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arXiv:1709.04538 · Journal of Mathematical Physics

Petz recovery versus matrix reconstruction

Milan Holzäpfel, M. Cramer, Nilanjana Datta, Martin Bodo Plenio

Published Apr 1, 2018• 7 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The reconstruction of the state of a multipartite quantum mechanical system represents a fundamental task in quantum information science. At its most basic, it concerns a state of a bipartite quantum system whose subsystems are subjected to local operations. We compare two different methods for obtaining the original state from the state resulting from the action of these operations. The first method involves quantum operations called Petz recovery maps, acting locally on the two subsystems. The second method is called matrix (or state) reconstruction and involves local, linear maps that are not necessarily completely positive. Moreover, we compare the quantities on which the maps employed in the two methods depend. We show that any state that admits Petz recovery also admits state reconstruction. However, the latter is successful for a strictly larger set of states. We also compare these methods in the context of a finite spin chain. Here, the state of a finite spin chain is reconstructed from the reduced states of a few neighbouring spins. In this setting, state reconstruction is the same as the matrix product operator reconstruction proposed by Baumgratz et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 020401 (2013)]. Finally, we generalize both these methods so that they employ long-range measurements instead of relying solely on short-range correlations embodied in such local reduced states. Long-range measurements enable the reconstruction of states which cannot be reconstructed from measurements of local few-body observables alone and hereby we improve existing methods for quantum state tomography of quantum many-body systems.

