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arXiv:1309.1238

Parametrization of degenerate density matrices

Tae-Hun Lee

Published Sep 5, 2013• 0 citations
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Abstract

This paper presents a parametrization of a degenerate density matrix. The problem needs to be approached first with a diagonalized form (the spectral representation) to deal with degeneracy. Such a form is useful for this parametrization in that the conditions to be a density matrix from a Hermitian matrix are applied only to a diagonal eigenvalue matrix, not a unitary matrix. Those conditions can be satisfied by parametrizing eigenvalues with squared spherical coordinates in dimension of the matrix. Degeneracy in eigenvalues brings symmetries between a eigenvalue matrix and a unitary matrix, which are realized in a form of a commuting unitary matrix, called a commutant. The associated redundant parameters in a unitary matrix have to be eliminated. It is realized in this paper that degrees of degeneracies can be defined as the total number of possible pairs of the same eigenvalues and one degree of degeneracy corresponds to one phase and one two dimensional rotation in a unitary matrix or a commutant. In this way all the degeneracies are identified and assigned to one phase-one rotation block. Therefore, a unitary matrix or a commutant is a product of these blocks and a general diagonal phase matrix. In physics a unitary matrix is often parametrized by rotation and phase matrices, called an angular representation here. There are many possible different phase configurations. It is often not a trivial matter whether a given parametrized unitary matrix is general. A simple diagram will be introduced to illustrate how to transform one phase configuration to another.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1309.1238

