Quantum enhancement to information acquisition speed

The speed of the transmission of a physical signal from a sender to a receiver is limited by the speed of light, regardless of the physical system being classical or quantum. In this sense, quantum mechanics can not provide any enhancement of the speed of information transmission. If instead we consider that the information needing to be transmitted is not localized at the sender's location, but dispersed throughout space, spatial coherence might provide some enhancement. In this work, we demonstrate a quantum mechanical advantage in the speed of acquirement and transmission of information globally encoded in space. We present a task for which we prove a quadratic enhancement to the information acquisition speed using quantum information carriers with respect to their classical counterpart. Our findings can naturally be applied in situations where the information source has limited power, i.e. bounded number of signals that can be sent per unit time.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates a quantum advantage in acquiring and transmitting information encoded globally, showing a quadratic enhancement in information acquisition speed using quantum information carriers compared to their classical counterparts.