Resource In Quantum Information Theory Research Articles

Ontological indistinguishability as a central tenet of quantum theory.

Quantum indistinguishability directly relates to the philosophical debate on the notions of identity and individuality. They are crucial for our understanding of multipartite quantum systems. Furthermore, the correct interpretation of this feature of quantum theory has implications that transcend fundamental science and philosophy, given that quantum indistinguishability is a resource in quantum information theory. Most of the conceptual analysis of quantum indistinguishability is restricted to studying the permutational invariance of quantum states, the concomitant quantum statistics and their entanglement. Here, we analyse the role of indistinguishability and non-individuality in other areas of quantum theory. We start by analysing how a very peculiar use of indistinguishability underlies Feynman's rules for summing amplitudes in interference phenomena. Next, we study how quantum indistinguishability is underestimated in several topics of debate in the quantum physics literature, such as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument, Bell's inequalities and the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem. Finally, we argue that an ontology of truly indistinguishable entities can serve as a basis for a quantum ontology that can give interesting answers to the interpretational problems of quantum mechanics. We claim that, in addition to superposition, contextuality and entanglement, indistinguishability (understood in a robust ontological sense) is one of the central features of quantum physics. This article is part of the theme issue 'Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics'.

Indistinguishable entangled fermions: basics and future challenges.

The study of entanglement in systems composed of identical particles raises interesting challenges with far-reaching implications in both, our fundamental understanding of the physics of composite quantum systems, and our capability of exploiting quantum indistinguishability as a resource in quantum information theory. Impressive theoretical and experimental advances have been made in the last decades that bring us closer to a deeper comprehension and to a better control of entanglement. Yet, when it involves composites of indistinguishable quantum systems, the very meaning of entanglement, and hence its characterization, still finds controversy and lacks a widely accepted definition. The aim of the present paper is to introduce, within an accessible and self-contained exposition, the basic ideas behind one of the approaches advanced towards the construction of a coherent definition of entanglement in systems of indistinguishable particles, with focus on fermionic systems. We also inquire whether the corresponding tools developed for studying entanglement in identical-fermion systems can be exploited when analysing correlations in distinguishable-party systems, in which the complete information of the individual parts is not available. Further, we open the discussion on the broader problem of constructing a suitable framework that accommodates entanglement in the presence of generalized statistics. This article is part of the theme issue 'Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics'.

Detection and classification of three-qubit states using l_1 norm of coherence

Entanglement is a purely quantum mechanical phenomenon and thus it has no classical analog. On the other hand, coherence is a well-known phenomenon in classical optics and in quantum mechanics. Recent research shows that quantum coherence may act as a useful resource in quantum information theory. We will employ here quantum coherence to detect and classify the entanglement property of three-qubit states. Moreover, we have shown that if any three-qubit state violates another necessary condition for the detection of a general biseparable state then the given three-qubit state cannot be a biseparable state. Since there are only three categories of states for the three-qubit system so if we detect that the state under probe is neither a separable nor a biseparable state then we can definitely conclude that the given three-qubit state is a genuine entangled state. We have illustrated our results with a few examples.

Gravitational time dilation as a resource in quantum sensing

Atomic clock interferometers are a valuable tool to test the interface between quantum theory and gravity, in particular via the measurement of gravitational time dilation in the quantum regime. Here, we investigate whether gravitational time dilation may be also used as a resource in quantum information theory. In particular, we show that for a freely falling interferometer and for a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, the gravitational time dilation may enhance the precision in estimating the gravitational acceleration for long interferometric times. To this aim, the interferometric measurements should be performed on both the path and the clock degrees of freedom.

Transformation relation between coherence and entanglement for two-qubit states

Entanglement and coherence are two important resources in quantum information theory. A question naturally arises: Is there some connection between them? We prove that the entanglement of formation and the first-order coherence of two-qubit states satisfy an inequality relation. Two-qubit pure state reaches the upper bound of this inequality. A large number of randomly generated states are used to intuitively verify the complementarity between the entanglement of formation and the first-order coherence. We give the maximum accessible coherence of two-qubit states. Our research results will provide a reliable theoretical basis for conversion of the two quantum resources.

Compositional resource theories of coherence

Quantum coherence is one of the most important resources in quantum information theory. Indeed, preventing the loss of coherence is one of the most important technical challenges obstructing the development of large-scale quantum computers. Recently, there has been substantial progress in developing mathematical resource theories of coherence, paving the way towards its quantification and control. To date however, these resource theories have only been mathematically formalised within the realms of convex-geometry, information theory, and linear algebra. This approach is limited in scope, and makes it difficult to generalise beyond resource theories of coherence for single system quantum states. In this paper we take a complementary perspective, showing that resource theories of coherence can instead be defined purely compositionally, that is, working with the mathematics of process theories, string diagrams and category theory. This new perspective offers several advantages: i) it unifies various existing approaches to the study of coherence, for example, subsuming both speakable and unspeakable coherence; ii) it provides a general treatment of the compositional multi-system setting; iii) it generalises immediately to the case of quantum channels, measurements, instruments, and beyond rather than just states; iv) it can easily be generalised to the setting where there are multiple distinct sources of decoherence; and, iv) it directly extends to arbitrary process theories, for example, generalised probabilistic theories and Spekkens toy model---providing the ability to operationally characterise coherence rather than relying on specific mathematical features of quantum theory for its description. More importantly, by providing a new, complementary, perspective on the resource of coherence, this work opens the door to the development of novel tools which would not be accessible from the linear algebraic mind set.

