Hyperentanglement is a significant resource for high-capacity quantum communication. Here we present a robust spatial-polarization hyperentanglement distribution scheme for two-photon systems. The error on the polarization states of two-photon systems transmitted from two paths can be corrected resorting to the robust time-bin entanglement which suffers little from the channel noise. The spatial bit-flip error takes place with a very small probability and the spatial phase-flip error can be precluded by adjusting the path-length of spatial modes. Using this scheme, the two parties in quantum communication can share a maximally hyperentangled state of two-photon systems in a deterministic way, which will improve the efficiency of quantum communication largely.

A linear optical unambiguous discrimination of hyperentangled Bell states is proposed for two-photon systems entangled in both the polarization and momentum degrees of freedom (DOFs) assisted by time bin. This unambiguous discrimination scheme can completely identify 16 orthogonal hyperentangled Bell states using only linear optical elements, where the function of the auxiliary entangled Bell state is replaced by time bin. Moreover, the possibility of extending this scheme for distinguishing hyperentangled Bell states in n DOFs is discussed, and it shows that 2 n+k+1 hyperentangled Bell states in n (n ≥ 2) DOFs can be distinguished with k (k < n) auxiliary entangled states of additional DOFs by introducing a time delay, which decreases the auxiliary entanglement resource required for unambiguous discrimination of hyperentangled Bell state. Therefore, this scheme provides a new way for distinguishing hyperentangled states with current technology, which will extend the application of discrimination of hyperentangled states via linear optics to other quantum information protocols besides hyperdense coding schemes in the future. IntroductionPhoton system is one of the most interesting candidates for quantum communication with the character of manipulability, high-speed transmission, and high capacity. The entangled photon system is a crucial quantum resource in quantum communication, which has many important applications in quantum communication protocols, such as quantum key distribution, [1][2][3][4] quantum secret sharing, [5] quantum dense coding, [6,7] quantumThe ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.

We present an original self-error-rejecting photonic qubit transmission scheme for both the polarization and spatial states of photon systems transmitted over collective noise channels. In our scheme, we use simple linear-optical elements, including half-wave plates, 50:50 beam splitters, and polarization beam splitters, to convert spatial-polarization modes into different time bins. By using postselection in different time bins, the success probability of obtaining the uncorrupted states approaches 1/4 for single-photon transmission, which is not influenced by the coefficients of noisy channels. Our self-error-rejecting transmission scheme can be generalized to hyperentangled N-photon systems and is useful in practical high-capacity quantum communications with photon systems in two degrees of freedom.

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) is a powerful technique of transmitting confidential information directly and securely based on the pre-established secure quantum channel and block transmission. Here we propose an efficient QSDC protocol using the complete Bell-state measurement (CBSM) resorting to linear optical elements and temporal-polarization hyperentanglement. In this protocol, the polarized entangled photons are utilized as the information carrier, and all the detection events of CBSM can be identified with common single-photon detectors instead of photon number resolving detectors due to the introduction of temporal degree of freedom (DOF). Moreover, since all the two-photon detection events in CBSM are effective and can be preserved with the efficiency of 100% rather than 50% in the previous QSDC, the quantum efficiency of QSDC can be doubled by encoding more messages on entangled photon pairs.

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