or ‘Förster coupling’.
 382 Solid-state quantum information carriers

Static dipole–dipole interaction

An exciton consists of both a negative charge (the conduction-state electron) and a positive
charge (the valence-state hole). If for some reason the electron and hole densities are not
symmetrically distributed with respect to each other, a dipole moment can result. Since the
spatial wavefunction of the hole must by definition be identical to the wavefunction of the
missing electron, we can write this dipole moment as
 
p = −e dr |ξc (r)Uc (r)|2 r + e dr |ξv (r)Uv (r)|2 r , (11.54)
space space

where we have made use of the envelope-function forms for the two wavefunctions. Since
the parity of the Bloch functions is well defined, we can use a procedure similar to the one
that led to Eq. (11.45) to simplify this expression
  
p = −e dr |ξc (r)|2 − |ξv (r)|2 r . (11.55)
space

There will be a finite dipole as long as the electron and hole are not centred at the same
position within the nanostructure. This can occur naturally in some systems, or can be
induced in others by applying an electric field to separate the electron and hole. If two
neighbouring quantum dots A and B each have an exciton with a dipole moment, there is a
resulting energy shift called the ‘bi-exciton shift’, due to the dipole–dipole interaction. It is
given by
1 3
VXX = 3
pA · pB − 2 (pA · r)(pB · r) , (11.56)
4πǫ0 ǫr R R
where R is the distance between the two nanostructures, as shown in Fig. 11.8. Higher-order
contributions, such as dipole–quadrupole, quadrupole–quadrupole, etc., are small as long
as R is larger than the spatial dimensions of the nanostructures. For quantum dots spaced
by only a few nanometres, VXX can be on the order of a few meV.

Fig. 11.8. (a) The static exciton dipole–dipole interaction relies on the different spatial envelope functions of
the electron (light shading) and hole (dark shading). (b) The transition dipole–dipole or Förster
interaction relies on strong coupling to the electromagnetic field, which needs overlap between
the electron and hole. The two particles are depicted here as perfectly overlapping (grey shading).
383 11.3 Interactions in solid-state qubit systems

Transition dipole–dipole
This interaction occurs when an exciton couples strongly to an optical field. It is possible
for an exciton on one quantum dot to emit a photon, thereby decaying to the ground state,
and for the photon to be reabsorbed by a neighbouring dot. The dominant interaction of this
type for closely spaced dots has an intermediate ‘virtual photon’.
The matrix element can be calculated using the Coulomb operator, which couples the
two quantum dots together via exchange of virtual photons:
 
e2 1
VF = drA drB ψc∗ (rA )ψv∗ (rB ) ψv (rA )ψc (rB ) , (11.57)
4πǫ0 ǫr r + rA − rB

where the labels rA and rB represent the position coordinates of the electrons on dots A and
B with respect to the centres of those two dots, respectively, and r is the vector connecting
the two centres. The Coulomb operator can be expanded in a Taylor series, and the lowest
non-zero term is of dipole–dipole form:

e2 3
VF = rcv, A · rcv, B − (rcv, A · r)(rcv, B · r) . (11.58)
4πǫ0 ǫr R3 R2

This time, however, the relevant dipole operators are the transition dipoles rather than the
static dipoles. That is: 
rcv, A = drA ψc∗ (rA ) rA ψv (rA ) (11.59)

with a similar expression for rcv, B . These transition dipoles are identical to the ones we found
previously in Eq. (11.45) for the coupling of an optical field to a single exciton. We showed
there that the dipole depends on two factors: first, the overlap of the envelope functions,
and second the dipolar coupling of the Wannier functions for valence and conduction states.
Under optimized conditions the Förster coupling can be as large as one meV.
The conditions that are needed for strong static dipole–dipole coupling are quite different
from those needed for strong transition dipole–dipole coupling. For the former we need the
electron and hole to be well separated, whereas the latter requires a large overlap between the
envelope functions of the two. It is possible to move between these two different scenarios
by choosing the right materials, or by applying an electric field to the sample. We will
see in Section 11.4 how each type can be manipulated to create two-qubit gates with the
entangling power needed for universal quantum computing.

11.3.2 Spin interactions

As we saw in Section 11.2, the electron spin is a very promising representation of a qubit in
the solid state. We have so far discussed how spins can be manipulated optically, and we will
see in the next section that interactions between optical excitations can give rise to indirect,
controlled, spin–spin interactions. However, direct interactions can provide another way to
create entangled states between spins, and can be controlled optically.
384 Solid-state quantum information carriers

For the examples we will discuss later in the next section, we need to introduce only one
type of spin coupling: exchange coupling. This coupling is the electrostatic interaction that
arises because the combined wavefunction of two electrons must be antisymmetric under the
exchange of the two particles. This means that the symmetries of the spatial and spin parts
of the wavefunction are linked together. If the two electrons have single-electron spatial
wavefunctions that overlap, the exchange symmetry changes the energy of the state – and
therefore the symmetric and antisymmetric spin wavefunctions also have different energies.
This is expressed mathematically by the Heisenberg Hamiltonian

HJ = J12 σ 1 · σ 2 . (11.60)

The σ j are the spin operators4 and J12 denotes the strength of the exchange interaction.
Using the spin qubit notation defined in Chapter 2, i.e., σz |0 = Z |0 = |0 and
σz |1 = Z |1 = − |1 , we find that the eigenstates of the √ Heisenberg Hamiltonian are
arranged into a non-degenerate singlet state (|01√− |10 )/ 2 with eigenvalue −3J12 and
three degenerate triplet states, {(|10 + |01 )/ 2, |00 , |11 } with eigenvalue J12 . For
more details on the exchange coupling and other possible interaction mechanisms we refer
the reader to Ashcroft and Mermin (1976).

11.4 Entangling two-qubit operations

Having introduced some of the different types of interaction that can be found in solid-state
systems, we will now discuss how to control these interactions such that they can provide
a universal two-qubit gate. We will start with the system that is easiest to control optically,
where the qubit is defined as the presence or absence of an exciton.

11.4.1 Optical gates with exciton qubits

As an example, let us consider our qubit |0 to be the ground state of a quantum dot. The
lowest-lying exciton will be our qubit |1 , and to remove the complications of spin let us
assume that we always use ǫ L polarized light to create a spin projection Jz = +1 heavy-hole
exciton. Assume that we have two closely spaced quantum dots that are not necessarily the
same size: each has its own exciton spectrum. Creating entanglement needs an interaction,
and in this example we assume that there is a static dipole–dipole coupling between the
two excitons, but negligible transition dipole–dipole interaction. The Hamiltonian for the
two-dot system then becomes:

H = ω1 |1 1| ⊗ Î + ω2 Î ⊗ |1 1| + VXX |11 11| . (11.61)

4 The spin operator is a vector of Pauli operators. In this chapter and the next, we will write σ for the Pauli
k
matrices of general spin systems. Only when the spin system is also the qubit do we employ the notation X , Y ,
and Z for the Pauli operators.
 385 11.4 Entangling two-qubit operations

Fig. 11.9. The energy levels of two exciton qubits associated with two adjacent quantum dots. Each dot has
a different exciton creation energy and so can be individually addressed. (a) There is no coupling
here, so a laser tuned to the |10 ↔ |11 transition will also be resonant with |00 ↔ |01 . (b) A
dipole–dipole interaction is now included so that the |10 ↔ |11 can be individually addressed.
The laser now has little or no effect on the |00 state.

Since the interaction is diagonal in the computational basis, we can immediately see that
the eigenstates are simply the computational basis states. Further, since the two dots have
different single exciton creation energies, all of the eigenstate transitions are likely to be
distinct, as is shown in Fig. 11.9. In particular, the two states |10 and |11 are separated
by an energy of ω2 − VXX . This transition is dipole-allowed and a laser on resonance will
cause Rabi flopping between these two levels.

Exercise 11.4: Show that a π pulse of a laser tuned to the |10 ↔ |11 transition effects
the universal two-qubit gate:
⎛ ⎞
1 0 0 0
⎜0 1 0 0⎟
U =⎜
⎝0 0
⎟. (11.62)
0 −i⎠
0 0 i 0

This is a cy gate, which is sometimes called a ‘controlled rotation gate’, and can be used to
create maximally entangled states.

In order to pick out the |10 ↔ |11 the laser bandwidth must be narrower than the
coupling energy VXX , and the cy gate can be executed in a time no shorter than ∼ /VXX .
For a VXX of a few meV, this results in a gating time of less than one picosecond.
Static dipole–dipole coupling is not the only interaction that allows the generation of an
entangled state. In fact, almost all interactions will do it. However, generation of entangle-
ment is not particularly useful unless it is controlled: it must be possible to modulate the
coupling such that, once created, the entangling component of the evolution can be stopped
and the entanglement preserved. This can be more difficult with non-diagonal interactions,
but it is still possible as we will now see.
Instead of the diagonal VXX coupling, we introduce the off-diagonal transition dipole–
dipole, or Förster coupling VF . Let us again consider two detuned quantum dots that are
always excited by ǫ L light. For two quantum dots stacked along the z direction, r = R ẑ, one
386 Solid-state quantum information carriers

can use the analysis of Section 11.3.1 to show that the Förster transfer preserves the spin of
the exciton as it transfers. We can therefore again restrict our Hamitonian to excitons with
spin +1, which are our qubit |1 states. Thus we obtain

H = ω1 |1 1| ⊗ Î + ω2 Î ⊗ |1 1| + VF (|10 01| + |10 01|). (11.63)

Two computational basis states remain eigenstates: |00 and |11 . The states |10 and
|01 are mixed by the interaction; the degree of mixing depends on the value of VF and the
detuning ν = ω1 − ω2 . The eigenstates are
θ θ
|ψ+ = cos |10 + sin |01 and (11.64)
2 2
θ θ
|ψ− = − sin |10 + cos |01 , (11.65)
2 2
which have energies
ω1 + ω2 (ν)2
λ± = ± + VF2 . (11.66)
2 4
The mixing angle θ is given by
2VF
θ = arctan . (11.67)
ν
We now look at some different parameter regimes. First, if VF ≪ ν, the eigenstates are
almost exactly the computational basis states |10 and |01 . In this case an unentangled state
will not evolve into an entangled one since the Förster coupling is effectively suppressed.
However, in the √ opposite limit, VF ≫ ν, the eigenstates become perfect Bell states:
(|10 ± |01 )/ 2. In this case, entanglement generation can occur, and we can understand
this as follows.
Since the |00 and |11 states are effectively uncoupled from all other states, we know
that any wavefunction amplitude associated with them will simply evolve in time by accu-
mulating a phase. The interesting dynamics happen in the subspace spanned by |10 and
|01 , which is two-dimensional and so can be represented on a Bloch sphere, as shown in
Fig. 11.10. Let the poles of the sphere be the two unentangled states |10 and |01 . Then
all points on the equator are equal superpositions of |10 and |01 : maximally entangled
states.
Imagine we initialize in state |10 and prepare the system in the VF ≪ ν regime;
nothing happens apart from our state accumulating a phase. Now imagine that we can
suddenly switch to the VF ≫ ν regime. The eigenstates are then the maximally entangled
states, represented by diametrically opposite points on the equator. The time evolution is
now a precession around the axis connecting the two eigenstates at a frequency given by
their energy difference 2VF . Therefore, our initial state starts to rotate towards the equator.
After a time τ = π/(4VF ) the state has reached the equator and is maximally entangled.
We can prevent it going any further by switching back to the VF ≪ ν regime, whence
the state simply evolves in the equatorial plane. This sequence of controlled entanglement
generation is equivalent to a universal two-qubit gate.
 387 11.4 Entangling two-qubit operations

Fig. 11.10. The Bloch-sphere representation of the two-dimensional subspace spanned by |01 and |10 . The
poles represent the two product states and the equator the set of maximally entangled states.
(a) In the limit VF ≪ ν the eigenstates (marked as grey circles) are at the poles, so the state
|10 (shown as an arrow) only accumulates an overall phase as time passes. (b) In the limit
VF ≫ ν the eigenstates are on the equator, so |10 rotates towards |01 .

How can we move between the two regimes so quickly? The most obvious strategy
might be to modulate VF in some way. For example, one could apply an electric field
to the quantum-dot structure that would have the effect of moving the electron and hole
part, thus reducing their transition dipole. However, only a moderate amount of modulation
can be achieved with reasonable fields, and this process is quite slow. An alternative is to
change ν. This can be done quickly and the modulation can be quite large if we exploit
the so-called AC Stark effect: if a detuned laser is applied to an excitonic transition with
a coupling strength  and a detuning δ, then second-order perturbation theory shows us
that this shifts the transition energy by an amount 2 /4δ. Excitons in adjacent quantum
dots typically have different oscillator strength and energy, and so different values of 
and δ; their energy shifts are therefore distinct and it is possible to tune the two excitons
in and out of resonance in this way (see Fig. 11.11). Exploiting the AC Stark shift is a
particularly promising idea since the control is provided by a laser that can be pulsed
straightforwardly on the timescales needed to create entanglement (typically picoseconds).
In Fig. 11.12 we show a numerical simulation in this two-dot system for an entangling laser
pulse of π/4VF ≈ 5 ns. The figure of merit we use is the entanglement of formation (see
Chapter 3).

11.4.2 Optical gates with spin qubits

Let us now turn to the longer-lived spin qubit, and see how we can use excitonic interactions
to create two-qubit entanglement in this system. It is possible to use both static and transition
dipole–dipole coupling to do this, but we will not go through the details of both; rather we
will focus on the latter. We refer to Pazy et al. (2003) for a discussion of static dipole–dipole
gates.
 388 Solid-state quantum information carriers

Fig. 11.11. The eigenstate energies of two Förster coupled quantum dots as a function of the coupling
strength of an applied laser field to the second dot (2 ). A constant ratio of couplings to the two
dots 1 / 2 = 0.55 is assumed. The two detunings are δ1 = 292.59 meV and δ2 = 290.59 meV.
VF = 0.1 meV. (Figure adapted from Nazir et al. 2004b.)

Using the results of previous sections we can write down the Hamiltonian for two Förster-
coupled quantum dots under illumination with ǫ L light. Remember that only heavy-hole
trions with spin +1 can be produced from the |1 state, and assume that the dots are
arranged such that the angular momentum of the trion is preserved when it is transferred. We
obtain:
 
H(t) = ωT |Th Th | ⊗ Î + Î ⊗ |Th Th |
 
+  cos ωl t |1 Th | ⊗ Î + |Th 1| ⊗ Î + Î ⊗ |1 Th | + Î ⊗ |Th 1|

+ VF (|1, Th Th , 1| + |Th , 1 1, Th |) , (11.68)

where ωT is the heavy-hole trion creation energy, ωl is the laser frequency.

Let us examine the eigenstate structure of this Hamiltonian, which now spans a nine-
dimensional Hilbert space. This space splits into four non-interacting subspaces: {|00 },
{|11 , |1, Th , |Th , 1 , |Th Th }, {|01 , |0, Th }, and {|10 , |Th , 0 }, which considerably sim-
plifies the analysis. Fig. 11.13 shows the spectrum of eigenstates in each of the four
subspaces with the laser turned off.
The figure shows that the coupling VF has no effect on the subspaces that contain |10 ,
|01 , and |00 . On the other hand, the two single-trion states contained in the |11 subspace √
have their degeneracy lifted by VF such that the eigenstates become (|1, Th ± |Th , 1 )/ 2.
 389 11.4 Entangling two-qubit operations

Fig. 11.12. Entanglement of formation of a system prepared in the product state |01 and subjected to a laser
pulse of duration 5 ns. The pulse is designed to induce AC Stark shifts in the two dots that tune
them into resonance, allowing the Förster coupling to induce resonant exciton transfer. The
evolution is stopped when the state is maximally entangled. EF is plotted for a range of exciton
decay times τ . (Figure adapted from Nazir et al. 2004b.)

Exercise 11.5: Assuming that the transition dipoles √ for the two quantum dots are equal,
show that the transition
√ |11 ↔ (|1, T h − |Th , 1 )/ 2 is dipole-forbidden, but that |11 ↔
(|1, Th + |Th , 1 )/ 2 is dipole-allowed.

The energy level shifts of the single-exciton states in the

√ |11 space mean that we can
uniquely address the transition |11 ↔ (|1, Th −|Th , 1 )/ 2 by choosing a laser frequency
ωl = ωT −VF , and this is the basis of our two-qubit gate. Starting out in a computational basis
state, then applying a 2π pulse with the tuned laser, we find the following transformation

|00 → |00 ,
|01 → |01 ,
|10 → |10 ,
|11 → − |11 . (11.69)

This is exactly a cz gate, performed on the spin qubits, using an interaction between excitons.
The time in which the gate can be performed is limited only by the size of VF : the laser
coupling strength must be weaker than VF to avoid unwanted excitations in the other
subspaces. For a typical system this would give a minimum gate time of a few picoseconds.
 390 Solid-state quantum information carriers

Fig. 11.13. Eigenstate spectrum for the four uncoupled subspaces that describe two Förster-coupled quantum
dots, each of which house a spin qubit. See Nazir et al. (2004b) for details.

Fig. 11.14. Diagram showing the mechanism for entangling two logical qubits 1 and 2. (a) The system
evolution starts when the central control bit is brought down optically from the excited level |e .
(b) The natural spin–spin dynamics in the system causes the three spins to become entangled with
one another. (c) After a characteristic ‘revival time’ τ the control returns to |0 and is immediately
shelved into |e to prevent further evolution. Figure adapted from Benjamin et al. (2004b).

11.4.3 Passivating spin–spin interactions optically

Another possible route to performing optical entangling gates with spin qubits is to take an
interacting chain of spins and to modulate the interaction using optics. This idea followed
that of Benjamin and Bose (2004). Imagine, for example, the three-spin chain depicted in
Fig. 11.14. The interactions between the neighbouring spins in the chain might be described
by the Heisenberg Hamiltonian in Eq. (11.60). If the spins are placed in a magnetic field,
391 11.4 Entangling two-qubit operations

they will have a Zeeman splitting Ej ,5 such that the overall Hamiltonian for the spin chain is:
3
 2

H= Ej σjZ + J σ j · σ j+1
j=1 j=1
3
 2
  
≡ Ej Z j + J Xj Xj+1 + Yj Yj+1 + Zj Zj+1 . (11.70)
j=1 j=1

An important property of a system described in this way is that it conserves total spin
projection. Therefore, if we define spin down as |0 and spin up as |1 for all three spins,
then if we initialize the system in |100 , say, it can only evolve into states with amplitudes
for |010 and |001 . This conservation law makes the analysis of the dynamics much
simpler, since we can treat the four subspaces corresponding to total spin − 23 , − 12 , 12 and 32
separately.
We proceed by defining two logical qubits at the ends of the short chain (i.e., spins 1 and 3).
The central qubit can now act as a ‘control’ species, which through suitable manipulation
can be used to induce an entangling gate on the two logical qubits. In addition, we can
arrange the interaction such that the control qubit does not become entangled with the
logical qubits. Each logical qubit can of course start in any state, but we can work out
the unitary evolution that must occur by taking each computational basis state in turn. For
simplicity, let us assume that the control qubit starts out in the state |0 , and that the magnetic
field, and therefore the Zeeman splitting of all the spins, is zero.
The initial logical state |00 L lives in the one-dimensional subspace that consists only
of |000 . This eigenstate has eigenvalue zero, so |00 L stays the same for all time. The
initial logical states |10 L and |01 L live in the same subspace, which has three component
basis states {|100 , |010 , |001 }. We calculate the evolution in this subspace in the next
exercises.

Exercise 11.6: Write out the Hamiltonian for this three-dimensional subspace
 − in a matrix
form and show that one of the eigenstates must have the form ψ ≡ (|100 −
√  +  −
|001 )/√2. Next, write out the Hamiltonian in the basis { ψ ψ , |φ } ≡ {(|100 +
√
|001 )/ 2, (|100 − |001 )/ 2, |010 }. Third, show therefore that the state |ψ+ returns
to itself after a time τ = π /3J , but with an accrued phase. The time τ is a ‘revival’ time,
at which point the control bit returns to state |0 and is unentangled with its neighbours.

Exercise 11.7: Demonstrate that the effective unitary gate that occurs between |10 L and
|01 L at time τ is

1 exp(iπ/3) − 1 exp(iπ/3) + 1
U2 = − . (11.71)
2 exp(iπ/3) + 1 exp(iπ/3) − 1

Finally, the initial state |11 L lives in another three-dimensional subspace, but
again revives to itself after the time τ , undergoing the transformation |11 L →

5 Zeeman splitting is the name given to the separation of spin energy levels that results from the application of a
magnetic field.
392 Solid-state quantum information carriers

− exp(−iπ/3) |11 L . The combined unitary evolution of all four logical qubits after the
time τ is a universal entangling gate.
We have so far ignored the most difficult challenge here: how do we stop the evolution
once the gate has been executed? In fact, a number of methods have been proposed for this,
including a direct modulation of the Zeeman splitting of the control spin, which can prevent
energy transfer between spins under certain conditions. A possibly simpler method is optical
control. If the central spin has an addressable optical transition between |0 and some higher
state |e , then we might resonantly excite that transition once the central qubit has revived;
a resonant π pulse promotes all population to |e , which in an ideal system would switch off
all spin–spin interactions. A potential problem with this kind of scheme is that spontaneous
emission could return the control back to its active spin states. However, there are more
sophisticated techniques which never require population of |e : optical control is used to
shift levels that are not populated, thus bringing the three spins out of resonance with one
another. For more details, see Benjamin et al. (2004).

11.4.4 Optical control of spin–spin exchange interactions

We have seen how exchange interactions can be passivated using an excitation to a higher-
lying energy level. Another approach, which has much in common with this, is to generate
an exchange interaction using excitation to a higher-lying level.
Certain defects in solids, for example bismuth or phosphorus in silicon, have well-
localized ground states |g , but somewhat more delocalized optically excited states |e .
This is a similar effect to that observed in the hydrogen atom, for example, whose more
energetic electronic states have a much larger mean distance from the nucleus. Imagine now
that one of these defects acts as a control species C, and is placed near two defects that act
as spin qubits Q and Q′ , and which do not have such properties. If the control is in state
|g there is no overlap with the nearby qubits, and from the argument of Section 11.3, there
is no exchange interaction. On the other hand, if the control is excited to |e an exchange
coupling would be expected. We would describe their Hamiltonian as
′
H = EQ σzQ + EC σzC + EQ′ σzQ (11.72)
 ′

+ JQC σ Q · σ C + JQ′ C σ Q · σ C + ω0 |e e| .

EQ represents the Zeeman splitting of spin Q (with similar notation for the other spins);
JQC (JQ′ C ) is the exchange interaction, assumed isotropic, between Q (Q′ ) and C’ which
only exists when C is in its excited state |e . ω0 is the optical excitation energy of C.
A gate operation can be performed in a similar way to that discussed in the previous
section. The control is initialized in some well-defined state and it is then optically excited,
turning the exchange coupling on. The system is now allowed to evolve naturally and after a
certain period of time the control returns to its initial state – at which point a second optical
pulse returns it to state |g . It can be shown that, for JQC = JQ′ C there are revival times at
which a non-trivial two-qubit gate operation is applied to Q and Q′ .
393 11.5 Scalability of solid-state devices

11.5 Scalability of solid-state devices

So far, we have focused our attention on small quantum devices consisting of at most two
qubits. This is of course far from what is needed for a useful quantum computer, even for
small-scale applications. It is therefore necessary to scale up to many qubits. This presents
quite a difficulty: it is not obvious how any of the ideas presented so far could be scaled.All of
our single-qubit operations require the individual addressing of a single nanostructure with a
laser, but the beam waist of a laser is at least on the order of an optical wavelength, i.e., a few
hundred nanometres. However, if there is to be a sizable qubit–qubit interaction, the spacing
between nanostructures must be only a few nanometres. Therefore individual addressing is
impossible using only spatial addressing methods. Some progress can be made by employing
optical fields with different frequencies to address individual nanostructures, although this
is inherently limited by the bandwidth of the optical pulses, especially if they are to be
delivered quickly enough to make viable quantum gates. A combination of both spatial and
spectral selectivity may provide a possible route to proper scalability. However, there are
some interesting alternatives to this strategy, which require a shift of design perspective.

11.5.1 Path erasure

One alternative route to scalability is to use the entangling operations based on path-erasure
techniques developed in Chapter 7. A spin qubit in a quantum dot maps perfectly onto
the double-heralding scheme. The basic requirement for such a scheme to work is for an
‘L’-type energy-level structure: two low-lying levels that define the qubit and a single level
lying at an optical energy above the first two. This higher level must couple only optically
to one of the two-qubit basis states. The higher-lying level for the spin qubit is a heavy-hole
trion, and the optical selectivity is provided by using a single resonant laser with circular
polarization. The NV− centre can also be used in this way. The qubit is the ms = 0 and
one of the ms = ±1 ground electron-spin states, split in a magnetic field. The combination
of magnetic and zero field splitting means that a spin-dependent optical transition can be
found using frequency tuning.

