The noise threshold below which the qubit depolarizing channel retains positive quantum capacity has been studied since 1996. The classic constructions come with exact finite formulae, but in every reported threshold to date -- most recently the record of Agarwal et al. -- the final step, the sign of the coherent information at the reported point, is a floating-point evaluation. We give the first exact-arithmetic, independently machine-checkable positivity proofs in this regime: an explicit 45-copy rank-two input state $A$, published as a 1,472-byte witness, with certified $I_c>0$ at the exact rational $p = 16239/250000 = 0.064956$ (per-Pauli convention; total error rate $3p = 0.194868$) -- beyond both the best value printed in the Agarwal et al. paper ($0.064657$) and the strongest state in the same authors'public repository ($\approx 0.064911$), both numerical. Because the depolarizing family is a semigroup under composition, fixed-input coherent information is nonincreasing in $p$ on $[0,1/4]$, so a single certified point extends to the entire interval below it. The same machinery confines the positivity boundaries of $A$ and of the strongest public state of Agarwal et al. to disjoint rational intervals separated by more than $1/25000$ -- to our knowledge the first proven ordering of the positivity boundaries of two explicit competing code states. Every computational claim in the paper reduces to a finite list of big-integer comparisons, checkable by a dependency-free few-hundred-line verifier whose soundness rests on three self-contained half-page lemmas. Payloads, certificates, and verifier accompany the paper as a supplementary artifact.
The quantum capacity of the bosonic thermal attenuator, which is given by the regularization of its coherent information, is unknown. The seminal work of Holevo and Werner established in 1999 the standard one-use lower bound obtained from input thermal states. We first prove that this long-standing lower bound is the exact supremum over all single-mode Gaussian states and then show that, crucially, a non-Gaussian state can do better. As a consequence, we prove positivity of the quantum capacity in a parameter region where the channel is not antidegradable, yet its coherent information optimized over single-mode Gaussian states vanishes. For example, with one thermal photon in the environment and at transmissivity $\eta=0.8$, the coherent information is non-positive for every single-mode Gaussian input. We give an explicit rank-two non-Gaussian state, supported on only six Fock levels, whose coherent information is certified to be at least $4.7\times10^{-4}$ qubits per channel use. This short witness is far from numerically optimal: a numerical optimization over fixed non-Gaussian families reaches at least $8.4\times 10^{-3}$ qubits per channel use at the same point. More generally, at $\nu=1$, using non-Gaussian inputs we certify positivity of the coherent information, and therefore of the quantum capacity, down to $\eta=0.7841$; by contrast, the channel is antidegradable, and hence has zero quantum capacity, for $\eta\leq0.75$. Overall, our work identifies new high-noise regimes in which bosonic quantum communication is possible.
Francesco Anna Mele, Giuseppe Catalano, Marco Fanizza et al.· 0 citations
We develop a family of semi-device-independent (SDI) entanglement-assisted prepare-measure (PM) communication games involving two parties, within the $n\rightarrow l$ random-access code (RAC) framework where the sender Alice holds a n-bit string and communicates $l<n$ bits or qubits to the receiver Bob. In contrast to the standard quantum PMRAC, here the parties share a prior entanglement, and Alice applies quantum operations on her sub-system to encode her inputs and sends to Bob. We first consider the $4\rightarrow l$ entanglement-assisted PMRAC with $l=1$ and $2$ and derive the optimal quantum success probabilities using an elegant analytical technique. We demonstrate quantum supremacy over both classical RACs and conventional quantum PMRACs. Moreover, we exhibit that the optimal quantum advantage allows one to certify Alice's unitary operations. We then derive an upper bound on the quantum success probabilities for $5\rightarrow l$ entanglement-assisted PMRAC with $l=1,2$ and $3$. Further, we extend the demonstration of quantum advantage for $n\rightarrow n-2$ case where n is arbitrary.
