Papers

Continuous-variable (CV) quantum systems offer a natural framework for continuous optimization through their infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. In this paper, we propose the Complex Continuous-Variable Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (CCV-QAOA), a variational framework operating in the complex domain that optimizes over complex decision variables. The method efficiently solves real and complex multivariate optimization problems. To demonstrate its versatility, we apply CCV-QAOA across a broad suite of optimization use cases, including convex quadratic minimization, scaling studies with circuit depth and cutoff dimension, constrained quadratic programs using penalty constructions, and non-convex benchmarks such as the Styblinski-Tang function and complex quartic landscapes.

Tantalum is a promising platform for superconducting quantum circuits, yet coherence times remain limited by dielectric losses from interfacial two-level systems (TLS), exacerbated by native oxide regrowth. Here, we implement molecular surface passivation using self-assembled organic monolayers on freshly etched tantalum and silicon in coplanar waveguide resonators. Surface characterization by contact angle, XPS, FTIR and TEM confirm the formation of ordered, nanometer-thick films that suppress oxide formation. Microwave measurements in the ~5-9 GHz range reveal internal quality factors up to 1.8x10^6 in the single-photon regime at 100 mK, representing a ~140% improvement over untreated devices with native oxide. Power and temperature dependent measurements attribute this enhancement to reduced TLS-induced losses. These results demonstrate that molecular passivation effectively engineers low-loss interfaces and provides a scalable route toward high-coherence superconducting quantum devices.

Surface oxides contribute to losses in superconducting transmon devices resulting in degraded performance. We explore the use of the damascene process to replace the sidewall native oxide of a device with a metal/substrate interface. We simulate sidewall oxidation by burying an oxide layer during fabrication. We observe a modest improvement between the two types of devices, which is suggestive of a reduction in the surface participation ratio.

Measurement-only circuits provide a minimal setting in which repeated local projections can either generate or suppress many-body entanglement, giving rise to measurement-induced phase transitions and dynamical regimes, that might have no unitary counterpart. Here we investigate entanglement and information transitions in one-dimensional measurement-only Clifford circuits with long-range two-qubit parity checks. By tuning both the measurement range and density per layer, we uncover a broad set of phases whose classification requires probes beyond entanglement entropy, such as mutual information, tripartite mutual information, purification from an ancilla, and Bell-cluster statistics. We map phase diagrams using large-scale Clifford simulations for two protocols: a random-basis design in which each measurement is randomly chosen from $\lbrace XX,YY,ZZ \rbrace$, and a single-basis design in which the basis is fixed within each layer but varies between layers, hence introducing more structure to the circuit. We map the trajectory-averaged entanglement entropy to a two-dimensional statistical mechanics model by extending a replica-based method to random-basis measurement-only circuits, and show that a continuous-time limit yields an effective long-range XX hamiltonian in the steady state. This connection links the observed volume-law to sub-volume-law entanglement transition to the boundary between a continuous symmetry broken phase and a critical XY phase. Strikingly, in structured (single-basis) circuits we find a phase in which volume-law and long-range entanglement coexists with rapid, size-independent purification of an ancilla qubit, and the absence of scrambling, highlighting measurement-only circuits as a promising route to efficiently preparing highly entangled and technologically useful quantum states.

We explore the performance of the time-convolutionless (TCL) projection operator technique using the Fano-Anderson model as a test case. Comparing the exact TCL master equation with an expansion in powers of the strength of the system-environment coupling, we analyze the transient dynamics as well as the steady-state behavior. For a Lorentzian spectral density we demonstrate that the dimensionless expansion parameter corresponds to the ratio of the environmental correlation time to the relaxation time of the system, and we derive the convergence radius for the TCL expansion, which is seen to depend on the ratio of detuning and width of the spectral density. We further study the quantum non-Markovianity of the model based on the evolution of the Bures distance between quantum states and how it is represented by the second and fourth order of the expansion. Our results highlight both the strengths and the limitations of the TCL formalism in capturing key features of open quantum systems and, in particular, the challenges of accurately describing strongly coupled systems and non-Markovian dynamics.

