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We investigate the utilization of a single generalized dephasing qubit for sensing a quantum reservoir, where the antisymmetric coupling between the qubit and its reservoir is broken. It is found that in addition to the decay factor encoding channel, the antisymmetric coupling breaking gives rise to another phase factor encoding channel. We introduce an optimal measurement for the generalized dephasing qubit which enables the practical measurement precision to reach the theoretical ultimate precision quantified by the quantum signal-to-noise ratio (QSNR). As an example, the generalized dephasing qubit is employed to estimate the $s$-wave scattering length of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. It is found that the phase-induced QSNR caused by the antisymmetric coupling breaking is at least two orders of magnitude higher than the decay-induced QSNR at the millisecond timescale and the optimal relative error can achieve a scaling $\propto 1/t$ with $t$ being the encoding time in long-term encoding. Our work opens a way for supersensitive sensing of quantum reservoirs.

We propose a theoretical scheme for quantum sensing of temperature close to absolute zero in a quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). In our scheme, a single-atom impurity qubit is used as a temper-ature sensor. We investigate the sensitivity of the single-atom sensor in estimating the temperature of the BEC. We demonstrate that the sensitivity of the temperature sensor can saturate the quantum Cramer-Rao bound by means of measuring quantum coherence of the probe qubit. We study the temperature sensing performance by the use of quantum signal-to-noise ratio (QSNR). It is indicated that there is an optimal encoding time that the QSNR can reach its maximum in the full-temperature regime. In particular, we find that the QSNR reaches a finite upper bound in the weak coupling regime even when the temperature is close to absolute zero, which implies that the sensing-error-divergence problem is avoided in our scheme. Our work opens a way for quantum sensing of temperature close to absolute zero in the BEC., Comment: 9 pages,9 figures

Being able to implement effective entanglement distribution in noisy environments is a key step towards practical quantum communication, and long-term efforts have been made on the development of it. Recently, it has been found that the null-result weak measurement (NRWM) can be used to enhance probabilistically the entanglement of a single copy of amplitude-damped entangled state. This paper investigates remote distributions of bipartite and multipartite entangled states in the amplitudedamping environment by combining NRWMs and entanglement distillation protocols (EDPs). We show that the NRWM has no positive effect on the distribution of bipartite maximally entangled states and multipartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, although it is able to increase the amount of entanglement of each source state (noisy entangled state) of EDPs with a certain probability. However, we find that the NRWM would contribute to remote distributions of multipartite W states. We demonstrate that the NRWM can not only reduce the fidelity thresholds for distillability of decohered W states, but also raise the distillation efficiencies of W states. Our results suggest a new idea for quantifying the ability of a local filtering operation in protecting entanglement from decoherence., Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures. Minor revision has been made

We study transport properties of two entangled photons which are initially injected into two nearest-neighbor coupling cavities in a one-dimensional coupled-cavity array (CCA). It is found that photonic transport dynamics in the two-photon CCA exhibits entanglement-enhanced two-photon delocalization (TPD) phenomenon. It is shown that the CCA can realize the localization-to-delocalization transition for two entangled photons., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

This paper is to investigate the effects of quantum noises on entanglement localization by taking an example of reducing a three-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state to a two-qubit entangled state. We consider, respectively, two types of quantum decoherence, i.e., amplitude-damping and depolarizing decoherence, and explore the best von Neumann measurements on one of three qubits of the triple GHZ state for making the amount of entanglement of the collapsed bipartite state be as large as possible. The results indicate that different noises have different impacts on entanglement localization, and that the optimal strategy for reducing a three-qubit GHZ state to a two-qubit one via local measurements and classical communications in the amplitude-damping case is different from that in the noise-free case. We also show that the idea of entanglement localization could be utilized to improve the quality of bipartite entanglement distributing through amplitude-damping channels. These findings might shed a new light on entanglement manipulations and transformations., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures

We investigate collective radiant properties of two separated atoms in X-type quantum states. We show that quantum correlations measured by quantum discord (QD) can induce and enhance superradiance and subradiance in the two-atom system even though in the absence of interatomic quantum entanglement. We also explore quantum statistical properties of photons in the superradiance and subradiance by addressing the second-order correlation function. In particular, when the initial state of the two separated atoms is the Werner state with non-zero QD, we find that radiation photons in the superradiant region exhibit the nonclassical sub-Poissonian statistics and the degree of the sub-Poissonian statistics increases with increasing of the QD amount, while radiation photons in the subradiant region have either the sub-Poissonian or super-Poissonian statistics depending on the amount of QD and the directional angle. In the subradiant regime we predict the QD-induced photon statistics transition from the super-Poissonian to sub-Poissonian statistics. These results shed a new light on applications of QD as a quantum resource., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

For carrying out many quantum information protocols entanglement must be established in advance between two distant parties. Practically, inevitable interaction of entangled subsystems with their environments during distribution and storage will result in degradation of entanglement. Here we investigate the decoherence of two-qubit entangled states in the local amplitude noise. We show that there exists a set of partially entangled states that are more robust than maximally entangled states in terms of the residual quantum correlation measured by concurrence, fully entangled fraction, and quantum discord. This result indicates that nonmaximally entangled states can outperform maximally entangled states for quantum correlation distribution and storage under the amplitude damping. It also educes a notable consequence that the ordering of states under quantum correlation monotones can be reversed even by local trace-preserving and completely positive maps., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures

