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Sequential state discrimination of coherent states
Sequential state discrimination is a strategy for quantum state discrimination of a sender’s quantum
states when N receivers are separately located. In this report, we propose optical designs that can
perform sequential state discrimination of two coherent states. For this purpose, we consider not
only binary phase-shifting-key (BPSK) signals but also general coherent states, with arbitrary prior
probabilities. Since our optical designs do not include electric feedback, they can be implemented
without difficulty. Furthermore, we analyze our proposal for the case of photon loss. We also
demonstrate that sequential state discrimination of two coherent states performs better than the
probabilistic quantum cloning strategy. This proposal can facilitate multiparty QKD based on coherent
states.