Quantum Conditional Mutual Information Research Articles

Matrix product states and the decay of quantum conditional mutual information

A uniform matrix product state defined on a tripartite system of spins, denoted by ABC, is shown to be an approximate quantum Markov chain when the size of subsystem B, denoted |B|, is large enough. The quantum conditional mutual information (QCMI) is investigated and proved to be bounded by a function proportional to exp(−q(|B| − K) + 2K ln |B|), with q and K computable constants. The properties of the bounding function are derived by a new approach, with a corresponding improved value given for its asymptotic decay rate q. We show the improved value of q to be optimal. Numerical investigations of the decay of QCMI are reported for a collection of matrix product states generated by selecting the defining isometry with respect to Haar measure.

Quantum conditional mutual information of W state in non-inertial frames

Quantum conditional mutual information (QCMI) is a versatile information theoretic measure. It is used to find the amount of correlations between two qubits from the perspective of a third qubit. In this work, we characterise the QCMI of tripartite W-states when some of the qubits are in accelerated motion. Here for our investigations we consider a massless fermionic field in the single-mode approximation. We consider all possible situations with respect to the acceleration of the qubits. From our results, we observe that QCMI can either increase or decrease depending on the role of the qubit being accelerated. Finally we discuss the connection between QCMI and correlations by studying the biseparable and separable states.

On the relation between quantum Darwinism and approximate quantum Markovianity

There are strong evidences in the literature that quantum non-Markovianity would hinder the presence of Quantum Darwinism. In this Letter, we study the relation between quantum Darwinism and approximate quantum Markovianity for open quantum systems by exploiting the properties of quantum conditional mutual information. We show that for approximately Markovian quantum processes the conditional mutual information still has the scaling property for Quantum Darwinism. Then two general bounds on the backflow of information are obtained, with which we can show that the presence of Quantum Darwinism restricts the information backflow and the quantum non-Markovianity must be small.

Squashed entanglement in one-dimensional quantum matter

Squashed entanglement and its universal upper bound, the quantum conditional mutual information, are faithful measures of bipartite quantum correlations defined in terms of multipartitions. As such, they are sensitive to the fine-grain structure of quantum systems. Building on this observation, we introduce the concept of quantum conditional mutual information between the edges of quantum many-body systems. We show that this quantity characterizes unambiguously one-dimensional topological insulators and superconductors, being equal to Bell-state entanglement in the former and to half Bell-state entanglement in the latter, mirroring the different statistics of the edge modes in the two systems. The edge-to-edge quantum conditional mutual information is robust in the presence of disorder or local perturbations, converges exponentially with the system size to a quantized topological invariant, even in the presence of interactions, and vanishes in the trivial phase. We thus conjecture that it coincides with the edge-to-edge squashed entanglement in the entire ground-state phase diagram of symmetry-protected topological systems, and we provide some analytical evidence supporting the claim. By comparing them with the entanglement negativity, we collect further indications that the quantum conditional mutual information and the squashed entanglement provide a very accurate characterization of nonlocal correlation patterns in one-dimensional quantum matter.

Resilience of topological superconductivity under particle current

We investigate the robustness of topological superconductors under the perturbing influence of a finite charge current. To this aim, we introduce a modified Kitaev Hamiltonian parametrically dependent on the quasiparticle momentum induced by the current. Using different quantifiers of the topological phase, such as the Majorana polarization and the edge state quantum conditional mutual information, we prove the existence of a finite critical value of the quasiparticle momentum below which edge modes and topological superconductivity survive. We also discuss how a finite current breaks time reversal symmetry and changes the topological class in the Altland-Zirnbauer classification scheme compared to the case of isolated systems. Our findings provide a nontrivial example of the interplay between topology and the nonequilibrium physics of open quantum systems, a relation of crucial importance in the quest to a viable topological quantum electronics.

Topological squashed entanglement: Nonlocal order parameter for one-dimensional topological superconductors

Identifying entanglement-based order parameters characterizing topological systems, in particular topological superconductors and topological insulators, has remained a major challenge for the physics of quantum matter in the last two decades. Here we show that the end-to-end, long-distance, bipartite squashed entanglement between the edges of a many-body system, defined in terms of the edge-to-edge quantum conditional mutual information, is the natural nonlocal order parameter for topological superconductors in one dimension as well as in quasi one-dimensional geometries. For the Kitaev chain in the entire topological phase, the edge squashed entanglement is quantized to log(2)/2, half the maximal Bell-state entanglement, and vanishes in the trivial phase. Such topological squashed entanglement exhibits the correct scaling at the quantum phase transition, is stable in the presence of interactions, and is robust against disorder and local perturbations. Edge quantum conditional mutual information and edge squashed entanglement defined with respect to different multipartitions discriminate topological superconductors from symmetry breaking magnets, as shown by comparing the fermionic Kitaev chain and the spin-1/2 Ising model in transverse field. For systems featuring multiple topological phases with different numbers of edge modes, like the quasi 1D Kitaev ladder, topological squashed entanglement counts the number of Majorana excitations and distinguishes the different topological phases of the system. In fact, we show that the edge quantum conditional mutual information and the edge squashed entanglement remain valid detectors of topological superconductivity even for systems, like the Kitaev tie with long-range hopping, featuring geometrical frustration and a suppressed bulk-edge correspondence.