11.5.2 Global control

An alternative to measurement-based techniques is so-called ‘global control’. It is a natural

extension of the system described by the Hamiltonian in Eq. (11.70), but with a slightly
modified interaction term, and with a much longer chain of interacting spins. The global-
control technique was designed to circumvent the need for individual addressing, and it is
possible to perform universal quantum computing in a repeating chain of physical qubits
simply by applying control commands globally, i.e., to the entire chain simultaneously.
A variety of schemes have been proposed in this vein, and following Benjamin (2000)
we will focus here on one of the simpler ones that is most applicable to a chain of optically
394 Solid-state quantum information carriers

active solid-state nanostructures. The repeating unit of the chain is a pair of distinct qubits,
and we assume that these are excitons in two adjacent quantum dots, which have different
transition energies. The two will be labelled ‘A’ and ‘B’, and have energies ωA and ωB ,
respectively. This chain then repeats, forming an ‘ABABAB…’ structure. Suppose that two
adjacent spin systems are coupled via the Ising interaction, which is of the form σz1 σz2 . A
small ABA section of chain then has the Hamiltonian

H = ωA (Z1 + Z3 ) + ωB Z2 + J (Z1 Z2 + Z2 Z3 ) . (11.73)

If we now want to apply, say, a π pulse on the ‘B’ qubit, the frequency that our laser needs
to have is determined by the state of the neighbouring ‘A’ qubits. If both are in state |0 , the
required frequency is ωB + 2J ; if both are |1 it is ωB − 2J , and otherwise it is ωB . These
neighbour-dependent frequencies allow us to apply global update rules to all of the B qubits.
For example, we could get all of the ‘B’ qubits to flip (i.e., have an X operation applied to
them) as long as their neighbours had opposite spin orientations simply by applying a pulse
of frequency ωB .
The two spins at the ends of the chain are unique since they have only one neighbour, and
this can be used to feed an initial state onto the chain using a ‘shift register’ set of global
update instructions, as shown in Fig 11.15. The chain is initially cooled to the ground state
with all qubits in |1 . The far left end qubit can then be addressed using a laser of frequency
ωA − J , and any end-qubit superposition can be made with a suitable laser pulse. Let the
resulting state be

|ψ1 = (α |0 + β |1 ) ⊗ |1111 . . . = α |01111 . . . + β |11111 . . . . (11.74)

The state of the chain end spin can now be shifted along by applying two global pulses. The
first applies the rule ‘flip if your neighbours have opposite states to each other’ to all the B
spins, giving
|ψ = α |00111 . . . + β |11111 . . . . (11.75)
The second addresses the chain end spin once more, applying the rule ‘flip if your neighbour
is in state |0 ’, giving

|ψ = |1 ⊗ (α |0 + β |1 ) ⊗ |1111 . . . . (11.76)

This state is simply the initial state shifted onto the second qubit. Similarly, the information
can be shifted to the third qubit using two further flip pulses, one with frequency ωA and the
second with frequency ωB . Transfer to the fourth qubit then needs pulses at ωA , then ωB .
These last four pulses can then be repeated to move the information to the desired position
along the chain.
The clever trick we have just discussed gives the appearance of individual addressability,
even though in reality we can only uniquely address the chain ends. This is a very powerful
tool, which goes beyond simple state initialization. Using an encoding of four physical
qubits (P) per logical qubit (L), with |0 L ≡ |0011 P and |1 L ≡ |1100 P , Benjamin
showed that a universal set of quantum gates can be performed efficiently using just global
pulses of the type we have just discussed.
 395 11.6 References and further reading

Fig. 11.15. A chain of alternating qubit species ‘A’ (squares) and ‘B’ (circles) can serve as a universal
quantum computer. The topmost figure shows the initial state, with all qubits in the state |1
(dark grey). Applying appropriate pulses with frequency ωA − J allows one to prepare an arbitrary
state of the chain end species: the |0 component is shown in white. A series of two further global
pulses allows this state to be transferred to the adjacent ‘B’ qubit, and this process can be
repeated to prepare any initial state using only global pulses.

11.6 References and further reading

There are many good books on solid-state physics. For an introductory level book, we rec-
ommend Myers (1997) and for a more advanced treatment we refer to Ashcroft and Mermin
(1976). The optical properties of semiconductors are covered in Basu (1997) and quantum
heterostructures are discussed in Harrison (2005); the envelope-function approximation is
discussed in Burt (1999). For a comprehensive review of crystal defects, we refer to the
book by Stoneham (1975).
There are many schemes for quantum computing using excitons in quantum dots.
Selected papers include Biolatti et al. (2002), Troiani et al. (2000), and Lovett et al.
396 Solid-state quantum information carriers

(2003). Creating two-qubit entanglement using optical control of spin qubits has been
discussed by Pazy et al. (2003), Calarco et al. (2003), and Nazir et al. (2004b). Control
of spin–spin interactions using optics has, for example, been proposed by Stoneham et al.
(2003). Finally, global-control protocols were envisaged by Lloyd (1993) and developed by
Benjamin (2000).
12 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

Solid-state systems, by their very nature, have a vast number of different possible quantum
degrees of freedom. In Chapter 11, we saw that some of these degrees of freedom make good
qubits. However, there are plenty more which are less suitable, since they cannot easily be
localized and externally controlled. Once the qubit has been chosen, it is important to think
about how it interacts with the other, uncontrolled quantum excitations in its environment.
Such an interaction leads to unpredictable behaviour and can cause decoherence – the
irretrievable loss of quantum information from the qubit – and this will be the topic of this
chapter. The most obvious decoherence mechanism for any optical manipulation scheme
is the spontaneous emission of photons. The theory behind this follows analogously from
the theory we discussed in Chapter 7, with a suitable definition of a transition dipole for
the relevant transitions. However, solid-state systems bring with them lattice vibrations, or
phonons, which have no direct atomic analogue. We will therefore focus on phonons in
this chapter, first discussing how we model them, and second how they interact with the
electron-based qubit that we discussed in the last chapter. Later, we will see how this leads
to a loss of coherence, and how optical methods can be used to slow the rate of coherence
loss. Phonon interactions are complex and not easy to model exactly, but we will show that
with certain approximations very successful theories can be developed. In the last part of
the chapter we will discuss a particular phonon–electron system that can be solved exactly.

12.1 Phonons

Let us consider first the simplest system which captures the essential physics of lattice
vibrations: a uniform linear chain of N atoms. The atoms have a mass m and have equilibrium
positions that are spaced by a distance a. We label the displacement from equilibrium of
atom l by ul , and assume that nearest-neighbour atoms interact electrostatically (Fig. 12.1).
If we expand this interaction energy in a Taylor series in the displacement and keep terms
up to second order, we obtain the Hamiltonian:
 1 2 g
H= p + (ul − ul+1 )2 , (12.1)
2m l 2
l

where pl is the momentum operator conjugate to ul . Cutting off at second order is called
the ‘harmonic approximation’, and the ‘force constant’ g parameterizes the second-order
term in the expansion. The first-order term vanishes, since we assume that the net force on
the atoms at equilibrium is zero.
 398 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

Fig. 12.1. Schematic diagram illustrating the simple model of a one-dimensional chain of atoms. The solid
lines represent the equilibrium position of each atom, and the dashed lines the instantaneous
positions which are displaced from equilibrium.

It is straightforward to solve this Hamiltonian by transforming to the ‘normal modes’

of the chain; this removes the coupling between oscillators and allows one to recast the
problem in terms of independent modes. We define

1  −ikal
uk = √ e ul and (12.2)
N l
1  ikal
pk = √ e pl . (12.3)
N l

The allowed wave vectors are found by applying ‘periodic boundary conditions’, where
the N sites are imagined to be joined up in a circle.1 This leads to ul = ul+N , yielding
k = 2πn/Na. We then rewrite Eq. (12.1) as

1  
H= pk p−k + m2 ωk2 uk u−k , (12.4)
2m
k

with ωk2 = (4g/m) sin2 (ka/2).

Exercise 12.1: Show that the Hamiltonian in Eq. (12.4) is the normal mode expansion of
the Hamiltonian in Eq. (12.1).

Next, we quantize the normal modes by promoting the position and momentum variables
to operators ûk and p̂k . We can use the usual commutation relations of conjugate variables
to show that the operators

mωk i
âk = ûk + p̂−k and (12.5)
2 mωk

† mωk i
âk = ûk − p̂−k (12.6)
2 mωk

have the standard bosonic commutators

   
† † †
âk , âk ′ = δk ′ ,k and [âk , âk ′ ] = âk , âk ′ = 0 . (12.7)

1 See Ashcroft and Mermin (1976) for a detailed discussion of periodic boundary conditions.
399 12.1 Phonons

They allow us to write the Hamiltonian in the form

 † 1
H= ωk âk âk + . (12.8)
2
k

This is entirely analogous to the Hamiltonian we derived in Chapter 1 for photons in the
quantum theory of light. The main difference here is that the Hamiltonian describes a discrete
†
set of modes. We can therefore think of âk and âk as the annihilation and creation operators
for lattice vibrations. Each quantum of excitation in mode k has an energy ωk and is called
a phonon. More specifically it is an ‘acoustic phonon’.2 The eigenstates are products of the
equivalent of Fock states for phonons:

# (↠)n
|ψ = |n1 , n2 , ...., nN = √k |0 . (12.9)
k nk !

In three dimensions the theory is slightly more complicated, since neighbours in all direc-
tions must be taken into account. Our momenta and displacement operators therefore
become vectors and the Hamiltonian becomes:
1  ∗ 1
H= pl · p l + ul · gll ′ · ul ′ . (12.10)
2m 2 ′
l l,l

The ‘force constant’is now a tensor g, which accounts for the influence of each displacement
on all of the surrounding displacements. This equation looks pretty complicated, but we
can more or less follow the same prescription to solve it as before. First, we define some
normal modes that are characterized by a three-dimensional wave vector k:

1  −ik·Rl0
uk = √ e ul , (12.11)
N l
1  ik·Rl0
pk = √ e pl , (12.12)
N l

where Rl0 is the equilibrium position of atom l. Applying periodic boundary conditions
in three dimensions leads to allowed k vectors only within the first Brillouin zone of the
crystal (see Chapter 11). After some manipulation, we obtain

1 ∗
H= pk · pk + u∗k · g(k) · uk , (12.13)
2
k

where 
g(k) = grn eik·(Rn0 −Rr0 ) . (12.14)
n

2 The other kind of phonon is called an optical phonon, and can occur only when the repeating unit in a lattice
consists of more than one atom.
400 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

This expression is independent of the label r, since we assume that each atom is in the
same environment as every other atom, and we ignore edge effects. Also, g(k) does not
necessarily point in the same direction as the uk and so our Hamiltonian is not yet in the
diagonal form we desire. However, there are three directions in which the displacements
are in the same direction as g(k): they are the principal axes of the original g tensor. By
defining three axes of vibration λ along these directions, we do obtain the diagonal form
we need. Then the three-dimensional creation and annihilation operators are

mωkλ i
âkλ = ûkλ + p̂−kλ , (12.15)
2 mωkλ

† mωkλ i
âkλ = ûkλ − p̂−kλ , (12.16)
2 mωkλ

where ωkλ is the eigenenergy of the mode characterized by k and λ. The Hamiltonian then
takes the form:
 † 1
H= ωkλ âkλ âkλ + . (12.17)
2
k,λ

12.2 Electron–phonon coupling

Having established the Hamiltonian that describes the vibrations of the lattice, we must
now look at how phonons affect the coherence of qubits in solid-state environments. Let us
therefore think about how an electron in a solid responds when the lattice vibrates.
In the last chapter we used Bloch’s theorem to find the form of electron eigenstates in
the periodic potential of a regular array of atoms in a crystal. However, our model ignored
any movements in the atoms, which we must now consider. It is reasonable to expect that
the interaction between an electron at position r and an atom at position R depends only on
the distance between them. We therefore write for all the atoms and electrons in a crystal

Hea = V (rj − Rl ) . (12.18)
jl

Let us explicitly put in the atom equilibrium positions Rl0 , since we already know the elec-
tron solution to the resulting periodic potential. We will also assume that the displacements
from this equilibrium are small, so that we can expand in a Taylor series:

Hea = V (rj − Rl0 ) + ul · ∇V (rj − Rl0 ) + O(u2 ) . (12.19)
jl

The first term here is the periodic potential that appeared in the electron Hamiltonian we
studied in the last chapter, and whose eigenstates are Bloch wavefunctions. The phonons
couple to the electrons via the first derivative and the higher-order terms. Let us assume
401 12.2 Electron–phonon coupling

displacements small enough that we may take only the second term. The electron–phonon
interaction then becomes

Hep = ul · ∇V (rj − Rl0 ) . (12.20)
jl

The phonon states are given in terms of wave vectors, and it is therefore natural to take the
Fourier transform of the interaction function V
1 
V (r) = v(q)eiq·r . (12.21)
N q

The electron–phonon interaction then becomes

i  
Hep = v(q)eiq·rj q · ul e−iq·Rl0
N
qj l
i 
=√ v(q)eiq·rj q · uq . (12.22)
N qj

Since the electron–atom potential can have Fourier amplitudes anywhere, and not just inside
the first Brillouin zone, the vector q extends over all reciprocal space. However, we know
that uq is uniquely defined only within the first zone. Therefore, we translate those q lying
outside the first zone by the reciprocal lattice vector G, which brings it back inside the zone
to obtain a new wave vector k = q + G. We then find
i 
Hep = √ v(k + G)ei(k+G)·rj (k + G) · uk . (12.23)
N k,G,j

Referring again to the three principal polarization axes λ and writing the displacement
operator in terms of the creation and annihilation operators, Eq. (12.6), we find

  †
Hep = i v(k + G)ei(k+G)·rj (k + G) · ξ k+G,λ (âkλ + âkλ ) , (12.24)
2mN ωkλ
k,G,j,λ

where ξ k+G,λ is the polarization of the mode characterized by k + G and λ.

At the moment things look pretty complicated, but we will now make some simplifi-
cations. First, we assume that the electrons in the solid have an associated charge density
operator %(r).3 Using this, we can transform the sum over j above by an integral over r and
after integration obtain

  †
Hep = i v(k + G)(k + G) · ξ k+G,λ R(k + G)(âkλ + âkλ ) , (12.25)
2mN ωkλ
k,G,λ

3 %(r) represents the number of electrons per unit volume at each position r. If an electron with wavefunction
† †
ψj (r) has creation operator bj , then %(r) = jj′ ψj∗ (r)ψj′ (r)bj bj′ .
402 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

where R is the Fourier transform of %. It is customary to split up this expression by defining

a matrix element


Mq+G,λ = i v(k + G)(k + G) · ξ k+Gλ . (12.26)
2mN ωkλ

such that  †
Hep = Mq+G,λ R(k + G)(âkλ + âkλ ) . (12.27)
k,G,λ

This is the starting point for nearly all calculations of electron–phonon coupling. Differ-
ent forms for M are found in different regimes, but the general structure of the coupling
interaction is unchanged. Next, we consider a particular form of electron–phonon coupling.

12.2.1 Deformation potential coupling

Qubits in semiconductor quantum dots tend to be associated with low energy states close to
the band edge, that have relatively long wavelength when compared to the lattice spacing.
Such states will interact most strongly with small wave vector (i.e., long-wavelength) lattice
distortions, and we are therefore primarily concerned with calculating the matrix element
M in this limit. We therefore ignore all contributions from outside the first Brillouin zone,
setting G = 0.
There are several ways in which a strain on the crystal lattice can produce a change
in an electron energy. The strongest mechanism in the examples we will discuss in this
chapter (using GaAs as a model semiconductor material) is due to the inhomogeneous
displacement of lattice positions. This locally alters the band gap for electrons and gives a
position-dependent energy and is called ‘deformation potential coupling’.
For these long-wavelength interactions, it is possible to come up with a phenomenological
model rather than calculating the interaction strength from first principles. For deformation
potential coupling, we take the lowest-order approximation for the coupling potential v: we
assume it is a constant, D . Further, only longitudinal (L) excitations are important. Long-
wavelength transverse (T ) modes do not change the energy of short wave vector electrons
through inhomogeneous strain, since their effect averages. These approximations give an
interaction of the form
1
  2
†
Hep,D = iD R(k)|k|(âkL + âkL ) , (12.28)
2mN ωkL
k

where D can be measured in experiments, and is called the deformation potential coupling
constant.
There are other types of electron–phonon coupling. For example, in some crystals a
homogeneous strain can change the energy of an electron since it produces an electric field
through the ‘piezoelectric effect’.4 However, these other mechanisms are generally much

4 This can only happen in crystals that are non-centrosymmetric.

403 12.3 The master equation for electrons and phonons

weaker than deformation potential coupling and we will not consider them further here. We
refer to Ziman (2001) for more details.

12.2.2 Qubit–phonon coupling

What effect will the electron–phonon interaction have on the solid-state qubits we discussed
in Chapter 11? Since the phonons couple to the electron charge density, there will be no
direct interaction between an electron spin qubit and the lattice vibrations, since each spin
state has the same charge distribution.5 An exciton qubit does, however, have a different
charge configuration for the |0 and |1 states. Call the Fourier transforms of these R0q and
R1q . The charge-density operator can then be written, in the qubit Hilbert space

R(q) = R0q |0 0| + R1q |1 1| ,

R0q + R1q R0q − R1q
= (|0 0| + |1 1|) + (|0 0| − |1 1|). (12.29)
2 2
Since the first term is proportional to the identity, its only effect is a slight perturbation of
the phonon energies, and it has no effect on the qubit states. The exciton–phonon coupling
Hamiltonian may therefore be written as
 †
Hxp = Z gk (âk + âk ) , (12.30)
k

where we have dropped the label L for simplicity, and the exciton–phonon coupling
constant is

gk ≡ iD |k| (R0k − R1k ) . (12.31)
2mN ωkL
Eq. (12.30) is an interaction Hamiltonian in the form we first discussed in Chapter 7 in the
context of open quantum systems where our knowledge of the environment is limited. If the
electron–phonon coupling is weak, we can use the general methodology that we developed
in Section 7.3 and derive a master equation for our exciton qubit. This will allow us to
calculate qubit dynamics even when we have no knowledge of the phonon bath, and to
determine what sort of decoherence is caused by phonons.

12.3 The master equation for electrons and phonons

We would like to know what the effect of phonons is on an exciton qubit, and in particular
what effect phonons might have on a single-qubit gate operation. We therefore allow an
optical field to be applied to the qubit close to resonance. We know that the way to analyze

5 In fact, this is not always the case since spin–orbit coupling can change the charge distribution for different spin
states and therefore give rise to an electron–phonon coupling. However, this effect will be weak compared with
the phonon effects on exciton states, so we do not discuss it here.
404 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

such a situation is to move into a frame rotating with the optical field frequency and to make
the rotating-wave approximation. Allowing for the possibility of the field being detuned
from the qubit transition energy and using a Pauli matrix notation to describe the exciton
qubit, we obtain

HQ = ( Z + X ). (12.32)
2
2 is the detuning and 2 is the transition dipole coupling between the field and the qubit.
We have studied
√ this kind of Hamiltonian before in Chapter 7. Its energy eigenvalues are
± 2 W = ± 2 2 + 2 , with corresponding eigenvectors

θ θ
|+ = cos |0 + sin |1 ,
2 2
θ θ
|− = − sin |0 + cos |1 , (12.33)
2 2
where

θ = arctan , (12.34)

and 
W = 2 + 2 (12.35)
is the effective Rabi frequency. The exciton–phonon interaction Hamiltonian is unaffected
by the transformation into the rotating frame, so it still takes the form of Eq. (12.30).6 The
bare phonon Hamiltonian was found in Eq. (12.1) and its form tells us that the transformation
of the creation and annihilation operators of the phonons in the interaction picture is âk →
âk e−iωk t . In Chapter 7 we developed the general theory of open quantum systems. In
particular, we showed how to derive a master equation to describe the system dynamics in
the Born–Markov approximation. With reference to the result we obtained in Eq. (7.97),
we decompose the system operator Z in the interaction Hamiltonian into three parts
θ θ
− sin 2
ϒ0 (0) = (cos2 )(|+ +| − |− −|) , (12.36)
2 2
θ θ
ϒ−W (−W ) = −2 cos sin |+ −| , (12.37)
2 2
θ θ
ϒW (W ) = −2 cos sin |− +| . (12.38)
2 2
In all three cases the corresponding bath operator is the same, namely
 †
(t) = gk (âk e−iωk t + âk eiωk t ) , (12.39)
k

which has a correlation function given by

 *    +
1  ∞ † †
γ (ω) = 2 dt eiωt gk∗ âk e−iωk t + âk eiωk t gk′ âk′ + âk′ . (12.40)
 ′ 0
k,k

6 This can be verified by applying the general time-dependent unitary transformation, Eq. (7.19), to the combined
Hamiltonian HQ + Hxp .
405 12.3 The master equation for electrons and phonons

Assuming a thermal occupation of modes for the phonons and making use of the standard
boson commutation relations, we find7
 |gk |2  |gk |2
γ (ω) = π N (ωk ) δ(ω + ω k ) + π [N (ωk ) + 1] δ(ω − ωk ) , (12.41)
2 2
k k

where
1
N (ω) = (12.42)
exp(ω/kB T ) − 1
is the usual Bose–Einstein occupation number at temperature T .

Exercise 12.2: Using Eq. (12.40) calculate the correlation function γ (ω) in Eq. (12.41).

We can proceed further by defining the spectral density J (ω)

 |gk |2
J (ω) = 2π δ(ω − ωk ) . (12.43)
2
k

†
Using the fact that ϒW (W ) = ϒ−W (−W ), we obtain the following equation for the density
operator of the exciton qubit ρ:
 % &
†
ρ̇ = J (β) [N (β) + 1]D[ϒβ ]ρ + N (β)D[ϒβ ]ρ) . (12.44)
β∈{0,W }

where we have defined the dissipator

1 † 
† †
D[ϒβ ]ρ ≡ ϒβ ρϒβ − ϒβ ϒβ ρ + ρϒβ ϒβ . (12.45)
2
Eq. (12.44) is the master equation we have been looking for. There are two terms in the
sum. The first describes absorption of energy β from the bath, and the second describes
emission of energy β into the bath. The rate of both processes is proportional to the spectral
density at the energy β, i.e., to both the number of bath modes with an energy β and to the
ability of the system to couple to modes of that energy. Of course, the β = 0 term does not
correspond to any energy exchange but rather constitutes a ‘pure dephasing’ process.
The spectral-density function gives us all the information we need about the bath in order
to calculate system dynamics in the Born–Markov approximation. This is a rather powerful
result, especially when one considers the complexity of the problem at hand. In order to
give a little more insight into how it works, we calculate the spectral density for the specific
problem of deformation potential coupling of phonons to an exciton qubit.
First, we generalize Eq. (12.31) slightly, and allow the electron that is promoted when an
exciton is created to have different deformation potential coupling constants Dv and Dc ,
depending on whether it is in its ground (valence) state |0 or excited (conduction) state
|1 . In order to find the electron density Fourier transforms we must use a particular form

7 There are also Lamb shift terms (see Section 7.3), which are assumed to be small relative to the bare qubit
energy, and have been dropped.
406 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

for the conduction and valence wavefunctions, which reflect the confinement induced by
the quantum dot. The simplest choice is the ground solution of a harmonic potential
 
√ −3 r2
ψj (r) = (dj π ) 2 exp − 2 , (12.46)
2dj

where j = v, c denotes the valence or conduction states and the dj are constants that reflect
the typical extent of the valence and conduction wavefunctions. They can be different since
the two states are characterized by distinct effective masses. We therefore find that

dc2 q2 dv2 q2
Dv R0q − Dc R1q = Dc exp − − Dv exp − . (12.47)
4 4

By converting the sum over k to an integral and assuming a three-dimensional density of

phonon states,8 we find that

ω3  2 −ω2 /ωv2 2 −ω2 /ωc2 −ω 2 /ωcv

2

J (ω) = D e + D c e − 2D c D e . (12.48)
2πμcs5 v v

The low-energy phonons have a linear dispersion relation characterized by the sound √ veloc-
ity cs = ωk /|k| and we have defined three characteristic cut-off frequencies ωj = cs 2/dj
for j = c, v, and ωcv = 2cs / dv2 + dc2 . Here, μ is the mass density of the semiconductor
material.
The spectral density at ω = 0 is zero, and we can therefore drop this term in our master
equation, Eq. (12.44). We can conclude therefore that J (W ), a single value, completely
characterizes the rate of decoherence due to phonons in this system. Importantly, W can be
controlled and manipulated: it depends on the Rabi frequency and detuning, which can be
altered by changing the laser frequency and intensity. In the next section, we will use the
results derived here to show that we can control the decoherence rate for an exciton qubit
by altering some basic properties of the laser with which we drive the system.

12.4 Overcoming decoherence

12.4.1 Exploiting the spectral-density function

We can now ask the question: what will be the optimal strategy for performing an optical
quantum gate on this exciton qubit? To answer this question, consider Fig. 12.2, which is a
plot of the spectral density for a typical quantum dot. At low frequencies, the leading term
in J (ω) is proportional to ω3 , and if W is kept low the phonon decoherence mechanism
is ineffective. This parameter regime corresponds to a weak laser that is closely resonant

8 Since allowed wave vectors are evenly distributed in reciprocal space and each take up a reciprocal volume of
,
(2π)3 /V with V the sample volume, this amounts to k → (2π )−3 V dk.
 407 12.4 Overcoming decoherence

Fig. 12.2. The spectral-density function for an exciton qubit coupled to acoustic phonons through the
deformation potential. The parameters used in this calculation are typical for a GaAs quantum dot:
cs = 4.8 × 103 ms−1 , μ = 5300 kgm−3 , Dc = 14.6 eV, Dv = 4.8 eV, ωc = 3.135 ps−1 ,
ωv = 4.708 ps−1 . Figure adapted from Gauger et al. (2008).

Fig. 12.3. Rabi oscillations at zero temperature of an exciton qubit, for different Rabi frequencies. Phonon
decoherence gets worse at larger values of W , since the spectral density function increases
approximately as W 3 . Parameters typical of GaAs have been used in the simulation.

with the exciton transition. This is shown in Fig. 12.3, where Rabi oscillations of an exciton
qubit are shown for different values of W . The time axis has been suitably scaled, such that
the oscillations lie on top of each other. A Rabi oscillation is an example of a single-qubit
manipulation for the exciton, and even though an oscillation takes longer for a smaller
W , the loss of population per oscillation is reduced since the effect of phonons is greatly
suppressed.
 408 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

Fig. 12.4. Rabi oscillations of an exciton qubit, for different temperatures, at W = 0.1 ps−1 . A higher
temperature means a larger number of phonons are present and so decoherence gets worse.
Parameters typical of GaAs have been used in the simulation.