Three-observer classical dimension witness violation with weak measurement

Dimension is an important resource in quantum information theory. Based on weak measurement technology, we propose the three-observer dimension witness protocol in a prepare-and-measure setup. By applying the dimension witness inequality based on the quantum random access code and the nonlinear determinant value, we demonstrate that double classical dimension witness violation is achievable if we choose appropriate weak measurement parameters. Analysis of the results will shed new light on the interplay between the multi-observer quantum dimension witness and the weak measurement technology, which can also be applied in the generation of semi-device-independent quantum random numbers and quantum key distribution protocols.

Performance of quantum cloning and deleting machines over coherence

Coherence, being at the heart of interference phenomena, is found to be an useful resource in quantum information theory. Here we want to understand quantum coherence under the combination of two fundamentally dual processes, viz., cloning and deleting. We found the role of quantum cloning and deletion machines with the consumption and generation of quantum coherence. We establish cloning as a cohering process and deletion as a decohering process. Fidelity of the process will be shown to have connection with coherence generation and consumption of the processes.

Quantum coherence of steered states.

Lying at the heart of quantum mechanics, coherence has recently been studied as a key resource in quantum information theory. Quantum steering, a fundamental notion originally considered by Schödinger, has also recently received much attention. When Alice and Bob share a correlated quantum system, Alice can perform a local measurement to ‘steer’ Bob’s reduced state. We introduce the maximal steered coherence as a measure describing the extent to which steering can remotely create coherence; more precisely, we find the maximal coherence of Bob’s steered state in the eigenbasis of his original reduced state, where maximization is performed over all positive-operator valued measurements for Alice. We prove that maximal steered coherence vanishes for quantum-classical states whilst reaching a maximum for pure entangled states with full Schmidt rank. Although invariant under local unitary operations, maximal steered coherence may be increased when Bob performs a channel. For a two-qubit state we find that Bob’s channel can increase maximal steered coherence if and only if it is neither unital nor semi-classical, which coincides with the condition for increasing discord. Our results show that the power of steering for coherence generation, though related to discord, is distinct from existing measures of quantum correlation.

Maximally Entangled Set of Multipartite Quantum States

Entanglement is a resource in quantum information theory when state manipulation is restricted to local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC). It is therefore of paramount importance to decide which LOCC transformations are possible and, particularly, which states are maximally useful under this restriction. While the bipartite maximally entangled state is well known (it is the only state that cannot be obtained from any other and, at the same time, it can be transformed to any other by LOCC), no such state exists in the multipartite case. In order to cope with this fact, we introduce here the notion of the maximally entangled set (MES) of n-partite states. This is the set of states which are maximally useful under LOCC manipulation; i.e., any state outside of this set can be obtained via LOCC from one of the states within the set and no state in the set can be obtained from any other state via LOCC. We determine the MES for states of three and four qubits and provide a simple characterization for them. In both cases, infinitely many states are required. However, while the MES is of measure zero for 3-qubit states, almost all 4-qubit states are in the MES. This is because, in contrast to the 3-qubit case, deterministic LOCC transformations are almost never possible among fully entangled four-partite states. We determine the measure-zero subset of the MES of LOCC convertible states. This is the only relevant class of states for entanglement manipulation.

CAN ENTANGLEMENT BE EXTRACTED FROM MANY BODY SYSTEMS?

Some thermodynamical properties of solids, such as heat capacity and magnetic susceptibility, have recently been shown to be linked to the amount of entanglement in a solid. Until now, however, it was not clear whether this entanglement can be used as a resource in quantum information theory. Here we show that this entanglement is physical, demonstrating the principles of its extraction from a typical spin chain by scattering two particles off the system. Moreover, we show how to simulate this process using present-day optical lattice technology.

Coherent communication of classical messages.

We define coherent communication in terms of a simple primitive, show it is equivalent to the ability to send a classical message with a unitary or isometric operation, and use it to relate other resources in quantum information theory. Using coherent communication, we are able to generalize superdense coding to prepare arbitrary quantum states instead of only classical messages. We also derive single-letter formulas for the classical and quantum capacities of a bipartite unitary gate assisted by an arbitrary fixed amount of entanglement per use.

Distillation and bound entanglement

Quantum entanglement has been known for over sixty years, however the full significance of it as a basic resource in quantum information theory is only being discovered. The fundamental problem is ...