We study the existence of absolutely maximally entangled (AME) states in quantum mechanics and its applications to quantum information. AME states are characterized by being maximally entangled for all bipartitions of the system and exhibit genuine multipartite entanglement. With such states, we present a novel parallel teleportation protocol which teleports multiple quantum states between groups of senders and receivers. The notable features of this protocol are that (i) the partition into senders and receivers can be chosen after the state has been distributed, and (ii) one group has to perform joint quantum operations while the parties of the other group only have to act locally on their system. We also prove the equivalence between pure state quantum secret sharing schemes and AME states with an even number of parties. This equivalence implies the existence of AME states for an arbitrary number of parties based on known results about the existence of quantum secret sharing schemes. PACS numbers:Introduction. Entanglement is at the core of the power of quantum information processing and has been extensively studied for few qubits. The classification of entanglement classes for three and four qubits is well understood [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] and canonical forms of pure states under local unitary transformations of each local Hilbert space have also been analyzed [6,8,9]. As the number of local quantum degrees of freedom increases, our understanding of entanglement gets poorer. The number of independent invariants that classify entanglement grows exponentially and it is unclear which purpose each category of entanglement serves [10,11]. In recent years, there has been an important progress in the classification of the maximally multipartite entangled states composed of qubits [7,[12][13][14][15]. Nevertheless, a complete understanding of the structure, classification and usefulness of quantum states with the largest possible entanglement for arbitrary dimension is still missing. Another motivation for studying multipartite entanglement is its connection to other apparently unrelated areas of physics, like string theory and black-holes [16,17].Quantum teleportation is one of the most intriguing utilizations of entanglement. It allows distant parties, who share a resource of entanglement, to transport a quantum state from one party to the other by only exchanging classical information and using up said entanglement. The first proposal of such a protocol used the resource of bipartite entanglement between two parties [18]. Later teleportation protocols using genuine multipartite entanglement between more than two parties were proposed theoretically for four qubit entanglement [19], and experimentally in the form of open-destination teleportation for five qubits [20].This manuscript is devoted to initiate the study of a class of states with genuine multipartite entanglement. These states, which we call absolutely maximally entangled (AME) states, are defined as having the strict maximal entanglement in all

The generation of heralded pure Fock states via spontaneous parametric down conversion (PDC) relies on perfect photon-number correlations in the output modes. Correlations in any other degree of freedom, however, degrade the purity of the heralded state. In this paper, we investigate spectral entanglement between the two output modes of a periodically poled waveguide. With the intent of generating heralded 1-and 2-photon Fock states, we expand the output state of the PDC to second order in photon number. We explore the effects of spectral filtering and inefficient detection, of the heralding mode, on the count rate, g (2) and purity of the heralded state, as well as the fidelity between the resulting state and an ideal Fock state. We find that filtering can decrease spectral correlations, however, at the expense of the count rate and increased photon-number mixedness in the heralded output state. As a physical example, we model a type II PP-KTP waveguide pumped by lasers at wavelengths of 400 nm, 788 nm and 1.93 µm. The latter two allow the fulfillment of extended phase matching conditions in an attempt to eliminate spectral correlations in the PDC output state without the use of filtering, however, we find that even in these cases, some filtering is needed to achieve states of very high purity.

Parametric downconversion (PDC) is a technique of ubiquitous experimental significance in the production of non-classical, photon-number correlated twin beams. Standard theory of PDC as a two-mode squeezing process predicts and homodyne measurements observe a thermal photon number distribution per beam. Recent experiments have obtained conflicting distributions. In this paper, we explain the observation by an a-priori theoretical model solely based on directly accessible physical quantities. We compare our predictions with experimental data and find excellent agreement.

For a tripartite pure state of three qubits, it is well known that there are two inequivalent classes of genuine tripartite entanglement, namely the GHZ-class and the W-class. Any two states within the same class can be transformed into each other with stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC) with a non-zero probability. The optimal conversion probability, however, is only known for special cases. Here, we derive new lower and upper bounds for the optimal probability of transformation from a GHZ-state to other states of the GHZ-class. A key idea in the derivation of the upper bounds is to consider the action of the LOCC protocol on a different input state, namely 1/ √ 2[|000 − |111 ], and demand that the probability of an outcome remains bounded by 1. We also find an upper bound for more general cases by using the constraints of the so-called interference term and 3-tangle. Moreover, we generalize some of our results to the case where each party holds a higher-dimensional system. In particular, we found that the GHZ state generalized to three qutrits, i.e., |GHZ3 = 1/ √ 3[|000 + |111 + |222 ], shared among three parties can be transformed to any tripartite 3-qubit pure state with probability 1 via LOCC. Some of our results can also be generalized to the case of a multipartite state shared by more than three parties.

Every security analysis of quantum-key distribution (QKD) relies on a faithful modeling of the employed quantum states. Many photon sources, such as for instance a parametric down-conversion (PDC) source, require a multimode description but are usually only considered in a single-mode representation. In general, the important claim in decoy-based QKD protocols for indistinguishability between signal and decoy states does not hold for all sources. We derive bounds on the single-photon transmission probability and error rate for multimode states and apply these bounds to the output state of a PDC source. We observe two opposing effects on the secure key rate. First, the multimode structure of the state gives rise to a new attack that decreases the key rate. Second, more contributing modes change the photon number distribution from a thermal toward a Poissonian distribution, which increases the key rate

Quantum key distribution is among the foremost applications of quantum mechanics, both in terms of fundamental physics and as a technology on the brink of commercial deployment. Starting from principal schemes and initial proofs of unconditional security for perfect systems, much effort has gone into providing secure schemes which can cope with numerous experimental imperfections unavoidable in real world implementations. In this paper, we provide a comparison of various schemes and protocols. We analyse their efficiency and performance when implemented with imperfect physical components. We consider how experimental faults are accounted for using effective parameters. We compare various recent protocols and provide guidelines as to which components propose best advances when being improved. (c) 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. Weinheim

Quantum key distribution is among the foremost applications of quantum mechanics, both in terms of fundamental physics and as a technology on the brink of commercial deployment. Starting from principal schemes and initial proofs of unconditional security for perfect systems, much effort has gone into providing secure schemes which can cope with numerous experimental imperfections unavoidable in real world implementations. In this paper, we provide a comparison of various schemes and protocols. We analyse their efficiency and performance when implemented with imperfect physical components. We consider how experimental faults are accounted for using effective parameters. We compare various recent protocols and provide guidelines as to which components propose best advances when being improved.