We have ignored the effect of spontaneous emission of photons in our analysis so far. A
slower gate-operation time means an increased probability of photon emission, so phonon
and photon decoherence processes are minimized in quite different regimes. They play
off against each other, but optimal values can be found in which their combined effect is
minimized.
A further consideration is temperature, and in Fig. 12.4 we display Rabi oscillations at a
constant driving for different temperatures. A higher temperature excites more phonons,
which leads to a more rapid loss of exciton coherence. In laboratory experiments the
temperature is often as low as 4 K and this effect is suppressed, even at lower driving
rates.
One may wonder whether an alternative strategy might be employed: to drive our system
very strongly indeed, beyond the cut-off frequencies for the phonon spectral function. We
would then again find very low decoherence rates in this model. However, our Markovian
master equation is no longer valid in this regime: higher-order effects become important
when the laser driving is strong. We will discuss such effects later in the chapter.

12.4.2 Phonon decoherence for optically controlled spin qubits

As we discussed in the last chapter, spontaneous emission of photons means that exciton
qubits will never be more than a test system. For scalable quantum computing, an optically
controlled spin qubit is a better candidate, and by making judicious choices of optical control
parameters we can mitigate the effect of phonons in this case, too.
Let us focus on the simplest problem of a single-qubit under optical control. As we
discussed in Section 11.2, a spin qubit with a higher optical trion level |Th can be described
by the Hamiltonian
 
H =  |1 Th | + eiθ |Th 1| , (12.49)
409 12.4 Overcoming decoherence

where we have set the relative phase factor to zero, and  is the usual coupling of the laser
to the (in this case resonant) optical transition. The qubit state |0 does not appear here since
we make the simplifying assumption that it does not couple at all to |Th , and is degenerate
with |1 .
There are mechanisms by which the spin can decohere that do not involve the optical
level at all. For example, if there is a spin–orbit interaction, the two spin levels have slightly
different charge distributions, and would therefore have a different deformation potential
coupling to phonons, leading to a spin–phonon coupling. There may also be other (electron
or nuclear) spins in the vicinity of the qubit spin that can couple through the exchange,
hyperfine, or dipole–dipole interactions. All of these mechanisms play an important role in
quantum gates that involve direct manipulation of the spin with, for example, microwave
resonance. However, we are concerned with optical techniques for spin manipulation, and it
is then the optical transition to the higher level that gives the strongest decoherence channel.
Again, we are faced with two principal problems: photon emission and phonon coupling.
It is straightforward to transfer the analysis of the previous section to the trion–phonon
coupling problem. When a trion is created from an electron spin qubit state, the change
in the electron charge-density function is the same as it was in the exciton case. One can
therefore carry over the analysis exactly, and so associate the Pauli operators for the exciton
qubit with the {|1 , |Th } subspace here. Nonetheless, the effect on the qubit decoherence
characteristics here is going to be quite different since we are no longer concerned with the
relative coherence of the |1 and |Th , but rather on that of our spin, here labelled |0 and |1 .
Consider the following problem: how might we best perform a π rotation around the z
axis of the Bloch sphere for our spin qubit? Without any environmental interactions, the
answer was given in the last chapter, and is quite simple. Starting in an arbritrary spin state
(with no population in |Th ), we induce a complete Rabi oscillation between states |1 and
|Th such that all the population returns to |1 . Quantum mechanics tells us that this gives
rise to a relative phase of π between |0 (which is unaffected by the pulse) and |1 . This is
the Z gate we set out to construct.
In the presence of phonons and photon emission we have seen that Rabi oscillations
become imperfect as coherence is lost. At low enough temperature, the system will always
end up back in the {|0 , |1 } subspace following the control pulse, since photon decay
will always eventually remove any |Th population. Indeed, the relative populations of the
two-qubit states will be unchanged by the operation. However, the coherence of |0 and
|1 is affected by a pure dephasing √ process. We can quantify this effect by considering an
initial state |ψin = (|0 + |1 )/ 2 and then simulating the effect of the Z-gate operation
including decoherence. The result is a√ qubit density operator ρout , which is compared to the
ideal final state |ψout = (|0 − |1 )/ 2 using the fidelity

F = ψout | ρout |ψout . (12.50)

The result, plotted as a function of Rabi strength for different temperatures, is displayed in
Fig. 12.5.
As expected, F becomes lower as the temperature is increased for all displayed driv-
ing strengths. This is due to the temperature dependence of the Bose–Einstein factor for
 410 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

Fig. 12.5. Fidelity of a Z gate performed on a quantum-dot spin qubit by coherently driving an optical
transition on resonance, as a function of the resonant Rabi energy . Parameters typical of GaAs
have been used in the simulation. Figure adapted from Gauger et al. (2008).

phonons. The more interesting feature of the displayed plots is that they have a peaked
structure: there is an optimal value of  that maximizes the fidelity of operation. This is the
result of the competing dependencies of phonon and photon decoherence channels. As the
driving strength increases, the time the system spends in the state |Th decreases, and fewer
spontaneous photon-emission events occur on average. By contrast, the phonon spectral-
density function increases for higher driving and so the phonon-induced decoherence rate
goes up.
Even when the parameters are optimized at T = 0 there is still a significant loss of
fidelity during a gate operation, since both photon and phonon effects cannot be eliminated
simultaneously. In the next section we will introduce an alternative control strategy that can
result in significant fidelity improvements for some optically active systems.

12.4.3 Adiabatic gating

If it were possible to avoid populating the state |Th , or to run the gate operation such that
the phonon spectral density was sampled beyond the cut-off frequencies, improved gate
fidelities could be achieved. With an alternative adiabatic approach to system driving, both
of these are possible. Consider a more general version of the three-level Hamiltonian in
Eq. (12.49)
H = (|1 Th | + |Th 1|) + 2 |Th Th | (12.51)
where 2 is now the detuning of the laser from the optical transition. The eigenenergies
are displayed in Fig. 12.6.
In the eigenstate picture, the dynamic gate above is implemented with a rapid switch from
a condition | /| ≫ 0 to = 0. Under the first condition, |0 and |1 are degenerate
 411 12.4 Overcoming decoherence

Fig. 12.6. The energies of the three eigenstates of the spin–trion system described by Hamiltonian,
Eq. (12.51), as a function of the ratio / . The uncoupled |0 is always an eigenstate. At the far
left and far right of the plot, |1 and |Th are approximate eigenstates; towards the centre, two of
the eigenstates become mixtures of |1 and |Th .

eigenstates and the time evolution is a simple build-up of global phase. Under the second
condition, |0 remains an eigenstate, but |1 becomes a superposition of eigenstates |+
and |− . The subsequent time evolution is then a Rabi oscillation between |1 and |Th ,
and switching back to the first condition after one oscillation gives the relative phase on
|1 with respect to |0 . An alternative strategy is to move slowly from the far detuned
condition towards resonance, and then slowly away again. If the change is slow enough,
it is adiabatic, and so-called eigenstate following occurs. Imagine an initial state |1 when
| /| ≫ 0. This would be represented by point ‘a’ in Fig. 12.6. A gradual reduction in
the ratio | /| results in a following of the |− eigenstate line, until the state eventually
reaches the point ‘b’. The ratio is then increased again, taking us slowly back to point ‘a’.
The net result is a phase accumulation on |1 . On the other hand, if the system were prepared
as |0 and the same procedure is executed, the phase accumulated is different from that for
|1 , since the eigenstate trajectory for |0 simply follows the horizontal axis in Fig. 12.6. A
qubit-superposition state therefore undergoes a nontrivial Z gate under this operation:

|0 → |0 and |1 → e−iφ |1 , (12.52)

with  τ
φ= dt ω0+ (t) . (12.53)
0
√
Here, ω0+ = 2 + 2 − is the energy difference between the two eigenstates involved

in the procedure and τ is the time taken to return to the initial parameter configuration.
This kind of control can be achieved experimentally by using laser pulses whose intensity
profile or detuning varies slowly (the latter type is known as a ‘chirped’ pulse). Fig. 12.7
shows the fidelity of a phase gate for a pulse with constant detuning and intensity profile
(t) = 0 exp[−(t/τ )2 ]. The simulations are performed from a time t = −3τ to t = +3τ ,
 412 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

Fig. 12.7. The fidelity of a phase gate performed using the adiabatic-control technique, as a function of
detuning and for various temperatures. The driving strength 0 is always 1 meV. The local
minimum is due to the shape of the spectral density. Parameters typical of GaAs have been used
in the simulation. Figure adapted from Gauger et al. (2008).

where τ is set to create the correct π phase shift and so is longer for a more detuned pulse.
Both phonon interaction through deformation potential coupling and photon spontaneous
emission are taken into account using the Markovian master-equation approach, using values
typical of GaAs.
The fidelities obtained for this adiabatic approach are much improved with respect to
those for the dynamic gating strategy presented in Fig. 12.5. Since the laser is somewhat
detuned for all displayed curves, the trion level is never fully excited, which restricts the
photon-emission probability. In this approach, going to large values of detuning allows
one to probe the small spectral-density values beyond the cut-off frequencies, without
creating fast dynamics that violate the assumptions of the Markov approximation. The local
minimum in the fidelity (most clearly seen in the 20 K plot) occurs when the detuning value
corresponds to the first minimum in the spectral-density function. The typical timescale
for performing the adiabatic approach is perhaps a few tens of picoseconds, whereas in the
dynamic approach the time taken can be smaller, perhaps only a few picoseconds. However,
the adiabatic approach has the significant advantage of an in-built tolerance to the phonon
decoherence mechanism for optically controlled spins.

12.5 Strong coupling effects

So far we have exclusively looked at open quantum systems by making the Born–Markov
approximation, and indeed this does work very well in situations with a weak system–bath
413 12.5 Strong coupling effects

coupling. However, the weak coupling limit is not always appropriate, and in this section we
will introduce an exact solution to a particular Hamiltonian in the strong coupling regime.
This gives a nice illustration of some effects that cannot be captured in the Born–Markov
approach. Moreover, this exactly solvable model can be used as a basis for solving more
difficult problems.

12.5.1 An exact model: independent bosons

Our starting point will be the Hamiltonian of an exciton qubit coupled to a single-phonon
mode. Using the coupling derived for Eq. (12.30) for a single mode with bosonic operators
â and ↠, we obtain
H = ǫZ + ωa† a + gZ(â + ↠) , (12.54)
where ǫ is the exciton creation energy and we have not included any laser driving term.
First, we change the form of this Hamiltonian slightly (the reason for this will become
apparent later). We introduce the unitary displacement operator for phonons

D(δ) = exp[δ ↠− δ ∗ â] . (12.55)

This operator is formally identical to the displacement operator for optical quantum fields,
which we encountered in Chapter 1, and used extensively in Chapters 8 and 9.

Exercise 12.3: Show that the effect of the displacement operator on our usual phonon
annihilation and creation operators is given by

D† (δ)âD(δ) = â + δ and D† (δ)↠D(δ) = ↠+ δ ∗ . (12.56)

Making this transformation to our Hamiltonian in Eq. (12.54) and choosing δ real, we
obtain
H1 = ǫZ + ω(↠â + δ 2 ) + (â + ↠)(gZ + ωδ) . (12.57)
Setting δ = −g/ω and removing the irrelevant constant factor from the Hamiltonian gives

H1 = ǫZ + ω↠â + G |1 1| (â + ↠) , (12.58)

where G ≡ −2g. This has not made much difference to our original Hamiltonian, except
that the newly shifted phonon operators interact only with the |1 state of the exciton qubit.
We could have used Eq. (12.58) as our starting point, but we have included the extra step to
show the simple connection to Eq. (12.54). We can now use our displacement operator in
a more powerful way to completely eliminate the coupling term. We make its application
conditional on the state of the qubit, i.e., we apply the unitary transformation

U = |0 0| + |1 1| D(α) = eS , (12.59)

where the definition in terms of the operator S = α(↠− â) |1 1| will be useful in some
future manipulations. The transformation, Eq. (12.59), represents a controlled displacement
414 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

of the phonon field. Now

H0 = U H 1 U †
 
= ω ↠â + ǫ |0 0| +  ↠+ â (G − ωα) |1 1|
 
+ α 2 ω − ǫ − 2Gα |1 1| . (12.60)

We can choose our parameter α to give us the simplest possible form for the Hamiltonian.
Setting α = G/ω then allows us to completely remove the coupling term and finally

H0 = ǫ ′ Z + ω↠â , (12.61)

where the renormalized qubit energy is ǫ ′ = ǫ + G 2 /(2ω). This Hamiltonian is diagonal:

its eigenstates are products of the transformed qubit- and phonon-number states. Of course,
one must reverse the transformation, Eq. (12.59), in order to interpret these eigenstates in
terms of the particles we defined in our original Hamiltonian. With these original definitions
the eigenstates are entangled qubit–phonon states which are called ‘polarons’.
Let us now try to obtain some physical insight into what we have done in applying this
polaron transformation. The displacement operator shifts both the creation and annihilation
operator by the same amount α. In terms of an observable quantity we can think of it as a
global shift in the position operator of a simple harmonic oscillator, since this is proportional
to (â + ↠). The shift is needed only if the qubit is in state |1 , and it is therefore common to
picture the system as two harmonic potentials, one that is appropriate for |0 and the other
for |1 , which are shifted relative to each other. The eigenstate wavefunctions for phonons
are always solutions of the harmonic potential, but the solutions for |0 are displaced from
those for |1 ; see Fig. 12.8. It therefore becomes impossible to factor the phonon and
qubit dynamics when an initial superposition of |0 and |1 is prepared, leading to a pure
dephasing of the qubit. We will return to derive the form of this dephasing shortly, but let
us digress for a moment and calculate the optical properties of this coupled system.

12.5.2 The optical spectrum

Assuming that our system is in its ground state (i.e. that we are in the zero temperature
limit), then all the lines in the optical absorption spectrum result from transitions between
the lowest energy level in the |0 potential and the set of levels in the shifted |1 potential.
Let us label the ground vibrational level in the lower well |Vl and the upper well |Vu , and
the nth excited phonon level |nl and |nu for the lower and upper well, respectively. To
avoid confusion we will use the â and ↠operators for the lower well, with b̂ and b̂† in the
upper well. The intensity of an absorption line is proportional to the square of the dipole
matrix element connecting the two levels involved in the transition, Mp . For the ground
level in the lower well and the nth excited level in the upper well, we obtain
 
Mp = ψi | p ψf = 0, Vl | p |1, nu . (12.62)
 415 12.5 Strong coupling effects

Fig. 12.8. The exact qubit–phonon model discussed in this section can be represented by two harmonic
oscillators, one associated with qubit |0 and centred at displacement u = 0, and one is associated
with |1 and is shifted away from the original by an amount proportional to the coupling strength
G. Since the oscillator positions are different, there are many dipole-allowed transitions and the
zero-temperature absorption lines correspond to the indicated transitions.

With the usual definition of a Fock state given in Eq. (1.62), we can rewrite the matrix
element
0, Vl | p(b̂† )n |1, Vu p01
Mp = √ = √ Vl | (b̂† )n |Vu , (12.63)
n! n!
where we have defined p01 as the optical dipole element between qubit states |0 and |1 .9
To proceed further, we can write the b creation operators in terms of â, since the two are
related by the displacement discussed above:
G G
b̂ = â − and b̂† = ↠− . (12.64)
ω ω
Using the properties of boson operators it is then straightforward to show that
n
p01 G
Mp = √ − Vl | Vu . (12.65)
n! ω
The transition between the lowest levels in the lower and upper wells is called the ‘zero
phonon line’ (zpl). We label its intensity Izpl . We can easily relate the intensities of the
more energetic absorption lines to this one:
n
G2 1
In = Izpl . (12.66)
ω2 n!

9 For simplicity we assume the dipole aligns with the optical field polarization, and we drop its vector character.
 416 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

Fig. 12.9. For a single phonon interacting with our exciton qubit the optical spectrum consists of a series of
discrete lines. The absorption spectrum at zero temperature has lines corresponding to the
transitions indicated in Fig. 12.8: a zpl and a series of equally spaced, blue-shifted,
phonon-assisted transitions. The emission spectrum is the mirror image of the absorption
spectrum, as described in the text.

This is a Poisson distribution of intensity, which is displayed in Fig. 12.9. The emission
spectrum is also shown in this figure. At zero temperature, we would expect any excitation
in the system to quickly decay, non-radiatively, into the lowest state in the upper well. The
emission spectrum must then be the mirror image of the absorption spectrum. The highest
energy transition in emission is the zpl, with other lines corresponding to the emission of
various numbers of phonon energies.
In certain systems with rather localized, discrete-phonon modes, some qualitative spectral
features are described reasonably well by this model. For example, the NV− defect in
diamond has local vibronic modes, and the lowest energy optical transition is characterized
by a zero phonon line, with higher sidebands corresponding to phonon-assisted transitions.
These sidebands are quite a headache for the kinds of distributed entanglement scheme
discussed in the previous chapter, since they give an uncertainty in the frequency of the
417 12.5 Strong coupling effects

emitted photons. This can be overcome by filtering out all photons apart from the ones
with the frequency of the zpl, but this greatly reduces the success probability of these
entanglement-generation protocols. An alternative to filtering is using an optical cavity in
the weak coupling regime, which is tuned to the zpl transition. Since the cavity imposes a
structure on the photon bath modes, it enhances emission into the zpl.

12.5.3 Dephasing

We now need to calculate the nature and form of the dephasing that is predicted by this
exact model. We will follow the method of Hohenester (2007). The time-evolution operator
for the Hamiltonian in Eq. (12.54) is easiest to write in an interaction picture, where the
non-interacting part of the Hamiltonian is

H0 = ǫ ′ Z + ω ↠â = eS H1 e−S . (12.67)

We find that
′ ′
U (t, t ′ ) = eiH0 t eiH1 (t−t ) e−iH0 t
′ ′
= eiH0 t e−S e−iH0 t eiH0 t eS e−iH0 t . (12.68)

The first and last sets of three terms are similar and straightforward to calculate

eiH0 t e−S e−iH0 t = |0 0| + D(−αeiωt ) |1 1| . (12.69)

Finally, we can set t ′ = 0 for simplicity and use the fact that D(α)D(α ′ ) = D(α +
α ′ ) exp[iIm(αα ′ )] to obtain
 
U (t, 0) = |0 0| + exp −iα 2 sin ωt D α(1 − eiωt ) |1 1| . (12.70)

As we have already discussed, the qubit–phonon Hamiltonian cannot cause qubit relax-
ation. However, dephasing is possible. Let us therefore consider an initial state that is an
equal superposition of |0 and |1 , and look at how its coherence, expressed as a density
matrix element ρ10 behaves as a function of time. If the phonon mode is initially in thermal
equilibrium, with a density matrix ρth , we have

1
ρ10 (t) = exp[−iα 2 sin ωt]Trph [ρth D[α(1 − eiωt )] . (12.71)
2
The thermal average of the displacement function can be found with some effort, and
we will not reproduce the derivation here. The interested reader should refer to Barnett and
Radmore (1997) for more details. The result is:
 
1
Trph [ρth D(δ)] = exp −|δ|2 n̄ + , (12.72)
2
418 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

where n̄ = (exp[ωβ] − 1)−1 and β = (kB T )−1 . Substituting Eq. (12.72) into Eq. (12.71)
yields
 
1 G2 ωβ
ρ10 (t) = exp − 2 i sin ωt + (1 − cos ωt) coth . (12.73)
2 ω 2
The first term in the exponent is purely imaginary, so it affects the phase accumulation of
our qubit, but does not lead to loss of coherence. The other term is real, and corresponds
to a dephasing process. The modulus of ρ10 oscillates between its maximum value and
a minimum value with an amplitude that depends on temperature, coupling strength, and
phonon frequency. The coherence returns to its maximum value periodically, and in this
sense it is never truly lost from the qubit. Rather, it moves between the qubit- and single-
phonon mode. Such an effect could not have been predicted in the Born–Markov approach,
where the bath (in this case the single mode) is assumed to have no memory.
In most solids, however, it is of course very unrealistic to assume that the environment
consists of a single mode. We must therefore extend our model to cover all possible modes
q. In fact, this turns out to be relatively straightforward since each mode acts independently
of the others; hence the name ‘independent boson model’.

Exercise 12.4: Show that for a bath of phonon modes q, with internal Hamiltonian
† †
q ωq aq aq ,and coupling |1 1| q Gq (aq + aq ), we can write the time development
of the coherence ρ10 as
⎛ ⎞
 Gq2  
1 ωq β
ρ10 (t) = exp ⎝− i sin ωq t + (1 − cos ωq t) coth ⎠. (12.74)
2 q
ωq2 2

In order to study the coherence of our superposition state, we need only look at the real
argument of the exponential in Eq. (12.74). Let us call this function Ŵ(t). We go back to the
definition of the spectral-density function that we derived earlier in Eq. (12.43) to recast
this in an integral form:
 ∞
J (ω) ωβ
Ŵ(t) = − 2
(1 − cos ωt) coth dω. (12.75)
0 2π ω 2
Various exciton–phonon interactions can now be modelled, each giving rise to a different
form for the spectral-density function. As an example, let us look again at the deformation
potential to acoustic phonons given by Eq. (12.48). For simplicity, we assume that all of
the cut-off frequencies are equal (ωc = ωv = ωcv = ω0 ). Then
2 /ω 2
J (ω) = Cω3 e−ω 0 , (12.76)

with C = (De − Dv )2 /(2πμcs5 ).

A straightforward analytical expression can be found for Ŵ(t) in the limit of zero
temperature:  
√
C π 3 ω02 t 2 iω0 t
Ŵ(t) = −i ω0 exp − Erf . (12.77)
4 4 2
The resulting time dependence of the absolute value of the coherence function |ρ10 | is
displayed in Fig. 12.10. It displays several interesting features. First, there is dephasing in
 419 12.6 References and further reading

Fig. 12.10. The time evolution of the modulus of the coherence |ρ10 | of an exciton qubit, interacting with
phonons in the independent boson model. The interaction is assumed to be a three-dimensional
phonon bath with a deformation potential coupling. All curves assume equal cut-off frequencies
for conduction and valence states and use ω0 = 3 ps−1 . C = 0.044 ps−1 is appropriate for coupling
to phonons in GaAs, with larger values being plotted for comparison.

this case, even at zero temperature. Second, unlike in the single-mode model the coherence
does not revive this time, which is a consequence of the infinite Poincaré revival time
expected for the continuum of bath energies. Third, the loss of coherence is not, in general,
complete (it approaches a finite plateau) and fourth, the initial decay is Gaussian. The first,
third, and fourth features could never have been captured in the Markovian model, whose
history of independent dynamics gives rise to an exponential decay to zero.
The theory of optical control of decoherence in this sort of model is in its infancy. The
main difficulty is that when a laser driving term is included in the Hamiltonian, its structure
changes fundamentally and an exact solution is no longer available. However, some results
have been obtained using numerical methods in the driven case, and show that appropriately
tailored laser pulses can improve the coherence characteristics, even beyond the Markovian
limit.

12.6 References and further reading

There are many excellent texts that discuss the general theory of open quantum systems,
for example Breuer and Petruccione (2002) and Weiss (2008). Both of these texts introduce
420 Decoherence of solid-state qubits

many more techniques than we have been able to cover here. The interested reader should
also consult the classic review article of Leggett et al. (1987). ‘Many-particle physics’ by
Mahan (2000) contains a wealth of information about electron–phonon coupling, as does
the book by Ziman (2001) on electrons and phonons. For a more basic introduction to
the quantization of lattice vibrations, see Ziman (1969). For a comprehensive treatment of
several techniques, including master equations and polaron tranforms, and their application
to quantum-dot systems, see Brandes (2005) and for control of polarons in the independent
boson model we refer to Hohenester (2007).
13 Quantum metrology

In this chapter we consider the physical limits to information extraction. This is an important
aspect of optical quantum information processing in that many high-precision experiments
(such as gravitational wave detection) are implemented in optical systems, i.e., interfer-
ometers. It is not surprising that just as in computation and communication, the use of
quintessentially quantum mechanical properties allows us to improve the sensitivity in
interferometry. We start this chapter with a derivation of the Fisher information and the
Cramér–Rao bound, which tell us how much information we can extract about a parameter
in a set of measurements. In Section 13.2 we introduce the statistical distance between
two probability distributions. This can in turn be used to determine how many times the
system needs to be queried before we can determine which probability distribution gov-
erns the system. In addition, we make a connection between the statistical distance and
the angle between states in Hilbert space. In Sections 13.3 and 13.4 we derive bounds
on how fast quantum states evolve to orthogonal states, and how entangled states can be
used to improve parameter estimation. Finally, in Section 13.5 we present a number of
approaches for implementing quantum metrology in optical systems, most importantly in
optical interferometers.

13.1 Parameter estimation and Fisher information

In the theory of computation, discrete variables have the benefit that a practically perfect
readout is often possible. Readout of continuous variables, on the other hand, always has
an intrinsic precision (as we saw in Chapter 9). If the continuous variable is related to a
physical parameter we wish to measure, we need to maximize the precision of the measure-
ment. There are generally two aspects to parameter estimation, namely the encoding of the
(unknown) parameter in the state of a probe system, and the measurement of the system that
reveals information about the parameter. The entire process must be optimized in order to
prescribe the best procedure for parameter estimation. In this section, we construct a quan-
tity called the Fisher information, which tells us how much information about the parameter
we can extract from the state of the probe system given the chosen measurement procedure
(see Fig. 13.1). The Fisher information is related to the statistical distance between two
probability distributions, and also to the angles between rays (states) in Hilbert space. This
allows us to talk about the dynamical speed of evolution, and leads to two bounds on the
time needed to distinguish between processes that give rise to different quantum states. We
will see that entangled states can have an increased speed of dynamical evolution, and have
 422 Quantum metrology

Fig. 13.1. Schematic of the parameter-estimation procedure. A procedure S prepares a system in state ρ(0),
the process under study evolves the state to ρ(θ), and a measurement M extracts information
about θ .

the potential to give a better precision in parameter estimation than separable probe states,
given comparable resources.

