United Kingdom

This project explores Free Energy based Reinforcement Learning (FERL) with clamped Quantum Boltzmann Machines (QBM) applied to particle beam steering at the Super Proton Synchrotron at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN). The objective is to study and push the performance of the FERL approach compared to classical RL techniques in terms of sample efficiency. The latter determines the number of interactions required with the environment during agent training and is a highly relevant figure of merit particularly for control of particle accelerator systems. FERL can provide a significant improvement of the learning efficiency as shown in earlier research. Training the QBM, however, requires sampling spin configurations from a Boltzmann distribution which can be efficiently achieved using quantum annealing hardware where the QBM is represented by the pairwise coupled qubits of the QPU. An FERL framework has been developed, including double Q learning and experience replay, as well as allowing for discrete and continuous state spaces. Results obtained from sampling spin configurations with quantum annealing, both simulated and employing D-Wave 2000Q hardware, are discussed and compared to the performance of classical deep Q learning.

Bristol Quantum Information Technologies Workshop

Particle beam steering with quantum reinforcement learning

quantum annealing

quantum boltzmann machines

free energy based reinforcement learning

**BQIT is a three day annual workshop** aimed at enabling leading UK and international academics and industrial partners to come together; to explore and discuss future ambitions and challenges in the field of **Quantum Information Technologies.** Since our conception in 2014 we have had 230 speakers and panellists who have presented their work and opinions on a range of topics, from quantum theory to innovation in industry.


### Welcome Message
The BQIT:21 team welcomes you to the eighth Bristol Quantum Information Technologies workshop! 

Last year was the first time in our workshop's history that we had gone fully virtual. The global circumstances that continue to impact us all professionally and personally have forced BQIT once again to be delivered as an all-virtual workshop for 2021. The access this creates to colleagues across the world who would otherwise be unable to join us, as well as being able to make the workshop free for all attendees due to the lower costs involved in delivering an online workshop, are just a couple of the extraordinary benefits of meeting online. This also means that we can welcome three times as many attendees to BQIT than previous years.   

We take this opportunity to thank each of our speakers and poster presenters for contributing their technical content, this year's sponsors, whose support this year enabled BQIT:21 to be free to all attendees, and to all of our attendees for joining us online this year. We recognise the extra energy required to stay connected and motivated during these difficult times, and are hugely encouraged to see so many of you willing to continue to connect with us on an online platform. 

It is our hope that you have a productive and enjoyable time while you engage and interact with BQIT:21, and to everyone that has helped take BQIT:21 online, thank you! 

**The BQIT board and organisation team **


![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/a12e0c1ad3410144cb48557690e4ecaf.png)
### This year's workshop agenda is available here: [Virtual BQIT:21](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QwsSM0ztnxC_lgUKf3TbO3GvnI44AQkY/view?usp=sharing)
For further information, please contact us at: **bqit-admin@bristol.ac.uk**

![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/a12e0c1ad3410144cb48557690e4ecaf.png)

poster

Solid-state quantum emitters have great promise for quantum information applications such as, quantum computation and communication. Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are popular candidate due to its long-lived spin quantum state and well-defined optical transitions. Limitations of NV centers arise from the strongly temperature dependent dephasing effects caused by phonon interactions, which act to suppress the indistinguishability of photon emission essential for quantum interference. 
In this work we simulate the design of a cavity with an ultrasmall-mode-volume coupled to NV-center and show that we can extract highly efficient (99%) indistinguishable (>50%) photons at 200K. Upon filtering, we find an enhanced indistinguishability (73%) with efficiency (29%). We use a cavity-QED master equation approach to calculate efficiencies and indistinguishability of the photon emission at 200K and 300K. Typically, NV-centers are modelled as a two-level system with excess pure-dephasing. However, the NV-center consists of two orthogonally polarised dipoles which are non-degenerate in the presence of linear strain fields. To capture this polarisation splitting we model the NV-center as both a two- and three-level system and find that the inclusion of the non-degenerate excited states supresses indistinguishability and the results are optimized when the cavity orientation is aligned to one of these transition dipoles.


Efficient indistinguishable photons at 200K

High-dimensional entanglement can give rise to stronger forms of nonlocal correlations compared to qubit systems. Beyond being of fundamental interest, this offers significant advantages for quantum information processing. The problem of certifying these stronger correlations, however, remains an important challenge. Here we theoretically formalise and experimentally demonstrate a notion of genuine high-dimensional quantum steering. We show that high-dimensional entanglement combined with judiciously chosen local measurements can lead to a stronger form of steering, provably impossible to obtain via entanglement in lower dimensions. Exploiting the connection between steering and incompatibility of quantum measurements, we derive two-setting inequalities for certifying the presence of genuine high-dimensional steering. We report the experimental violation of these inequalities using macro-pixel photon-pair entanglement certifying genuine high-dimensional steering in dimensions up to 15.

