Abstract The condition for distinguishability of a countably infinite number of pure states by a single measurement is given. Distinguishability is to be understood as the possibility of an unambiguous measurement. For a finite number of states, it is known that the necessary and sufficient condition of distinguishability is that the states are linearly independent. For an infinite number of states, several natural classes of distinguishability can be defined. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for a system of pure states to be distinguishable. It turns out that each level of distinguishability naturally corresponds to one of the generalizations of linear independence to families of infinite vectors. As an important example, we apply the general theory to von Neumann’s lattice, a subsystem of coherent states which corresponds to a lattice in the classical phase space. We prove that the condition for distinguishability is that the area of the fundamental region of the lattice is greater than the Planck constant, and also find subtle behavior on the threshold. These facts reveal the measurement theoretical meaning of the Planck constant and give a justification for the interpretation that it is the smallest unit of area in the phase space. The cases of uncountably many states and of mixed states are also discussed.
Abstract The condition for distinguishability of a countably infinite number of pure states by a single measurement is given. Distinguishability is to be understood as the possibility of an unambiguous measurement. For a finite number of states, it is known that the necessary and sufficient condition of distinguishability is that the states are linearly independent. For an infinite number of states, several natural classes of distinguishability can be defined. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for a system of pure states to be distinguishable. It turns out that each level of distinguishability naturally corresponds to one of the generalizations of linear independence to families of infinite vectors. As an important example, we apply the general theory to von Neumann’s lattice, a subsystem of coherent states which corresponds to a lattice in the classical phase space. We prove that the condition for distinguishability is that the area of the fundamental region of the lattice is greater than the Planck constant, and also find subtle behavior on the threshold. These facts reveal the measurement theoretical meaning of the Planck constant and give a justification for the interpretation that it is the smallest unit of area in the phase space. The cases of uncountably many states and of mixed states are also discussed.
We give a unified treatment of quantum operations which transform one set of pure states into a another pure set. Extremal cases are deterministic transformations, which have unit success probability, and unambiguous state discrimination, which reveals the state and has the lowest success probability for a fixed initial ensemble. We obtain necessary and, for linearly independent initial states, sufficient conditions for the realisability of a given transformation with a fixed probability of success for each state. We then examine the relationship between deterministic transformations, majorization and distinguishability.
In this paper, we study the distinguishability of multipartite quantum states by separable operations. We first present a necessary and sufficient condition for a finite set of orthogonal quantum states to be distinguishable by separable operations. An analytical version of this condition is derived for the case of(D-1) pure states, whereDis the total dimension of the state space under consideration. A number of interesting consequences of this result are then carefully investigated. Remarkably, we show there exists a large class of 2 otimes 2 separable operations not being realizable by local operations and classical communication. Before our work, only a class of 3 otimes 3 nonlocal separable operations was known [Bennett , Phys. Rev. A 59, 1070 (1999)]. We also show that any basis of the orthogonal complement of a multipartite pure state is indistinguishable by separable operations if and only if this state cannot be a superposition of one or two orthogonal product states, i.e., has an orthogonal Schmidt number not less than three, thus generalize the recent work about indistinguishable bipartite subspaces [Watrous, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 080505 (2005)]. Notably, we obtain an explicit construction of indistinguishable subspaces of dimension 7 (or 6) by considering a composite quantum system consisting of two qutrits (resp., three qubits), which is slightly better than the previously known indistinguishable bipartite subspace with dimension 8.
Now, the known ensembles of orthogonal states which are distinguishable by local operators and classical communication (LOCC) satisfy the condition that the sum of Schmidit numbers of the orthogonal states is not bigger than the dimensions of the whole space. A natural question is whether an arbitary ensembles of LOCC-distinguishable orthogonal states satisfies the condition. We first show that, in this paper, the answer is positive. Then we generalize it into multipartite systems, and show that a necessary condition for LOCC-distinguishability of multipartite orthogonal quantum states is that the sum of the least numbers of the product states (For bipartite system, the least number of product states is Schmidit number) of the orthogonal states is not bigger than the dimensions of the Hilbert space of the multipartite system. This necessary condition is very simple and general, and one can get many cases of indistinguishability by it. It means that the least number of the product states acts an important role in distinguishablity of states, and implies that the least number of the product states may be an good manifestion of quantum nonlocality in some sense. In fact, entanglement emphases the "amount" of nonlocality, but the least number of the product states emphases the types of nonlocality. For example, the known W states and GHZ states have different least number of the product states, and are different in type.
In the past decades, quantum entanglement has been recognized to be the basic resource in quantum information theory. A fundamental need is then the understanding its qualification and its quantification: Is the quantum state entangled, and if it is, then how much entanglement is carried by that? These questions introduce the topics of separability criteria and entanglement measures, both of which are based on the issue of classification of multipartite entanglement. In this dissertation, after reviewing these three fundamental topics for finite dimensional Hilbert spaces, I present my contribution to knowledge. My main result is the elaboration of the partial separability classification of mixed states of quantum systems composed of arbitrary number of subsystems of Hilbert spaces of arbitrary dimensions. This problem is simple for pure states, however, for mixed states it has not been considered in full detail yet. I give not only the classification but also necessary and sufficient criteria for the classes, which make it possible to determine to which class a mixed state belongs. Moreover, these criteria are given by the vanishing of quantities measuring entanglement. Apart from these, I present some side results related to the entanglement of mixed states. These results are obtained in the learning phase of my studies and give some illustrations and examples.
Abstract We address perfect discrimination of two separable states. When available states are restricted to separable states, we can theoretically consider a larger class of measurements than the class of measurements allowed in quantum theory. The framework composed of the class of separable states and the above extended class of measurements is a typical example of general probabilistic theories. In this framework, we give a necessary and sufficient condition to discriminate two separable pure states perfectly. In particular, we derive measurements explicitly to discriminate two separable pure states perfectly, and find that some non-orthogonal states are perfectly distinguishable. However, the above framework does not improve the capacity , namely, the maximum number of states that are simultaneously and perfectly distinguishable.
In this paper, we present the necessary and sufficient conditions of separability for bipartite pure states in infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces. Let M be the matrix of the amplitudes of ∣ψ⟩, we prove M is a compact operator. We also prove ∣ψ⟩ is separable if and only if M is a bounded linear operator with rank 1, that is the image of M is a one dimensional Hilbert space. So we have related the separability for bipartite pure states in infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces to an important class of bounded linear operators in Functional analysis which has many interesting properties.