Variational Entanglement-Assisted Quantum Process Tomography with Arbitrary Ancillary Qubits.

Quantum process tomography is a pivotal technique in fully characterizing quantum dynamics. However, exponential scaling of the Hilbert space with the increasing system size extremely restrains its experimental implementations. Here, we put forward a more efficient, flexible, and error-mitigated method: variational entanglement-assisted quantum process tomography with arbitrary ancillary qubits. Numerically, we simulate up to eight-qubit quantum processes and show that this tomography with m ancillary qubits (0≤m≤n) alleviates the exponential costs on state preparation (from 4^{n} to 2^{n-m}), measurement settings (at least a 1 order of magnitude reduction), and data postprocessing (efficient and robust parameter optimization). Experimentally, we first demonstrate our method on a silicon photonic chip by rebuilding randomly generated one-qubit and two-qubit unitary quantum processes. Further using the error mitigation method, two-qubit quantum processes can be rebuilt with average gate fidelity enhanced from 92.38% to 95.56%. Our Letter provides an efficient and practical approach to process tomography on the noisy quantum computing platforms.

Optimization of quantum light sources and four-wave mixing based on a reconfigurable silicon ring resonator.

Being a key component on a photonic chip, the microring usually specializes in a certain nonlinear optical process and can not simultaneously meet different working conditions for different processes. Here, we theoretically and experimentally investigate a reconfigurable silicon microring resonator to act as a optimization strategy for both classical four-wave mixing and quantum light sources. Experimental results show that the four-wave mixing efficiency with continuous wave and pulsed pump can be both optimized to a high value well matching numerical analysis. A variety of quantum light sources - including the heralded single-photon source, two-photon source and multi-photon source - are demonstrated to present a high performance and their key parameters including the pair generation rates (PGR), the heralding efficiency (HE) and the coincidence-to-accidental ratio (CAR) are controllable and optimizable. Such tunable nonlinear converter is immune to fabrication variations and can be popularized to other nonlinear optical materials, providing a simple and compact post-fabrication trimming strategy for on-chip all-optical signal processing and photonic quantum technologies.

Implementing graph-theoretic quantum algorithms on a silicon photonic quantum walk processor.

Applications of quantum walks can depend on the number, exchange symmetry and indistinguishability of the particles involved, and the underlying graph structures where they move. Here, we show that silicon photonics, by exploiting an entanglement-driven scheme, can realize quantum walks with full control over all these properties in one device. The device we realize implements entangled two-photon quantum walks on any five-vertex graph, with continuously tunable particle exchange symmetry and indistinguishability. We show how this simulates single-particle walks on larger graphs, with size and geometry controlled by tuning the properties of the composite quantum walkers. We apply the device to quantum walk algorithms for searching vertices in graphs and testing for graph isomorphisms. In doing so, we implement up to 100 sampled time steps of quantum walk evolution on each of 292 different graphs. This opens the way to large-scale, programmable quantum walk processors for classically intractable applications.

Remote-controlled quantum computing by quantum entanglement.

Quantum entanglement enables measurement on one party to affect the other's state. Based on this peculiar feature, we propose a model of remote-controlled quantum computing and design an optical scheme to realize this model for a single qubit. As an experimental demonstration of this scheme, we further implement three Pauli operators, Hardmard gate, phase gate, and π/8 gate. The minimal fidelity obtained by quantum process tomography reaches 82%. Besides, as a potential application, our model contributes to secure remote quantum information processing.

Reconfigurable multiphoton entangled states based on quantum photonic chips.

Multipartite entanglement is one of the most prominent features of quantum mechanics and is the key ingredient in quantum information processing. Seeking for an advantageous way to generate it is of great value. Here we propose two different schemes to prepare multiphoton entangled states on a quantum photonic chip that are both based on the theory of entanglement on the graph. The first scheme is to construct graphs for multiphoton states by the network of spatially anti-bunching two-photon sources. The second one is to construct graphs by the linear beam-splitter network, which can generate W and Dicke states efficiently with simple structure. Both schemes can be scaled up in the photon number and can be reconfigured for different types of multiphoton states. This study supplies a systematic solution for the on-chip generation of multiphoton entangled states and will promote the practical development of multiphoton quantum technologies.

Hacking single-photon avalanche detectors in quantum key distribution via pulse illumination.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) has been proved to be information-theoretically secure in theory. Unfortunately, the imperfect devices in practice compromise its security. Thus, to improve the security property of practical QKD systems, a commonly used method is to patch the loopholes in the existing QKD systems. However, in this work, we show an adversary's capability of exploiting the imperfection of the patch itself to bypass the patch. Specifically, we experimentally demonstrate that, in the detector under test, the patch of photocurrent monitor against the detector blinding attack can be defeated by the pulse illumination attack proposed in this paper. We also analyze the secret key rate under the pulse illumination attack, which theoretically confirmed that Eve can conduct the attack to learn the secret key. This work indicates the importance of inspecting the security loopholes in a detection unit to further understand their impacts on a QKD system. The method of pulse illumination attack can be a general testing item in the security evaluation standard of QKD.

Polymorphisms of the growth hormone gene and their association with growth traits and sex in Sarcocheilichthys sinensis.