13.1.1 Bounds on precision measurements

On a practical level, experimental science is primarily concerned with making precision

measurements. Often, such experiments are properly understood as the estimation of a
set of parameters {θ1 , . . . , θn }. Here, we consider the estimation of a single parameter θ .
The experiment involves the measurement of an observable, with each measurement event
yielding an outcome x that depends on the value of θ . In general, there will be errors
and uncertainties in the measurement, which means that the relation between θ and the
measurement outcome x is a probability distribution p(θ|x). We do not have direct access to
this probability distribution. Rather, we have the measurement outcome x. We can model the
experiment using a description of the state of the system ρ(θ ) and the povm Êx associated
with measurement outcome x. The Born rule then stipulates that
 
p(x|θ ) = Tr Êx ρ(θ ) , (13.1)

,
with dx Êx = Î. The uncertainties of the measurement procedure are encapsulated in the
povm Êx , while any uncertainties in the state-preparation procedure are captured by the
mixed state ρ(θ ). We can relate p(θ|x) and p(x|θ ) via Bayes’ rule

p(x|θ ) p(θ)
p(θ |x) = ≡ L(θ|x) , (13.2)
p(x)

where L is the likelihood of θ given the experimental data x. We assume that p(θ) and p(x)
are known or can be inferred. A large part of this chapter is devoted to the construction of
such measurements with quantum optics.
In this section, we relate p(x|θ ) to the procedure for extracting a value of θ from the
data x using an estimator T (x), and determine the error in θ . An estimator is a function
that tells us how to translate the measurement data x into a value of θ . This will lead to the
introduction of the Fisher information and the Cramér–Rao bound. We follow the derivation
of Braunstein and Caves (1994). Throughout we will assume that x is a continuous variable,
but the argument also holds for discrete variables, in which case the integrals over x must
be replaced by sums over a discrete set of measurement outcomes xj .
423 13.1 Parameter estimation and Fisher information

Let T (x) be an estimator for θ based on the measurement outcome x, and let T ≡
T (x) − T θ with 
T θ ≡ dx p(x|θ )T (x) . (13.3)

The estimator is called ‘unbiased’ when T θ = θ . For any estimator T (biased or unbiased),
and for N independent samples yielding measurement outcomes x1 , . . . , xN we have

dx1 · · · dxN p(x1 |θ ) · · · p(xN |θ ) T = 0 . (13.4)

This follows from the definition of T . Taking the derivative to θ and using the chain rule
yields
N 
 - .
1 ∂p(xi |θ ) d T θ
dx1 · · · dxN p(x1 |θ) · · · p(xN |θ ) T− =0, (13.5)
p(xi |θ ) ∂θ dθ
i=1

where we have used the fact that T does not depend on θ , but T θ does. This can be
rewritten as
  N  - .
 ∂ ln p(xi |θ ) d T θ
dx1 · · · dxN p(x1 |θ) · · · p(xN |θ ) T = . (13.6)
∂θ dθ
i=1

To this equation we can now apply the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality:

| f , g |2 ≤ ||f ||21 ||g||22 , (13.7)

where f and g are duals with norms ||f ||21 and ||g||22 , respectively. We substitute
N
 ∂ ln p(xi |θ )
f = and g= T, (13.8)
∂θ
i=1

yielding
  N
2
 ∂ ln p(xi |θ )
dx1 · · · dxN p(x1 |θ) · · · p(xN |θ )
∂θ
i=1
 - .
2
 d T θ 2
× dx1 · · · dxN p(x1 |θ ) · · · p(xN |θ ) ( T ) ≥   . (13.9)
dθ 
We can simplify this inequality by introducing the ‘Fisher information’ F(θ):
 
∂ ln p(x|θ ) 2 1 ∂p(x|θ ) 2
F(θ) ≡ dx p(x|θ) = dx . (13.10)
∂θ p(x|θ ) ∂θ
This is a measure of the information that the experimental set-up (consisting of the state
ρ(θ ) and the povm {Êx }) reveals about θ . Writing the integral over ( T )2 as ( T )2 θ and
removing the superfluous brackets in the derivative then yields the following inequality:
 
2
 d T θ 2
N F(θ) ( T ) θ ≥    . (13.11)
dθ 
424 Quantum metrology

This is almost a useful inequality. However, rather than the average error in the estimator
T , we want to relate the Fisher information to the average error in the actual value of θ .
We therefore need to find a relationship between ( T )2 θ and ( θ )2 θ .
The error θ in the parameter θ for a single data point x is related to the estimator T (x)
in the following way:
T (x)
θ≡ −θ . (13.12)
|d T θ /dθ|
If the estimator T is biased, then θ θ is non-zero. Note that θ is not the same as T ,
since θ is related to the actual value of θ , while T is completely determined by the data
point x, the estimator function T (x), and the calculated probability distribution p(x|θ ). The
derivative corrects for the way T θ changes with θ . For example, if we record a millisecond
process such as the popping of a balloon with a high-speed camera, we can measure the
time it takes for the balloon to deflate by timing the slowed-down version on the film. This
is the estimator. To find the real time it takes to deflate, we have to divide the measured
time by the slow-down factor of the high-speed camera. For the error in the deflating time
we need to make the same adjustment. It is a translation from the measured timescale of
seconds, to the real timescale of milliseconds, or a change in units.
In order to derive the Cramér–Rao bound, we need to relate the error θ to the variance
of the estimator T . Using T = T (x) − T θ , we find
 2 * + 
2
d T θ 
( T) =   ( θ )2 − θ 2
. (13.13)
θ
dθ  θ
θ

We can eliminate the factor ( T )2 θ using Eq. (13.11), and we find

1 1
( θ )2 θ ≥ + θ 2
θ ≥ . (13.14)
N F(θ) N F(θ)

This is the celebrated Cramér–Rao bound, which puts a minimum value on the error in θ .
In any conceivable experiment (classical or quantum) the variance must always be greater
than the inverse of (N times) the Fisher information. It is clear that the precision improves
when the Fisher information increases. We therefore have to design experiments such that
the Fisher information is as large as possible. Since F(θ) is a function of p(x|θ ), which
in turn is determined by the state of the system ρ(θ ) and a povm Êx , this means we need
to construct suitable states and observables to measure. However, for a given experiment,
there is no guarantee that this bound can actually be attained. Generally, the Cramér–Rao
bound is the theoretical minimum for the size of an error, even though in practice the error
may be larger.
One important case of the Cramér–Rao bound occurs when the Fisher information is
approximately constant (and of order one). That is, the amount of information about θ
in a single measurement is constant. In this case, we can write the uncertainty δθ in the
parameter θ as
 1
δθ ≡ ( θ )2 θ  √ . (13.15)
N
425 13.2 The statistical distance

1
In other words, the error in a parameter θ after N independent samples scales as N − 2 . This
is called the ‘standard quantum limit’ (sql) or the ‘shot-noise limit’.
√
Exercise 13.1: Given an input state |ψ = (|0 + exp(iθ ) |1 )/ 2 and a measurement of
the Pauli X operator, calculate the Fisher information. Repeat this for the Pauli Z operator
and the Hadamard. What is the minimum error in θ after N such measurements?

13.2 The statistical distance

A problem related to parameter estimation is hypothesis testing. Suppose we have two

theories, predicting different values for our parameter, θ or θ ′ . We again set up an experiment
consisting of the parameter-dependent state and the measurement procedure. Rather than
trying to measure the parameter precisely, we define two probability distributions p(x|θ )
and p(x|θ ′ ), and ask how well we can distinguish between the two probability distributions
in the experiment. This means that we have to introduce the concept of a distance between
two probability distributions, called the ‘statistical distance’. In this section we will review
some general properties of metric spaces and use these to derive a distance function on the
space of probability distributions. We relate the statistical distance to the Fisher information,
and give a Cramér–Rao bound for distinguishing two probability distributions. We give a
classical derivation of the statistical distance first, and then extend the discussion to the
quantum mechanical case.

13.2.1 Distance between classical probability distributions

We wish to construct a space of probability distributions with a distance defined on it. A

function s(a, b) is a distance between two points a and b if

(i) s(a, b) ≥ 0
(ii) s(a, b) = 0 ⇔ a = b
(iii) s(a, b) = s(b, a)
(iv) s(a, c) ≤ s(a, b) + s(b, c) (the triangle inequality).

Furthermore, the distance in a metric space is determined by a metric gkl . In infinitesimal

form, this becomes 
ds2 = gkl dak dal , (13.16)
kl

where the dak are the components of the tangent vector to a. For a Euclidean space, the metric
is the identity tensor, and the distance between points a and a + da becomes Pythagoras’
theorem: 
ds2 = dak dak . (13.17)
k
 426 Quantum metrology

Note that there is a difference between the upper and the lower indices. We call the
mathematical object with upper indices a ‘vector’, and the object with lower indices a
‘1-form’ (in older literature the vector is often called ‘contravariant’ and the 1-form ‘covari-
ant’, which refers to the way they behave under linear transformations). We can represent
this pictorially as shown in Fig. 13.2. For more information about this geometrical repre-
sentation of vectors, see Weinreich (1998), and for a more detailed introduction to vectors
and 1-forms see Carroll (2004). The scalar product is a product (a ‘contraction’) between
a vector and a 1-form (upper and lower indices). It corresponds to the number of sheets
in the stack that are pierced by the arrow. It is now easy to see that transformations on
the space leave the scalar product invariant: distorting the arrow (vector) and the stack of
sheets (1-form) in equal measure will not change the number of sheets that are pierced by
the arrow. The 1-form is the ‘dual’ of the vector (and vice versa), and they are related via the
metric:
 
aj = gjk ak and aj = g jk ak . (13.18)
k k

In other words, the metric comes with upper or lower indices (or a mixture, if necessary),
and acts as ‘raising’ or ‘lowering’ operators on the indices. Pictorially, the vectors transform
as shown in Fig. 13.3. Moreover, the vectors that lie in the surfaces of the 1-form (at point
a) are all orthogonal to the dual vector to the 1-form (at point a).

Fig. 13.2. Vectors and 1-forms. The inner product is invariant under space transformations.

Fig. 13.3. Using the metric to transform between vectors and 1-forms.
 427 13.2 The statistical distance

Fig. 13.4. The probability simplex for probability distributions over three possible events E1 , E2 , and E3 ,
occurring with probabilities p1 , p2 , and p3 , respectively. A point p in the simplex uniquely
determines a probability distribution.

From the raising and lowering of the indices, we can derive a key property of the metric:
 
   
aj = gjk kl
g al = gjk g kl al ⇒ gjk g kl = δj l ≡ δjl , (13.19)
k l kl l

where the second identity follows from the linear independence of the aj , and δjl is the
Kronecker delta. The metric with upper indices g jk is therefore the inverse of the metric gjk
with lower indices (and vice versa).
Next, the ‘probability simplex’ is the convex space of probability distributions (see
Fig. 13.4). This is a metric space, but the (Euclidean) distance between the two points
p and p′ is not necessarily the most useful distance function for probability distributions.
We can write down a general distance function between two probability distributions p and
p′ = p + dp in terms of the metric:

ds2 = gjk dpj dpk . (13.20)
jk

In general, the sum may be an integral.

Our next task is to find a ‘natural metric’ gjk of the simplex. To this end we construct
the natural dual to the tangent vectors dp of a probability distribution p, namely a random
variable. In particular, an observable A can be considered a (classical) random variable with
expectation value 
A ≡ Aj pj , (13.21)
j

where Aj are the possible values of A. The points of constant expectation value form surfaces
in the dual space to dp. Consequently, surfaces with incrementally increasing expectation
values form a stack, which makes for a natural 1-form.
An explicit expression for the metric can be determined by a quadratic form of (tangent)
vectors, or alternatively, a quadratic form of 1-forms. We choose to derive the metric from
428 Quantum metrology

the latter. For a pair of observables A and B, the natural quadratic form is the so-called
‘correlation’
 
Aj Bk g jk = AB = Aj Bj p j . (13.22)
jk j

From this we see immediately that g jk = δj k pj . Using k g jk gkl = δ j l we have

δj k
gjk = , (13.23)
pj

and therefore
  (dpj )2
ds2 = gjk dpj dpk = (13.24)
pj
jk j

is a ‘statistical distance’ between two infinitesimally close probability distributions p and

p + dp. We derived this expression using the correlation in Eq. (13.22), which is the only
natural quadratic form for classical observables. We therefore claim that ds2 is the natural
statistical distance between two infinitesimally close probability distributions, up to an
overall constant factor. The mathematical form of ds2 is slightly peculiar, which hints at
a fundamental property of probability distributions. We can substitute pj = (r j )2 and use
d(r j )2 = 2r j dr j , which yields

ds2 = 4 (dr j )2 . (13.25)
j

We have now expressed the statistical distance as the natural Euclidean distance for ‘prob-
ability amplitudes’! Note that we have not talked about quantum mechanics at all at this
point: probability amplitudes arise naturally in classical probability theory. We should also
point out the factor four in Eq. (13.25). This can be interpreted as a scale factor due to a
difference in units. It will appear again in the next section, when we discuss the dynamical
evolution of states.
We can relate the statistical distance to the Fisher information in the following way.
Divide both sides of Eq. (13.24) by dθ 2

2  1 2
ds dpj
= = F(θ) . (13.26)
dθ pj dθ
j

This is the Fisher information for a probability distribution over a discrete variable, given
in Eq. (13.10). When p is defined over a continuum x, we can write this as

2  2
ds 1 ∂p(x|θ )
= dx = F(θ) . (13.27)
dθ p(x|θ ) ∂θ

A Taylor expansion of s in θ can be written as

ds
s(θ) = s(0) + δθ + O(δθ 2 ) . (13.28)
dθ
429 13.2 The statistical distance

If we set ds = s(θ) − s(0) and take the square of the expansion to lowest order, we find

2
ds
ds2 = δθ 2 . (13.29)
dθ

From the Cramér–Rao bound in Eq. (13.14) and the expression of the Fisher information
in Eq. (13.27), we derive

2 2
ds ds 1 1
ds2 = δθ 2 ≥ = . (13.30)
dθ dθ N F(θ) N

The criterion for distinguishing nearby probability distributions p(x|θ ) and p(x|θ ′ ) is
therefore given by
Nds2  1 . (13.31)
Here, N is the number of times we have to query the system. In other words, it is the size of our
measurement data. We state this relation in infinitesimal form as an approximate inequality,
since the distinguishability criterion is tight only for infinitesimal distances. However, this
formula does provide useful practical estimates for distinguishing probability distributions
separated by a small finite distance.
Consider now the special case where one of the probabilities pj in the probability dis-
′
tribution is zero, while pj is non-zero. The statistical distance diverges, since (dpj )2 is
non-zero and the denominator pj is zero. What does this mean? Assume that our system
can be described by either one of two probability distributions p1 or p2 . When p1 assigns a
zero probability to a certain event, while p2 assigns a finite probability to the same event,
a single observation of the event is sufficient to determine that our system obeys p2 , rather
′
than p1 . It does not matter that the chance of seeing the event (pj ) may be very small. The
possibility of distinguishing p1 and p2 with certainty in a single shot is enough to make the
statistical distance infinitely large. In practice, infinities will cause problems, and we tend
to exclude the boundaries of the simplex in practical situations, such as when performing
numerical calculations.

13.2.2 Distance between density operators

The derivation of the statistical distance between two probability distributions has so far been
completely classical, and in particular the correlation we used in Eq. (13.22) is a quadratic
form based on taking classical averages. In quantum theory, averages are calculated by
taking the expectation value of observables with respect to the state ρ:

 = Tr(ρ Â) . (13.32)

We are especially interested in the case where  is a Hermitian operator, or an observable.

This introduces a subtlety for the quantum mechanical correlation between two observables
 and B̂, since the correlation is itself an observable and should therefore be Hermitian.
430 Quantum metrology

However, the product of two Hermitian operators is not Hermitian when  and B̂ do not
commute:
(ÂB̂)† = B̂† † = B̂ = ÂB̂ . (13.33)
One way to solve this is to define the natural quadratic form for quantum mechanical
observables as the expectation value of the anti-commutator 12 (ÂB̂ + B̂Â) = 21 {Â, B̂}:

1* + 1  
{Â, B̂} = Tr {Â, B̂}ρ , (13.34)
2 2
where the factor 1/2 is chosen such that the autocorrelation Â2 = 21 {Â, Â} is included in the
quadratic form. Using the cyclic property of the trace, the correlation can be written as
1* + 1    
{Â, B̂} = Tr Â{ρ, B̂} ≡ Tr  Rρ (B̂) , (13.35)
2 2
where we have defined the superoperator Rρ (B̂) as
1 1
Rρ (B̂) = {ρ, B̂} = (pj + pk )Bjk |j k| , (13.36)
2 2
jk

and the density operator is written in the diagonal basis as ρ = j pj |j j|. The number
Bjk is a matrix element of B̂ in the basis {|j }. The operator Rρ is analogous to the metric in
Eq. (13.22). It can therefore be interpreted as a raising operator, just as g jk raised the index
from a 1-form to a vector. The inverse of Rρ must then be analogous to the lowering operator
Lρ = Rρ−1 . Using Eq. (13.36) it is not too difficult to show that (see Exercise 13.2):
 2Bjk
Lρ (B̂) = |j k| . (13.37)
pj + pk
jk

This is the direct analog of Eq. (13.23). Just as in the classical case, we exclude the boundaries
of the probability simplex in order to ensure that the inverse Lρ exists.
   
Exercise 13.2: Show that Lρ Rρ (B̂) = Rρ Lρ (B̂) = B̂ for any B̂. This proves that
Lρ is the inverse of Rρ , and vice versa.

The observables  and B̂ are the natural 1-forms (where the surfaces of constant expec-
tation value form the stack in Fig. 13.3). Similarly, the density operator ρ plays the role
of the probability distribution, which is naturally a vector with components pj . The raising
and lowering operators Rρ and Lρ can then be used to turn the 1-forms into vectors, and
vice versa. This is represented pictorially in Fig. 13.5, and is a direct analogue to Fig. 13.3.
Note that we use dρ as a vector, rather than ρ. It is the vector from one density matrix ρ to
another ρ + dρ.
We generalize the statistical distance for classical probability distributions to a statistical
distance dsρ2 between the two density operators ρ and ρ + dρ:

ds2 = gjk dpj dpk ⇒ dsρ2 = Tr dρ Lρ (dρ) . (13.38)
jk
 431 13.2 The statistical distance

Fig. 13.5. The raising and lowering operators Rρ and Lρ relate vectors and 1-forms. This applies to both the
operators  and the density matrices ρ. The stacks (1-forms) are surfaces of constant expectation
value.

Using Eq. (13.27) we can relate the statistical distance along a path parameterized by θ to
the Fisher information and the derivative of ρ with respect to θ :

2
dsρ dρ
F(θ) = = Tr ρ ′ Lρ (ρ ′ ) with ρ′ = . (13.39)
dθ dθ

This relation allows us to derive a bound on the Fisher information. This is important,
because so far the Cramér–Rao bound on the error δθ can be arbitrarily small given large
enough Fisher information, as is evident from Eq. (13.14). Physically, a bound on the Fisher
information means that there is a limit to the amount of information about θ that one can
extract in any given measurement.
In order to derive the bound on F(θ), we recall that in quantum mechanics the Heisenberg
equations of motion can be written as

dρ i  
= − K̂, ρ , (13.40)
dθ 

where the operator K̂ is the generator of translations in θ . For example, if θ is a time

translation, K̂ is the Hamiltonian; if θ is a position, K̂ is the momentum operator, etc. In the
equations of motion we have assumed that the generator does not depend on θ , which is a
natural assumption in parameter estimation (any unitary evolution ρ(0) → ρ(θ ) satisfies
this). Furthermore, we can replace K̂ by K̂ = K̂ − K̂ without changing the equations
of motion, since the expectation value K̂ is a number, and therefore always commutes
432 Quantum metrology

with ρ:
dρ i  
=− K̂, ρ . (13.41)
dθ 
We can now use the explicit form of Lρ in Eq. (13.37) to calculate
2
2  pj − p k
F(θ) = Tr ρ ′ Lρ (ρ ′ ) = (pj + pk ) | K̂jk |2
2 pj + p k
jk

4 4
≤ ( K̂)2 θ ≡ (δ K̂)2 , (13.42)
2 2
in our usual notation. This means that the Fisher information is bounded by the variance of
the generator K̂ of translations in the parameter θ . We will use this important result later in
this chapter.
Compare Eq. (13.42) to a single-shot parameter-estimation procedure with N = 1. The
Cramér–Rao bound in Eq. (13.14) then dictates that
1
(δθ )2 ≥ , (13.43)
F(θ)
and by eliminating F(θ) from both equations, we find

δθ δ K̂ ≥ . (13.44)
2
This is the ‘Heisenberg uncertainty relation’ for a parameter θ and its generator K̂. The
most important examples are the energy–time uncertainty relation, where θ is time and K̂
is the Hamiltonian, and the number–phase uncertainty relation, where θ is the phase of a
quantum mechanical oscillator, and K̂ = n̂ is its number operator. The interpretation of
the uncertainty principle, which often leads to debates, can now be inferred: the error in
the measurement of a parameter times the uncertainty in its generator for the measured
system can never be smaller than a finite value. For this relation to be meaningful, we
need a well-defined measurement procedure leading to δθ, and a well-defined Hermitian
generator K̂. Note that the derivation given here is different from the usual textbooks on
quantum mechanics, which derive the Heisenberg uncertainty relations for non-commuting
observables. The two derivations complement each other.

Exercise 13.3: Verify Eqs. (13.42) and (13.44).

We conclude this section with a discussion on the interpretation of the statistical distance
when we confine ourselves to pure quantum states. Consider two (possibly non-orthogonal)
states |ψ1 and |ψ2 . There will be some preparation device that produces either |ψ1 or
|ψ2 , and we have to find out which one it is. The preparation device may be some physical
process that changes the state of a probe system. There are many possible observables that
may give us some information about these states, and we are of course interested in the
optimal measurement.
The statistical distance is defined for probability distributions, and in quantum mechanics
we need both a quantum state and an observable to construct a probability distribution via the
433 13.3 The dynamical evolution of states

Born rule. We here therefore define the statistical distance for the two states relative to the
measurement. If the (non-degenerate) measurement basis is denoted by {|φ1 , . . . , |φm },
the two probability distributions become

p1 (j) = | ψ1 |φj |2 and p2 (j) = | ψ2 |φj |2 , (13.45)

and the corresponding amplitudes are

r1 (j) = | ψ1 |φj | and r2 (j) = | ψ2 |φj | . (13.46)

The probability amplitudes form the components of a unit vector in a hypersphere, and the
Euclidean distance between two such vectors is given by the angle between the vectors:
  
s(ψ1 , ψ2 ) = max arccos | ψ1 |φj || φj |ψ2 | . (13.47)
j

The optimal measurement occurs when one of the basis vectors of the measurement
observable is equal to one of the states, say |φ1 = |ψ1 , such that

s(ψ1 , ψ2 ) = arccos (| ψ1 |ψ2 |) . (13.48)

This is the angle between the two rays |ψ1 and |ψ2 in Hilbert space. Notice that there is
a difference of a factor 2 between the statistical distance s(ψ1 , ψ2 ), which is a Euclidean
distance, and the statistical distance derived in Eq. (13.25). This is not a problem, since both
definitions satisfy the criteria for a distance function given at the beginning of this section.
However, it becomes important when we use the two definitions side-by-side in the next
section.

13.3 The dynamical evolution of states

Since we have a well-defined concept of distance between quantum states, we can ask how
quickly a statistical distance may be travelled in a quantum evolution. In other words,
we wish to derive the maximum dynamical speed of evolution, and relate this to the
distinguishability of probability distributions. The speed of evolution v can be formally
defined as
ds
v(t) ≡ . (13.49)
dt
However, we can be more general by considering θ , rather than t as the dynamical parameter.
We have already defined the Hermitian operator K̂ as the generator of translations in θ in
the previous section. We therefore write
2
ds 4
v(θ)2 = = F(θ) ≤ (δ K̂)2 , (13.50)
dθ 2
434 Quantum metrology

where we used Eq. (13.42) for the inequality. This leads to

ds 2δ K̂
≤ , (13.51)
dθ 
which can be integrated to give
 θ  π
 π 
dθ ′ ≥ ds ⇒ θ≥ . (13.52)
0 2δ K̂ 0 2 δ K̂

Note that we have integrated the distance s from 0 to π. From the Euclidean distance
between quantum states we know that orthogonality is reached when s = π/2, since s is
the angle between two unit vectors in Hilbert space. However, in the definition of v(θ) we
used the statistical distance of Eq. (13.25), which means that we need to multiply π/2 by a
factor 2. In the special case of θ = t, the generator K̂ is the Hamiltonian, and we write δ K̂
as the variance of the energy E:
π 
t≥ . (13.53)
2 E
This bound is known as the Mandelstam–Tamm inequality, and was first derived in 1945
by Mandelstam and Tamm. It is another example of a Cramér–Rao bound. There exists an
extensive literature on exactly what this inequality means. From the preceding discussions,
we see that it gives the minimum time in which a system can evolve from one state to an
orthogonal state. See Bhattacharyya (1983) for a discussion of other interpretations.
The inequality is not applicable when E tends to zero or infinity. An important example
where this bound fails is for processes with a Lorentzian spectrum

γ 1
| ω|ψ(ω0 ) | = . (13.54)
π (ω − ω0 )2 + γ 2

The variance in energy is infinite, but the linewidth γ does define a sensible lifetime
τ = γ −1 . States such as these occur naturally in spontaneous-emission processes.