We investigate the effect of a periodic electric field drive on the generalized Aubry-André model, also known as the Ganeshan-Pixley-Das Sarma (GPD) model, which is well known as a host of mobility edges. Our study of the Floquet spectrum of the driven GPD model uncovers the emergence of two distinct Floquet mobility edges, a delocalized–localized (DL) edge in the bounded regime, and a multifractal–localized (ML) edge in the unbounded regime. Using analytical results derived from Avila's global theory applied to the high frequency effective Hamiltonian, together with numerical diagnostics such as the fractal dimension and inverse participation ratio, we demonstrate that these mobility edges can be effectively controlled by the amplitude and frequency of the electric field drive. We also identify drive-induced localization at specific values of the driving parameters, corresponding to dynamical localization points in the absence of quasiperiodic potential. Furthermore, the dynamical study of the periodically driven GPD model demonstrates superdiffusive to almost ballistic transport in the bounded regime corresponding to the DL edges, whereas subdiffusive transport is observed in the unbounded regime associated with the ML edges. We also analyze deviations from the high-frequency effective description by explicitly examining the low-frequency driving regime, where significant and counterintuitive deviations in both spectral properties and transport behavior are observed. Our study highlights the interplay of a quasiperiodic potential and a periodically varying electric field drive as a powerful mechanism to engineer mobility edges and control transport in systems with rich spectral features.

We study random entanglement percolation in heterogeneous quantum networks, where the singlet-conversion probabilities (SCPs) of the edges are drawn from a probability distribution rather than being fixed. After briefly recalling random classical and random quantum entanglement percolation, we focus on polarization-dependent loss (PDL) as a physical source of random edge entanglement in photonic networks. In this setting, polarization imbalance induces a simple map from the PDL magnitude to the edge SCP. We illustrate this map for representative PDL models and discuss the resulting implications for entanglement percolation.

We cast the design of parameterized quantum circuits as a four-player potential game whose state is a circuit directed acyclic graph (DAG) and whose players encode trainability, non-stabilizerness, task performance, and hardware cost. Per-player restricted action sets factorize the move space into append, remove, retype, and rewire operations; a block-coordinate $\varepsilon$-Nash residual $\delta_\text{Nash}$ certifies that no single player can improve unilaterally. A single weight sweep on MaxCut $K_4$ traces a Pareto frontier from a Clifford endpoint $(M_2/n,\langle H\rangle)=(0,4.00)$ to a non-Clifford endpoint $(0.48,3.30)$. On three four-qubit hardware topologies (heavy-hex, $2\times 2$ grid, Rydberg all-to-all), Nash search achieves the highest mean potential; on the $2\times 2$ grid Nash reaches the theoretical ceiling $\Phi_\text{max}=4.10$ on two of five seeds while the simulated-annealing baseline does so on one; paired Wilcoxon tests over five seeds cannot reject the null on any single topology ($p\ge 0.22$). On LiH/STO-3G, seeding Nash from a 58-gate Givens-doubles ansatz produces a 48-operation, depth-25 circuit retaining $97.7\%$ of the correlation energy while simultaneously reducing gate count, increasing non-stabilizerness, and controlling trainability. The framework is complementary to energy-only searches such as ADAPT-VQE and k-UpCCGSD, which reach chemical accuracy with fewer operations but do not optimize the other three axes.

