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arXiv:1402.0375 · Quantum Information Processing

Highly symmetric POVMs and their informational power

Wojciech Słomczyński, Anna Szymusiak

Published Nov 13, 2015• 26 citations
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Abstract

We discuss the dependence of the Shannon entropy of normalized finite rank-1 POVMs on the choice of the input state, looking for the states that minimize this quantity. To distinguish the class of measurements where the problem can be solved analytically, we introduce the notion of highly symmetric POVMs and classify them in dimension 2 (for qubits). In this case, we prove that the entropy is minimal, and hence, the relative entropy (informational power) is maximal, if and only if the input state is orthogonal to one of the states constituting a POVM. The method used in the proof, employing the Michel theory of critical points for group action, the Hermite interpolation, and the structure of invariant polynomials for unitary–antiunitary groups, can also be applied in higher dimensions and for other entropy-like functions. The links between entropy minimization and entropic uncertainty relations, the Wehrl entropy, and the quantum dynamical entropy are described.

DOI
10.1007/s11128-015-1157-z

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We discuss the dependence of the Shannon entropy of normalized finite rank-1 POVMs on the choice of the input state, looking for the states that minimize this quantity. To distinguish the class of measurements where the problem can be solved analytically, we introduce the notion of highly symmetric POVMs and classify them in dimension 2 (for qubits). In this case, we prove that the entropy is minimal, and hence, the relative entropy (informational power) is maximal, if and only if the input state is orthogonal to one of the states constituting a POVM. The method used in the proof, employing the Michel theory of critical points for group action, the Hermite interpolation, and the structure of invariant polynomials for unitary–antiunitary groups, can also be applied in higher dimensions and for other entropy-like functions. The links between entropy minimization and entropic uncertainty relations, the Wehrl entropy, and the quantum dynamical entropy are described.
In order to find out for which initial states of the system the uncertainty of the measurement outcomes will be minimal, one can look for the minimizers of the Shannon entropy of the measurement. In case of group-covariant measurements this question becomes closely related to the problem of how informative the measurement is in the sense of its informational power. Namely, the orbit under group action of the entropy minimizer corresponds to a maximally informative ensemble of equiprobable elements. We give a characterization of such ensembles for three-dimensional group-covariant (Weyl–Heisenberg) symmetric informationally complete positive operator valued measures (SIC-POVMs) in both geometric and algebraic terms. It turns out that a maximally informative ensemble arises from the input state orthogonal to a subspace spanned by three linearly dependent vectors defining a SIC-POVM (geometrically) or from an eigenstate of a certain Weyl matrix (algebraically).
One of the differences between classical and quantum world is that in the former we can always perform a measurement that gives certain outcomes for all pure states, while such a situation is not possible in the latter one. The degree of randomness of the distribution of the measurement outcomes can be quantified by the Shannon entropy. While it is well known that this entropy, as a function of quantum states, needs to be minimized by some pure states, we would like to address the question how ‘badly’ can we end by choosing initially any pure state, i.e., which pure states produce the maximal amount of uncertainty under given measurement. We find these maximizers for all highly symmetric POVMs in dimension 2, and for all SIC-POVMs in any dimension.
The Wehrl entropy is the entropy of the probability distribution in phase space corresponding to the Husimi function in terms of coherent states. We explain the significance of the Wehrl entropy in quantum information theory, and present the theory behind the Lieb conjecture, which states that, in finite dimensions, the minimum Wehrl entropy occurs for Bloch coherent states. This was proven by Lieb and Solovej in 2012. We present the theory behind coherent states, with a particular emphasis on Bloch coherent states, and give a geometrical representation of quantum states as points on a sphere. Using this representation, we identify spherical arrangements of 2–9 points that maximize the Wehrl entropy locally. We conjecture that these maxima are in fact global. Furthermore, we investigate how the maximally entangled symmetric states are related to the states corresponding to maximal Wehrl entropy.
The accessible information and the informational power quantify the amount of information extractable from a quantum ensemble and by a quantum measurement, respectively. So-called spherical quantum 2-designs constitute a class of ensembles and measurements relevant in testing entropic uncertainty relations, quantum cryptography, and quantum tomography. We provide lower bounds on the entropy of 2-design ensembles and measurements, from which upper bounds on their accessible information and informational power follow, as a function of the dimension only. We show that the statistics generated by 2-designs, although optimal for the above-mentioned protocols, never contains more than 1 bit of information. Finally, we specialize our results to the relevant cases of symmetric informationally complete sets and maximal sets of mutually unbiased bases, and we generalize them to the arbitrary-rank case.
We introduce two information-theoretical invariants for the projective unitary group acting on a finite-dimensional complex Hilbert space: PVM- and POVM-dynamical (quantum) entropies, which are analogues of the classical Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy rate. They quantify the maximal randomness of the successive quantum measurement results in the case where the evolution of the system between each two consecutive measurements is described by a given unitary operator. We study the class of chaotic unitaries, i.e., the ones of maximal entropy, or equivalently, such that they can be represented by suitably rescaled complex Hadamard matrices in some orthonormal bases. We provide necessary conditions for a unitary operator to be chaotic, which become also sufficient for qubits and qutrits. These conditions are expressed in terms of the relation between the trace and the determinant of the operator. We also compute the volume of the set of chaotic unitaries in dimensions two and three, and the average PVM-dynamical entropy over the unitary group in dimension two. We prove that this mean value behaves as the logarithm of the dimension of the Hilbert space, which implies that the probability that the dynamical entropy of a unitary is almost as large as possible approaches unity as the dimension tends to infinity.
Complementarity relations between various characterizations of a probability distribution are at the core of information theory. In particular, lower and upper bounds for the entropic function are of great importance. In applied topics, we often deal with situations where the sums of certain powers of probabilities are known. The main question is how to convert the imposed restrictions into two-sided estimates on the Shannon entropy. It is addressed in two different ways. The more intuitive of them is based on truncated expansions of the Taylor type. Another method is based on the use of coefficients of the shifted Chebyshev polynomials. We propose here a family of polynomials for estimating the Shannon entropy from below. As a result, estimates are more uniform in the sense that errors do not become too large in particular points. The presented method is used for deriving uncertainty and certainty relations for positive operator-valued measures assigned to a quantum design. Quantum designs are currently the subject of active researches due to potential use in quantum information science. It is shown that the derived estimates are applicable in quantum tomography and detecting steerability of quantum states.