Exercise 13.4: Calculate E and E for a single-photon state with a Lorentzian spectrum.

In the derivation of the Mandelstam–Tamm inequality above we have used the relation
between ds/dθ and the Fisher information F(θ). However, we also defined the statistical
distance as the angle between two quantum states s = arccos(| ψ0 |ψθ |). Assume that |ψ0
is some initial state with θ = 0, and |ψθ is the state after an evolution generated by K̂,
parameterized by θ ,
i
|ψθ = exp − K̂θ |ψ0 . (13.55)

We can now explicitly calculate the derivative of the statistical distance with respect to the
parameter θ

ds d 1 d
= arccos (| ψ0 |ψθ |) = −  | ψ0 |ψθ | . (13.56)
dθ dθ 1 − | ψ0 |ψθ |2 dθ
435 13.3 The dynamical evolution of states

If we use
1
 ≥1 for all x , (13.57)
1 − |x|2
we obtain the inequality
ds d
≤− | ψ0 |ψθ | . (13.58)
dθ dθ
Next, we show that  
d d 
− | ψ0 |ψθ | ≤  ψ0 |ψθ .
 (13.59)
dθ dθ
Given the generalized Schrödinger equation id/dθ |ψ = K̂ |ψ , we can express the
left-hand side as
d d 
| ψ0 |ψθ | = ψ0 |ψθ ψθ |ψ0
dθ dθ
−i ψ0 | K̂ |ψθ ψθ |ψ0 + i ψ0 |ψθ ψθ | K̂ |ψ0
=
2| ψ0 |ψθ |
Im( ψ0 |K̂|ψθ ψθ |ψ0 )
=
| ψ0 |ψθ |
| ψ0 | K̂ |ψθ ψθ |ψ0 |
≤ . (13.60)
| ψ0 |ψθ |

The right-hand side of Eq. (13.59) can be calculated as

 
d  1
  = | ψ0 | K̂ |ψθ | = | ψ0 | K̂ |ψθ | · | ψ0 |ψθ |
 dθ ψ0 |ψθ   | ψ0 |ψθ |
| ψ0 | K̂ |ψθ ψθ |ψ0 |
≥ , (13.61)
| ψ0 |ψθ |

where in the last line we have used the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality. Comparing the left-hand
side and the right-hand side we just calculated, we obtain
 
d | ψ0 | K̂ |ψθ ψθ |ψ0 |  d 
| ψ0 |ψθ | ≤ ≤ ψ0 |ψθ . (13.62)
dθ | ψ0 |ψθ | dθ 

Since arccos x is a monotonically decreasing function, its derivative is (strictly) negative,

and the derivative of | ψ0 |ψθ | to θ is strictly positive. Consequently, we have proved that
Eq. (13.59) is true. We continue our derivation by substituting this into Eq. (13.58)
 
ds d  | ψ0 | K̂ |ψθ | | ψ0 | K̂ |ψ0 | | K̂ |
≤  | ψ0 |ψθ | ≤ ≤ ≡ . (13.63)
dθ dθ   

Separating again the variables s and θ , we find

 θ  π/2
′ 
dθ ≥ ds . (13.64)
0 | K̂ | 0
436 Quantum metrology

After integration, the inequality becomes

π 
θ≥ . (13.65)
2 | K̂ |

When K̂ is the Hamiltonian of the system, and θ = t. This inequality is known as the
Margolus–Levitin inequality
π 
t≥ , (13.66)
2 E
where E is the average energy in the system at t = 0. This inequality was discovered
in 1998, more than fifty years after the formulation of the inequality of Mandelstam and
Tamm, and it has since played an important role in quantum parameter estimation and
general quantum information theory. The proof of the Margolus–Levitin inequality for the
unitary evolution of mixed states can be found via state purification. Alternative proofs are
given in Giovannetti et al. (2003) and in Levitin and Toffoli (2009). Levitin and Toffoli also
proved that the only states that can achieve the maximum dynamical speed limit are pure
states of the form
1  
|ψ = √ |ψ0 + eiϕ |ψ1 , (13.67)
2
where |ψ0 and |ψ1 are (possibly degenerate) energy eigenstates, and ϕ is an arbitrary
phase.
In order to find the dynamical speed of evolution, we need to know both E and E
to find out whether the Mandelstam–Tamm or the Margolus–Levitin bound applies. For
metrology, we need to choose our states such that both E and E are favourable. If we
look at a single optical mode with a sharply peaked central frequency ω, the phase change
can be written as θ = ωt, and the two inequalities become

π ω π ω
θ≥ and θ≥ , (13.68)
2 E 2 E

so we have two expressions for the minimal resolvable phase θ, given an interaction time
t and Hamiltonian H.
We now consider two examples, namely the coherent state and a noon state. The coherent
state |α of a single mode with frequency ω has mean energy E = ω n , and energy
√
uncertainty E = ω n . The two inequalities then yield

π 1 π 1
tMT ≥ √ and tML ≥ . (13.69)
2ω n 2ωn

Therefore tMT ≥ tML , and the Mandelstam–Tamm inequality is the equality that restricts the
dynamical speed of evolution for coherent states. Similarly, the minimum phase resolution
given a fixed interaction time t is determined by the Mandelstam–Tamm inequality, and
reads
π 1
θ≥ √ . (13.70)
2 n
Therefore, coherent states can in principle be used to measure phases at the shot-noise limit.
437 13.4 Entanglement-assisted parameter estimation

√
Noon states, on the other hand, are written as (|N , 0 + |0, N )/ 2, and have average
energy E = N ω and uncertainty E = 0. Therefore, the Mandelstam–Tamm inequality
is ill defined, while the Margolus–Levitin inequality yields
π 1
tML ≥ . (13.71)
2 Nω
If n and N are measures for the resources of the states, then the dynamical speed of
evolution for noon states is much faster than that for coherent states. Similarly, given a
fixed interaction time t, the phase change θ that can be resolved with a noon state is
given by
π 1
θ≥ . (13.72)
2N
In other words, noon states can be used in principle to reach the Heisenberg limit. However,
we will see that both the state preparation of these states and the optimal measurements that
give the Heisenberg limit are extremely challenging to implement in practice.

13.4 Entanglement-assisted parameter estimation

We have seen above that noon states, in which N photons are entangled with a spatial
degree of freedom, can in principle attain the Heisenberg limit. In this section, we will
consider how the Heisenberg limit can be reached with a large number of entangled qubits.
We first calculate the precision in the estimation of a phase θ given N independent qubits,
and we compare this with the situation where the N qubits are entangled in a ghz state. In
addition, we calculate the Fisher information in both cases.
First we consider the ‘classical’
√ case without any entanglement. We prepare a qubit in
the state |+ = (|0 + |1 )/ 2. The evolution of the qubit is given by

|0 → |0 and |1 → exp(iθ ) |1 . (13.73)

This produces the state

|0 + eiθ |1
|+ → |θ = √ . (13.74)
2
We need to find a suitable observable to estimate θ . A promising candidate is the Pauli X
operator:
X = θ | X |θ = cos θ . (13.75)
A measurement of X has two possible outcomes, ±1. The probability p(±|θ ) is given by
the Born rule
1
p(±|θ) = | ± |θ |2 = (1 ± cos θ ) . (13.76)
2
The Fisher information is readily calculated to be
 2
1 ∂p(±|θ )
F(θ) = = 1. (13.77)
±
p(±|θ ) ∂θ
438 Quantum metrology

If we repeat this procedure with N qubits, we find X 2 = N

Xj 2 = N cos2 θ . Using
N j=1
X 2 = Î, we get N
j=1 (Xj2 ) = N and the variance becomes

( X )2N = N − N cos2 θ = N sin2 θ . (13.78)

Using Eq. (13.13) we can relate the variance ( X ⊗N )2 to the average error in the phase δθ:
 
 d X N −1

δθ =   ( X )N = √1 . (13.79)
dθ  N
This is the standard quantum limit. If we calculate the Cramér–Rao bound using the Fisher
information, we find
1 1
δθ ≥ √ = √ , (13.80)
N F(θ) N
which is consistent with Eq. (13.79).
Next, we consider an N -qubit ghz state as the input state, and assume the same evolution
|0 → |0 and |1 → eiθ |1 . The ghz state can be written as
1
|+N ≡ √ (|0, 0, . . . , 0 + |1, 1, . . . , 1 ) (13.81)
2
with the same evolution as before. Afterwards, the state can be written as
1  
|θN ≡ √ |0, 0, . . . , 0 + eiN θ |1, 1, . . . , 1 . (13.82)
2
For convenience, we redefine |ψ0 = |0, 0, . . . , 0 and |ψ1 = |1, 1, . . . , 1 . Now our N -
qubit system is mathematically equivalent to a single (non-local!) system with a relative
phase shift N θ. If we choose the observable XN = |ψ0 ψ1 | + |ψ1 ψ0 |, then we calculate

θN | XN |θN = cos N θ and θN | XN2 |θN = 1 . (13.83)

√
Therefore, XN = 1 − cos2 N θ = sin N θ, and we find for the phase resolution
 −1
 d XN  1
δθ =  
 XN = . (13.84)
dθ N

This is the Heisenberg limit. The Fisher information is calculated using

1
p(±N |θN ) = (1 ± cos N θ ) , (13.85)
2
yielding
 2
1 ∂p(±|θ )
F(θ) = = N2 . (13.86)
±
p(±|θ ) ∂θ
The Cramér–Rao bound now reads
1 1
δθ ≥ √ = , (13.87)
F(θ) N
439 13.4 Entanglement-assisted parameter estimation

which is consistent with Eq. (13.84). Since all N qubits are used in a single measurement, the
Fisher information depends on N , while the number of independent samples is one. Since the
error δθ in Eq. (13.84) coincides with the minimum error derived via the Fisher information,
this is an optimal parameter-estimation procedure given this type of measurement.

Exercise 13.5: Verify the Fisher information in Eq. (13.86).

Even though the measurement of a highly entangled observable XN is in principle possible

in the quantum mechanical formalism, it is not likely that this can be implemented in
practice with optical systems. Instead, we want to rewrite this problem in terms of two-
qubit entangling operations and single-qubit measurements. The universality of single- and
two-qubit gates for quantum computing means that this rewriting can be done (at least in
principle). It is convenient to use the stabilizer formalism (see Chapter 2). We construct a
star-shaped cluster of N qubits, where each qubit is prepared in the |+ state, and N − 1
cz gates are applied between qubit 1 and qubits j = 1. The stabilizer generators are then
given by #
S1 = X1 Zj and Sj = Xj Z1 . (13.88)
j =1

Next, the star cluster is converted to a ghz state by means of (single-qubit) Hadamard
operators on qubits j = 1. This leads to the stabilizer
N
#
S1′ = Xj and Sj′ = Zj Z1 . (13.89)
j=1

The state is given by Eq. (13.81), and the evolution Uθ ,j of each qubit j again induces a
relative phase shift θ , leading to the state |θN . In terms of the stabilizer, this evolution can
be written as
† †
Sj′′ = Uθ ,j Uθ ,1 Zj Z1 Uθ ,1 Uθ ,j = Zj Z1 = Sj′ (13.90)
and
N
# N
#
†
S1′′ = Uθ ,j Xj Uθ ,j = (cos θ Xj + sin θ Yj ) . (13.91)
j=1 j=1

Applying the Hadamard operators on qubits j = 1 and the N −1 disentangling cz operators,

the stabilizer becomes

S̄j = Xj and S̄1 = cos(N θ ) X1 + sin(N θ ) Y1 . (13.92)

In other words, the qubits j = 1 are all back in the state |+ , and qubit 1 is in the state
stabilized by S̄1 :
1  
S̄1 |ψ = |ψ ⇐⇒ |ψ = √ |0 + eiN θ |1 . (13.93)
2
Following the standard procedure above, a single Pauli X measurement on qubit 1 then
estimates the value of θ with a precision δθ = N −1 . When the measurement yields +1, we
estimate θ = 0, and when the measurement yields the outcome −1, we estimate θ = π/N .
440 Quantum metrology

Exercise 13.6: Show that the Mandelstam–Tamm and Margolus–Levitin bounds can be
violated in general CP maps, by considering the isolated, non-unitary evolution of qubit 1
in Eq. (13.93).

So far, we have used entangled states to achieve the Heisenberg limit. However, one
may want to use probe states that are separable to begin with, and perform a non-local
measurement on all the qubits after the evolution Uθ has been applied to the separable
state. The benefit of this approach is that the probe state is less sensitive to decoherence
as it undergoes the evolution Uθ . The question is whether this also allows us to achieve
the Heisenberg limit. Surprisingly, the answer is negative. To see this, assume that we wish
to measure a time parameter t. Suppose we have N systems labelled j, and each system
has d energy levels. The difference between the smallest and the largest energy eigenvalue
is ǫ. Each system is prepared in a state |ψ j and undergoes a unitary evolution Uj (t) =
exp[−iHj t/]. The total Hamiltonian for the N systems can be written as H = j Hj .
If we use the N qubits in a single-shot parameter-estimation procedure, the Heisenberg
uncertainty relation dictates that

δt δH ≥ . (13.94)
2
In order to minimize δt, we need to maximize H:

  √ ǫ
δH = ( Hj )2 = N ( Hmax )2 = N , (13.95)
j
2

where ( Hmax )2 is the maximum variance for a single system. The average error in the
parameter θ is therefore

δt ≥ √ . (13.96)
ǫ N
This is the standard quantum limit. Therefore, when we start with a separable input of
N quantum systems, regardless of the measurement procedure, the average error in θ is
bounded by the sql, which can be attained in a strictly classical setting. This derivation
applies not only to energy and time, but to any parameter θ and its generator K̂. Consequently,
in order to reach the Heisenberg limit, we need entangled states as our resources. This places
a powerful restriction on implementations of quantum metrology.

13.5 Optical quantum metrology

So far, we have presented a theoretical approach for estimating parameters that take small
values, and we have seen that entanglement can be used to improve the precision from the
standard quantum limit to the Heisenberg limit. However, it is thus far not clear how these
protocols can be implemented in practice. In particular, we are interested how to implement
quantum metrology with optical interferometry. This is the subject of the present section.
441 13.5 Optical quantum metrology

13.5.1 The Jordan–Schwinger representation

To translate the quantum-metrology protocols of the previous section to optical interferom-

eters, we use the Stokes operators:

 † 
†
Ĵx = â1 â2 + â1 â2
2
i  † 
†
Ĵy = − â1 â2 − â1 â2
2

 † 
†
Ĵz = â1 â1 − â2 â2 . (13.97)
2
In addition, we can define the total-number operator
† †
N̂ = â1 â1 + â2 â2 . (13.98)

We make two crucial observations about these observables. First, the Stokes operators
obey the commutation relations for the Pauli operators [Ĵi , Ĵj ] = iǫijk Ĵk , and second,
they generate the unitary transformations of beam splitters and phase shifters. Combining
these two properties, we can translate the qubit-based metrology of the previous section
into optical interferometers. However, we know from Chapter 6 that we cannot perform
deterministic two-qubit gates, and so we have to proceed with caution.
The operators Ĵx and Ĵy generate the unitary transformation of (generalized) beam
splitters. In particular, we will use
 
i cos φ2 i sin φ2
UBS = exp φ Ĵx = , (13.99)
 i sin φ2 cos φ2

acting on modes a1 and a2 . Similarly, we can generate a relative phase shift between two
modes a1 and a2 using the operator Ĵz

i e−iθ/2 0
Uθ = exp θ Ĵz = . (13.100)
 0 eiθ/2

This means that interferometers (constructed on modes a1 and a2 ) can be generated by the
Stokes operators. In particular, if the input state of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer (see
Fig. 13.6) is given by |ψin , then the output state can be written as
   
iπ Ĵx i iπ Ĵx
|ψout = exp exp − θ Ĵz exp − |ψin
2  2
i
= exp − θ Ĵy |ψin . (13.101)


A typical measurement of the output modes of the Mach–Zehnder interferometer is the

intensity difference between the two output modes, which is given by Ĵz . This operator
 442 Quantum metrology

Fig. 13.6. The Mach–Zehnder interferometer. The beam-splitter transformations are generated by the
operator Jx , and the relative phase shift θ = θ1 − θ2 is generated by Ĵz .

therefore both generates the relative phase shift, and measures the intensity difference of
the output. Using Eq. (13.101) we can write

ψout | Ĵz |ψout = ψin | Ĵz′ |ψin , (13.102)

with

Ĵz′ = eiπ Ĵx /2 eiθ Ĵz / e−iπ Ĵx /2 Ĵz eiπ Ĵx /2 e−iθ Ĵz / e−iπ Ĵx /2
= cos θ Ĵz − sin θ Ĵx . (13.103)

From this equation, we can relate the variance in Ĵz′ to the variance in Ĵz and Ĵx :
 
( Ĵz′ )2 = sin 2 θ( Ĵx )2 + cos2 θ ( Ĵz )2 − sin 2θ Ĵx Ĵz − Ĵx Ĵz . (13.104)

The error in the phase δθ can then be written as

 
 d Ĵ ′ −1
 z 
δθ =   Ĵz′ . (13.105)
 dθ 

This is as far as we can go at this juncture without specifying the input state of the
interferometer.

Exercise 13.7: For a coherent state in one input mode of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer,
and vacuum in the other, |α, 0 , show that the phase sensitivity scales as
1 1
δθ = =√ . (13.106)
|α| n
The second observation about the Stokes operators was that they have the same structure
as the angular-momentum operators in quantum mechanics. We therefore can use our knowl-
edge of the angular-momentum eigenstates in the description of interferometers, namely
the relations

Ĵ 2 |j, m = j(j + 1)2 |j, m and Ĵz |j, m = m |j, m . (13.107)

This is the Jordan–Schwinger representation of interferometers.

443 13.5 Optical quantum metrology

Suppose that the input state to the interferometer has a well-defined number of photons
n. We can then write
N̂ |ψin = n |ψin . (13.108)
Furthermore, using the definition of the Stokes operators in Eq. (13.97), we can express the
operator Ĵ 2 in terms of N̂ :
 
2 N̂ N̂
Ĵ = Ĵx2 + Ĵy2 + Ĵz2 = + 1 2 , (13.109)
2 2

which in turn means that

n n 
Ĵ 2 |ψin = j(j + 1)2 |ψin = + 1 2 |ψin . (13.110)
2 2

Therefore, the input state on modes a1 and a2 with total photon number n corresponds to an
‘angular-momentum’ state j = n/2. Similarly, the second quantum number m takes integer
values between −j and +j:
n n
Ĵz |ψin = m |ψin with − ≤m≤ . (13.111)
2 2

The benefit of this approach is that we can calculate the expectation values of functions
of the Stokes operators for large photon-number states very easily. In particular, we can
readily calculate the variance Ĵz without having to transform large powers of the creation
and annihilation operators.

Exercise 13.8: Verify Eqs. (13.103) and (13.109).

Next, we consider the input state |j, m . We evaluate

Ĵz′ = cos θ Ĵz − sin θ Ĵx = m cos θ . (13.112)

The variance is
( Ĵz′ )2 = sin2 θ ( Ĵx )2 (13.113)
where we have used the fact that the remaining terms in Eq. (13.104) are zero for eigenstates
of the Ĵz operator. Exploiting the cylindrical symmetry along the z axis, we can write
Ĵx2 = (Ĵ 2 − Ĵz2 )/2, which yields the variance

2  
( Ĵz′ )2 = sin2 θ j(j + 1) − m2 . (13.114)
2

Substituting this into Eq. (13.105) we obtain the error in the phase θ:
 −1 
 d Ĵ ′  j(j + 1) 1
 
δθ =  z
 Ĵz′ = − . (13.115)
 dθ  2m2 2
444 Quantum metrology

If we want to minimize the error in θ , we should choose m as large as possible, i.e., m = ±j.
Using j = m = n/2, this leads to the standard quantum limit

1
δθ = √ . (13.116)
n

When m = n/2, all photons are in mode a1 , and no photons are in mode a2 . In other words,
n input photons in the same input mode (and no photons in the second input mode) behave
as n independent particles. When m = 0, the mean Ĵz′ is zero and the error δθ diverges,
so we cannot make definite statements about this input state at this stage. We will return to
this later.

Exercise 13.9: Calculate the Fisher information given the input state j = n/2, m = n/2,
and a measurement of the intensity difference. How is the sensitivity affected by the detector
efficiency?

Next, we consider input states that approach the Heisenberg limit. The eigenstates |j, m
are separable two-mode states: both the photon number and the number difference of the
modes is sharp, which means that we can write |j, m as a tensor product of two Fock states
|n1 and |n2 on modes a1 and a2 , respectively

|j, m = |n1 , n2 with n1 = j + m, n2 = j − m . (13.117)

We can consider (entangled) superpositions of these states that may achieve the Heisenberg
limit. We need to keep the total photon number 2j fixed, otherwise the eigenstates will not
interfere, and we can write
    
ymckj,mm′ = √1 |j, m + j, m′ . (13.118)
2
We call these ‘ymck’ states, after Yurke, McCall, and Klauder, who first described them.
We now have to determine the expectation value Ĵz′ and the variance Ĵz′ . The derivation
is straightforward but rather lengthy, and the results for arbitrary m and m′ do not come in
a nice compact form. We will therefore consider two special cases, one where m = 0 and
m′ = 1, and secondly the noon state (m = −m′ = j).
When m = 0 and m′ = 1, the state takes the form
   +  +
ymckj,01 = √1  n , n +  n + 1, n − 1 , (13.119)
2 2 2 2 2

and the expectation value Ĵz′ is evaluated as

  
Ĵz′ = cos θ − sin θ j(j + 1) (13.120)
2 2
and the variance is
 2 2  2 
Ĵz′ = cos θ + sin2 θ (j 2 + j − 1) . (13.121)
4
445 13.5 Optical quantum metrology

The error in the phase can then be calculated as

 −2
 d Ĵ ′   2 cos2 θ + sin2 θ (j 2 + j − 1)
2  
(δθ ) =  z
 Ĵz′ =  . (13.122)
 dθ  (sin θ + cos θ j(j + 1))2

This error depends on the value of θ , and we therefore need to estimate θ around the value
that yields the smallest error. This is found to be θ = 0, and the effective error becomes

1 2
(δθ )2 = → δθ ≈ , (13.123)
j(j + 1) n

where we have used j = n/2 and set n large. Up to a constant factor, this input state for the
Mach–Zehnder interferometer reaches the Heisenberg limit.
Another important state for interferometry is the noon state, and more generally the
ymck state with m = −m′
   +  +
ymckj,m,−m = √1  n + m, n − m +  n − m, n + m . (13.124)
2 2 2 2 2

The noon state is recovered when m = j = n/2. The expectation value of the intensity
difference at the output modes for large m becomes

m + m′ m−m
Ĵz′ =  cos θ =  cos θ = 0. (13.125)
2 2

Since the measured expectation value does not depend on θ , no information about θ can
be learned in such an experiment. Also, the variance around θ = 0 is Ĵz′ = |m|, which
means that the larger the separation m, the bigger the spread.
One may wonder why the noon state (and all other states with m = −m′ ) behaves
this badly in a Mach–Zehnder interferometer. After all, it was designed for its maximal
sensitivity to phase shifts. The answer is that the noon state yields the Heisenberg limit
when the phase shift is applied directly to it. Here, we use the noon state as the input to a
50:50 beam splitter, which changes the state to a form that is insensitive to phase differences
in the interferometer. When only two photons are involved, it is clear why this is the case.
A two-photon noon state |2, 0 + |0, 2 transforms under a 50:50 beam splitter into the
state |1, 1 , which is of course completely insensitive to any relative phase shift in the two
modes.
This observation leads us back to the question of what can be achieved with input states
of the form |j, 0 , in other words, when an equal number of photons enter the Mach–
Zehnder interferometer in each input mode. Suppose that the input state to the Mach–
Zehnder interferometer is given by
n n+

|ψin =  , , (13.126)
2 2
such that the total photon number is n. Assuming no losses in the photodetectors, and
perfect photon-number resolution, we can calculate the probability distribution that the
 446 Quantum metrology

Fig. 13.7. Probability for finding a photon-number difference of 2k, given an input state |n/2, n/2 in a
Mach–Zehnder interferometer.

photon-number difference between the two output modes is 2k:

*   n n +2
 n n  i  nθ
p(2k|θ) =  + k, − k  exp − θ Ĵj  ,  = Jk2
 , (13.127)
2 2  2 2 2

where Jn (x) is a Bessel function, and θ is again the relative phase shift in the arms of
the interferometer. This probability distribution is shown in Fig. 13.7. The width of the
distribution can be estimated at |k| < θ n/2, which approaches the Heisenberg limit. For
more details, see Holland and Burnett (1993).

13.5.2 The creation of YMCK and NOON states

How can we create the states that yield the Heisenberg limit? In particular, we wish to create
the state in Eq. (13.119) with n/2 = N :

1
|ψin = √ (|N , N + |N + 1, N − 1 ) . (13.128)
2

If we consider only linear-optical elements, there is no way to create this state with unit
probability. However, there is a procedure that creates a close approximation to this state
with less than unit probability (see Fig. 13.8). Assuming that we can create Fock states
(which is still a very tall order), we can start with an input state |N + 1, N . Both modes
are sent through a beam splitter with very small reflection coefficient. The two reflected
modes are sent into a 50:50 beam splitter, the output modes of which are detected. When
the two detectors register a single photon, we have removed it from the input, but we do
 447 13.5 Optical quantum metrology

√
Fig. 13.8. The probabilistic creation of the state (|N , N + |N + 1, N − 1 )/ 2. Two beam splitters with small
reflection coefficients are placed into the input modes. The reflected beams are mixed in a 50:50
beam splitter. When a single photon is detected, the required state is created, up to a relative
phase shift eiπ , which is corrected by φ.

not know from which mode it came. Adjusting the beam-splitter reflectivities for the fact
that the input photon number is different, we can obtain the required state with exceedingly
high fidelity. When the photodetectors are bucket detectors, in other words they cannot
distinguish between one or more photons, then we can achieve arbitrary high fidelity at the
cost of reduced success probability by lowering the reflectivity of the two beam splitters.

