title: Experimental demonstration of quantum source coding.
abstract: We report an experimental demonstration of Schumacher's quantum noiseless coding theorem. Our experiment employs a sequence of single photons, each of which represents three qubits in terms of eight spatial and polarization modes. We initially prepare each photon in one of a set of eight nonorthogonal code word states corresponding to the value of a block of three binary letters. We use quantum coding to compress this quantum data into a two-qubit quantum channel and then uncompress the two-qubit channel to restore the original data with a fidelity approaching the theoretical limit.
authors.affiliation: Communications Research Laboratory, Koganei, 4-2-1 Nukuikita, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8795, Japan.
authors.forename: Yasuyoshi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Mitsumori
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Vaccaro
authors.forename: Stephen M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Barnett
authors.forename: Erika
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Andersson
authors.forename: Atsushi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hasegawa
authors.forename: Masahiro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Takeoka
authors.forename: Masahide
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sasaki