Enhancing quantum state discrimination with indefinite causal order

The standard quantum state discrimination problem can be understood as a communication scenario involving a sender and a receiver following these three steps: (i) the sender encodes information in pre-agreed quantum states, (ii) sends them over a noiseless channel, and (iii) the receiver decodes the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Spiros Kechrimparis, James Moran, Athena Karsa, Changhyoup Lee, Hyukjoon Kwon
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2024-01-01
Series:New Journal of Physics
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/ada05e
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Summary:The standard quantum state discrimination problem can be understood as a communication scenario involving a sender and a receiver following these three steps: (i) the sender encodes information in pre-agreed quantum states, (ii) sends them over a noiseless channel, and (iii) the receiver decodes the information by performing appropriate measurements on the received states. In a practical setting, however, the channel is not only noisy but often also unknown, thus altering the states and making optimal decoding generally not possible. In this work, we study this noisy discrimination scenario using a protocol based on indefinite causal order. To this end, we consider the quantum switch and define its higher-order generalisations, which we call superswitches . We find that, for certain channels and ensembles, the guessing probability can be significantly improved compared to both single- and multiple-copy state discrimination.
ISSN:1367-2630