We study spectral properties of quantum many-body Hamiltonians through a subsystem-based framework. Given a Hamiltonian of the form $H = \sum_{X \subseteq \Lambda} \Phi(X)$ acting on a tensor product Hilbert space, we associate to each subset $S \subseteq \Lambda$ a subsystem Hamiltonian $H_S$ and its spectrum $\mathcal{S}(S) = \sigma(H_S)$. This produces a family of spectra indexed by subsystems, allowing spectral data to be organized according to interaction structure. We show that subsystem Hamiltonians admit local approximations: $H_S$ can be approximated by operators supported on finite neighborhoods with an error bounded by $\|H_S - H_{S,r}\| \le |S| e^{-\mu r} \|\Phi\|_\mu$. As a consequence, subsystem spectra are stable under truncation in the sense that $d_H(\mathcal{S}(S), \sigma(H_{S,r})) \le |S| e^{-\mu r} \|\Phi\|_\mu.$ We then prove that for disjoint subsets $S_1, S_2 \subseteq \Lambda$, the subsystem spectrum is approximately additive: $d_H\big(\mathcal{S}(S_1 \cup S_2), \mathcal{S}(S_1) + \mathcal{S}(S_2)\big) \le (|S_1| + |S_2|) e^{-\mu D} \|\Phi\|_\mu,$ where $D = d(S_1, S_2)$. In the finite-range case, this relation becomes exact. The results show that spectral properties reflect the locality of interactions not only at the level of operators, but also at the level of spectra. The framework provides a way to study many-body systems in which interaction geometry directly shapes spectral behavior.

Belief propagation has recently emerged as a powerful framework for evaluating tensor networks in higher dimensions, combining computational efficiency with provable analytical guarantees. In this work, we develop the first end-to-end theory of tensor network belief propagation for a class of projected entangled pair states satisfying strong injectivity. We show that when the injectivity parameter exceeds a constant threshold, BP fixed points can be found efficiently, and a cluster-corrected BP algorithm computes physical quantities to $1/\mathrm{poly}(N)$ error in $\mathrm{poly}(N)$ time for an $N$ qubit system. We further identify a striking phenomenon we term algorithmic locality: local perturbations of the tensor network affect the BP fixed point with an influence decaying rapidly with distance. Moreover, through the cluster expansion, this locality extends to observables, implying that local expectation values can be approximated from local data with controlled accuracy. We exhibit three regimes admitting strong injectivity: random Gaussian PEPS with large physical dimension, high-temperature Gibbs states of commuting two-body Hamiltonians, and fixed-depth quantum circuits subject to sufficiently strong depolarizing noise. Our bounds are worst-case sufficient conditions and do not identify sharp algorithmic transitions.

Efficient generation of quantum resources is a central objective of modern quantum technological platforms. Independently, quantum batteries have emerged as nanoscale devices that utilize collective quantum effects to store energy with a charging advantage over classical strategies. Here, we show a direct connection between these two pursuits: protocols for fast generation of resourceful quantum states can simultaneously charge a quantum battery with a collective advantage, and conversely, a quantum battery protocol with a charging advantage rapidly produces resource-rich states. Using this connection, we propose an integrated hardware protocol on superconducting circuits in which each experimental run can interchangeably accomplish either quantum battery charging, or quantum sensing through generation of metrologically useful states. Our results establish that quantum resources and stored energy are distinct yet simultaneously-producible quantities within the same dynamics. This opens the door to polymorphic quantum architectures that dynamically switch between sensing and energy-storage functions, thereby producing additional functionalities without extra hardware cost.

Peaked quantum circuits, whose output distribution is sharply concentrated on a single bitstring, have emerged as a promising candidate for verifiable quantum advantage, as the correctness of the quantum output can be checked by simply comparing against the known peak. Recent work by Gharibyan et al. arXiv:2510.25838 claimed heuristic quantum advantage using peaked circuits executed on Quantinuum's 56-qubit H2 processor. These peaked circuits concentrate their output on a single hidden bitstring by training a shallow simulable circuit variationally and inserting an obfuscated permutation to increase the depth to a level that makes classical simulation intractable, with estimated runtimes of years for the largest instances. We show that these circuits can be efficiently simulated classically. We describe a method that efficiently performs a full tensor network contraction, allowing near-exact sampling and extraction of the peaked bitstring. The method exploits the mirrored structure of the circuit and iteratively cancels both halves into a Matrix Product Operator (MPO), and avoids the obfuscated permutation by greedily reducing the MPO bond dimension through a process we call unswapping. The method can fully contract and extract the peak of the largest circuit in approximately one hour on a single GPU, around half the time it took to run on the quantum hardware.

