Quantum Throughput: Quantifying quantum communication with homodyne measurements

Abstract

Quantum communication relies on optical implementations of channels, memories and repeaters. In the absence of perfect devices, a minimum requirement on real-world devices is that they preserve quantum correlations, meaning that they have some thoughput of a quantum mechanical nature. Previous work has verified throughput in optical devices while using minimal resources. We extend this approach to the quantitative regime. Our method is illustrated in a setting where the input consists of two coherent states while the output is measured by two homodyne measurement settings.