Decay of quantum conditional mutual information for purely generated finitely correlated states

The connection between quantum state recovery and quantum conditional mutual information (QCMI) is studied for the class of purely generated finitely correlated states (pgFCSs) of one-dimensional quantum spin chains. For a tripartition of the chain into two subsystems separated by a buffer region, it is shown that a pgFCS is an approximate quantum Markov chain (QMC) and, stronger, may be approximated by a quantum Markov chain in trace distance, with an error exponentially small in the buffer size. This implies that (1) a locally corrupted state can be approximately recovered by action of a quantum channel on the buffer system, and (2) QCMI is exponentially small in the size of the buffer region. Bounds on the exponential decay rate of QCMI and examples of quantum recovery channels are presented.

Uniform continuity bounds for characteristics of multipartite quantum systems

We consider universal methods for obtaining (uniform) continuity bounds for characteristics of multipartite quantum systems. We pay special attention to infinite-dimensional multipartite quantum systems under the energy constraints. By these methods, we obtain continuity bounds for several important characteristics of a multipartite quantum state: the quantum (conditional) mutual information, the squashed entanglement, the c-squashed entanglement, and the conditional entanglement of mutual information. The continuity bounds for the multipartite quantum mutual information are asymptotically tight for large dimension/energy. The obtained results are used to prove the asymptotic continuity of the n-partite squashed entanglement, the c-squashed entanglement, and the conditional entanglement of mutual information under the energy constraints.

On Lower Semicontinuity of the Quantum Conditional Mutual Information and Its Corollaries

It is well known that the quantum mutual information and its conditional version do not increase under local channels. I this paper we show that the recently established lower semicontinuity of the quantum conditional mutual information implies (in fact, is equivalent to) the lower semicontinuity of the loss of the quantum (conditional) mutual information under local channels considered as a function on the Cartesian product of the set of all states of a composite system and the sets of all local channels (equipped with the strong convergence). Some applications of this property are considered. New continuity conditions for the quantum mutual information and for the squashed entanglement in both bipartite and multipartite infinite-dimensional systems are obtained. It is proved, in particular, that the multipartite squashed entanglement of any countably-non-decomposable separable state with finite marginal entropies is equal to zero. Special continuity properties of the information gain of a quantum measurement with and without quantum side information are established that can be treated as robustness (stability) of these quantities w.r.t. perturbation of the measurement and the measured state.

On Composite Quantum Hypothesis Testing

We extend quantum Stein’s lemma in asymmetric quantum hypothesis testing to composite null and alternative hypotheses. As our main result, we show that the asymptotic error exponent for testing convex combinations of quantum states rho ^{otimes n} against convex combinations of quantum states sigma ^{otimes n} can be written as a regularized quantum relative entropy formula. We prove that in general such a regularization is needed but also discuss various settings where our formula as well as extensions thereof become single-letter. This includes an operational interpretation of the relative entropy of coherence in terms of hypothesis testing. For our proof, we start from the composite Stein’s lemma for classical probability distributions and lift the result to the non-commutative setting by using elementary properties of quantum entropy. Finally, our findings also imply an improved recoverability lower bound on the conditional quantum mutual information in terms of the regularized quantum relative entropy—featuring an explicit and universal recovery map.

Conditional Quantum One-Time Pad.

Suppose that Alice and Bob are located in distant laboratories, which are connected by an ideal quantum channel. Suppose further that they share many copies of a quantum state ρ_{ABE}, such that Alice possesses the A systems and Bob the BE systems. In our model, there is an identifiable part of Bob's laboratory that is insecure: a third party named Eve has infiltrated Bob's laboratory and gained control of the E systems. Alice, knowing this, would like use their shared state and the ideal quantum channel to communicate a message in such a way that Bob, who has access to the whole of his laboratory (BE systems), can decode it, while Eve, who has access only to a sector of Bob's laboratory (E systems) and the ideal quantum channel connecting Alice to Bob, cannot learn anything about Alice's transmitted message. We call this task the conditional one-time pad, and in this Letter, we prove that the optimal rate of secret communication for this task is equal to the conditional quantum mutual information I(A;B|E) of their shared state. We thus give the conditional quantum mutual information an operational meaning that is different from those given in prior works, via state redistribution, conditional erasure, or state deconstruction. We also generalize the model and method in several ways, one of which is a secret-sharing task, i.e., the case in which Alice's message should be secure from someone possessing only the AB or AE systems, but should be decodable by someone possessing all systems A, B, and E.