Quantum networks are a keystone of the quantum internet. However, existing implementations remain largely confined to static point-to-point links due to the absence of a switching paradigm capable of dynamically routing fragile quantum entanglement without introducing decoherence. Here, we propose the Universal Quantum Switch, a foundational building block allowing on-demand, non-blocking, and encoding-agnostic routing of quantum information, as well as seamless modality conversion between disparate quantum platforms. We develop a prototype in thin-film lithium niobate and experimentally demonstrate robust switching with $\le 4\%$ decoherence via thermo-optic modulation and high-speed electro-optic switching of arbitrary entangled states at 1 MHz. Moreover, we show that our platform can support reconfiguration speeds up to 1 GHz. To our knowledge, this work represents the first demonstration of multi-node dynamic entanglement distribution at these speeds. Complementing these experimental results, we project the architecture's scalability, showing dimension-independent decoherence, and provide a scalable, interoperable building block for heterogeneous quantum network fabrics.

We investigate the limits of quantum error correction (QEC) in neutral-atom processors approaching high-fidelity gates and fast cycle times. We show that shorter QEC cycles amplify platform-specific errors, notably Rydberg excitation hopping, and hinder decay of residual Rydberg population, leading to non-Markovian correlated errors that degrade logical performance. To address this, we introduce loss biasing, where spurious Rydberg excitations are rapidly converted into atom loss via mid-circuit ionization, transforming errors into erasure-like noise and suppressing their propagation. Loss biasing restores the fault-tolerant logical error scaling for intra-cycle Pauli errors; furthermore, we argue that when supported with loss-aware decoding, it can achieve the optimal scaling of erasures while enabling shorter QEC cycles with reduced hardware overhead. We outline an implementation using fast autoionization in alkaline-earth(-like) atoms, establishing loss biasing as a practical route toward fault-tolerant quantum computing with sub-millisecond QEC cycles.

Solid-state spin defects hold great promise as building blocks for various quantum technologies. Embedding spin centers in $p$-$n$ diodes under reverse bias has proved to be a powerful strategy to narrow the optical linewidth and increase spin coherence, while also enabling control of the photoluminescence wavelength via Stark shift. Given the multitude of parameters influencing spin centers in diodes (e.g., doping densities and profiles, temperature, bias voltage, spin center position), a question that has not yet been answered is: which set of these design parameters maximizes spin center coherence? In this work, we address this question by developing a scaled gradient descent optimization algorithm that minimizes the optical linewidth of spin centers by combining the numerical solution of a diode's Poisson equation with calculated charge noise from the non-depleted regions. Our optimization is performed for both single- and multiple-parameter cases for divacancies in SiC $p$-$i$-$n$ diodes, including reverse-bias voltage, doping density and profile, and diode total length. Importantly, the optimization is subject to realistic physical constraints, such as small operating bias voltages, avoidance of the dielectric breakdown regime and physical thresholds for doping density. Additionally, due to the leakage current at reverse bias voltages, we develop a new formalism to investigate its influence on coherence. We show that the corresponding noise can be mitigated by implanting spin defects away from the diode's surfaces. Our work provides guidance on experimentally relevant diodes for hosting spin centers with the narrowest optical linewidths and longest coherence times.

Execution of quantum algorithms on large-scale quantum computers will require extremely low logical error rates, which necessitates the development of scalable decoding architectures. Local decoders are promising candidates for this task, as they avoid the communication and data processing bottlenecks inherent in global decoding strategies. Cellular automaton (CA) decoders represent a distinct class of local decoders, offering a path toward the low-latency, real-time decoding required for practical applications. In this work, we present SCALA (Signaling CA with Local Attraction), a novel non-hierarchical cellular automaton decoder for quantum repetition and toric codes. By evaluating SCALA alongside the hierarchical CA decoder proposed by Harrington, we provide a direct comparison between non-hierarchical and renormalization-group-style local decoding strategies. We characterize SCALA across three key metrics: Performance, scalability, and robustness. Our results show that SCALA achieves a code-capacity threshold of approximately $p_c\approx 7.5\%$ and provides strong sub-threshold scaling of about $p_L\propto p^{d/4}$ on the toric code. In terms of scalability, our non-hierarchical design ensures that the local computational resources remain independent of system size, yielding a modular local architecture suitable for hardware implementation. Finally, SCALA demonstrates strong robustness to qubit measurement errors and noise within the decoder itself, a critical advantage for real-time decoding on noisy hardware. Our results establish SCALA as a high-performance, scalable, and robust local decoder for scalable quantum error correction.