Rajdeep Paul, Prabuddha Roy, A. K. Pan· 0 citations
Can a high-quality quantum gate be certified when uncharacterized state-preparation and measurement errors are dominant? Can this be achieved with low experimental overhead? Here, we introduce a sound black-box certification protocol for a single-qubit gate based on a small set of fixed, deterministic sequences. From the data, the protocol derives finite-sample bounds on the gate's rotation eigenvalue, a gauge-invariant property. Its phase reveals the accuracy of the rotation angle, while its modulus quantifies the loss of coherence under repeated gate applications. We implement the protocol on a $^{40}\mathrm{Ca}^{+}$ trapped-ion processor and certify the $\sqrt{\mathrm{X}}$-gate rotation eigenvalue using $22\,000$ circuit executions, and demonstrate the robustness of certification to state-preparation and measurement errors by deliberately degrading the readout. Finally, we prove that these spectral constraints imply, up to a physically meaningful unitary change of basis, a rigorous average gate-fidelity lower bound for every time-independent qubit model compatible with the data. In both readout settings, the spectral bounds yield the same fidelity certificate of $99.94(3)\%$ with $99\%$ confidence. Our results establish a new standard for quantum-gate certification by combining soundness and experimental efficiency without requiring trusted reference operations, randomized circuits, or model fitting.
N. Miklin, Jan Nöller, J. Martínez et al.· 0 citations
Quantum resource testing is a fundamental primitive of quantum information processing, profoundly connected to resource manipulation. Its goal is to discriminate $n$ copies of a given resourceful state $\rho$ from all free (i.e., resourceless) states; key instances for applications are entanglement testing and quantum magic testing. The asymptotic characterisation relies on the recently proven Generalised Quantum Stein's Lemma (GQSL), which establishes the rate of decay of the false negative error probability for a fixed false positive error probability. This result, however, is intrinsically asymptotic and thus can provide no finite-resource guarantees, which makes its practical implications unclear. Here, we establish the first rigorous finite-$n$ bounds on quantum resource testing and hence quantum resource manipulation, thus strengthening the GQSL and providing explicit estimates on the number of copies needed to achieve a prescribed performance. As notable consequences, we obtain (a) the convergence of the regularised R\'enyi relative entropies of a resource, which settles the important open problem from [Fang/Hayashi, arXiv:2508.12901, IEEE ToIT 72:6, 2026]; and (b) the first sample-complexity bound for asymmetric resource testing: for any fixed false positive error probability, a false negative error probability of at most $\delta$ can be achieved with $n=O\left(\frac{\log(1/\delta)}{D^\infty(\rho\|F)}\right)$ copies of $\rho$, in the limit where $\delta \to 0$.
Quantum sensors hold great promise for achieving better sensitivity in the measurement of physical quantities compared to their classical counterparts. However, the conditions under which quantum advantage in sensing can be achieved are rather restrictive, and most quantum enhancements in sensing are lost in the presence of noise, errors, or a poorly calibrated system. To overcome these limitations, we are motivated to import ideas from fault-tolerant quantum computing to quantum sensing. Specifically, we consider a qubit noise model where the probability of phase-flip errors is exponentially smaller (in qubit number) compared to the probability of bit-flip errors that occur with probability $p$. For this noise structure, we demonstrate that, given a total sensing time $T$, Heisenberg scaling can be attained for times up to $T\propto 1/p^{(N+1)/2}$ for a $N$-qubit repetition code, in contrast with $T\propto 1/p$ without using a fault-tolerant sensing protocol.
Lorcán O. Conlon, Yu-Xin Wang, E. Abbasgholinejad et al.· 0 citations
The output state of a 2D geometrically local shallow random quantum circuit does not have long range correlations due to its lightcone structure. But this changes if one measures a subset of the qubits: long-range entanglement can be induced by the measurement process, leading to conditional correlations between distant qubits. In this paper we investigate the structure of conditional dependence in these circuits and its consequences for quantum advantage. For a tripartition $ABC$ of the qubits, we consider the ensemble of post-measurement states on $A$ that is conditioned on a specific measurement outcome on $B$ and ranges over all possible measurement outcomes on $C$. For circuit depths exceeding a constant critical value $d^*$, we conjecture that this ensemble is well approximated by a certain generalization of the Haar ensemble, called the Scrooge ensemble~[Jozsa \textit{et al.}, \href{https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.49.668}{Phys. Rev. A \textbf{49}, 668 (1994)}]; we also provide supporting numerical and analytical evidence. Our conjecture describes a precise sense in which the state retains its lightcone structure on the remaining unmeasured qubits, but also develops some globally random features arising from the measurement. A consequence is that $n$-qubit shallow random quantum circuits in two dimensions are classically efficiently simulable in the presence of a tiny depolarizing noise rate $\Omega(\log(n)/n)$.
Yinchen Liu, Max McGinley, T. Schuster et al.· 1 citation