Genuine High-Dimensional Quantum Steering

Noise is ubiquitous in any realisation of a quantum computer and must be supressed using Quantum Error Correction (QEC). Recent works have shown that in the presence of biased noise significant improvements can be seen in the capabilities of error correcting codes. For continuous variable systems this bias can be artificially introduced through an appropriate choice of bosonic code. Here we study the code capacity behaviour of a biased GKP qubit concatenated with a simple n-qubit repetition code with the aim of drastically reducing the complexity of the error correction process. Preliminary findings indicate under a Gaussian displacement noise channel this code offers a performance improvement over a bare, square lattice GKP qubit.

Quantum Error Correction using Biased GKP States Concatenated with a Repetition Code

The integrated photon sources are part of the generation and manipulation of photons in photonic chips. In this work, we explore waveguides on Silicon Carbide as photon pair sources since it is scalable and manufacturable using lithography. This type of sources are tuned the geometry of these waveguides through the Spontaneous Four Wave Mixing process. We explore the co-propagating, co-polarized and monomodal propagation configuration. In the end, this work aims to be a compilation of physical characteristics of the waveguide and its corresponding spectral characteristics. It will also develop a workflow for the study of other materials such as Silicon Nitride (manufacturable with lithography) and Silicon Dioxide (manufacturable with direct femtosecond laser writing). We present the simulation and optimization of a waveguide in a spectral range related with availability of workplace devices (lasers and detectors).

DESIGN OF INTEGRATED PHOTON SOURCES FOR QUANTUM INFORMATION APPLICATIONS

The Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect is a fourth-degree interference originally intended to measure subpicosecond (or micrometre) time intervals between two photons. Lyons et al showed that there is sufficient precision in this method to measure the time delay with a HOM interferometer to the attosecond level (nanometre path length), giving a strong motivation to use this technique for thickness or refractive index estimation for transparent samples. Here, we propose a microscope using the HOM interference combined with a wavelength-entangled photon pair source allowing an interference fringe to be observed within the HOM interference dip. By varying the wavelength separation of the photons, the sensitivity of the microscope can be controlled. We propose to use temperature control of a periodically polled nonlinear crystal in a Sagnac architecture. By adaptively modifying the temperature of the nonlinear crystal in this arrangement, we aim to avoid ambiguity in parameter estimation.

The two-colour Hong-Ou-Mandel microscope

We study the interplay between entanglement and chaos in the time evolution of Bohmian trajectories of a two qubit system, made of coherent states of the quantum harmonic oscillator. This simple quantum system has very rich dynamics from a Bohmian standpoint, since with a proper choice of the physical parameters one finds ordered (periodic or non-periodic) and chaotic trajectories. We provide strong numerical evidence that the chaotic trajectories of this system are ergodic regardless of the amount of the entanglement and study their impact on the dynamical approximation to Born's rule for an arbitrary initial configuration of the quantum particles.

Order and Chaos in Two Entangled Bohmian Qubits

Quantum conference key agreement (QCKA) establishes secure keys between multiple users from a single use of a GHZ state. In a network that provides photonic graph states as a resource between its nodes, this can be drastically more efficient than trying to establish a secure conference key using traditional 2-party primitives. 

Building on previous work where we demonstrated 4-party QCKA over a 50 km distance, we here move towards demonstrating this network advantage. Starting with a universal 6-qubit graph state, we will use network routing protocols to distill either 4-qubit GHZ states for QCKA or combinations of Bell pairs for two-party QKD. Then, a 4-user conference key can be established with half the resources.

Multi-party quantum cryptography in a graph-state network

Quantum measurements lie at the heart of experimental quantum science and quantum information processing. Traditionally, these measurements take the form of projecting a state intoa certain basis which tells us information about what the state is. Quantum state elimination (QSE) has recently garnered attention as an alternative approach where the outcomes tells uswhat the state is not. QSE plays a role in foundational physics about what is the nature ofa quantum state established by Pusey, Barrett and Rudolph (PBR). Recently, J. Crickmore, etal (Phys. Rev. Res., 2, 013256) proposed a new protocol for two-out-of-four state elimination extending QSE to a multiqubit setting. Specifically, the authors introduced a non-trivial set off our states that cannot be resolved by projective measurements on each qubit, instead requiring entangled measurement operators. These entangled measurements take the form of POVMs. States are encoded into pathmodes while the POVM is implemented interferometrically. We employ a beam displacer type interferometry for passive path mode stability. Specific detection events correspond to a POVM element which, along with a certain prepared state, results in two-out-of-four states being eliminated. Beyond being a proof of principle demonstration, useful quantum communication andcryptography schemes will be investigated.

Experimental realisation of 2 out of 4 quantum state elimination

Global quantum communications enable networked quantum information processing. Satellite QKD (SatQKD) overcome current optical fibre range limitations, but limited transmission times between satellites and ground stations constrains the amount of secret key due to finite-block size effects. We analyse these effects and their implications for system design and operation, for a trusted-node downlink employing an optimised BB84 with weak coherent pulse decoy states.

Finite Key Effects in Satellite-based Quantum Key Distribution

Introduction to the Angstrom Engineering Quantum Series Platform

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