Exercise 13.10: Calculate the optimal beam-splitter reflectivities for Fig. 13.8, assuming
perfect photodetectors.

Similarly, we can construct a probabilistic method for creating noon states. To this end
we write the noon state as
†N †N
1 â + â âN + âN
√ (|N , 0 + |0, N ) = 1 √ 2 |0, 0 = 1√ 2 |N , N . (13.129)
2 2N ! 2N !

In the last equation we have used the fact that we can create a noon state by removing
photons from a separable state |N , N . The removal of photons can then be translated into
detection, just as for the ymck states. However, now we need to repeat this procedure
N times:
#N
 
âN
1 + âN
2 = â1 + eiφk â2 , (13.130)
k=1

where exp(iφk ) = exp(2πik/N ) are the N th roots of unity. Given a single photon in the
two detectors in Fig. 13.8, the detection event can be interpreted as an operator â1 ± eiφ â2
(depending on which detector registers the photon). Repeating this structure N times, and
assuming a successful detection at each stage, the output state is a noon state (see Fig. 13.9).
The overall success probability is exponentially small, but feed-forward techniques can be
used to reduce the overhead to polynomial size in N . One may argue that such a high
overhead should be counted towards the necessary resources, in which case a square-root
improvement in the precision is insignificant compared to the overhead, be it exponential
or polynomial. However, there may still be a role for these techniques in situations where
 448 Quantum metrology

√
Fig. 13.9. The probabilistic creation of the noon state (|N , 0 + |0, N )/ 2.

high-intensity light causes damage to a particular sample. A light source with the maximum
allowed intensity operating at the shot-noise limit may simply not be accurate enough for
phase estimation. √
The creation of the ymck state (|j, 0 +|j, 1 )/ 2 and the noon state are special cases of a
general procedure for creating multi-mode optical states with well-defined photon number.
Any such state can be described by a polynomial of creation operators acting on a multi-
mode vacuum state. We can translate this into a polynomial of annihilation operators acting
on a multi-mode number state |n ⊗m . This polynomial can be decomposed into its roots,
which are themselves linear polynomials. In turn, these can be implemented successively
with linear-optical elements according to the technique described above.

Exercise 13.11: Assume that N is even. Instead of post-selecting on a single photon in

each detector pair in Fig. 13.9, we post-select on detector coincidences (one photon in each
detector). What is the success probability of creating a size N noon state?

Exercise 13.12: Starting from N identical single-photon states in N different modes, prove
using Eq. (6.25) that the theoretical upper limit for creating a noon state with linear-optical
elements and photodetection is p = 2/N .

13.5.3 Squeezed-state metrology

So far, we have considered Mach–Zehnder interferometers with input states that have a
definite number of photons. Depending on the distribution of the photons over the two
input modes, we have found a phase sensitivity that scales either as the standard quantum
limit, or as the Heisenberg limit. However, it is very difficult to create states with a definite
number of photons N , especially if N is large. We have also seen (in Exercise 13.7) that
coherent states give rise to the standard quantum limit. This should not be surprising, since
the coherent states are in some sense the classical states of light. The question is therefore
whether squeezed states can help achieve the Heisenberg limit in a practical way.
In order to investigate this question, we will first modify the Jordan–Schwinger repre-
sentation presented in the previous section. The natural operators in the context of squeezed
 449 13.5 Optical quantum metrology

states are
 † † 
K̂x = â1 â2 + â1 â2
2
i  † † 
K̂y = − â1 â2 − â1 â2
2
 † 
†
K̂z = â1 â1 + â2 â2 + 1 , (13.131)
2

the first two of which (K̂x and K̂y ) generate the two-mode squeezing operator
   
† † ∗ i 
S(ξ ) = exp −ξ â1 â2 + ξ â1 â2 = exp − 2ξ2 K̂x + 2ξ1 K̂y , (13.132)


where ξ = ξ1 +iξ2 . Note that the operator K̂z is linearly related to the total-number operator,
rather than the number difference Ĵz . This is because we want the commutation relations of
K̂x , K̂y , and K̂z to form a closed algebra
     
K̂x , K̂y = −iK̂z , K̂y , K̂z = iK̂x , and K̂z , K̂x = iK̂y (13.133)

and this is not possible with just the operators K̂x , K̂y , and Ĵz . This closed algebra in turn
allows us to calculate the evolution of states and operators generated by the K̂i . We find that

eiζ K̂x / K̂z e−iζ K̂x / = cosh ζ K̂z + sinh ζ K̂y ,

eiθ K̂z / K̂y e−iθ K̂z / = cos θ K̂y + sin θ K̂x ,

eiζ K̂x / K̂y e−iζ K̂x / = cosh ζ K̂y + sinh ζ K̂z . (13.134)

These are the Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relations, and a general method for calculating
the more complicated ones is presented in Appendix 1.
Next, we translate the Mach–Zehnder interferometer, as described by the angular-
momentum operators Ĵi , into a squeezing interferometer by replacing Ĵi with K̂i throughout
the protocol. In other words, as shown in Fig. 13.10, the beam splitters generated by Ĵx are
replaced by two-mode squeezing operators generated by K̂x , the phase is encoded not with

Fig. 13.10. Translating the Mach–Zehnder interferometer into a squeezing interferometer by replacing Ĵi with
K̂i . We define θ = −(θ1 + θ2 ).
450 Quantum metrology

a regular phase shift but with the K̂z operator, and the measured observable in the output
† †
modes is the total photon number N̂ = â1 â1 + â2 â2 , which can be written as 2K̂z − 1. Such
an interferometer produces an output state

i i i
|ψout = exp ζ K̂x exp − θ K̂z exp − ζ K̂x |ψin . (13.135)
  

Using the same method as above, we calculate the expectation values of the operators with
respect to the input state, rather than the output state. Using the relations in Eq. (13.134),
we find that
N̂ = ψout | 2K̂z − 1 |ψout = (1 − cos θ ) sinh2 ζ , (13.136)
and  
( N̂ )2 = sin2 θ + (1 − cos θ )2 cosh2 ζ sinh2 ζ . (13.137)

The precision in the phase is then given by the standard procedure


2 sin2 θ + (1 − cos θ )2 cosh2 ζ 
1

(δθ ) = = 2 
. (13.138)
sin2 θ sinh2 ζ sinh ζ θ =0

We have again evaluated the precision around θ = 0, where the error δθ reaches a minimum.
To compare this with the interferometers described so far, we need to relate sinh ζ to the
average number of photons generated by the two-mode squeezers. There is, however, a
subtlety in determining this number. From Eq. (13.136) we deduce that the average number
of detected photons at θ = 0 is zero. This is expected, since in the absence of the phase
shift θ the second two-mode squeezer is the inverse of the first two-mode squeezer. We
therefore have to compare the precision with the average number of photons inside the
interferometer, i.e., the average number of photons created by the first two-mode squeezer.
For a vacuum input state, this is readily calculated as
* +
N̂ = 2 eiζ K̂x K̂z e−iζ K̂x − 1 = cosh ζ − 1 . (13.139)

From this, we find sinh2 ζ = N̂ ( N̂ + 2), and the precision in the phase becomes

1 1
δθ =  ≃ , (13.140)
N̂ ( N̂ + 2) N̂

which is the Heisenberg limit. The best current levels of squeezing have a strength of about
10 dB, and the average photon number is approximately N = 2. This is not enough
to make a meaningful improvement in parameter estimation in the above configuration.
Other difficulties in implementing this protocol are mode matching in the second two-
mode squeezer, the reduced collection and detection efficiency of the detectors, and photon
loss inside the interferometer (if the probe medium is dispersive).

Exercise 13.13: Verify Eqs. (13.136) and (13.137).

451 13.5 Optical quantum metrology

13.5.4 The Mach–Zehnder interferometer revisited

The final route to Heisenberg-limited parameter estimation we consider here is a Mach–

Zehnder interferometer that receives as input states a coherent state and squeezed vacuum.1
We again wish to measure the relative phase shift θ between the two interior modes of
the interferometer, and as before, we measure the photon-number difference in the output
modes. We can write the input and output states as
i
|ψin = |α, ξ and |ψout = exp − θ Ĵy |ψin , (13.141)


where |α is a coherent state with average photon number n = |α|2 and |ξ is a squeezed
vacuum state with average photon number sinh2 r, and ξ = reiφ . Given the measurement
of Ĵz in the output modes and the state of the input modes, we can calculate the Fisher
information
F(θ) = |α|2 e2r + sinh 2 r . (13.142)
This leads to the Cramér–Rao bound for the average error in θ
1 1 1
δθ ≥ √ =√  , (13.143)
M F(θ) M |α| e + sinh2 r
2 2r

where M is the number of times the experiment is repeated (independently).

Exercise 13.14: Verify Eq. (13.142).

In the discussion above, using the ymck states as input states to the Mach–Zehnder
interferometer, we saw that the sensitivity of the procedure depended on the actual value of
θ . In particular, θ had to be close to zero or π in order to achieve the Heisenberg limit. When
the phase shift we expect to measure is small, this may not be such an important restriction.
However, when the phase shift is completely unknown, we would like to have a parameter-
estimation procedure that attains the Heisenberg limit independent of the value of θ . From
Eq. (13.142) we see that the Cramér–Rao bound allows for this possibility. Maximum-
likelihood techniques are known to saturate the Cramér–Rao bound asymptotically for
large M , and we therefore have found a technique that attains the Heisenberg limit for
arbitrary values of θ .
There are several important regimes in this set-up, and we will briefly review them here.
In each case, the error δθ is expressed in terms of the average photon number n in the
experiment.
(i) r = 0: There is no squeezing, and the bound in Eq. (13.143) reduces to
1 1
δθ ≥  =√ . (13.144)
M |α|2 M n

This is the standard quantum limit, as expected for coherent states.

1 Historically, this set-up was first considered by Caves in 1981, and is considered the start of Heisenberg-limited
parameter estimation.
452 Quantum metrology

(ii) α = 0: In this case, there is only squeezing, which leads to the bound

1 1 1
δθ ≥  = √ √ , (13.145)
M sinh2 r M n

where n = sinh2 r.
(iii) sinh 2 r ≪ |α|2 : When there is only a small amount of squeezing, the bound becomes

e−r
δθ ≥ √ , (13.146)
M n

where n ≃ |α|2 . This is sub-shot-noise precision, but does not reach the Heisenberg
limit. It is also the regime that can be probed with current technology.
(iv) sinh2 r ≫ |α|2 : In this regime, the bound on the error in θ becomes

1
δθ ≥  , (13.147)
M n (4|α|2 + 1)

where n ≃ sinh 2 r.
(v) sinh 2 r ≃ |α|2 : Finally, the optimal Cramér–Rao bound is obtained when the intensities
of the coherent mode and the squeezed vacuum are approximately the same:

1 1
δθ ≥ √ , (13.148)
M n

where n ≃ 2|α|2 ≃ 2 sinh2 r. However, given current levels of experimentally

achievable squeezing, it will be very difficult to achieve this level of precision in the
measurement of θ for large n .
For a given number of detected photons N , the optimal regime (5) provides two-mode states
in the interior that exhibit the largest contribution of noon components |N , 0 + |0, N in
the total superposition. It is therefore the amount of entanglement between the two interior
modes that is responsible for the Heisenberg-limited precision, rather than the reduced
quadrature noise of the squeezed input state.

13.6 References and further reading

As has become clear in this chapter, constructing a practical implementation for Heisenberg-
limited quantum metrology is extremely challenging. First, we require entangled quantum
states of some sort, which can then be used to encode the parameter we wish to estimate.
Second, we need to maintain coherence in the probing stage, when the parameter is imprinted
onto the entangled state. And finally, we need the ability to measure the quantum state with
high fidelity. In the case of photon counting, low detector efficiencies can be disastrous.
There have been many theoretical proposals for achieving the Heisenberg limit, but currently
453 13.6 References and further reading

only proof-of-principle experiments have been carried out (that is, experiments that show
a square-root improvement, but for rather small N ). It seems that large-scale quantum
metrology is as hard to implement as large-scale quantum computing.
For an introduction to classical probability theory, see Jaynes (2003). The theory of
parameter estimation in quantum mechanics was pioneered by Helstrom (1976) and Holevo
(1982, 2001). The statistical distance for pure quantum states was introduced by Wootters
(1981), and expanded for mixed states by Braunstein and Caves (1994). For the geometrical
description of quantum parameter estimation, see Braunstein et al. (1996), who also discuss
generalized uncertainty relations. The energy bound on the dynamical evolution of states
was found by Margolus and Levitin (1998), and this complemented the earlier bound by
Mandelstam and Tamm (1945).
Optical metrology was pioneered by Caves (1981), and Yurke et al. (1986). It was shown
by Giovannetti et al. (2006) that entanglement is essential in the input state when the
Heisenberg limit is to be attained. Noon states were introduced by Bollinger et al. (1996),
and named by Kok and Dowling. For the state preparation of noon states, see Kok et al.
(2002a), and Cable and Dowling (2007). The performance of various schemes to attain the
Heisenberg limit were analyzed in the presence of photon loss by Huelga et al. (1997) and
recently by Pezzé and Smerzi (2008) and Demkowicz-Dobrzanski et al. (2009).
 Appendix A
1 Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relations

In this appendix, we prove the operator ordering formula in Eq. (1.203):

∗K ∗K
eκK+ −κ −
= eτ K+ e−2νK0 e−τ −
. (A1.1)

We follow the derivation by Truax (1985). The ordering formula is completely determined
by the commutation relations of the operators K+ , K− , and K0 , which are given by

[K− , K+ ] = 2K0 and [K0 , K± ] = ±K± , (A1.2)

together with
† †
K+ = K− and K 0 = K0 . (A1.3)
Operators that obey this algebra generate a Lie group that is known as SU(1,1).
First, we define two unitary operators, U1 (λ) and U2 (λ) according to
∗K
U1 (λ) = eλ(κK+ −κ − ),

U2 (λ) = ep+ (λ)K+ ep0 (λ)K0 ep− (λ)K− . (A1.4)

The operators must satisfy U1 (0) = U2 (0) = Î. This leads to the boundary conditions for
the functions pk (λ) with k = +, −, 0:

p+ (0) = p0 (0) = p− (0) = 0. (A1.5)

We will now derive three coupled differential equations for the pk (λ), and find the solutions
for these boundary conditions. We then set λ = 1 to arrive at the operator ordering formula
of Eq. (1.203). In principle, this technique can be used to find numerous other operator
ordering formulas, and we will give another example towards the end of this appendix.
In order to find the coupled differential equations, we require that U1 (λ) = U2 (λ), and
we differentiate both sides with respect to λ:
   
κK+ − κ ∗ K− U1 (λ) = κK+ − κ ∗ K− U2 (λ)
dp+
= K+ ep+ K+ ep0 K0 ep− K−
dλ
dp0 p+ K+
+ e K0 ep0 K0 ep− K−
dλ
dp− p+ K+ p0 K0
+ e e K− ep− K− . (A1.6)
dλ
455 Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relations

Multiplying this from the right with U2−1 (λ) then gives the equation

dp+ dp0 p+ K+
κK+ − κ ∗ K− = K+ + e K0 e−p+ K+
dλ dλ
dp− p+ K+ p0 K0
+ e e K− e−p0 K0 e−p+ K+ . (A1.7)
dλ
Next, we use the standard Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relation

1
eA Be−A = B + [A, B] + [A, [A, B]] + . . . (A1.8)
2!
to evaluate the transformation of the operators K0 and K− :

ep+ K+ K0 e−p+ K+ = K0 − p+ K+ , (A1.9)

and  
2
ep+ K+ ep0 K0 K− e−p0 K0 e−p+ K+ = K− + p+ K+ − 2p+ K0 e−p0 . (A1.10)
This leads to the equation

dp+ dp0 2 −p0 dp−

κK+ − κ ∗ K− = − p+ + p+ e K+
dλ dλ dλ
dp0 dp− dp−
+ − 2p+ e−p0 K0 + e−p0 K− . (A1.11)
dλ dλ dλ

Collecting the coefficients of the three different operators gives the three coupled differential
equations

dp− −p0
κ∗ = − e , (A1.12)
dλ
dp0 dp−
0= − 2p+ e−p0 , (A1.13)
dλ dλ
dp+ dp0 2 −p0 dp−
κ= − p+ + p+ e . (A1.14)
dλ dλ dλ
These equations can be rearranged to give

dp0 dp+ 2
+ 2κ ∗ p+ = 0 and + κ ∗ p+ = κ. (A1.15)
dλ dλ
We can solve the latter equation by making two substitutions: first we choose p+ = y/κ ∗
with y(0) = 0, and then we choose y = u′ /u with u′ (0) = 0. The resulting second-order
differential equation is
u′′ − |κ|2 u = 0. (A1.16)
This equation can be solved using standard techniques. We find that
κ
p+ (λ) = tanh(λ|κ|), (A1.17)
|κ|
456 Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relations

which in turn yields

κ∗
p0 (λ) = −2 ln [cosh(λ|κ|)] and p− (λ) = − tanh(λ|κ|). (A1.18)
|κ|

When we substitute these functions into Eq. (A1.4) we obtain the operator ordering formula
in Eq. (A1.1) and Eq. (1.203).
The technique described above is very general, and can be used to derive various other
operator ordering formulas. For example, we can change the order of the exponentials in
U2 (λ) and rederive the functions p+ , p− , and p0 . Alternatively, we can choose a different
set of commutation relations and derive a new ordering formula. One such alternative set is

[K− , K+ ] = −2K0 and [K0 , K± ] = ±K± , (A1.19)

together with
† †
K+ = K− and K 0 = K0 . (A1.20)
Operators that obey this algebra generate a Lie group that is known as SU(2). The algebra
is almost identical to that of SU(1,1), except for the minus sign in [K− , K+ ]. Following the
procedure given above, we find that the operator ordering formula for these operators is
∗K ∗K
eκK+ −κ −
= eτ K+ e−2νK0 e−τ −
, (A1.21)

with
κ
τ= tan |κ| and ν = ln(cos |κ|). (A1.22)
|κ|
 Appendix B
2 The Knill–Laflamme–Milburn protocol

In this appendix, we present the original argument by Knill, Laflamme, and Milburn (klm). It
consists of three parts: (1) a probabilistic cz gate based on the ns gate discussed in Chapter 6;
(2) a method of teleporting the probabilistic gate into a circuit to achieve arbitrary high
success probability; and (3) an error-correction protocol that facilitates efficient encoding
with respect to the level of accuracy of the gates. Here, we discuss the gate-teleportation
aspect of the klm protocol. A longer introduction is given by Myers and Laflamme (2005).
We first present the gate-teleportation protocol due to Gottesman and Chuang (1999),
and then show how it was adapted for linear-optical implementations by Knill, Laflamme,
and Milburn (2001). We show how to teleport single- and two-qubit gates, which requires
the capability of perfect Bell measurements. In quantum optics, perfect Bell measurements
are not possible, and the remainder of this appendix is devoted to the adaptation of the
gate-teleportation protocol to single- and multi-photon teleportation.
We can write the teleportation of a single qubit schematically as

|ψ 1 |00 23 → X3n Z3m |nm 12 |ψ 3 , (B2.1)

where |00 23 is the (unnormalized) Bell state |00 + |11 on modes 2 and 3, and |nm 12
is the Bell state found in Alice’s Bell measurement. The indices n, m = {0, 1} denote the
measurement outcomes (sent to Bob), that determine how the teleported state differs from
the input state. Now consider what happens if the entangled pair is in a slightly different
state, such that |00 23 → Î2 ⊗ U3 |00 23 . The teleportation protocol then yields

Î1 ⊗ Î2 ⊗ U3 |ψ 1 |00 23 → U3 X3n Z3m |nm 12 |ψ 3 , (B2.2)

and the output state is given by

|ψout = UX n Z m |ψ , (B2.3)

where we suppressed the subscript 3 for the single-qubit operators. If Bob applies his
corrective Pauli operations, X −n first, followed by Z −m , the output state becomes

|ψout = Z −m X −n UX n Z m |ψ = Ũ |ψ . (B2.4)

For certain choices of known U we can use this outcome for the so-called gate teleportation
of U . In other words, U is not implemented directly: it is induced by employing a different
entangled state in the teleportation procedure. Hence, the gate operation is reduced to state
preparation, which may be easier in some cases. The teleportation circuit is given by
458 The Knill–Laflamme–Milburn protocol

ψ1 H ‘m’

0 2 H ‘n’

0 3 U Xn Zm ψ out .

In order for the gate teleportation to work, we must be able to commute U through the Pauli
operators X and Z. In particular, the commutator should not be proportional to an arbitrary
unitary operator, because Bob has to ‘undo’ the commutator [U , X n Z m ]. If this is again an
arbitrary single-qubit operator, Bob may as well directly apply U . We assume that U is part
of the Clifford group, which means that
′ ′
UX n Z m = eiφ(n,m) X n Z m U , (B2.5)

where φ(n, m) ∈ [0, 2π) is a global phase factor. We can then write the gate teleportation
(up to a global phase) as

|ψout = X k Z l U |ψ → U |ψ , (B2.6)

for some k, l that can be worked out by Bob if he knows U , n, and m. This protocol is useful
if Bob can perform deterministic Pauli operators, but not arbitrary single-qubit gates. In
addition, the protocol assumes that the entangled input state can be created, and that Alice
can perform a deterministic Bell measurement.
It is straightforward to extend this technique to two-qubit gates, where the advantage
becomes very important. We teleport both qubits, and apply the two-qubit operation to the
two entangled resource states for teleportation. The double teleportation protocol can be
written as
  
|ψ 1 |00 23 |00 45 |φ 6 → |km 12 X3k Z3m |ψ 3 X4n Z4l |φ 4 |nl 56 . (B2.7)

Applying a two-qubit gate U34 to the entangled state |00 23 |00 45 prior to teleportation
produces the output state

|out = U34 X3k Z3m X4n Z4l |ψ, φ 34 . (B2.8)

In the circuit model, this can be written as

ψ 1 H ‘m’

0 2 H ‘k’

0 3 Xk Zm

U34 out

0 4 Xn Zl

0 5 H ‘n’

6 H ‘l’
459 The Knill–Laflamme–Milburn protocol

When the two-qubit unitary U34 is part of the Clifford group, Bob can apply corrective Pauli
gates such that the output state is U34 |ψ, φ 34 . In particular, when the two-qubit unitary is
a cz gate, the circuit becomes
ψ ‘m’
B
‘k’
00
Zk Zm Xn
cz ψ ,

Xk Zn Zl
00
‘n’
B
‘l’

where B denotes the Bell measurement, and the two-qubit entangled resource states are
denoted by the boxed |00 . The advantage of gate teleportation now becomes clear: it is
possible to deterministically implement interesting two-qubit gates, such as the cx and the
cz gates, via the state preparation of a suitable four-qubit entangled state. Since the four-
qubit entangled state must be prepared in advance, this may be a probabilistic process, as
long as the preparation stage tells us that we succeeded. Bob does not need the capability of
deterministic two-qubit gates, only single-qubit gates. The protocol does, however, require
the capability to perform complete deterministic Bell measurements.
A perfect deterministic Bell measurement of single-photon qubits is impossible, as shown
by Lütkenhaus et al. (1999). Perfect distinguishability of the four two-qubit Bell states has
a success probability of at most one-half. Gate teleportation would then also be proba-
bilistic, and the advantage of teleporting probabilistic gates into a quantum computation is
squandered. However, if we allow for an arbitrarily small imperfection in the teleportation
protocol, we can circumvent the assumptions of the no-go theorem, and we can perform
gate teleportation with arbitrary large success probability.
Teleportation of a single photonic qubit with high success probability requires a large
number of auxiliary modes (see Fig. 2.1). The single-photon qubit exists as an excitation
in two optical modes, namely

|ψ = c0 |0 + c1 |1 = c0 |1, 0 + c1 |0, 1 . (B2.9)

We will be teleporting only one of these modes (called ‘mode teleportation’), which we will
denote by α |0 0 + β |1 0 in mode 0. This is not the reduced state of Eq. (B2.9), but the
linearity of quantum mechanics ensures that mixed states can be teleported with the same
protocol. Both modes, constituting the entire qubit state, can be teleported using mode
teleportation of each mode. The entangled resource for mode teleportation is a 2N -mode
(unnormalized) state |tN
N
 N

N −j N −j N −j
|tN = |1 j |0 |0 j |1 ≡ |0 j |1 , (B2.10)
j=1 j=1
 460 The Knill–Laflamme–Milburn protocol

Fig. 2.1. Mode teleportation.

where we used that |0 = |1, 0 and |1 = |0, 1 , and |0 j ≡ |0 1 ⊗ . . . ⊗ |0 j , etc. The

teleportation protocol proceeds by sending the input mode 0 and the first N modes of
the entangled resource into a balanced N + 1-port, where any which-path information of
the input photons is erased. All N + 1 output modes are measured in the number basis,
recording a string of numbers n = (n0 , . . . , nN ), where ni indicates the number of detected
photons in mode i. Let the total-photon number be given by k = i ni . The input mode is
then teleported to mode N + k with relative phase shift ω(n) between |0 and |1 given by
⎛ ⎞
N

