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arXiv:0705.4282 · Physical Review Letters

Characterizing the Structure of Preserved Information in Quantum Processes

Robin Blume-Kohout, Hui Khoon Ng, David Poulin, Lorenza Viola

Published Jan 22, 2008• 97 citations
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Abstract

We introduce a general operational characterization of information-preserving structures-encompassing noiseless subsystems, decoherence-free subspaces, pointer bases, and error-correcting codes-by demonstrating that they are isometric to fixed points of unital quantum processes. Using this, we show that every information-preserving structure is a matrix algebra. We further establish a structure theorem for the fixed states and observables of an arbitrary process, which unifies the Schrödinger and Heisenberg pictures, places restrictions on physically allowed kinds of information, and provides an efficient algorithm for finding all noiseless and unitarily noiseless subsystems of the process.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.100.030501

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We introduce a general operational characterization of information-preserving structures-encompassing noiseless subsystems, decoherence-free subspaces, pointer bases, and error-correcting codes-by demonstrating that they are isometric to fixed points of unital quantum processes. Using this, we show that every information-preserving structure is a matrix algebra. We further establish a structure theorem for the fixed states and observables of an arbitrary process, which unifies the Schrödinger and Heisenberg pictures, places restrictions on physically allowed kinds of information, and provides an efficient algorithm for finding all noiseless and unitarily noiseless subsystems of the process.
Quantum systems carry information. Quantum theory supports at least two distinct kinds of information (classical and quantum), and a variety of different ways to encode and preserve information in physical systems. A system's ability to carry information is constrained and defined by the noise in its dynamics. This paper introduces an operational framework, using information-preserving structures, to classify all the kinds of information that can be perfectly (i.e., with zero error) preserved by quantum dynamics. We prove that every perfectly preserved code has the same structure as a matrix algebra, and that preserved information can always be corrected. We also classify distinct operational criteria for preservation (e.g., ``noiseless,'' ``unitarily correctible,'' etc.) and introduce two natural criteria for measurement-stabilized and unconditionally preserved codes. Finally, for several of these operational criteria, we present efficient (polynomial in the state-space dimension) algorithms to find all of a channel's information-preserving structures.
We develop a structure theory for decoherence-free subspaces and noiseless subsystems that applies to arbitrary (not necessarily unital) quantum operations. The theory can be alternatively phrased in terms of the superoperator perspective, or the algebraic noise commutant formalism. As an application, we propose a method for finding all such subspaces and subsystems for arbitrary quantum operations. We suggest that this work brings the fundamental passive technique for error correction in quantum computing an important step closer to practical realization.
Operator quantum error correction is a technique for robustly storing quantum information in the presence of noise. It generalizes the standard theory of quantum error correction, and provides a unified framework for topics such as quantum error correction, decoherence-free subspaces, and noiseless subsystems. This paper develops (a) easily applied algebraic and information-theoretic conditions that characterize when operator quantum error correction is feasible; (b) a representation theorem for a class of noise processes that can be corrected using operator quantum error correction; and (c) generalizations of the coherent information and quantum data processing inequality to the setting of operator quantum error correction.
We show that every correctable subsystem for an arbitrary noise operation can be recovered by a unitary operation, where the notion of recovery is more relaxed than the notion of correction insofar as it does not protect the subsystem from subsequent iterations of the noise. We also demonstrate that in the case of unital noise operations one can identify a subset of all correctable subsystems---those that can be corrected by a single unitary operation---as the noiseless subsystems for the composition of the noise operation with its dual. Using the recently developed structure theory for noiseless subsystems, the identification of such unitarily correctable subsystems is reduced to an algebraic exercise.
The dynamical-algebraic structure underlying all the schemes for quantum information stabilization is argued to be fully contained in the reducibility of the operator algebra describing the interaction with the environment of the coding quantum system. This property amounts to the existence of a nontrivial group of symmetries for the global dynamics. We provide a unified framework that allows us to build systematically additional classes of error correcting codes and noiseless subsystems. It is shown that by using symmetrization strategies one can artificially produce noiseless subsystems supporting universal quantum computation.
There are two complementary approaches to realizing quantum information so that it is protected from a given set of error operators. Both involve encoding information by means of subsystems. One is initialization-based error protection, which involves a quantum operation that is applied before error events occur. The other is operator quantum error correction, which uses a recovery operation applied after the errors have occurred. Together, the two approaches make it clear how quantum information can be stored at all stages of a process involving alternating error and quantum operations. In particular, there is always a subsystem that faithfully represents the desired quantum information. We give a definition of faithful realization of quantum information and show that it always involves subsystems. This supports the ``subsystems principle'' for realizing quantum information. In the presence of errors, one can make use of noiseless, (initialization) protectable, or error-correcting subsystems. We give an explicit algorithm for finding optimal noiseless subsystems. Finding optimal protectable or error-correcting subsystems is in general difficult. Verifying that a subsystem is error correcting is known to involve only linear algebra. We discuss the verification problem for protectable subsystems and reduce it to a simpler version of the problem of finding error-detecting codes.