Deep reinforcement learning for quantum circuit optimization faces three bottlenecks: replay buffers that overlook temporal difference (TD) target reliability, curriculum-based architecture search requiring a full quantum-classical evaluation after every edit, and the discard of noiseless trajectories when retraining under hardware noise. We address these limitations by treating replay as a central algorithmic lever. We introduce ReaPER+, an annealed replay rule that transitions from TD-error prioritization to reliability-aware sampling as value estimates mature. ReaPER+ achieves up to 4x higher sample efficiency than fixed PER, ReaPER, and uniform replay, while matching prior on-policy solution quality with up to 32x fewer interactions At 12 qubits, fixed ReaPER reaches the lowest energy error in the fewest steps, while PER and uniform replay find more compact circuits at higher error. On tasks scaling to 20 qubits, ReaPER+ retains its advantage, demonstrating that reliability-aware annealing extends beyond small-system benchmarks. LunarLander-v3 confirms that the ReaPER+ is domain-agnostic, it improves success rates by up to 26.8% over PER and 21.8% over fixed ReaPER, with a 3% AUC gain over both. We further introduce OptCRLQAS, which amortizes quantum-classical evaluations across multiple architectural edits, reducing training wall-clock time by up to 67.5% on 12-qubit without degrading solution quality. Finally, lightweight replay-buffer transfer warm-starts noisy optimization from noiseless trajectories, without weight transfer or $\epsilon$-greedy pretraining, reducing steps to chemical accuracy by 85-90% and final energy error by up to 90% relative to from-scratch learning. Transfer gains increase with system size. Together, these results establish experience storage, sampling, and transfer as decisive levers for sample efficient, noise-aware quantum circuit optimization.

New sources of charge-parity (CP) violation beyond those described in the Standard Model (SM) are required to explain the observed matter–antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. The Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) provides a framework to introduce additional electroweak sources of CP-odd physics in a model-independent manner. However, these CP-violating signatures are mostly degenerate to CP-even SMEFT operators in polarisation-blind observables, distinguishable only in the SM-New Physics (NP) interference using the azimuthal decay angle. Using Quantum Tomography techniques, we present a new approach to constraining these NP effects. Reconstructing the spin density matrix (SDM) of a diboson system, we go beyond `interference resurrection' to exploit the full signature of the Beyond-SM physics, including the pure quadratic NP terms. We show that this approach provides superior simultaneous sensitivity to characteristic features of CP-even and CP-odd contributions, including effects not fully captured by traditional angular observables.

Bosonic quantum error correction enables hardware-efficient protection of quantum information by encoding logical qubits in harmonic oscillators. Bosonic grid states, such as Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) states, are particularly promising due to their potential to correct small displacements and boson loss. However, their generation remains challenging, typically relying on probabilistic protocols or auxiliary qubit systems. Here, we propose deterministic protocols for generating bosonic grid states using programmable nonlinear bosonic circuits composed solely of squeezing, displacement, and Kerr operations. We show that aiming to enforce GKP symmetries in the output of these circuits yields states with competitive performance with respect to current realizations, but whose quality saturates with increasing circuit depth due to imperfect symmetry restoration. Instead, we find that these bosonic circuits naturally give rise to a distinct class of states, that we label as phased-comb states, which are unitarily related to standard grid states but feature an intrinsic phase structure. We demonstrate that these states define a scalable bosonic quantum error-correcting code with near-optimal performance under boson loss comparable to that of approximate GKP states. We further analyze their logical operations and show how to implement a universal gate set for them. Our results establish programmable nonlinear bosonic circuits as a viable route towards the generation of scalable bosonic quantum error-correcting states beyond standard GKP encodings.