2πi
ω(n) = exp ⎝ jnj ⎠ . (B2.11)
N +1
j=0

To show that the input mode is teleported to mode N + k, consider the following argument.
Given that k photons are detected, only two terms in the superposition in |ψ 0 |tN contribute
to the detection event, namely

k N −k k−1 N −k
α |0 0 |1 |0 |0 |0 N +k |1
k−1 N −k+1 k−1 N −k
+ β |1 0 |1 |0 |0 |1 N +k |1 , (B2.12)
↑

where we have aligned the two terms vertically to show most clearly how the teleportation
arises. The first N + 1 modes are the detected modes, and the mode N + k is the teleported
mode, as indicated by the arrow. Moreover, the remaining undetected modes are unentangled
with the qubit. The trailing N −k modes can be recycled as single-photon states. It is essential
that the correct number of photons is detected. This places very strong requirements on
the photodetectors that are used in this protocol. In Chapter 6 we have seen how we can
circumvent this requirement. Here, we ignore these requirements and treat the klm protocol
as a proof of principle.
461 The Knill–Laflamme–Milburn protocol

The protocol for mode teleportation relies on the fact that the total number of detected
photons k can arise in two distinct ways: either mode 0 had no photons and all k photons
were due to the term |1 k |0 N −k |0 k |1 N −k in the state |tN , or mode 0 had a photon and
the remaining k − 1 photons came from the term |1 k−1 |0 N −k+1 |0 k−1 |1 N −k+1 in the
state |tN . What happens when k = 0 or k = N + 1? In that case we can infer that mode
0 had zero or one photons, respectively. In turn, this means that we accidentally made a
measurement of the input qubit in the computational basis. The probability of failure for
mode teleportation is therefore

|α|2 |β|2 1
pfail = + = , (B2.13)
N +1 N +1 N +1
where we used the fact that |α|2 + |β|2 = 1.
Putting together the two-qubit gate-teleportation protocol with the linear-optical imple-
mentation, we can perform gate teleportation of the cz gate by using the 4N -mode entangled
state
N

|czN = (−1)(N −j)(N −k) |1 j |0 N −j
|0 j |1 N −j
|1 k |0 N −k
|0 k |1 N −k

j,k=0
N

= (−1)(N −j)(N −k) |0 j |1 N −j
|0 k |1 N −k
, (B2.14)
j,k=0

where again |0 = |1, 0 and |1 = |0, 1 . This state can be created from the two-mode
state |tN , tN by applying N successful cz operations between modes N + i and 2N + i,
for all i = 1, . . . , N . The success probability for creating such a state with the probabilistic
cz gate introduced by Knill, Laflamme, and Milburn is 16−N . Since two modes must be
teleported, the success probability of the gate teleportation given |czN is

N2
pczN = . (B2.15)
(N + 1)2
If this probability is larger than the fault-tolerant threshold, scalable quantum comput-
ing with single photons, linear optics, and photodetection are possible, albeit with a large
overhead per cz gate.
Creating a cz gate with an error rate that is within the fault-tolerant threshold of at most
a few per cent will require a very large overhead in auxiliary modes N . For example, for a
failure probability of about 2% we require N = 100. These overheads are not practical, and
the question is whether this can be improved. Due to the nature of the error, a measurement
of the qubit in the computational basis, this can indeed be done via an added level of error
correction.
A code that protects against accidental measurements in the computational basis is the
parity code introduced in Section 6.3.3. There, we showed explicitly how a universal set
of quantum gates can be performed with the probabilistic fusion gates. In the original klm
protocol, the role of the fusion gates were played by probabilistic cz gates implemented
according to the method described above.
 Appendix C
3 Cross-Kerr nonlinearities for single photons

In this appendix, we give a more realistic model for the interaction of optical modes with a
cross-Kerr nonlinearity, and show that this has important ramifications for any application
that uses single photons to induce large phase shifts. In several chapters throughout the book
we have used a simple single-mode model for cross-phase modulation between modes a1
and a2 , described by the Hamiltonian
† †
HK = κ â1 â1 â2 â2 , (C3.1)

which leads to the mode transformations

† †
â1 → b̂1 = eiκ â2 â2 â1 and â2 → b̂2 = eiκ â1 â1 â2 . (C3.2)

In this model we assume there is no photon loss, no dispersion, and no self-phase modulation.
The input and output mode operators all obey the bosonic commutation relations
† †
[âi , âj ] = [b̂i , b̂j ] = δij , (C3.3)

and
† † † †
[âi , âj ] = [âi , âj ] = 0 and [b̂i , b̂j ] = [b̂i , b̂j ] = 0. (C3.4)
This is the so-called instantaneous model of the cross-Kerr nonlinearity, since it does not
take into account the finite time it takes to build up the phase. We will now consider what
happens when both the single-photon wave packet and the response of the optical fields to
the medium have a finite time duration.
When we wish to consider the temporal behaviour of the field modes, we need to consider
the time-dependent mode operators âj (t) and b̂j (t) and their Hermitian conjugates. Again,
we assume no photon loss, dispersion, or self-phase modulation. Following Shapiro (2006),
†
the response of the medium is given by a convolution of the intensity operator âj âj with
a function h(t), such that the accumulated phase in the instantaneous model is replaced by
the operator exp[iμ̂j (t)]:
  ∞ 
†
iκ âj âj †
e → exp iκ dτ h(t − τ ) âj (τ )âj (τ ) ≡ exp iμ̂j (t) . (C3.5)
−∞

Here, the convolution h(t) will be non-zero only for a finite duration , and is normalized
such that  ∞
dt h(t) = 1. (C3.6)
−∞
463 Cross-Kerr nonlinearities for single photons

We must apply the substitution rule in Eq. (C3.5) to Eq. (C3.2) in order to find the non-
instantaneous, or ‘causal’ mode transformations. Since we want to treat the outgoing modes
as proper quantum-field modes, we demand that the commutation relations in Eqs. (C3.3)
and (C3.4) still hold for modes b1 and b2 . This is not satisfied trivially, and we must
include operators eiξ̂1 (t) and eiξ̂2 (t) in the mode operators b̂1 and b̂2 , respectively. The mode
transformations then become

â1 (t) → b̂1 (t) = eiξ̂1 (t) eiμ̂2 (t) â1 (t)

â2 (t) → b̂2 (t) = eiξ̂2 (t) eiμ̂1 (t) â2 (t). (C3.7)

Demanding that the modes b1 and b2 obey the bosonic commutation relations implies that
the operators ξ̂1 (t) and ξ̂2 (t) obey the commutation relation
 
ξ̂1 (t), ξ̂2 (t ′ ) = iκ h(t ′ − t) − h(t − t ′ ) . (C3.8)

The operators ξ̂1 and ξ̂2 are Langevin noise operators, and they will in general affect the
fidelity of the quantum gates based on single-photon cross-Kerr nonlinearities.
Next, consider a single photon in mode a1 with temporal mode shape defined by the
wave packet  ∞
†
|1 1 = dt ψ(t) â1 (t) |0 1 , (C3.9)
−∞
where |0 1 is the multi-mode vacuum at different times for the spatial mode a1 . The second
mode a2 may carry another single-photon state or a multi-photon state, depending on the
particular application. Typically, this mode must have the same temporal mode shape as a1 ,
since the photons may be used in subsequent interferometry. The (average) phase shift that
the single photon in mode a1 produces in mode a2 can be calculated using Eqs. (C3.7) and
(C3.5), and is given by
 ∞
eiμ̂1 (t) = dτ |ψ(τ )|2 eiκh(t−τ ) . (C3.10)
−∞

We can now consider two types of situation, namely the regime in which the Kerr medium
has a fast response compared to the photon wave packet, and the regime of slow response.
In the fast-response regime, the temporal width of the photon wave packet τ0 is much
larger than the duration of the nonlinear interaction of the Kerr medium. Consequently,
the temporal region where h(t) = 0 is only a fraction of the temporal wave packet, and the
phase shift occurs only in this small region of the wave packet. If we think of the photon
as a superposition of the form in Eq. (C3.9), only those terms with t such that h(t) = 0
will experience the phase shift κh(t). All other terms do not experience any phase shift.
Therefore, the phase shift cannot be taken out of the integral over t, and the nonlinear
medium does not produce an overall phase shift that can be set to π . The fast-response
regime is therefore ruled out, and we must consider the slow-response regime.
In the slow-response regime the photon wave packet is much shorter than the interaction
time, τ0 ≪ . For a reasonably well-behaved ψ(τ ) we can then approximate |ψ(τ )|2 with
464 Cross-Kerr nonlinearities for single photons

a delta function δ(τ − t0 ), for some t0 chosen in the region where h is relatively large. The
induced phase in mode a2 then becomes

eiμ̂1 (t) = eiκh(t−t0 ) for τ0 ≪ . (C3.11)

In principle, this can be made arbitrary large. However, large κ also implies a strong noise
term due to ξ̂j (t), as indicated by Eq. (C3.8). As a result, the noise will degrade the fidelity
of the operation considerably.
The nature of the noise operator ξ̂j (t) depends on the physical implementation of the
cross-Kerr interaction. In Shapiro (2006) and Shapiro and Razavi (2007) it is shown that
single-photon gates based on the cross-Kerr nonlinearity experience a fidelity degradation
that is too severe to be useful in quantum information processing.
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 Index

1-form, 426–430 bad cavity limit, 350

Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relation, 26, 30, 34, 41,
abelian group, 54, 56 82, 85, 307, 315, 455, 449
absorption, 60, 65, 149, 168, 233, 332, 334–336, band, 367
342–344, 365, 372 band edge, 366, 370, 371
coefficient, 329, 332, 336, 339, 340, 342 band gap, 367, 370–372
line, 248, 337, 340, 343, 414 bath operator, 404
spectrum, 337, 339, 342, 414, 416 Bayes’ rule, 422
two-photon, 249–251 BB84 protocol, 57, 58, 172–176, 281, 292
accuracy, 290–292 beam splitter, 29–37, 108, 109, 117, 118, 124–136,
adiabatic, 345, 348 146, 147, 152, 159–165, 168, 169, 179–188,
elimination, 246 191–198, 265–275, 280–287, 296–306, 311, 318,
following, 222, 329, 411 321, 441, 445, 446, 449
gate, 410 attack, 281, 284
switching, 346 for path erasure, 237, 238, 244
adjacency matrix, 311 lossless, 29, 31
algebra, 24, 42, 449, 454, 456 polarizing, 152, 161, 164
algorithm, 62, 101 beam waist, 20–22
alphabet, 283, 292 Bell
amplitude, 5, 8, 15–21, 27, 38, 155, 156, 176 basis, 53, 59, 63, 163, 167
analogue computer, 80, 87 measurement, 60, 61, 64, 163–169, 172, 181, 240,
ancilla state, 64, 65, 86, 312, 313 270–280, 457–459
angular momentum, 24, 442, 443, 449 deterministic, 164
annihilation operator, 13–28, 34–46, 106, 146–148, pair, 172, 173, 175
154–157, 163–164, 223, 255, 259, 268–270, 296, state, 53, 55, 59, 63, 84, 162–165, 168, 169, 173,
301, 443, 448 190, 208, 268, 270, 290, 355, 386, 457, 459
anode, 121, 122 event-ready, 168
antibonding orbital, 364 Bessel function, 446
anti-commutation relation, 49, 77, 430 biexciton, 382
anti-correlation, 58 binomial distribution, 116
antisymmetry, 361, 384 birefringence, 149, 150, 152
architecture, 62, 64 optical axis, 149, 150
atom bit, see classical bit
as qubit system, 210 bit flip, 49, 54, 76–78, 176, 200, 201, 205
four-level, 337, 341, 342, 344 bit string, 57, 58, 67, 80, 180, 199
three-level, 219, 220, 245, 246, 337–350 black box, 183, 184
two-level, 212–215, 226, 327, 328, 330, Bloch function, 363–371, 382
338, 339 Bloch–Messiah reduction, 36, 301, 309–311
atom–field interaction, 225 Bloch sphere, 50–52, 63, 65, 69, 93, 94, 148–158,
atomic ensemble, 207, 327–360 200, 206, 214–216, 386
attenuation, 60, 134, 176, 177 Bloch’s theorem, 361–365, 400
authentication, 173, 293 block diagonal form, 218
autocorrelation function, 107 Bogoliubov transformation, 11, 29, 34–37, 146, 148,
avalanche photodiode, see detector, APD 154, 157, 160–163, 263, 301
478 Index

Boltzmann’s equation, 102 coherence, 105–110, 452

bonding orbital, 364, 365 length, 140
bootstrapping approach, 328 coherent state, 37–45, 181, 258, 263–272, 279–285,
Born approximation, 230 292, 295–297, 304–306, 318–320, 335, 336, 343,
Born–Markov approximation, 230, 404, 405, 412 356–359, 436, 448–451
failure of, 418 coincidence rate, 121, 131–133, 135, 136
Born rule, 113, 257, 422, 433, 437 collective
Bose–Einstein distribution, 232, 405 enhancement, 351, 352
boundary, 429, 430 excitation, 344, 346
boundary conditions, 454 state, 353
periodic, 398, 399 colour centre, 138
Brillouin zone, 363, 365, 367, 369, 399, 402 comb, 88
broker–client protocol, 241 communication channel, 170, 172–174, 177
bucket detector, 113, 114, 118–121, 134 commutation relation, 146, 223, 224, 256, 264, 441,
449, 454, 456, 458, 462, 463
canonical equal-time, 6
momentum, 16, 80 complementarity, 294
position, 40, 43 completeness relation, 9, 41, 91
quantization, 4–8 overcomplete, 41
cathode, 121 complex plane, 39
Cauchy–Schwarz inequality, 20, 423, 435 composite system, 97–102
causality, 333 computational basis, 48–53, 57–73, 78, 81, 98, 104,
cavity, 28, 138, 144 146, 148, 154, 159–161, 171, 172, 182, 184, 191,
micro-, 138, 207 197–206, 461
optical, 330, 336, 350, 351, 417 concatenation, 66, 79, 321, 322
channel loss, 176 concurrence, 101, 104, 170
characteristic function, 258, 259 conduction band, 122, 365–374, 378
charge density, 4 conduction state, 405
electron, 403 confidence, 115, 126, 127
operator, 401, 403 confinement potential, 371, 372
chirality, 51 conserved current, 9
circuit model, 60–67, 73–75, 86, 87, 193, 199, 200, continuity equation, 9
205, 207 continuous spectrum, 80
classical bit, 48, 53–60, 103 continuum normalization, 8
random, 172 continuum of modes, 21
Clifford contraction, 426
extended group, 315, 316 control, 307
gate, 69, 73, 80, 85, 316 convex space, 427
group, 56, 73, 315, 458, 459 convex sum, 93, 100
clock, 266 convolution, 276, 311, 313, 323, 462
cluster state, 54, 60, 63, 64, 66–79, 86, 181, 192–194, core electron, 363
196–200, 202–204, 208, 209, 238, 240–242, 244, correlation, 311, 325, 428–429
248, 439 correlation function, 105, 107–109, 231, 404, 405
classes, 73 first-order, 107–109
connectivity, 203 second-order, 109, 132
disconnected, 67, 71 correspondence principle, 227
for qunats, 303, 309–318, 324 Coulomb force, 210, 361
higher-dimensional, 74 Coulomb gauge, 5–7, 16, 148, 211
in atomic ensembles, 355 Coulomb operator, 383
linear, 198 counterfactual, 115, 125
one-dimensional, 67–75 cphase gate, see cz gate
regular lattice, 67 Cramér–Rao bound, 421, 422, 424, 429–434, 438,
tree, 73, 74, 202–208 451, 452
two-dimensional, 67, 79, 209 creation operator, 13–17, 26, 34–46, 106, 146, 154,
cnot gate, see cx gate 223, 296, 301, 443, 448
code word, 283, 284, 287, 292 critical phenomenon, 79
479 Index

cross-Kerr nonlinearity, 343, 344, 355–359 count rate, 120, 121, 133
cryptography, 57, 58, 64, 105, 172, 173 dark counts, 113–120, 123–129, 133, 137
continuous variable, 281, 282, 287 dead time, 123, 126
with atomic ensembles, 352 efficiency, 114–130, 133, 137, 138, 183, 184, 187,
crystal, 361–368, 373 193–195, 202, 205, 208, 235, 240, 267, 444,
defect, 375, 379, 380 450, 452
electronic structure, 362–367 homodyne, 304, 306, 315–325
lattice, 362, 363 jitter, 114, 123
cubic gate, 316–318 non-demolition, 176, 290, 291
current, 120–122, 127–131, 144 number resolution, 113, 115–124, 129, 130,
critical, 128 165, 445
density, 4 pmt, 121
photo-, 131 polarization sensitive, 164, 169
super-, 128 signature, 164–168, 186, 189–195
cut-off frequency, 406, 408, 410 spatial non-uniformity, 114, 123
cx gate, 53, 60, 63, 65, 69, 79, 80, 84, 85, 180, 181, spectral response, 114, 123
190–193, 200–202, 205–207, 459 superconducting nanowire, 128, 129
continuous variable, 84, 268, 309 time multiplexing, 126, 127, 129
cy gate, 385 timing resolution, 114
cyclic permutation, 51 transition edge sensor, 127, 129
cylindrical lens, 158, 159 vlpc, 126
cz gate, 53, 56, 63–69, 74, 75, 80, 84, 86, 181–185, deterministic gate, 185
190–193, 196, 439, 457–461 detuning, 411
continuous variable, 84, 303, 309–317 diagonal basis, 430
diamond, 138, 361, 379, 380
d-level system, 51 dielectric medium, 29, 30, 37, 149, 159, 160
dark counts, 195, 240 nonlinear, 37
dark state, 340, 348 diffraction, 155, 156
dark state polariton, 345, 360 dipole, 106, 211
decibel, 295 approximation, 211, 223
decoherence, 162, 170, 172, 203, 440 blockade, 353–355
in solid-state systems, 397 matrix element, 329, 414
overcoming it, 406 operator, 211, 212, 224
decoherence-free subspace, 170–172 dipole–dipole interaction, 353, 381–387, 409
decoy state, 172, 176, 177 Dirac delta function, 6–8, 19, 88, 269, 275, 276, 312,
deformation potential coupling, 402–419 324, 464
constant, 402, 405, 407, 418 transverse, 8
degeneracy, 94 discrete mode, 16, 28–33, 41
delay line, 207, 297 dispersion, 332, 462
density of states, 233 dispersion relation, 5, 19
density operator, 90–104, 133, 228–235, 246, 247, free particle, 370
257–260, 297, 430 free space, 223
decomposition, 93, 94 linear, 406
exciton, 405 dispersive medium, 450
qubit, 409 displacement operator, 38–40, 43, 81, 259–267,
two-level atom, 327 272–284, 294, 296–298, 305, 318–323, 358
dephasing, 187, 207, 208, 405, 417 phonon, 413, 414
depolarization, 207, 208 dissipation, 328, 332
detector, 107–110, 113–143, 159–160, 164–169, 176, dissipator, 405
181–184, 189, 208, 306, 318, 323, 445–448, 460 distance, 433
absolute efficiency, 120 Euclidean, 427, 428, 433, 434
afterpulsing, 114, 123 infinitesimal, 429
apd, 121 statistical, 421, 428–434
bucket, 196, 208, 447 distinguishability, 429, 433
cascade, 121, 123–129, 136 distributed entanglement, 241, 416
coincidence, 448 double heralding, 238–242, 244, 251
480 Index

Dove prism, 159, 160 environment, 75, 76, 95, 96, 117, 173–175
dual, 423, 426, 427 epr state, 84, 268, 274–279, 287–290, 303
dual-rail representation, 181 equations of motion, 3, 4, 25, 26, 181, 431
dual space, 427 error, 54, 58, 62, 74–80, 87, 88, 96, 101, 422, 424,
dynode, 121, 122 431, 438–445, 450, 451
average, 424
catastrophic, 189, 190
eavesdropper, 58, 172–176, 281, 283, 291, 292
detection, 77
measure-resend, 284
function, 283
partial measurement, 284
momentum, 321
photon number splitting, 176, 177
position, 321
edge, 66, 67, 71–73
propagation, 79
effective mass, 367–370
translation, 88
eigenstate following, 411
transmission, 283–286, 290
Ekert91 protocol, 57, 172–176, 291
error correction, 54, 62, 75–80, 87
electric pulse, 114
3-qubit majority code, 77, 78, 88, 205, 321
electromagnetic
5-qubit minimal code, 76, 77
field, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 17, 37, 40, 146, 210–212, 225,
7-qubit Steane code, 78
227, 228
9-qubit Shor code, 76, 321
wave, 3 9-qunat code, 321–323
electromagnetically induced transparency, css code, 76, 175, 292
337–339, 360 for qunats, 318–324, 326
electron, 121–123, 210–212, 219 gkp code, 88, 287, 318–320, 324
spin, 96, 367, 368, 376, 378 non-additive code, 76
electron–atom potential, 401 redundant encoding, 198, 205–208
electron–phonon coupling, 400–402 stabilizer code, 76–78, 175
electron spin resonance, 376 estimator, 422, 424
emission biased, 424
rate, 138, 139 unbiased, 423
spectrum, 138, 139, 416 Euclidean space, 425
energy, 11, 12, 14, 39, 45, 434, 440 Euler angle, 65
energy transfer, 352 Euler–Lagrange equations, 4
entangled state, 95, 103, 104, 115, 118, 141, 421, 440, evanescent wave, 248
452, 457–459, 461 evil twin, 204
maximally, 53, 58 evolution, 100, 256, 257, 259, 263, 267
entanglement, 58, 59, 64, 73, 98, 101–104, 190, 192, measurement-based, 62
204, 267–272, 277–281, 287–291, 297, 299, 303, dynamical speed, 421, 433, 436
310, 311 quantum, 433
bound, 102 unitary, 62, 84, 431, 439, 449
creation by measurement, 247 exchange interaction, 384, 392, 409
degradation, 169 excitation, 11–14, 27
deterministic, 163 excited state, 106
distillation, 168–170, 173–175, 280, 281, 289, 291 exciton, 361, 375–378, 385–389, 394
generation, 238, 241 qubit, 375, 376, 384, 385, 408, 409
hyper-, 142 spin, 375, 386
of atom and photon, 227 exciton–exciton interaction, 381–383
of atomic ensembles, 349–351 exciton–phonon interaction, 403, 418
of atoms, 245 exciton–photon interaction, 376, 378
of formation, 101, 104, 387, 389 exponential decay, 79
purification, 61, 62, 280 exponential speed-up, 61, 62, 76, 179
swapping, 61, 62, 162, 164, 166–169, 272,
277–281, 351 Förster coupling, 352
two-photon, 162 failure
witness, 98 catastrophic, 190
entangling gate, 181, 190, 192, 199 correctable, 190
envelope function, 369–373, 382, 383, 395 false positive, 119, 120, 123, 133, 281
481 Index

fault tolerance, 75–79, 201 Gaussian

threshold, 75, 79, 201, 205–209 mode, 18, 19, 23
feed-forward, 66, 85, 165, 183, 190, 280, 304, 306, operator, 299–307, 311, 316
316, 447 state, 258, 271, 277, 280
Fermi–Dirac distribution, 361 generator, 25, 30, 33, 36, 37, 49, 50, 52, 54–56,
Fermi’s golden rule, 107 67–72, 76–78, 83–85, 87, 137, 140, 261,
fibre, 60, 248 287–291, 431–433, 440, 449
coupler, 126, 127 geometrical optics, 159
loop, 127, 137 ghz state, 69, 193–196, 199, 200, 437–439
tension, 160, 162 global control, 393
fibre attenuation, 207 global phase, 411
fidelity, 100, 101, 115, 123, 128, 129, 162, 167, 168, Gottesman–Knill theorem, 62, 72, 73, 85
173–175, 187, 194, 195, 238, 240, 242, 279–283, for continuous variables, 303–307, 316
312, 324, 409, 410, 447, 452, 463, 464 Gouy phase, 23
field operator, 10, 25, 28, 106, 107 graph, 66–73
field quadrature, 44 inversion, 71
finite square well, 371, 372 sub-, 72
Fisher information, 421–425, 428–434, 437, 438, graph state, 67, 73, 310
444, 451 loops, 73
Floquet gravitational waves, 421
Hamiltonian, 217, 218 ground state, 12, 106
state, 217, 227 group velocity, 332, 333, 340
theory, 216, 217 growth requirement, 75
fluorescence, 247, 248, 381
focal length, 158 Hadamard gate, 50, 51, 56, 60, 63, 65, 66, 69–72, 83,
Fock state, 12, 13, 38, 39, 113, 223–227, 245, 335, 86, 89, 147, 180, 268, 425, 439
346, 348, 415, 444, 446 Hamiltonian, 4–15, 25–41, 80–85, 106, 136–142, 146,
phonon, 399 152, 181, 263, 266, 270, 295–309, 319, 431–436,
Förster coupling, 381–390 440, 462
force constant, 397 atom–photon, 225, 227, 328
tensor form, 400 atomic ensemble, 330, 331, 339, 344, 352
Fourier cross-Kerr, 344, 355
components, 5, 18, 217, 227 density, 4–6
series, 216 four-level system, 341
transform, 18, 22, 24, 51, 80–88, 125, 139, Heisenberg, 384
257–259, 294–299, 303, 304, 309–315, Jaynes–Cummings, see Jaynes–Cummings model
320–324 linear chain, 397
transform (fractional), 159–161 local, 299
Fourier-limited, 138, 139 Luttinger–Kohn, 369
non-Hermitian, 235, 246
Fredkin gate, 63
of electron in classical field, 211, 212
frequency, 436
quadratic, 34, 37, 41, 82–85, 263, 266
broadband, 27
simulation, 300
frequency mode, 13, 14
three-level system, 219–222, 245, 337, 339,
functional derivative, 4
345, 410
fusion gate, 193–202, 205–208, 461
two-level system, 212–214, 327, 328
type-I, 193–195, 201
with periodic coefficients, 216, 227
type-II, 194, 195, 197, 198, 200, 201
Hanbury–Brown–Twiss experiment, 108, 129–134,
137, 138
GaAs, see gallium arsenide harmonic oscillator, 15
gain, 277, 279 harmonic potential, 406, 414
gallium arsenide, 365, 369–371, 376, 402, 407–410 Hartree–Fock theory, 362
gate failure, 75 Heisenberg limit, 437–452
gate operation, 408, 410 Heisenberg picture, 25, 223, 272, 277
gauge freedom, 5 Heisenberg uncertainty relation, see uncertainty
Gauss’ law, 4, 7 relation
482 Index