Telecloning and its reverse process, referred to as remote information concentration(RIC), have attracted considerable interest because of their potential applications in quantum-information processing. We here present a general scheme for RIC in d-level systems (qudits), in which the quantum information initially distributed in many spatially separated qudits can be remotely and deterministically concentrated to a single qudit via an entangled channel without performing any global operations. We show that the entangled channel of RIC can be different types of entangled states, including mixed states as well as pure ones. More interestingly, these mixed states include a bound entangled state which has a similar form to the generalized Smolin state but has different characteristics from it. We also show that there exists a multipartite entangled state which can be used to implement both telecloning and RIC in the two-level system. Our many-to-one RIC protocol could be slightly modified to perform some types of many-to-many RIC tasks., Comment: 11 pages, one figure

The cross-Kerr nonlinearity (XKNL) effect can induce efficient photon interactions in principle with which photonic multiqubit gates can be performed using far fewer physical resources than linear optical schemes. Unfortunately, it is extremely challenging to generate giant cross-Kerr nonlinearities. In recent years, much effort has been made to perform multiqubit gates via weak XKNLs. However, the required nonlinearity strengths are still difficult to achieve in the experiment. We here propose an XKNL-based scheme for realizing a two-photon polarization-parity gate, a universal two-qubit gate, in which the required strength of the nonlinearity could be orders of magnitude weaker than those required for previous schemes. The scheme utilizes a ring cavity fed by a coherent state as a quantum information bus which interacts with a path mode of the two polarized photons (qubits). The XKNL effect makes the bus pick up a phase shift dependent on the photon number of the path mode. Even when the potential phase shifts are very small they can be effectively measured using photon-number resolving detectors, which accounts for the fact that our scheme can work in the regime of tiny XKNL. The measurement outcome reveals the parity (even parity or odd parity) of the two polarization qubits., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures; some revisions have been made

We study the one-to-two phase-covariant telecloning of a qudit without ancilla. We show that the fidelity of the two clones can reach that of the clones in the optimal ancilla-based one-to-two phase-covariant cloning and telecloning, i.e., the limitation of quantum mechanics. More interestingly, it is a nonmaximally entangled state rather than the maximally entangled state that can be used to realize such a telecloning task., Comment: The improvement of Phys. Rev. A 79, 064306 (2009); see also Chin. Phys. Lett. 27, 100303 (2010)

Remote information concentration (RIC) in $d$-level systems (qudits) is studied. It is shown that the quantum information initially distributed in three spatially separated qudits can be remotely and deterministically concentrated to a single qudit via an entangled channel without performing any global operations. The entangled channel can be different types of genuine multipartite pure entangled states which are inequivalent under local operations and classical communication. The entangled channel can also be a mixed entangled state, even a bound entangled state which has a similar form to the Smolin state, but has different features from the Smolin state. A common feature of all these pure and mixed entangled states is found, i.e., they have $d^2$ common commuting stabilizers. The differences of qudit-RIC and qubit-RIC ($d=2$) are also analyzed., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures

We propose a scheme for multiparty hierarchical quantum-information splitting (QIS) with a multipartite entangled state, where a boss distributes a secret quantum state to two grades of agents asymmetrically. The agents who belong to different grades have different authorities for recovering boss's secret. Except for boss's Bell-state measurement, no nonlocal operation is involved. The presented scheme is also shown to be secure against eavesdropping. Such a hierarchical QIS is expected to find useful applications in the field of modern multipartite quantum cryptography., Comment: 6 pages, 2 tables

We propose genuine ($k$, $m$)-threshold controlling schemes for controlled teleportation via multi-particle entangled states, where the teleportation of a quantum state from a sender (Alice) to a receiver (Bob) is under the control of $m$ supervisors such that $k$ ($k\leq m$) or more of these supervisors can help Bob recover the transferred state. By construction, anyone of our quantum channels is a genuine multipartite entangled state of which any two parts are inseparable. Their properties are compared and contrasted with those of the well-known Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger, W, and linear cluster states, and also several other genuine multipartite entangled states recently introduced in literature. We show that our schemes are secure against both Bob's dishonesty and supervisors' treacheries. For the latter case, the game theory is utilized to prove that supervisors' cheats can be well prevented. In addition to their practical importance, our schemes are also useful in seeking and exploring genuine multipartite entangled states and opening another perspective for the applications of the game theory in quantum information science., Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure

We present a scheme for asymmetric quantum information splitting, where a sender distributes asymmetrically a qubit to distant agents in a network. The asymmetric distribution leads to that the agents have different powers to reconstruct the sender's qubit. In other words, the authorities of the agents for getting the quantum secret are hierarchized. The scheme does not need the agents to get together and make nonlocal operations. Our scheme can also be modified to implement controlled teleportation against uncooperation of part of supervisors., Comment: Introduction and Conclusion parts are improved