We quantize a classically stable system of a harmonic oscillator polynomially coupled to a ghost with negative kinetic energy. We prove that due to an integral of motion with a positive discrete spectrum: i) the Hamiltonian has a pure point spectrum unbounded in both directions, ii) the evolution is manifestly unitary, iii) the vacuum is well-defined, iv) expectation values for squares of canonical variables are bounded. Numerical solutions of the Schrödinger equation confirm these results. We argue that the discrete spectrum of the integral of motion enforces stability for extended interactions.

The Dicke model (DM) serves as a paradigm for understanding collective light-matter interactions. We introduce the chiral Dicke model, a generalization where an atomic ensemble couples to a two-mode cavity via chiral interactions. Unlike the standard DM, the chiral DM is endowed with an inherent continuous $U(1)$ symmetry associated with angular momentum conservation. The ground-state phase diagram and the associated quantum phase transitions are charted out, revealing a $U(1)$-broken superradiant phase that spans a broad parameter space. We demonstrate that the spectrum of quantum fluctuations is highly tunable in both the symmetric and broken phases. Strikingly, our calculations reveal that the system exhibits `multiversality', where distinct universality classes govern the transition between the same two phases. In particular, along a special line in parameter space, the dynamical critical exponent for the normal-superradiant phase transition changes from $z\nu=1$ to $z\nu=1/2$. Our work establishes the chiral Dicke model as a powerful platform to realize novel quantum phases and multiversal critical phenomena in light-matter coupled systems.

I show that the clock ambiguity cannot be solved by a purely relational condition like the noninteraction condition, and it is even stronger, extending to evolution laws. The ambiguity is solved by specifying the physical meaning of observables. Page and Wootters (1983) showed how time and dynamics can emerge from entanglement within a stationary quantum system containing a clock. The clock ambiguity problem is that, from a purely relational stance and without fixing a clock-world split, the emergence is ambiguous, resulting in any possible history (Albrecht 1995). I show that the ambiguity is stronger than previously recognized. Under the relational stance, it extends from histories to the evolution laws themselves. The spectrum of any ideal clock uniformizes the spectra of the world's evolution operators, leaving only the dimension of the Hilbert spaces as invariant information. Fixing the clock-world split can solve the ambiguity, but this would block spacetime symmetries. One might want to remove the ambiguity up to a unitary equivalence by imposing noninteraction, as in Marletto and Vedral (2017). But once the clock spectrum uniformizes the world spectrum, unitary equivalence becomes too coarse to distinguish any two possible world dynamics, which is the result proved here. Thus a purely relational condition such as noninteraction is insufficient. Nor can all different decompositions be regarded as equally valid perspectives, since then records would not be correlated with the events they record, and empirical knowledge would be impossible. The resolution is therefore not to embrace the ambiguity, but to recognize what a bare reading of the Page-Wootters structure omits: the physical meaning of the operators.

Exact quantum codes detecting a prescribed set of Pauli errors are approached through algebraic constructions–stabilizer, codeword-stabilized, permutation-invariant, topological, and related families. Geometrically, exact Pauli detection is governed by joint higher-rank numerical ranges of these Pauli operators, whose structure for rank $\geq 2$ is largely uncharted. From this viewpoint, we show that such codes often form connected continuous families rather than collections of disjoint solution regions. These families are characterized by a single scalar derived from the Knill-Laflamme conditions: denoted $\lambda^*$, it is the Euclidean norm of the signature vector of Pauli expectation values on the maximally mixed code state, and provides a one-parameter summary of the code's joint Pauli variance profile. Within these continuous landscapes, stabilizer codes occupy only discrete, measure-zero subsets of the attainable $\lambda^*$-spectrum, exposing a largely unexplored continuum of genuinely nonadditive exact codes. We establish this picture by analyzing the geometry of higher-rank operator compressions, and extend it to symmetry-restricted settings where cyclic and permutation symmetries are imposed on both the error model and the code projector. Small-system cases reveal interval, singleton, and empty regimes through eigenvalue interlacing and symmetry-sector decompositions; larger systems are treated numerically via Stiefel-manifold optimization and symmetry-adapted parameterizations. In every unrestricted and symmetry-compatible case analyzed, the attainable $\lambda^*$-spectrum forms a single closed interval whenever nonempty–although a general proof remains open. These results place stabilizer, symmetric, and nonadditive code families within a unified higher-rank variance framework, suggesting a continuous geometric perspective on the landscape of exact quantum codes.