Heisenberg–Weyl key, 57, 58

group, 56, 81 key distribution, 173–175, 281, 288–293
operator, 52, 81–84, 86, 294–298, 304–310, kinetic energy, 121
314–315 klm protocol, 181, 457, 460, 461
Helmholtz equation, 18 Kraus operator, 100, 208, 209, 250, 251
Hermite polynomials, 21–23, 126, 159, 160, 320 Kronecker delta, 7, 29, 189, 427
high-speed camera, 424
Hilbert space, 48, 53, 55, 69, 76, 77, 96–103, 148,
L-configuration, 219, 238, 249, 393
154, 168, 170, 191, 258, 421, 433, 434
laboratory frame, 212
hole, 367, 374–378, 382–384, 387, 388, 393
Lagrangian density, 4–6
heavy, 369, 370, 377, 378, 384, 388, 393
Laguerre polynomials, 23
light, 369, 370, 378
Lamb shift, 12, 233, 405
spin, 368, 375, 378
lambda structure, 219, 221, 236, 338
split-off, 368
Langevin operator, 463
Holevo bound, 104, 105, 174
holography, 154–157 laser, 23, 41, 134–138, 160, 176, 177, 297
homodyne detection, see detector, homodyne chirped pulse, 411
Hong–Ou–Mandel effect, 129–139, 163, 181, 355 pulse, 411
hotspot, 128 pump, 136, 266
Huygens’ principle, 105 lattice vibrations, 397
hyperfine interaction, 409 lc operation, 71
hypothesis testing, 425 lc-equivalence, 69, 196
Legendre transform, 6
idempotent, 191 lifetime, 75, 138, 139, 434
InAs, see indium arsenide likelihood, 422
incomplete knowledge, 94 maximum-, 451
independent boson model, 413–419 Lindblad operator, 328, 338, 350
optical spectrum, 414 linear chain, 397
indium arsenide, 370, 371, 376 linear optics, 118, 144, 152, 160–165, 180, 181, 183,
information, 423, 424, 431, 432, 445 184, 187–190, 192, 198–448
loss, 100, 103 linear transformation, 11, 37
partial, 90 linewidth, 138, 139, 434
propagation, 311–313, 318, 324, 325 local oscillator, 266, 282
inner product, see scalar product locc, 103, 104
intensity, 8, 17, 32 loss tolerance, 193, 195, 196
difference, 266, 441, 442, 445 lowering operator, 426, 430
interaction, 25, 30, 34, 38
picture, 25, 228, 230, 232, 295, 404
Mach–Zehnder interferometer, 355
interference, 105, 107, 108, 155, 156, 168, 181
macroscopic signal, 113, 114, 122
interferometer, 31–36, 123, 134, 142, 143, 179, 180,
macrostate, 102
183, 186–192, 301, 311, 441–445, 450, 451, 463
Mandelstam–Tamm inequality, 434–440
Mach–Zehnder, 31, 32, 142, 143, 160, 183, 441,
many-qubit operation, 52
442, 445–451
squeezing, 449 map, 96–99
intersystem crossing, 381 completely positive, 78, 96–102, 144, 190,
invariance, 165, 171, 172 191, 440
extended, 98, 99
Jaynes–Cummings model, 222–227, 231, 333, 346 linear, 97
joint entropy, 104, 105 positive, 96–102
Jordan–Schwinger representation, 442, 448 trace-preserving, 97, 98, 102
jump operator, 234–238, 246, 247, 349 Margolus–Levitin inequality, 436–440
Markov approximation, 230, 412
Kerr nonlinearity, 144, 307, 309, 318, 319 massless, 14
cross-, 142, 143, 181–183, 318, 319, 462–464 master equation, 228, 251, 338, 403, 405
fast-response, 463 Lindblad form, 328
instantaneous model, 462 Markovian, 405
slow-response, 463 two-level atom, 327, 328
483 Index

Maxwell, J. C., 3 mutual information, 104, 105, 173–175

Maxwell–Ampère law, 4 mutually unbiased basis, 242
Maxwell’s equations, 4–6, 181, 248
measurement, 95, 97, 101, 105, 108, 109, 313–323, N -port, 32, 33, 125, 134, 179–181, 184, 185, 188, 189
421, 422, 424, 429, 431–433, 437, 439, 452 nanostructure, 372
counterfactual, 204 nearest-neighbour, 67
optimal, 432, 433, 437 network, 184, 190
photon number, 114, 115 nitrogen vacancy defect, 361, 379–381, 416
precision, 422 spin, 379, 381
projective, 70, 184, 379 no click, 114, 124
single shot, 429, 432, 440 no-cloning theorem, 57–61, 204, 281
time, 424 no-signalling principle, 59, 60
von Neumann, 142, 144 noise, 57, 61, 75, 123, 183, 202, 208, 463, 464
metric, 425–427, 430 excess, 311, 325
microstate, 102 function, 276
minimum uncertainty state, 40 transmission, 323
mirror, 31 non-Gaussian operation, 280
mixed state, 90, 93, 94, 96, 101, 103, 105, 115, nonlinear medium, 295, 308
117–133, 135, 192, 422, 436 χ (2) , 136, 266, 295
improper, 92, 95 χ (3) , 308
maximally, 93, 103 nonlinear optics, 181, 263, 327, 342
proper, 92, 95, 291 noon state, 436–437, 444–448, 452
mode norm, 423
idler, 136–140 normal mode, 32, 34, 36, 398
signal, 136 quantization of, 398
mode function, 6–29 normalizable state, 13
Gaussian, 133, 139, 146, 154 ns gate, 184–190, 457
helical, 25 nuclear spin, 96, 409
Hermite–Gaussian, 16, 18, 21–24, 123, 152–160 number density, 27
Hermite–Gaussian (elegant), 23, 153 number operator, 13, 14, 26, 30, 32, 39, 40, 261,
Laguerre–Gaussian, 16, 18, 23–25, 123, 152–160 441, 449
Laguerre–Gaussian (elegant), 24 number state, 183, 184, 443
Lorentzian, 133, 139 NV-centre, see nitrogen vacancy defect
time-bin, 28, 29
transverse, 16–24, 123, 124, 145, 152–161 Ohmic state, 127, 128
mode matching, 135, 450 one-electron approximation, 361
mode operator, 6–14, 28–29, 33–37, 44 one-way model, 49, 60, 62, 64, 67, 75, 86, 87, 199,
mode transformation, 146, 152, 160, 164, 165, 182, 202, 303
185, 188, 302, 308 for qunats, 309
causal, 463 open quantum systems, 403, 404
linear, 29 operational, 95, 101
nonlinear, 263 operator
molecule, 138 Hermitian, 429–433
momentum linear, 97, 99
eigenstate, 81, 83, 86–89, 294, 297, 312, 313 non-commuting —s, 430
error, 321 non-negative, 96–102
operator, 210, 211, 366, 398, 431 ordering formula, 454, 456
quadrature, 15, 16, 27, 40, 256, 259, 265, super-, 90, 96, 97, 100, 430
273–275, 278 optical
transverse, 17, 18 master equation, 227–233, 245
monochromatic, 308 mode, 179, 180, 183, 187, 188, 195
monotonic, 103, 104 pumping, 381
multi-mode expansion, 308 switch, 127, 142, 161, 162, 343
multinomial distribution, 125 orbital angular momentum, 18, 25, 146, 156–162, 181
multi-photon events, 176 orthonormal basis, 91, 96
484 Index

P-representation, 259 creation operator, 399, 400

parameter estimation, 421, 425, 431, 432, 436, 439, displacement operator, 413
440, 450–452 electron coupling, 400
entanglement-assisted, 437 Hamiltonian, 399
parametric approximation, 295 longitudinal, 402
parametric downconversion, 120, 136–141, 163, optical, 399
166–168, 194, 297 transverse, 402
type-I, 140 photoelectric effect, 121, 123
type-II, 140 photodetector, see detector, PMT
paraxial approximation, 18–21, 146 photon, 11
parity, 199–201, 205–207 anti-bunching, 109, 110
projection, 357, 358 bunching, 109, 110
partial transpose, 98 counting, 452
particle, 14, 15, 294 distinguishability, 131, 135
partition ensemble fallacy, 94, 95, 168 distribution, 448
path erasure, 236, 248, 351, 393 emitter, see source, single-photon
path length, 183 identical, 130
Pauli blocking, 377 loss, 114–116, 144, 149, 169, 202–207, 297, 299,
Pauli exclusion principle, 377 304, 306, 308, 450, 462
Pauli gate, 49–56, 63–73, 76–84, 104, 146–154, 171, multi-photon events, 133, 138
196–199, 206–208, 287, 288, 304, 310, 409, 425, number, 32, 42, 43, 145, 165, 166, 168, 311, 318
437, 441, 457–459
pairs, 46, 166–168, 176
Pauli group, 55, 56, 77, 315
position operator, 14
Peres–Horodecki criterion, 101, 102
source, 179, 181, 192–195, 202–208
periodic potential, 400
statistics, 41
in a crystal, 362, 363, 370
switch, 182
perturbation theory, 365, 367, 387
photon–number units, 260
degenerate, 218, 221, 245, 378
photon–photon interaction, 181
phase, 436, 443, 445, 450
physical reality, 94
estimation, 437
π-converter, 158, 159
flip, 49, 54, 77, 78, 176, 200, 201
π-pulse, 377
gate, 50, 51, 56, 69–72, 83, 84, 180, 200, 201, 206,
409, 411 π/2-converter, 158, 159
global, 50, 72 π/8 gate, 50, 51, 56, 80
image, 156 piezoelectric effect, 402
matching, 139, 140 pinhole, 140
of optical field, 216 plane wave, 4, 8, 16, 28, 146
plate, 156 Poincaré revival, 419
resolution, 436, 438, 442 Poisson distribution, 119, 120, 136, 176, 416
sensitivity, 445, 448 loss, 118
shift, 29–33, 140–143, 259, 261, 266, 268, polarization, 5–19, 25–31, 35, 131, 140, 141,
297–301, 308–314, 318, 322, 438–442, 445, 145–172, 180–183, 186, 187, 191–194, 197–199,
450, 451, 462, 463 207, 208, 212, 223, 240–243, 329–336, 356,
shifter, 29–33, 37, 146, 147, 149, 158–160, 164, 372–375
179, 180, 184 circular, 17, 148, 150, 151, 393
transition, 79 elliptical, 17
velocity, 5, 149, 332 linear, 15, 17, 149–151, 375, 378
phase space, 255–264, 269, 277, 283, 294, 296–298, rotation, 30, 31
318–320 polarization field, 308
displacement, 294, 296–298, 305, 318–323 polaron, 414
rotations, 261 transformation, 414
squeezing, 261 ponderomotive force, 319
translations, 259 position
phonon, 96, 397 eigenstate, 294, 297, 312, 313, 321, 322
acoustic, 399, 407 error, 321
annihilation operator, 399, 400 operator, 80, 84, 398, 431
485 Index

quadrature, 15, 16, 27, 40, 259, 263, 267, loss, 60, 61, 77, 187
273–275, 278 physical, 50, 67, 77, 78, 170, 171
post-selection, 133–135, 139, 156, 166–169, 190, 192 single-rail, 145
potential difference, 122 solid-state, 397
povm, 100, 105, 113–120, 123–125, 249, 422–424 time-bin, 161, 162, 181
precision, 421, 424, 437, 450, 452 qudit, 51, 52, 62, 76, 161
pressure, 90 qunat, 52, 80, 84–87, 255, 281, 294–325, 348
primitive lattice vector, 362
principal axes, 400 Rabi frequency, 213, 221, 227, 328, 330, 336, 348,
probability 349, 376, 407
amplitude, 185, 428, 433 Rabi oscillation, 214, 219, 221–227, 407–411
distribution, 94, 95, 103, 115–120, 127, 134, radiation gauge, 5
256–262, 285, 286, 421–433, 445 raising operator, 426, 430
marginal distribution, 256, 257, 262, 266, 283, Raman transition, 220, 221, 239, 378
285, 286 random-number generator, 175
simplex, 427–430 Rayleigh length, 21
probe field, 338 read-out, 48
reciprocal lattice, 362
projector, 68, 92, 100, 113–115, 168, 169, 189, 191,
198, 230 reciprocal lattice vector, 363, 401
Redfield equation, 230
projector operator, see projector
reference frame, 147, 172, 282
pure dephasing, 328–341, 405, 414
reflectivity, 147, 284–286, 446
pure state, 90–103, 432
refractive index, 29, 248, 297, 308, 332, 336, 339–343
Pythagoras’ theorem, 425
regularization, 11, 21, 29
repeat until success, 242–244, 251
Q-factor, 207 repetition rate, 128, 129
Q-representation, 259 resistance, 128
quadratic form, 427–429 resistive barrier, 128
quadrature noise, 452 resonance, 213–218, 222, 225, 226, 236, 239
quadrature operator, 14, 16, 27, 44, 45, 298–326 resource, 310, 317
quantum resource requirements, 62
circuit, 63, 67 resource state
computer, 62, 64, 75, 76, 87, 175, 179–181, entangled, 458–460
192, 207 rotating frame, 212, 327, 337, 345
confinement, 370 rotating-wave approximation, 213, 218–221, 295,
328, 333, 337, 339, 345, 376
jumps, 227, 234, 246, 248, 349
rotation
mechanics, 428
axis, 50
linearity, 57, 96
group (2D), 261
memory, 175, 207, 208, 281, 291, 292,
phase space, 87
344–348, 360
RWA, see rotating-wave approximation
metrology, 421, 436, 440, 441, 452
Rydberg state, 352, 354, 355
optics, 422
repeater, 57, 60–62, 348, 352
sample damage, 448
trajectory, 234, 235, 247
saturation, 114
well, 371 scalar field approximation, 19
quantum dot, 138, 372, 375–390, 393, 402–407, 410 scalar potential, 4, 19, 210
electronic structure, 372 scalar product, 9–11, 13, 41, 426
laser, 372 time-independent, 9, 10
optical properties, 373–375 scaling
quantum key distribution, see key distribution exponential, 447
qubit logarithmic, 174
check, 175, 176 polylog, 204
dual-rail, 145, 146, 160, 162, 164 polynomial, 52, 79, 82, 85–87, 306–308, 313, 314,
key, 175 320, 447
logical, 67–81, 170, 171 scattering, 155, 156
486 Index

Schmidt Lorentzian, 434

basis, 270, 271 optical, 416
decomposition, 244 spin
Schrödinger equation, 18, 24, 210, 370–372, 435 chain, 391, 394
for atom and classical field, 212, 213 of electron, see electron, spin
for periodic potential, 361, 362 of hole, see hole, spin
with non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, 235 polarization, 381
with periodic coefficients, 216–218 qubit, 375–378, 387–393
Schrödinger picture, 25, 223, 228 readout, 379, 381
secure communication, 57, 173 spin angular momentum, 25, 368
selection rule, 220, 238, 372–375 spin manipulation
self-phase modulation, 308, 462 using optics, 409
semiconductor, 122, 361–370 using microwaves, 409
heterostructure, 361, 369–372 spin–orbit interaction, 368, 370
separable state, 96, 102, 103, 163, 447 spin–phonon coupling, 409
Shannon entropy, 103–105 spin–spin coupling, 381, 383, 384, 390, 392
shot-noise limit, see standard quantum limit spontaneous emission, 216, 221, 234, 328–334, 339,
Si, see silicon 345, 397, 408, 412, 434
signal velocity, 333 spurious object, 119, 123, 133
silicon, 363–365, 392 squeezed state, 41, 42, 448
simple harmonic oscillator, 414 coherent, 258, 263–272, 281–285, 292
simulation, 52, 73, 75, 85 two-mode, 120
single photon, 145, 149, 154, 160–162, 166, vacuum, 263–265, 270, 271, 282, 303, 306, 311,
168, 169, 172, 176, 177, 181, 183, 202, 451, 452
207, 209 squeezing, 359, 451
single-qubit operation, 49–53, 62–74, 181, 200, 208, operator, 41–43, 449, 450
215, 439 single-mode, 34, 41, 45, 259, 273, 294, 295, 298,
single-qunat operation, 86 299, 305, 311, 316
singlet state, 54–56, 58, 59, 61, 98, 164–168, 172 two-mode, 35, 41, 45, 46, 300–303
singular value stabilizer, 287–291, 439
restricted, 300 formalism, 51, 54, 67, 69, 72, 76, 83, 86, 197, 204,
singular value decomposition, 35, 302 304, 439
Slater determinant, 362 generator, 54–56, 67–71, 76–78, 84, 85, 175,
slow light, 340, 360 198, 203, 204, 287–291, 304–306, 310,
system, 397 311, 439
solid-state state, 310
qubit, 375, 379–383, 394 standard quantum limit, 425, 436–444, 448, 451
system, 96, 361, 384, 393 Stark effect, 387, 389
sound velocity, 406 state preparation, 101, 202, 203, 208, 422
source state space, 39, 40
efficiency, 133 statistical mechanics, 90, 102
entangled photon, 139 statistical mixture, 91
heralded, 129, 136–138 statistics
quality, 116, 123, 130, 134, 136 Poisson, 109, 110
single-photon, 113, 129–142, 162, 166, 176 sub-Poissonian, 110
weak coherent, 134, 135 super-Poissonian, 110
space, 425 stimulated emission, 234
spacetime trajectory, 63 stimulated Raman adiabatic passage, see stirap
spectral stirap, 222, 239, 340
decomposition, 92, 94 stochastic variable, 234, 235
density, 405–407, 418 Stokes operator, 441–443
phonon density, 410 strong coupling, 412
spectrum sub-band, 372
broadband, 139 superconducting state, 127
487 Index

superluminal, 332 trion-phonon coupling, 409

superposition principle, 96 triplet state, 172
susceptibility, 327–342 tritter, 321, 322
atomic ensemble, 331 two-level atom, 327
four-level atom, 342 two-qubit operation, 52–63, 75, 162, 181, 183, 439,
linear, 329 441, 457–461
single atom, 329, 336
three-level atom, 338 uncertainty, 422, 424
√
swap gate, 53, 251 principle, 432
symmetric product, 259 statistical, 90
symmetry, 97 uncertainty relation, 20, 40, 432, 440
symplectic matrix, 302 energy-time, 432
syndrome, 76, 78, 290, 323 number-phase, 432
unit cell, 364, 365, 373
universal
target, 53, 190, 191, 201, 303
resource, 67, 74
Taylor expansion, 25, 397, 428
set of gates, 200, 205, 206, 379, 392
telecom, 129
set of gates (qunats), 309
teleportation, 57–66, 86, 162–168, 297, 310–312, 317,
324, 457–461
vacuum, 121, 131, 133, 143
continuous variable, 272–280
energy, 12
Gottesman–Chuang, 62, 457
fluctuation, 323
local, 60, 64, 65, 86, 311, 312, 324
global, 27
mode, 459–461
noise, 12, 287, 323
post-selected, 167
state, 27, 38, 39, 41, 42, 45, 147, 160, 168, 169,
with atomic ensembles, 352
185, 186, 188, 195, 442, 448, 450
temperature, 90, 120, 127–129, 138
valence
tensor product, 53, 55, 56, 69, 72, 84, 85, 97
band, 122, 365, 367–371, 374, 378
thermal distribution, 119, 120
electron, 364, 370, 375, 379
thermal state, 232 state, 364, 368, 372–377, 382, 383, 405
thermodynamics, 90 variable
time evolution, 25, 29, 30, 39 continuous, 45, 62, 80, 81, 84–89, 255–283,
operator, 417 287–292, 294, 304, 320, 321, 421, 422
superoperator, 229 discrete, 421, 422, 428
time-bin, 146, 161 dynamical, 4, 6, 7, 16
expansion function, 29 random, 102–105, 427
operator, 28 variance, 311, 325, 326, 424, 432–444
Toffoli gate, 63 vector potential, 4–8, 16–19, 46, 210, 211
topological quantum computing, 74 velocity, 90
topology, 67 vertex, 66, 73
torque, 25 vibrational level, 414
trace vibronic mode, 416
cyclic property, 91, 430 visibility, 108
partial, 95, 96, 103 visible-light photon counter, see detector, VLPC
transition dipole, 372, 373, 383, 387, 389, 397 von Neumann entropy, 101–104, 174, 270,
translation, 433 271, 280
operator, 362, 363 von Neumann equation, 228
symmetry, 17
time, 431 Wannier function, 363, 365, 373, 383
transmittivity, 117, 118, 127, 285 wave equation, 4–6, 8, 18–21, 24
transparency window, 340, 342 homogeneous, 5, 6
transpose, 98, 102 paraxial, 18–24, 152, 153
partial, 101, 102 wave front, 333
tree encoding, 202–208 wavefunction, 320
triangle inequality, 425 Gaussian, 87
trion, 408, 409 wave number, 131
488 Index

wave packet, 14, 27, 28, 123, 126, 127, 462, 463 overlap formula, 267
Gaussian, 27, 28 world line, 63
Lorentzian, 27
wave plate yield, 176, 177
half, 149–151, 157, 158, 162 ymck state, 444–451
quarter, 31, 149–152, 158, 162 Young’s double-slit experiment, 105–107
wave vector, 5, 8, 10, 13, 19–21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 31,
139, 140, 146, 147, 156, 159
weak driving approximation, 236, 238, 240, 242, 251, Zeeman splitting, 391, 392
331, 334 Zeno
which path information, 238 effect, 245, 248, 251
Wigner function, 255–277, 283–290, 298, 311, gate, 248–251
323, 357 zero-phonon line, 415–417
 Qubit operators

The Pauli operators:

0 1 0 1 0
     
−i
X = Y = Z=
1 0 i 0 0 −1

Single-qubit rotations:

cos θ −i sin θ
 
UX (θ) = exp (−iθ X ) =
−i sin θ cos θ
cos φ − sin φ
 
UY (φ) = exp (−iφ Y ) =
sin φ cos φ
 −iϕ
0

e
UZ (ϕ) = exp (−iϕ Z) =
0 eiϕ

The Hadamard H , the phase operator , and the π/8 gate T :

1 1 1 1 0 1 0
     
H=√ = T =
2 1 −1 0 i 0 eiπ/4

Important commutation relations:

XZ = −ZX YX = −XY ZY = −YZ

HX = ZH HZ = XH HY = −YH
X † = Y Y † = −X Z† = Z

Two-qubit gates:

1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞
⎜0 1 0 0⎟ ⎜0 1 0 0⎟
cx = ⎜
⎝0
⎟ (= cnot) cz = ⎜ ⎟
0 0 1⎠ ⎝0 0 1 0⎠
0 0 1 0 0 0 0 −1
 Advanced quantum mechanical relations

Von Neumann entropy:

S(ρ) = −Tr(ρ log2 ρ) = − λj log2 λj

j

Positive operator-valued measures of projectors Pµ :

Êν = λνµ Pµ with Êν = Î

µ ν

In terms of Kraus operators:

Êν = Aµν A†µν with A= αµν |µ ν| and |αµν |2 = λνµ
µ µν

The fidelity between two density operators:

  2
1/2 1/2
F = Tr ρ2 ρ1 ρ2

The Lindblad master equation:

dρ i
= − [ρ, H] − γnm (ρL + mLn + Lm Ln ρ − 2Ln ρLm ) + H.c.
dt  n,m

The Fisher information:

 ∞ 2 ∞ 2
1 ∂ ln p(x|θ )
  
∂p(x|θ )
F(θ) = dx = dx p(x|θ )
−∞ p(x|θ) ∂θ −∞ ∂θ
 Operators in quantum optics

Creation and annihilation operators:

†   † †
  
âj , âk = δjk and âj , âk = âj , âk = 0

Position and momentum quadrature operators:

 
  †
 ω  
q̂ = â + â p̂ = −i â − â†
2ω 2
 
ω i ω i
â = q̂ + √ p̂ ↠= q̂ − √ p̂
2 2ω 2 2ω
Position–momentum commutation relation:

[q̂, p̂] = i

The displacement operator:

 
D(α) = exp α ↠− α ∗ â

The single-mode squeezer:

ξ ξ∗
S1 (ξ ) = exp − â†2 + â2
2 2

The two-mode squeezer:

† †
 
S2 (ξ ) = exp −ξ â1 â2 + ξ ∗ â1 â2

The Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff relations:

µ2
eµB Ae−µB = A + µ[A, B] + [B, [B, A]] + . . .
2!
1
exp(A) exp(B) = exp A + B + [A, B] if [A, [A, B]] = [B, [A, B]] = 0
2
The Wigner function:

1 ∞ i x x
Wρ (q, p) = dx exp xp q− ρ q+
2π −∞  2 2

The overlap formula for Wigner functions:

∞ ∞
Tr(AB) = 2π  dq dp WA (q, p)WB (q, p)
−∞ −∞
 Continuous variable operators

Heisenberg–Weyl operators for qunats:

i
X (q) = exp − qp̂


i
Z(p) = exp pq̂

Fourier transform F:  
iπ 2
F = exp (q̂ + p̂2 )
4
Phase gate (θ ):
i θ q̂2
(θ ) = exp
 2
Conjugation relations:

FX (q)F † = Z(q) FZ(p)F † = X (−p) = X −1 (p)

qθ iθq2
(θ )X (q)† (θ) = X (q)Z exp
 22
(θ )Z(p)† (θ) = Z(p)
Two-qunat operations:
i
cxij = exp − q̂i ⊗ p̂j

i
czij = exp q̂i ⊗ q̂j