Macroscopically Nonlocal Quantum Correlations.

It is usually believed that coarse graining of quantum correlations leads to classical correlations in the macroscopic limit. Such a principle, known as macroscopic locality, has been proved for correlations arising from independent and identically distributed (IID) entangled pairs. In this Letter, we consider the generic (non-IID) scenario. We find that the Hilbert space structure of quantum theory can be preserved in the macroscopic limit. This leads directly to a Bell violation for coarse-grained collective measurements, thus breaking the principle of macroscopic locality.

Coherence Equality and Communication in a Quantum Superposition.

In this Letter, we introduce a "coherence equality" that is satisfied by any classical communication-i.e., conveyed by a localized carrier traveling along well defined directions. In contrast, this equality is violated when the carrier is prepared in coherent quantum superposition of communication directions. This is phrased in terms of the success probability of a certain communication task, which is always constant and equal to 1/2 in the classical case. On the other hand, we develop two simple quantum schemes that deviate systematically from the classical value, thus, violating the coherence equality. Such a violation can also be exploited as an operational way to witness spatial quantum superpositions without requiring us to recombine the modes in a standard interferometer, but only by means of spatially separated local measurements.

Experimental few-copy multi-particle entanglement detection.

Many future quantum technologies rely on the generation of entangled states. Quantum devices will require verification of their operation below some error threshold, but the reliable detection of quantum entanglement remains a considerable challenge for large-scale quantum systems. Well-established techniques for this task rely on the measurement of expectation values of entanglement witnesses, which however require many measurements settings to be extracted. Here we develop a generic framework for efficient entanglement detection that translates any entanglement witness into a resource-efficient probabilistic scheme, whose confidence grows exponentially with the number of individual detection events, namely copies of the quantum state. To benchmark our findings, we experimentally verify the presence of entanglement in a photonic six-qubit cluster state generated using three single-photon sources operating at telecommunication wavelengths. We find that the presence of entanglement can be certified with at least 99:74% confidence by detecting 20 copies of the quantum state. Additionally, we show that genuine six-qubit entanglement is verified with at least 99% confidence by using 112 copies of the state. Our protocol can be carried out with a remarkably low number of copies and in the presence of experimental imperfections, making it a practical and applicable method to verify large-scale quantum devices.

Two-Way Communication with a Single Quantum Particle.

In this Letter we show that communication when restricted to a single information carrier (i.e., single particle) and finite speed of propagation is fundamentally limited for classical systems. On the other hand, quantum systems can surpass this limitation. We show that communication bounded to the exchange of a single quantum particle (in superposition of different spatial locations) can result in "two-way signaling," which is impossible in classical physics. We quantify the discrepancy between classical and quantum scenarios by the probability of winning a game played by distant players. We generalize our result to an arbitrary number of parties and we show that the probability of success is asymptotically decreasing to zero as the number of parties grows, for all classical strategies. In contrast, quantum strategy allows players to win the game with certainty.

Macroscopic Superpositions as Quantum Ground States.

We study the question of what kind of a macroscopic superposition can(not) naturally exist as a ground state of some gapped local many-body Hamiltonian. We derive an upper bound on the energy gap of an arbitrary physical Hamiltonian provided that its ground state is a superposition of two well-distinguishable macroscopic "semiclassical" states. For a large class of macroscopic superposition states we show that the gap vanishes in the macroscopic limit. This in turn shows that preparation of such states by simple cooling to the ground state is not experimentally feasible and requires a different strategy. Our approach is very general and can be used to rule out a variety of quantum states, some of which do not even exhibit macroscopic quantum properties. Moreover, our methods and results can be used for addressing quantum marginal related problems.

Single-photon test of hyper-complex quantum theories using a metamaterial.

In standard quantum mechanics, complex numbers are used to describe the wavefunction. Although this has so far proven sufficient to predict experimental results, there is no theoretical reason to choose them over real numbers or generalizations of complex numbers, that is, hyper-complex numbers. Experiments performed to date have proven that real numbers are insufficient, but the need for hyper-complex numbers remains an open question. Here we experimentally probe hyper-complex quantum theories, studying one of their deviations from complex quantum theory: the non-commutativity of phases. We do so by passing single photons through a Sagnac interferometer containing both a metamaterial with a negative refractive index, and a positive phase shifter. To accomplish this we engineered a fishnet metamaterial to have a negative refractive index at 780 nm. We show that the metamaterial phase commutes with other phases with high precision, allowing us to place limits on a particular prediction of hyper-complex quantum theories.

A two-qubit photonic quantum processor and its application to solving systems of linear equations.

Large-scale quantum computers will require the ability to apply long sequences of entangling gates to many qubits. In a photonic architecture, where single-qubit gates can be performed easily and precisely, the application of consecutive two-qubit entangling gates has been a significant obstacle. Here, we demonstrate a two-qubit photonic quantum processor that implements two consecutive CNOT gates on the same pair of polarisation-encoded qubits. To demonstrate the flexibility of our system, we implement various instances of the quantum algorithm for solving of systems of linear equations.

Towards photonic quantum simulation of ground states of frustrated Heisenberg spin systems.

Photonic quantum simulators are promising candidates for providing insight into other small- to medium-sized quantum systems. Recent experiments have shown that photonic quantum systems have the advantage to exploit quantum interference for the quantum simulation of the ground state of Heisenberg spin systems. Here we experimentally characterize this quantum interference at a tuneable beam splitter and further investigate the measurement-induced interactions of a simulated four-spin system by comparing the entanglement dynamics using pairwise concurrence. We also study theoretically a four-site square lattice with next-nearest neighbor interactions and a six-site checkerboard lattice, which might be in reach of current technology.

Necessary and sufficient condition for nonzero quantum discord.

Quantum discord characterizes "nonclassicality" of correlations in quantum mechanics. It has been proposed as the key resource present in certain quantum communication tasks and quantum computational models without containing much entanglement. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of nonzero quantum discord for any dimensional bipartite states. This condition is easily experimentally implementable. Based on this, we propose a geometrical way of quantifying quantum discord. For two qubits this results in a closed form of expression for discord. We apply our results to the model of deterministic quantum computation with one qubit, showing that quantum discord is unlikely to be the reason behind its speedup.

Efficient hidden-variable simulation of measurements in quantum experiments.

We prove that the results of a finite set of general quantum measurements on an arbitrary dimensional quantum system can be simulated using a polynomial (in measurements) number of hidden-variable states. In the limit of infinitely many measurements, our method gives models with the minimal number of hidden-variable states, which scales linearly with the number of measurements. These results can find applications in foundations of quantum theory, complexity studies, and classical simulations of quantum systems.