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This paper presents a parametrization of a degenerate density matrix. The problem needs to be approached first with a diagonalized form (the spectral representation) to deal with degeneracy. Such a form is useful for this parametrization in that the conditions to be a density matrix from a Hermitian matrix are applied only to a diagonal eigenvalue matrix, not a unitary matrix. Those conditions can be satisfied by parametrizing eigenvalues with squared spherical coordinates in dimension of the matrix. Degeneracy in eigenvalues brings symmetries between a eigenvalue matrix and a unitary matrix, which are realized in a form of a commuting unitary matrix, called a commutant. The associated redundant parameters in a unitary matrix have to be eliminated. It is realized in this paper that degrees of degeneracies can be defined as the total number of possible pairs of the same eigenvalues and one degree of degeneracy corresponds to one phase and one two dimensional rotation in a unitary matrix or a commutant. In this way all the degeneracies are identified and assigned to one phase-one rotation block. Therefore, a unitary matrix or a commutant is a product of these blocks and a general diagonal phase matrix. In physics a unitary matrix is often parametrized by rotation and phase matrices, called an angular representation here. There are many possible different phase configurations. It is often not a trivial matter whether a given parametrized unitary matrix is general. A simple diagram will be introduced to illustrate how to transform one phase configuration to another.
Unitary transformations and density matrices are central objects in quantum physics and various tasks require to introduce them in a parameterized form. In this paper we present a parameterization of the unitary group of arbitrary dimension d which is constructed in a composite way. We show explicitly how any element of can be composed of matrix exponential functions of generalized anti-symmetric σ-matrices and one-dimensional projectors. The specific form makes it considerably easy to identify and discard redundant parameters in several cases. In this way, redundancy-free density matrices of arbitrary rank k can be formulated. Our construction can also be used to derive an orthonormal basis of any k -dimensional subspaces of with the minimal number of parameters. As an example it is shown that this feature leads to a significant reduction of parameters in the case of investigating distillability of quantum states via lower bounds of an entanglement measure (the m -concurrence).
The unitary matrix that brings a Hermitian H into block-diagonal form can be uniquely determined under very simple and transparent conditions. Int his work the block-diagonalization problem is investigated in the framework of the second quantization formalism. Starting with an operator Ḩ which in any n-particle Fock space has a well-defined matrix representation an attemt was made to answer the question whether the transformation matrices T which can be separately given in the various n-particle spaces can be considered matrix representations of the same operator. T̂. Interestingly, the very important result was reached that the block-diagonalization operator T̂ exists and is unique. As a particular example, attention was concentrated on the case of an operator Ĥ given by a one-particle operator. In this case the block-diagonalization operator can be constructed and given in explicit from. This approach is applied to the theory of Green’s functions where the block-diagonalization of the Hamiltonian has interesting consequences that are illustrated in some details.
We find the unitary operator for diagonalizing the Hamiltonian of a triatomic linear molecule. The unitary operator is expressed in a coordinate representation that brings convenience for deriving the density matrix \ensuremath{\rho}(x1{\mathrm{x}}_{1}x1​,x2{\mathrm{x}}_{2}x2​,x3{\mathrm{x}}_{3}x3​;${\mathrm{x}}_{1}^{\ensuremath{'}}$,${\mathrm{x}}_{2}^{\ensuremath{'}}$,${\mathrm{x}}_{3}^{\ensuremath{'}}$,\ensuremath{\beta}). The unitary transformation approach is simple because the derivation can be reduced to the calculation of two independent harmonic-oscillator density matrices and one free-particle density matrix. The average of the potential energy and the kinetic of the molecule is calculated by using the density matrix.
The density operator (density matrix) of a quantum mechenical system can be decomposed into operators which transform as irreducible representations of the symmetry group in coordinate and spin space. Each of these components has a physical meaning connected with the expectation values of certain operators. The reduced density matrices can be decomposed in a completely analogous way. The symmetry properties of the total wave function give rise to degeneracies of the eigenvalues of the reduced density matrices. These degeneracies can be removed by requiring that the natural spin orbitals (NSO, defined as the eigenfunctions of the first-order density matrix), as well as the natural spin geminals (NSG, the eigenfunctions of the second-order density matrix) and their spinless counterparts transform as irreducible representations of the symmetry group and are eigenfunctions of S/sup 2/ and S/sub z/. In many cases this requirement is compatible with the original definition of the NSO, the NSG, etc., e.g., when there is no spatial degeneracy of the total wave function and when the Z- component of the total spin vanishes. When these conditions are not fulfilled an alternative definition of the NSO and the NSG is proposed. (auth)
A possible method of classifying all density matrices for a N-state quantum system into different types, using the sameness of the characteristic polynomial of density matrices belonging to a given type, is discussed. The method employs the SU(N) generator expansion of density matrices. It is demonstrated that density matrices belonging to a given type, although different, share many common properties including the same eigenvalues, the same shape of the region in the parametric space in which lie the allowed parameter values, and the same global averages of the pertinent observables. Furthermore, we discuss the time evolution of a given type of density matrices and show that, in the appropriately defined time-dependent comoving matrix basis, a density matrix of a given type belongs, during entire unitary evolution, to the same type. In this way one is able to group and organize the multitude of different density matrices with certain analogous properties, into a smaller number of types, thus systematizing and cataloguing different mixed and pure states of a N-state system. The general discussion is illustrated throughout with the special case of a N=4-state quantum system. Two- and three-dimensional cross sections of the space of generalized Bloch vectors are determined by the Monte Carlo sampling method for several types of density matrices, providing some insight into the intricate and complex geometric structure of the space of density matrices.
Quantum Signal Processing (QSP) and Quantum Singular Value Transformation (QSVT) provide an efficient framework for implementing polynomials of block-encoded matrices, and thus offer a systematic approach to quantum algorithm design. However, despite a number of recent advances, important limitations remain. In particular, QSP can only transform unitary matrices, by applying a polynomial to their eigenvalues, while QSVT is a singular-value transformation and thus one can only obtain the polynomial of Hermitian matrices. As a consequence, these techniques do not directly apply to an arbitrary non-Hermitian matrix that is not diagonalizable. In this work, we propose a simple yet powerful method to extend these ideas to arbitrary square matrices by acting on their eigenvalues. To this end, we introduce the notion of an nnn-regular block encoding, namely, a block encoding whose kkk-th power reproduces the kkk-th power of the encoded matrix for every 0<k<n0 < k < n0<k<n. We show that applying QSP to any unitary with this property is equivalent to applying a polynomial of degree at most nnn to the block-encoded matrix, independently of its internal structure. Moreover, we provide a simple construction that transforms any block encoding into an nnn-regular one using only O(log⁡n)O(\log n)O(logn) ancillary qubits and operations. Finally, we show that this construction induces the desired transformation on the eigenvalues associated with the Jordan normal form of the matrix; for non-diagonalizable matrices this yields the full matrix function P(A)P(A)P(A), whose action on each Jordan block involves the derivatives of PPP, and not merely the map λ↦P(λ)λ\mapsto P(λ)λ↦P(λ).