Quantum communication with photon-number entangled states and realistic photodetection

We address the effects of realistic photodetection, with nonunit quantum efficiency and background noise (dark counts), on the performances of quantum communication schemes based on photon-number entangled states (PNES). We consider channels based on Gaussian twin-beam states (TWB) and non-Gaussian two-mode coherent states (TMC) and evaluate the channel capacity by optimizing the bit discrimination threshold. We found that TWB-based channels are more robust against noise than TMC-based ones and that this result is almost independent on the statistics of dark counts. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V.