DOI
10.1063/1.5009658

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The reconstruction of the state of a multipartite quantum mechanical system represents a fundamental task in quantum information science. At its most basic, it concerns a state of a bipartite quantum system whose subsystems are subjected to local operations. We compare two different methods for obtaining the original state from the state resulting from the action of these operations. The first method involves quantum operations called Petz recovery maps, acting locally on the two subsystems. The second method is called matrix (or state) reconstruction and involves local, linear maps that are not necessarily completely positive. Moreover, we compare the quantities on which the maps employed in the two methods depend. We show that any state that admits Petz recovery also admits state reconstruction. However, the latter is successful for a strictly larger set of states. We also compare these methods in the context of a finite spin chain. Here, the state of a finite spin chain is reconstructed from the reduced states of a few neighbouring spins. In this setting, state reconstruction is the same as the matrix product operator reconstruction proposed by Baumgratz et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 020401 (2013)]. Finally, we generalize both these methods so that they employ long-range measurements instead of relying solely on short-range correlations embodied in such local reduced states. Long-range measurements enable the reconstruction of states which cannot be reconstructed from measurements of local few-body observables alone and hereby we improve existing methods for quantum state tomography of quantum many-body systems.
A bstract We probe the multipartite entanglement structure of the vacuum state of a CFT in 1+1 dimensions, using recovery operations that attempt to reconstruct the density matrix in some region from its reduced density matrices on smaller subregions. We use an explicit recovery channel known as the twirled Petz map, and study distance measures such as the fidelity, relative entropy, and trace distance between the original state and the recovered state. One setup we study in detail involves three contiguous intervals A , B and C on a spatial slice, where we can view these quantities as measuring correlations between A and C that are not mediated by the region B that lies between them. We show that each of the distance measures is both UV finite and independent of the operator content of the CFT, and hence depends only on the central charge and the cross-ratio of the intervals. We evaluate these universal quantities numerically using lattice simulations in critical spin chain models, and derive their analytic forms in the limit where A and C are close using the OPE expansion. In the case where A and C are far apart, we find a surprising non-commutativity of the replica trick with the OPE limit. For all values of the cross-ratio, the fidelity is strictly better than a general information-theoretic lower bound in terms of the conditional mutual information. We also compare the mutual information between various subsystems in the original and recovered states, which leads to a more qualitative understanding of the differences between them. Further, we introduce generalizations of the recovery operation to more than three adjacent intervals, for which the fidelity is again universal with respect to the operator content.
Given a tripartite quantum state on A,B,CA,B,CA,B,C and the erasure channel on CCC, the rotated Petz map is a recovery channel that acts on BBB to recover the erased quantum information. The infidelity of the best recovery is upper bounded by the conditional mutual information (CMI). In this work, we study the infidelity of the rotated Petz map on several physically relevant long-range entangled quantum states. Specifically, we study three classes of quantum phases: (i) steady states of measurement-induced phase transitions, (ii) critical ground state under local measurements, and (iii) chiral states under local measurements. We find that the averaged infidelity of the Petz map recovery sharply distinguishes the three classes: (i) and (ii) are distinguished by the scaling of the infidelity with CMI and (iii) is characterized by an asymmetry of the fidelity with the rotation parameter. We also study Petz map recovery for topological order and find an operational interpretation of the topological entanglement entropy. Our result indicates that the recovery fidelity of the Petz map is a useful diagnostic of quantum phases of matter.
Optical systems are a main platform for quantum information processing. A main challenge is information loss due to scattering in unmonitored modes. These losses are modeled as state-independent beam-splitter interactions, with a thermal state (for all practical purposes, the vacuum) in the second input port. The perfect correction of these Gaussian lossy channels with Gaussian operations alone is known to be impossible. In this work, we investigate the Petz recovery map as an approximate recovery. For single mode losses and Gaussian reference states, the Petz map is found to use either a beam-splitter or a state-independent amplifier, depending on the parameters. Then we study the recovery performance on several examples, showing that it is near-optimal among the considered class of protocols. We also obtain more specific comparisons: Petz is always better than just re-preparing the reference state; but it is worse than doing nothing if the reference state is far from the true state. Finally, we extend our study to losses on two modes, and compare the global Petz map to the local implementation on each mode separately.
We probe the multipartite entanglement structure of the vacuum state of a CFT in 1+1 dimensions, using recovery operations that attempt to reconstruct the density matrix in some region from its reduced density matrices on smaller subregions. We use an explicit recovery channel known as the twirled Petz map, and study distance measures such as the fidelity, relative entropy, and trace distance between the original state and the recovered state. One setup we study in detail involves three contiguous intervals AAA, BBB and CCC on a spatial slice, where we can view these quantities as measuring correlations between AAA and CCC that are not mediated by the region BBB that lies between them. We show that each of the distance measures is both UV finite and independent of the operator content of the CFT, and hence depends only on the central charge and the cross-ratio of the intervals. We evaluate these universal quantities numerically using lattice simulations in critical spin chain models, and derive their analytic forms in the limit where AAA and CCC are close using the OPE expansion. In the case where AAA and CCC are far apart, we find a surprising non-commutativity of the replica trick with the OPE limit. For all values of the cross-ratio, the fidelity is strictly better than a general information-theoretic lower bound in terms of the conditional mutual information. We also compare the mutual information between various subsystems in the original and recovered states, which leads to a more qualitative understanding of the differences between them. Further, we introduce generalizations of the recovery operation to more than three adjacent intervals, for which the fidelity is again universal with respect to the operator content.
The Petz recovery map is considered one of the key candidates for the quantum analogue of Bayesian inference and Jeffrey's conditionalization. Since, there seems to be a natural connection between Bayesian inference and the notion of state tomography, it is natural to ask if the Petz recovery can be used for this latter task. In this paper, we discuss such recent results on iterated Petz recovery and relate them to Bayesian approaches to quantum state tomography. We highlight the limitations of direct Petz iteration and show how an extended Petz construction, by lifting the inference problem to a classical distribution over candidate quantum states, recovers the structure of Bayesian and maximum likelihood tomography. This provides perspective on the modifications or nuances required for a Petz approach to quantum retrodiction to perform quantum state tomography.
According to Quantum Darwinism, system-environment interactions both einselect particular system properties and encode them redundantly in many independent subsets of the environment, called fragments. This redundancy implies that an observer can recover the einselected information by accessing just one such fragment. However, the protocol by which such reconstruction should occur is often left unspecified. Considering a system ΓΓΓ interacting with a multipartite environment ΞΞΞ, we investigate whether, and under what conditions, the einselected state of ΓΓΓ can be recovered from environmental fragments using the Petz recovery map. We show that the fidelity between the system's initial state and the state reconstructed via Petz recovery develops a plateau as a function of the fragment size. Our results are supported by both analytical arguments and numerical simulations of large but tractable models.