The losses in a bosonic channel are the primary source of errors in current optic quantum communications. Astonishingly, by combining the noiseless attenuation and noiseless linear amplification, Mičuda et al. showed that the unavoidable losses in optic links can be compensated in a nondeterministically but heralded way (M. Micuda, I. Straka, M. Mikova, M. Dusek, N. J. Cerf, J. Fiurasek, and M. Jezek, arXiv:1206.2852). Here we analyze their noiseless loss suppression scheme in a more realistic scenario in which conventional on-off photon detectors as well as the heralded single photon are involved. We use the Wigner function method and investigate the performance of loss suppression in all Fock state space. The noiseless loss suppression for transmitting a weak coherent and single-mode squeezing state are investigated. All these results show that the noiseless attenuation and noiseless linear amplification, if combined, could help to eliminate the channel loss and could be beneficial in future quantum communication.

• Received 25 June 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.86.042305