Jun 21 2016
A team of quantum computing researchers from RMIT have formulated and illustrated a technique that can effectively identify high-dimensional entanglement. In quantum physics, entanglement can be defined as the capacity of two or more particles to be linked to each other in ways which are outside the realm of classical physics. Data regarding a particle found in an entangled ensemble offers an 'unnatural' amount of data on the other particles.
The research paper titled "High-dimensional entanglement certification", has been published on 17 June issue of the Scientific Reports.
The method we developed employs only two local measurements of complementary properties. This procedure can also certify whether the system is maximally entangled.
Dr Alberto Peruzzo, Senior Research Fellow, School of Engineering, RMIT
Large-scale quantum computing depends a lot on entanglement between the individual particles required for storing data, quantum bits, or qubits.
Quantum computing could exponentially speed up specific tasks, because entanglement provides a greatly enhanced quantity of data to be stored and processed with the same quantity of qubits.
Together with this increase also comes the problem of needing to measure the device many times to find out what it is truly doing - that is, before the quantum computer is up and running, we need to gather an exponentially large amount of information on how it is performing.
Dr Alberto Peruzzo, Senior Research Fellow, School of Engineering, RMIT
Zixin Huang, a PhD student working on the experiment, said: "The current form of computer encodes information in binary form. A higher dimensional state, however, is a particle that contains a message that can be 0, 1, 2 or more, so much more information can be stored and transmitted.
"To date, tools for characterising high-dimensional entangled states are limited. In the future when quantum computers become available, our method can potentially serve as a tool in certifying whether the system has enough entanglement between the qubits.
"It significantly cuts down on the number of measurements needed - in fact, it needs the least number of measurements per dimension. Additionally, unlike some others, this method works for systems of any dimension."