Quantum benchmark for storage and transmission of coherent states

K. Hammerer, M. M. Wolf, E. S. Polzik, J. I. Cirac

Published 2004-09-17, updated 2005-01-16Version 2

We consider the storage and transmission of a Gaussian distributed set of coherent states of continuous variable systems. We prove a limit on the average fidelity achievable when the states are transmitted or stored by a classical channel, i.e., a measure and repreparation scheme which sends or stores classical information only. The obtained bound is tight and serves as a benchmark which has to be surpassed by quantum channels in order to outperform any classical strategy. The success in experimental demonstrations of quantum memories as well as quantum teleportation has to be judged on this footing.