The growth hormone gene (gh) of Sarcocheilichthys sinensis was cloned and characterized in this study. The cDNA length of gh was 973 bp, containing a 5'-UTR of 15 bp, a 3'-UTR of 325 bp and an open reading frame of 633 bp. The genomic DNA of gh was 2135 bp in length containing five exons and four introns. The precursor peptide of gh contained 210 amino acids (aa), including a signal peptide of 22 aa (Met1-Ala22) and a mature region of 188 aa (Ser23-Leu210). The similarity and identity ranges of the gh precursor peptide with those of other cyprinids were 88.6%-99.0% and 84.8%-98.6%, respectively. The gh of S. sinensis expressed at the highest level in the pituitary, and its expression was also detected in muscle and brain. Six polymorphic sites were detected in intron 1 (g.51InDel, g.64InDel and g.242InDel), intron 2 (g.864T>C), intron 3 (g.1017InDel) and intron 4 (g.1541A>G). Among these sites, g.242InDel was significantly associated with condition factor, g.1541A>G was associated with all six growth traits, while g.864T>C was associated with sex. The data obtained herein provide useful information for further studies on the regulation mechanisms of growth and sexual growth differences in S. sinensis.

Evanescent-wave coupling phase-matching for ultrawidely tunable frequency conversion in silicon-waveguide chips.

We propose and analyze an evanescent-wave coupling phase-matching method for ultrawidely tunable frequency conversion in coupled χ (3)-waveguides which will boost the nonlinear optical properties of photonic chips. Taking a silicon-waveguide as an example, we design a two-coupled-waveguide system which provides an efficient coupling coefficient for the compensation of phase-mismatch in spontaneous four-wave mixing, achieving widely tunable entangled photon pairs which are usually not accessible in χ (3)-waveguides. A tuning range of 1170-2300n m for TE-mode or 1400-1730n m for TM-mode entangled photons is realized when the inter-waveguide gap varies within the range of 400-900n m. The bandwidth of evanescent-wave coupling phase-matching is also characterized. This unique phase-matching strategy is in principle applicable to any χ (2)- and χ (3)-waveguide chip, qualifying them as broadband frequency converters which will have wide applications in nonlinear optics and quantum optics.

General-Purpose Quantum Circuit Simulator with Projected Entangled-Pair States and the Quantum Supremacy Frontier.

Recent advances on quantum computing hardware have pushed quantum computing to the verge of quantum supremacy. Here, we bring together many-body quantum physics and quantum computing by using a method for strongly interacting two-dimensional systems, the projected entangled-pair states, to realize an effective general-purpose simulator of quantum algorithms. The classical computing complexity of this simulator is directly related to the entanglement generation of the underlying quantum circuit rather than the number of qubits or gate operations. We apply our method to study random quantum circuits, which allows us to quantify precisely the memory usage and the time requirements of random quantum circuits. We demonstrate our method by computing one amplitude for a 7×7 lattice of qubits with depth (1+40+1) on the Tianhe-2 supercomputer.

Efficient quantum walk on a quantum processor.

The random walk formalism is used across a wide range of applications, from modelling share prices to predicting population genetics. Likewise, quantum walks have shown much potential as a framework for developing new quantum algorithms. Here we present explicit efficient quantum circuits for implementing continuous-time quantum walks on the circulant class of graphs. These circuits allow us to sample from the output probability distributions of quantum walks on circulant graphs efficiently. We also show that solving the same sampling problem for arbitrary circulant quantum circuits is intractable for a classical computer, assuming conjectures from computational complexity theory. This is a new link between continuous-time quantum walks and computational complexity theory and it indicates a family of tasks that could ultimately demonstrate quantum supremacy over classical computers. As a proof of principle, we experimentally implement the proposed quantum circuit on an example circulant graph using a two-qubit photonics quantum processor.

Identification of Sex-Specific Markers Reveals Male Heterogametic Sex Determination in Pseudobagrus ussuriensis.

Comprehending sex determination mechanism is a first step for developing sex control breeding biotechnologies in fish. Pseudobagrus ussuriensis, one of bagrid catfishes in Bagridae, had been observed to have about threefold size dimorphism between males and females, but its sex determination mechanism had been unknown. In this study, we firstly used the amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP)-based screening approach to isolate a male-specific DNA fragment and thereby identified a 10,569 bp of male-specific sequence and a 10,365 bp of female-related sequence by genome walking in the bagrid catfish, in which a substantial genetic differentiation with 96.35 % nucleotide identity was revealed between them. Subsequently, a high differentiating region of 650 bp with only 70.26 % nucleotide identity was found from the corresponding two sequences, and three primer pairs of male-specific marker, male and female-shared marker with different length products in male and female genomes, and female-related marker were designed. Significantly, when these markers were used to identify genetic sex of the bagrid catfish, only male individuals was detected to amplify the male-specific marker fragment, and female-related marker was discovered to produce dosage association in females and in males. Our current data provide significant genetic evidence that P. ussuriensis has heterogametic XY sex chromosomes in males and homogametic XX sex chromosomes in females. Therefore, sex determination mechanism of P. ussuriensis is male heterogametic XX/XY system.