In Print

A collection of my most cited research papers, and a selection of my books.

My Research

Indefinite Causal Orders from Superpositions in Time

Treating the time of an event as a quantum variable, we derive a scheme in which superpositions in time are used to perform operations in an indefinite causal order. We use some aspects of a recently developed space-time-symmetric formalism of events. We propose a specific implementation of the scheme and recover the Quantum SWITCH, where quantum operations are performed in an order which is entangled with the state of a control qubit. Our scheme does not rely on any exotic quantum gravitational effect, but instead on phenomena which are naturally fuzzy in time, such as the decay of an excited…

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Perturbative quantum simulation

Approximations based on perturbation theory are the basis for most of the quantitative predictions of quantum mechanics, whether in quantum field theory, many-body physics, chemistry or other domains. Quantum computing provides an alternative to the perturbation paradigm, but the tens of noisy qubits currently available in state-of-the-art quantum processors are of limited practical utility. In this article, we introduce perturbative quantum simulation, which combines the complementary strengths of the two approaches, enabling the solution of large practical quantum problems using noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware. The use of a quantum processor eliminates the need to identify a solvable unperturbed Hamiltonian, while…

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Optomechanical entanglement between a movable mirror and a cavity field

We show how stationary entanglement between an optical cavity field mode and a macroscopic vibrating mirror can be generated by means of radiation pressure. We also show how the generated optomechanical entanglement can be quantified, and we suggest an experimental readout scheme to fully characterize the entangled state. Surprisingly, such optomechanical entanglement is shown to persist for environment temperatures above 20 K using state-of-the-art experimental parameters.

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Geometric quantum computation using nuclear magnetic resonance

A significant development in computing has been the discovery 1 that the computational power of quantum computers exceeds that of Turing machines. Central to the experimental realization of quantum information processing is the construction of fault-tolerant quantum logic gates. Their operation requires conditional quantum dynamics, in which one sub-system undergoes a coherent evolution that depends on the quantum state of another sub-system 2; in particular, the evolving sub-system may acquire a conditional phase shift. Although conventionally dynamic in origin, phase shifts can also be geometric 3, 4. Conditional geometric (or ‘Berry’) phases depend only on the geometry of the path…

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Unified view of quantum and classical correlations

We discuss the problem of the separation of total correlations in a given quantum state into entanglement, dissonance, and classical correlations using the concept of relative entropy as a distance measure of correlations. This allows us to put all correlations on an equal footing. Entanglement and dissonance, whose definition is introduced here, jointly belong to what is known as quantum discord. Our methods are completely applicable for multipartite systems of arbitrary dimensions. We investigate additivity relations between different correlations and show that dissonance may be present in pure multipartite states.

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Natural thermal and magnetic entanglement in the 1D Heisenberg model

We investigate the entanglement between any two spins in a one dimensional Heisenberg chain as a function of temperature and the external magnetic field. We find that the entanglement in an antiferromagnetic chain can be increased by increasing the temperature or the external field. Increasing the field can also create entanglement between otherwise disentangled spins. This entanglement can be confirmed by testing Bell’s inequalities involving any two spins in the solid.

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The role of relative entropy in quantum information theory

Quantum mechanics and information theory are among the most important scientific discoveries of the last century. Although these two areas initially developed separately, it has emerged that they are in fact intimately related. In this review the author shows how quantum information theory extends traditional information theory by exploring the limits imposed by quantum, rather than classical, mechanics on information storage and transmission. The derivation of many key results differentiates this review from the usual presentation in that they are shown to follow logically from one crucial property of relative entropy. Within the review, optimal bounds on the enhanced speed…

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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…

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Experimental one-way quantum computing

Standard quantum computation is based on sequences of unitary quantum logic gates that process qubits. The one-way quantum computer proposed by Raussendorf and Briegel is entirely different. It has changed our understanding of the requirements for quantum computation and more generally how we think about quantum physics. This new model requires qubits to be initialized in a highly entangled cluster state. From this point, the quantum computation proceeds by a sequence of single-qubit measurements with classical feedforward of their outcomes. Because of the essential role of measurement, a one-way quantum computer is irreversible. In the one-way quantum computer, the order…

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The classical-quantum boundary for correlations: Discord and related measures

One of the best signatures of nonclassicality in a quantum system is the existence of correlations that have no classical counterpart. Different methods for quantifying the quantum and classical parts of correlations are amongst the more actively-studied topics of quantum information theory over the past decade. Entanglement is the most prominent of these correlations, but in many cases unentangled states exhibit nonclassical behavior too. Thus distinguishing quantum correlations other than entanglement provides a better division between the quantum and classical worlds, especially when considering mixed states. Here we review different notions of classical and quantum correlations quantified by quantum discord…

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Entanglement measures and purification procedures

We improve previously proposed conditions each measure of entanglement has to satisfy. We present a class of entanglement measures that satisfy these conditions and show that the quantum relative entropy and Bures metric generate two measures of this class. We calculate the measures of entanglement for a number of mixed two spin-1/2 systems using the quantum relative entropy, and provide an efficient numerical method to obtain the measures of entanglement in this case. In addition, we prove a number of properties of our entanglement measure that have important physical implications. We briefly explain the statistical basis of our measure of…

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Quantifying entanglement

We present conditions every measure of entanglement has to satisfy, and construct a whole class of “good” entanglement measures. The generalization of our class of entanglement measures to more than two particles is straightforward. We present a measure which has a statistical operational basis that might enable experimental determination of the quantitative degree of entanglement.

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