Quantum entanglement is widely recognized as one of the key resources for the advantages of quantum information processing, including universal quantum computation 1 , reduction of communication complexity 2,3 or secret key distribution 4 . However, computational models have been discovered, which consume very little or no entanglement and still can efficiently solve certain problems thought to be classically intractable 5,6 . The existence of these models suggests that separable or weakly entangled states could be extremely useful tools for quantum information processing as they are much easier to prepare and control even in dissipative environments. It has been proposed that a requirement for useful quantum states is the generation of so-called quantum discord 7,8 , a measure of non-classical correlations that includes entanglement as a subset. Although a link between quantum discord and few quantum information tasks has been studied, its role in computation speed-up is still open and its operational interpretation remains restricted to only few somewhat contrived situations 9-12 . Here we show that quantum discord is the optimal resource for the remote quantum state preparation 13 , a variant of the quantum teleportation protocol 14 . Using photonic quantum systems, we explicitly show that the geometric measure of quantum discord 15 is related to the fidelity of this task, which provides an operational meaning. Moreover, we demonstrate that separable states with non-zero quantum discord can outperform entangled states. Therefore, the role of quantum discord might provide fundamental insights for resource-efficient quantum information processing.Introduction.-Quantum computation and quantum communication is believed to allow for information processing with an efficiency that cannot be achieved by any classical device. It is usually assumed that a key resource for this enhanced performance is quantum entanglement 16 . The creation and manipulation of entanglement, however, is a very demanding task, as it requires extremely precise quantum control and isolation from the environment. Thus, current experimental achievements are limited to rather small scale entangled systems [17][18][19] . On the other hand there is no proof that quantum entanglement is necessary for quantum information processing (QIP) that can outperform its classical counterpart. The investigation of QIP protocols that allow for significant enhancements in the efficiency of data processing by only using separable states is of high interest. Obviously, such states have the benefit of being easier to prepare and more robust against losses and experimental imperfections. In fact, there are quantum computational models based on mixed, separable states, most notably the so-called deterministic quantum computation with one qubit (DQC1) 5 , which has recently been demonstrated experimentally [20][21][22] . In this context, quantum discord has been proposed as the resource that can provide the enhancement for the computation 23,24 , but its relation to...

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.

Much of the anticipation accompanying the development of a quantum computer relates to its application to simulating dynamics of another quantum system of interest. Here, we study the building blocks for simulating quantum spin systems with linear optics. We experimentally generate the eigenstates of the XY Hamiltonian under an external magnetic field. The implemented quantum circuit consists of two CNOT gates, which are realized experimentally by harnessing entanglement from a photon source and applying a CPHASE gate. We tune the ratio of coupling constants and the magnetic field by changing local parameters. This implementation of the XY model using linear quantum optics might open the door to future studies of quenching dynamics using linear optics.

Scientific Reports 4: Article number: 6115; published online: 19 August 2014; updated: 12 May 2017 This article was originally published under a [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0/CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] license, but has now been made available under a [CC BY 4.0] license. The PDF and HTML versions of the paper have been modified accordingly.