Infinite information can be carried using a single quantum particle

2020 
In the beginning was the photon, and the photon was with information. Theoretically speaking, a photon can travel arbitrarily long before it enters into a detector, which then clicks. How much information can a photon carry? We study a bipartite asymmetric "two-way signaling" protocol as the extension of that proposed by Del Santo and Dakic. Suppose that Alice and Bob are distant from each other and each of them has an $n$-bit string. They are tasked to exchange the information of their local n-bit strings with each other, using only a single photon during the communication. It has been shown that the superposition of different spatial locations in a Mach-Zehnder (MZ) interferometer enables bipartite local encodings. We prove that, after the photon's travelling through a cascade of $n$-level MZ interferometers in our protocol, the one of Alice or Bob whose detector clicks can access the other's full information of $n$-bit string, while the other can gain one-bit of information. That is, the wave-particle duality makes two-way signaling possible, and a single photon can carry infinite information as $n$ goes infinite.
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