This thesis is concerned with rigorous security analyses of practical Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols, using a variety of modern proof techniques. The main results are as follows. First, we establish a security proof for variable-length QKD protocols against IID collective attacks, and extend this result to coherent attacks using the postselection technique. In doing so, we resolve a long-standing flaw in the application of the postselection technique to QKD, thereby placing it on a rigorous mathematical footing. Second, we develop a method to bound phase error rates in entropic uncertainty relation-based and phase error rate-based proofs, using only the observed statistics of the protocol, even when detectors are imperfect and only approximately characterized. This removes a key assumption of identical detector behaviour and enables these techniques to be applied in realistic settings. Third, we present a very general security analysis based on the marginal-constrained entropy accumulation theorem. The resulting framework can be readily adapted to practical imperfections and side channels, and is suitable for certification efforts. Finally, we show that the security of QKD protocols under realistic authentication assumptions can be reduced to the standard idealized setting, where authentication is assumed to behave honestly, with only minor protocol modifications. A distinctive feature of this thesis is its unified presentation of several major QKD security proof frameworks using consistent protocol descriptions and notation. Consequently, this thesis is intended not only as a collection of new technical results, but also as a useful reference for understanding rigorous security analysis in quantum key distribution.

The partial oracles framework is a quantum search algorithm that has the potential to exceed the quadratic speedup of Grover's algorithm, up to a theoretical maximum of an exponential speedup. Until now, however, the framework has lacked an explicit method for constructing the operator that represents the search iteration. In this paper, we provide the missing construction, for the special case of an oracle function definable using only in-place operations (that is, where the calculated result of the oracle function can be read just from the qubits in the search index). The restriction to in-place operations means that the current work does not yet exhibit quantum advantage: oracle functions constructed using only in-place operations are always classically reversible. To demonstrate quantum advantage, it will be necessary to extend this construction method to include out-of-place operations (part II). As part of the construction of the search iteration operator, we define a new type of transform, the reciprocal transform, which is applied to the oracle function. We show that the reciprocal transform obeys a chain rule, which makes it possible to break down complex transforms into simple steps. To illustrate the practical application of this search method, we apply the reciprocal transform to elementary operations from the SHA-256 hash algorithm: addition modulo $2^n$, the $Maj(a, b, c)$ function, the $Ch(a, b, c)$ function, and the bit shift functions. We also introduce the QFrame python library, which is used to automate the construction of quantum circuits that represent reciprocal transforms.

We present a fast, memory-efficient, unitarity-preserving numerical method beyond the rotating-wave approximation for the closed Tavis-Cummings model in which a multilevel spin system interacts with a cavity mode. This model can describe the interaction of an ensemble of spins with a cavity mode in which the spin frequency and other parameters are time-dependent. The method exploits the fact that, while the Tavis-Cummings model is not tri-diagonal, it can be brought into tri-diagonal form by a change of basis that can be implemented purely by re-indexing (permuting basis elements), which is a fast operation. By truncating the Fock basis of the cavity mode, the computational complexity of the method is linear in the total dimension of the coupled system, both in time and memory. The method can be employed to simulate any closed quantum system whose Hamiltonian terms can be brought into tri-diagonal form.

