QT209 – Introduction to Quantum Communication

Assignment (Total Marks 100)

Due date: 12th November 2024, Tuesday by 6:00 AM
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Instructions:
[1] This is a take-home assignment. Please write out the solutions, scan and submit
by email to the TA at: [email protected]
[2] If there are any questions about the assignment, please post this in Teams for the
benefit of everyone.
[3] Refrain from collaborative efforts to write answers to the questions. Identical
responses will result in severe penalty during grading.
[4] Late submission requires prior approval from the instructor.
[5] There are five questions in total with each carrying 20 marks.
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[1] (a) Derive the time evolution of the creation operation making use of the Heisenberg
picture ?
(b) Derive an expression for a 10-photon number state in terms of the vacuum state and
the annihilation operator?
(c) Calculate the mean and variance of the two quadrature operators for a 10-photon
number state?
(d) What is the uncertainty relationship between the two quadrature measurements for
the 10-photon number state? Does the 10-photon number state represent a minimum
uncertainty state between the two quadratures? Explain briefly.
(e) Plot the 10-photon number state in phase space, clearly indicating the photon
number mean and variance?

[2] (a) Consider a laser source emitting 10 nW of light at 1550 nm wavelength. What is the
photon flux from this source?
(b) What should be the required attenuation to make this source emit on an average 1-
photon per measurement time window of 1 nsec.
(c) What in the probability of having multiphoton events before and after attenuation of
the laser?
(d) Does the shot-noise limited signal to noise ratio of the source increase or decrease
after attenuation of the laser source in (b).
(e) Represent the attenuated laser source as in (b) in phase space clearly marking the
mean, variance and the two quadratures.

[3] Consider a 50:50 beam splitter with a phase shift of 90deg upon reflection with a two
photon number state injected through one of the input ports.
(a) Write the state at the input of the beam splitter.
(b) Write the state at the output of the beam splitter.
(c) Can the output state be considered as a path entangled state? Explain briefly.
(d) What are the different detection outcomes expected and what are the corresponding
probabilities?
 (e) Can you come up with a post-selection strategy to use the output state as a path
based random number generator (RNG)? What will be the yield of such a RNG
source?

[4] Consider a unbalanced Mach Zehnder Interferometer with a relative phase difference of
q between the two arms with two indistinguishable single photons injected in each input
port. Not that the phase element is denoted by a phase shift operator 𝑈 " = 𝑒 !.#$% such
"|𝑛〉 = 𝑒 !#.$ |𝑛〉
that: 𝑈

(a) Write the photon state at the output of the first beam splitter?
(b) Write the photon state at the input of the second beam splitter?
(c) Write the photon state at the output of the second beam splitter?
(d) Write down all the photon states that can be measured at the output along with their
measurement probability?
(e) For what value of q do we expect to see HOM interference. i.e. photon bunching
effect at the output of the second beam splitter?

[5] Consider two silicon based single photon avalanche photo detectors (SPAD) with the
following specifications:

Specifications Detector-A Detector-B

Efficiency
80% 75%
at 800 nm
Dark counts 100 counts/sec 200 counts/second
Dead time 30 micro-second 5 micro-second
Jitter 200 pico-second 200 pico-second

The two detectors are being used for free-space quantum key distribution experiments
from Alice to Bob with qubits generated at the rate of 10 MHz and mean photon number
per pulse of 0.1. Consider total free-space channel loss of 10 dB across a propagation
length of 100 km.

(a) What is the expected arrival rate of photons from Alice to Bob?
(b) Which of the two SPAD's detection rate be limited by the dead time of the detector?
Explain briefly.
(c) For what minimum transmission length would the detection events in both detectors
be limited by photon arrival rate (rather than dead time)?
(d) For a short QKD link of only 5 km distance, is it better to use detector-A or detector-B
at Bob's end? Explain briefly.
(e) Why do single photon detectors exhibit non-zero dead-time ? What could be a
possible drawback of having a finite jitter in the detector response? Explain briefly.

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