Quantum Approximate Markov Chains are Thermal

We prove that any one-dimensional (1D) quantum state with small quantum conditional mutual information in all certain tripartite splits of the system, which we call a quantum approximate Markov chain, can be well-approximated by a Gibbs state of a short-range quantum Hamiltonian. Conversely, we also derive an upper bound on the (quantum) conditional mutual information of Gibbs states of 1D short-range quantum Hamiltonians. We show that the conditional mutual information between two regions A and C conditioned on the middle region B decays exponentially with the square root of the length of B. These two results constitute a variant of the Hammersley-Clifford theorem (which characterizes Markov networks, i.e. probability distributions which have vanishing conditional mutual information, as Gibbs states of classical short-range Hamiltonians) for 1D quantum systems. The result can be seen as a strengthening - for 1D systems - of the mutual information area law for thermal states. It directly implies an efficient preparation of any 1D Gibbs state at finite temperature by a constant-depth quantum circuit.

Structure of quantum stochastic processes with finite Markov order

Non-Markovian quantum processes exhibit different memory effects when measured in different ways; an unambiguous characterization of memory length requires accounting for the sequence of instruments applied to probe the system dynamics. This instrument-specific notion of quantum Markov order displays stark differences to its classical counterpart. Here, we explore the structure of quantum stochastic processes with finite length memory in detail. We begin by examining a generalized collision model with memory, before framing this instance within the general theory. We detail the constraints that are placed on the underlying system-environment dynamics for a process to exhibit finite Markov order with respect to natural classes of probing instruments, including deterministic (unitary) operations and sequences of generalized quantum measurements with informationally-complete preparations. Lastly, we show how processes with vanishing quantum conditional mutual information form a special case of the theory. Throughout, we provide a number of representative, pedagogical examples to display the salient features of memory effects in quantum processes.

Deconstruction and conditional erasure of quantum correlations

We define the deconstruction cost of a tripartite quantum state on systems $ABE$ as the minimum rate of noise needed to apply to the $AE$ systems, such that there is negligible disturbance to the marginal state on the $BE$ systems, while the system $A$ of the resulting state is locally recoverable from the $E$ system alone. We refer to such actions as deconstruction operations and protocols implementing them as state deconstruction protocols. State deconstruction generalizes Landauer erasure of a single-party quantum state as well the erasure of correlations of a two-party quantum state. We find that the deconstruction cost of a tripartite quantum state on systems $ABE$ is equal to its conditional quantum mutual information (CQMI) $I(A;B|E)$, thus giving the CQMI an operational interpretation in terms of a state deconstruction protocol. We also define a related task called conditional erasure, in which the goal is to apply noise to systems $AE$ in order to decouple system $A$ from systems $BE$, while causing negligible disturbance to the marginal state of systems $BE$. We find that the optimal rate of noise for conditional erasure is also equal to the CQMI $I(A;B|E)$. State deconstruction and conditional erasure lead to operational interpretations of the quantum discord and squashed entanglement, which are quantum correlation measures based on the CQMI. We find that the quantum discord is equal to the cost of simulating einselection, the process by which a quantum system interacts with an environment, resulting in selective loss of information in the system. The squashed entanglement is equal to half the minimum rate of noise needed for deconstruction/conditional erasure if Alice has available the best possible system $E$ to help in the deconstruction/conditional erasure task.

State transfer with quantum side information

We first consider quantum communication protocols between a sender Alice and a receiver Bob, which transfer Alice's quantum information to Bob by means of non-local resources, such as classical communication, quantum communication, and entanglement. In these protocols, we assume that Alice and Bob may have quantum side information, not transferred. In this work, these protocols are called the state transfer with quantum side information. We determine the optimal costs for non-local resources in the protocols, and study what the effects of the use of quantum side information are. Our results can give new operational meanings to the quantum mutual information and the quantum conditional mutual information, which directly provide us with an operational interpretation of the chain rule for the quantum mutual information.

