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arXiv:0710.5827 · Communications in Mathematical Physics

A Reversible Theory of Entanglement and its Relation to the Second Law

Fernando G. S. L. Brandão, Martin Bodo Plenio

Published Feb 16, 2010• 93 citations
arXivHTMLPDF
DOI
10.1007/s00220-010-1003-1

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We consider the manipulation of multipartite entangled states in the limit of many copies under quantum operations that asymptotically cannot generate entanglement. In stark contrast to the manipulation of entanglement under local operations and classical communication, the entanglement shared by two or more parties can be reversibly interconverted in this setting. The unique entanglement measure is identified as the regularized relative entropy of entanglement, which is shown to be equal to a regularized and smoothed version of the logarithmic robustness of entanglement. Here we give a rigorous proof of this result, which is fundamentally based on a certain recent extension of quantum Stein's Lemma, giving the best measurement strategy for discriminating several copies of an entangled state from an arbitrary sequence of non-entangled states, with an optimal distinguishability rate equal to the regularized relative entropy of entanglement. We moreover analyse the connection of our approach to axiomatic formulations of the second law of thermodynamics. © Springer-Verlag 2010.
Abstract Many fruitful analogies have emerged between the theories of quantum entanglement and thermodynamics, motivating the pursuit of an axiomatic description of entanglement akin to the laws of thermodynamics. A long-standing open problem has been to establish a true second law of entanglement, and in particular a unique function that governs all transformations between entangled systems, mirroring the role of entropy in thermodynamics. Contrary to previous promising evidence, here we show that this is impossible and that no direct counterpart to the second law of thermodynamics can be established. This is accomplished by demonstrating the irreversibility of entanglement theory from first principles. Assuming only the most general microscopic physical constraints of entanglement manipulation, we show that entanglement theory is irreversible under all non-entangling transformations. We furthermore rule out reversibility without significant entanglement expenditure, showing that reversible entanglement transformations require the generation of macroscopically large amounts of entanglement according to certain measures. Our results not only reveal fundamental differences between quantum entanglement transformations and thermodynamic processes, but also showcase a unique property of entanglement that distinguishes it from other known quantum resources.
The first half of this thesis is dedicated to the study of generalizations of probability theory which include quantum theory and many of its alternatives. This research program seeks to understand quantum theory by exploring it ‘from the outside’, where it sits within a landscape of all operationally defined theories. We approach this problem with a new perspective: generalized decoherence. Quantum theory recovers classical theory via decoherence, where a ‘classical limit’ is achieved by a quantum system interacting with its environment, losing its quantum coherence. Typically it is the emergence of the classical world from the quantum that is studied. We reverse this paradigm and ask - how does the existence of a classical limit define the structure of quantum theory, or any other post-classical theory? We derive the existence of entangled states as a necessary feature of any theory that allows for the emergence of the classical world in this way. We then use our framework for generalized decoherence to explore the properties of theories that can ‘hyperdecohere’ to quantum theory. We find that any such theory must be very exotic compared to quantum theory, violating either the postulate of tomographic locality, reversibility, causality or purity. In the second half of this thesis we turn our attention to the second law of thermodynamics. We present a framework for deriving the second law under general constraints and explore two pertinent examples, constraining the fluctuations in work and constraining the size of the thermal bath and deriving the second law in these cases. Bounding fluctuations results in a unified free energy that contains the single-shot and Helmholtz free energies as limiting cases. Bounding the size of the thermal bath results in a finite-bath second law that is more general that previous attempts and draws connections between non-asymptotic thermodynamics and second-order information theory.