High-quality photonic Bell state measurements (BSMs) enable scalable universal quantum computing and long distance quantum communication. However, when implemented with linear optics, BSMs are fundamentally probabilistic, introducing substantial hardware overheads and limiting noise tolerance in photonic quantum computing architectures. Nonlinear interactions at the single-photon level can overcome these limitations by enabling near-deterministic photon-photon gates. Here, we demonstrate a passive photon-sorting circuit based on the induced nonlinearity arising from photon scattering in a solid-state quantum emitter. The scattering is implemented in a directional waveguide-emitter coupling interface and embedded on-chip into a linear optical circuit, through which we demonstrate sorting of one- and two-photon components with a success probability of 62%. We find that the current system can enable BSMs with a 57% post-selected success probability without ancillary photons, exceeding the linear-optical limit of 50%, and can be readily improved to >65% with design optimisations.

In this work, we systematically investigate the quantum-information diagnostics of cosmological perturbations with a nontrivial sound speed, utilizing a normalized open two-mode squeezed-state framework. Rather than introducing new observables, our analysis focuses on how a modified sound speed dynamically reshapes the Schrödinger evolution of the squeezing parameters ($r_k$ and $\phi_k$). We demonstrate how these dynamical changes are inherited by the reduced density matrix of the observable sector. By employing a sound-speed-resonance parametrization, we derive and evaluate the purity, von Neumann entropy, Rényi entropies, and logarithmic negativity. To overcome the intrinsic multiscale stiffness of the post-inflationary equations, we introduce a bounded variable $x = \tanh r_k$ as a partial regularization, which enables reliable numerical simulations exclusively within the inflationary regime. Our numerical results reveal that a nontrivial sound speed significantly suppresses the purity of the reduced state, indicating enhanced effective mixedness. Simultaneously, it strongly amplifies and modulates both the entropic and entanglement diagnostics. More precisely, a nontrivial sound speed postpones the onset of classicality by modulating the decoherence process. Ultimately, we show that a nontrivial sound speed leaves distinct and identifiable quantum-information signatures within the entanglement structure of the early universe.

Quantum technologies in the terahertz (THz) require a coherent interface between addressable qubits and THz quantum channels – a capacity that so far, remains largely underdeveloped. Here, we propose and demonstrate the generation of steady-state entanglement between polar quantum emitters, mediated by THz photons. We exploit strong visible-light driving of the emitters to create Rabi-split dressed eigenstates whose energy separation can be optically tuned into the THz regime. The polar nature of the emitters activates THz transitions within these eigenstates, allowing them to couple to a THz photonic mode that induces collective dissipative dynamics. A coherent driving and control of these effective THz emitters is achieved by using a sideband optical drive with detuning close to the THz transition frequency. The resulting interplay of collective dissipation and driving activates a mechanism to generate steady-state entanglement with high values of the concurrence ($C>0.9$), attainable under experimentally feasible parameters. Crucially, both coherent manipulation and quantum state tomography are implemented entirely through optical means, avoiding direct THz control and detection. This establishes a hybrid visible-THz quantum interface in which a THz channel mediates qubit-qubit entanglement (a key operational requirement for THz quantum technologies) while remaining optically accessible.

Modular quantum computing architectures require error correction schemes that remain effective in the presence of noisy inter-processor operations. As such, minimizing the number of such operations on logical circuits partitioned across quantum processors is a primary objective of distributed quantum computing. In this work, we develop basic techniques for qubit allocation using an exemplar color code family and explore generalizations to other color codes. In particular, we show that a 10% reduction in processor-nonlocal gates is achievable in a setting where syndrome extraction occurs after every logical gate, as in today's devices, and that this scales to significantly greater advantages in the multi-qubit case. We also explore methods of achieving universal gate sets efficiently in this distributed logical setting and evaluate the trade-offs of multiple approaches such as magic state distillation, code switching, and a new method based on logical swaps. Finally, we discuss some considerations for an allocation algorithm for these architectures to perform scalably and connect it to existing work on quantum circuit partitions.