Entanglement-assisted private communication over quantum broadcast channels

We consider entanglement-assisted (EA) private communication over a quantum broadcast channel, in which there is a single sender and multiple receivers. We divide the receivers into two sets: the decoding set and the malicious set. The decoding set and the malicious set can either be disjoint or can have a finite intersection. For simplicity, we say that a single party Bob has access to the decoding set and another party Eve has access to the malicious set, and both Eve and Bob have access to the pre-shared entanglement with Alice. The goal of the task is for Alice to communicate classical information reliably to Bob and securely against Eve, and Bob can take advantage of pre-shared entanglement with Alice. In this framework, we establish a lower bound on the one-shot EA private capacity. When there exists a quantum channel mapping the state of the decoding set to the state of the malicious set, such a broadcast channel is said to be degraded. We establish an upper bound on the one-shot EA private capacity in terms of smoothed min- and max-entropies for such channels. In the limit of a large number of independent channel uses, we prove that the EA private capacity of a degraded quantum broadcast channel is given by a single-letter formula. Finally, we consider two specific examples of degraded broadcast channels and find their capacities. In the first example, we consider the scenario in which one part of Bob’s laboratory is compromised by Eve. We show that the capacity for this protocol is given by the conditional quantum mutual information of a quantum broadcast channel, and so we thus provide an operational interpretation to the dynamic counterpart of the conditional quantum mutual information. In the second example, Eve and Bob have access to mutually exclusive sets of outputs of a broadcast channel.

Conditional Decoupling of Quantum Information.

Insights from quantum information theory show that correlation measures based on quantum entropy are fundamental tools that reveal the entanglement structure of multipartite states. In that spirit, Groisman, Popescu, and Winter [Phys. Rev. A 72, 032317 (2005)PLRAAN1050-294710.1103/PhysRevA.72.032317] showed that the quantum mutual information I(A;B) quantifies the minimal rate of noise needed to erase the correlations in a bipartite state of quantum systems AB. Here, we investigate correlations in tripartite systems ABE. In particular, we are interested in the minimal rate of noise needed to apply to the systems AE in order to erase the correlations between A and B given the information in system E, in such a way that there is only negligible disturbance on the marginal BE. We present two such models of conditional decoupling, called deconstruction and conditional erasure cost of tripartite states ABE. Our main result is that both are equal to the conditional quantum mutual information I(A;B|E)-establishing it as an operational measure for tripartite quantum correlations.

Efficient optimization of the quantum relative entropy

Many quantum information measures can be written as an optimization of the quantum relative entropy between sets of states. For example, the relative entropy of entanglement of a state is the minimum relative entropy to the set of separable states. The various capacities of quantum channels can also be written in this way. We propose a unified framework to numerically compute these quantities using off-the-shelf semidefinite programming solvers, exploiting the approximation method proposed in Fawzi, Saunderson and Parrilo (2017 arXiv: 1705.00812). As a notable application, this method allows us to provide numerical counterexamples for a proposed lower bound on the quantum conditional mutual information in terms of the relative entropy of recovery.

Squashed Entanglement, $$\mathbf {k}$$ k -Extendibility, Quantum Markov Chains, and Recovery Maps

Squashed entanglement [Christandl and Winter, J. Math. Phys. 45(3):829-840 (2004)] is a monogamous entanglement measure, which implies that highly extendible states have small value of the squashed entanglement. Here, invoking a recent inequality for the quantum conditional mutual information [Fawzi and Renner, Commun. Math. Phys. 340(2):575-611 (2015)] greatly extended and simplified in various work since, we show the converse, that a small value of squashed entanglement implies that the state is close to a highly extendible state. As a corollary, we establish an alternative proof of the faithfulness of squashed entanglement [Brandao, Christandl and Yard, Commun. Math. Phys. 306:805-830 (2011)]. We briefly discuss the previous and subsequent history of the Fawzi-Renner bound and related conjectures, and close by advertising a potentially far-reaching generalization to universal and functorial recovery maps for the monotonicity of the relative entropy.

Tight uniform continuity bounds for the quantum conditional mutual information, for the Holevo quantity, and for capacities of quantum channels

We start with Fannes’ type and Winter’s type tight (uniform) continuity bounds for the quantum conditional mutual information and their specifications for states of special types. Then we analyse continuity of the Holevo quantity with respect to nonequivalent metrics on the set of discrete ensembles of quantum states. We show that the Holevo quantity is continuous on the set of all ensembles of m states with respect to all the metrics if either m or the dimension of underlying Hilbert space is finite and obtain Fannes’ type tight continuity bounds for the Holevo quantity in this case. In the general case, conditions for local continuity of the Holevo quantity for discrete and continuous ensembles are found. Winter’s type tight continuity bound for the Holevo quantity under constraint on the average energy of ensembles is obtained and applied to the system of quantum oscillators. The above results are used to obtain tight and close-to-tight continuity bounds for basic capacities of finite-dimensional channels (significantly refining the Leung-Smith continuity bounds).