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arXiv:1710.01039

Estimating the decoherence time using non-commutative Functional Inequalities

Ivan Bardet

Published Oct 3, 2017• 23 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We generalize the notions of the non-commutative Poincaré and modified log-Sobolev inequalities for primitive quantum Markov semigroups (QMS) to not necessarily primitive ones. These two inequalities provide estimates on the decoherence time of the evolution. More precisely, we focus on an algebraic definition of environment-induced decoherence in open quantum systems which happens to be generic on finite dimensional systems and describes the asymptotic behavior of any QMS. An essential tool in our analysis is the explicit structure of the decoherence-free algebra generated by the QMS, a central object in the study of passive quantum error correction schemes. The Poincaré constant corresponds to the spectral gap of the QMS, which implies its positivity, while we prove that the modified log-Sobolev constant is positive under the $\mathbb L_1$-regularity of the Dirichlet form, a condition that also appears in the primitive case. We furthermore prove that strong $\mathbb L_p$-regularity holds for QMS that satisfy a strong form of detailed balance condition for $p\geq1$. The latter condition includes all known cases where this strong regularity was proved. Finally and to emphasize the mathematical interest of this study compared to the classical case, we focus on two truly quantum scenarios, one exhibiting quantum coherence, and the other, quantum correlations.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1710.01039

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We generalize the notions of the non-commutative Poincaré and modified log-Sobolev inequalities for primitive quantum Markov semigroups (QMS) to not necessarily primitive ones. These two inequalities provide estimates on the decoherence time of the evolution. More precisely, we focus on an algebraic definition of environment-induced decoherence in open quantum systems which happens to be generic on finite dimensional systems and describes the asymptotic behavior of any QMS. An essential tool in our analysis is the explicit structure of the decoherence-free algebra generated by the QMS, a central object in the study of passive quantum error correction schemes. The Poincaré constant corresponds to the spectral gap of the QMS, which implies its positivity, while we prove that the modified log-Sobolev constant is positive under the L1\mathbb L_1L1​-regularity of the Dirichlet form, a condition that also appears in the primitive case. We furthermore prove that strong Lp\mathbb L_pLp​-regularity holds for QMS that satisfy a strong form of detailed balance condition for p≥1p\geq1p≥1. The latter condition includes all known cases where this strong regularity was proved. Finally and to emphasize the mathematical interest of this study compared to the classical case, we focus on two truly quantum scenarios, one exhibiting quantum coherence, and the other, quantum correlations.
We generalize the concepts of weak quantum logarithmic Sobolev inequality (LSI) and weak hypercontractivity (HC), introduced in the quantum setting by Olkiewicz and Zegarlinski, to the case of non-primitive quantum Markov semigroups (QMS). The originality of this work resides in that this new notion of hypercontractivity is given in terms of the so-called amalgamated Lp\mathbb{L}_pLp​ norms introduced recently by Junge and Parcet in the context of operator spaces theory. We make three main contributions. The first one is a version of Gross' integration lemma: we prove that (weak) HC implies (weak) LSI. Surprisingly, the converse implication differs from the primitive case as we show that LSI implies HC but with a weak constant equal to the cardinal of the center of the decoherence-free algebra. Building on the first implication, our second contribution is the fact that strong LSI and therefore strong HC do not hold for non-trivially primitive QMS. This implies that the amalgamated Lp\mathbb{L}_pLp​ norms are not uniformly convex for 1≤p≤21\leq p \leq 21≤p≤2. As a third contribution, we derive universal bounds on the (weak) logarithmic Sobolev constants for a QMS on a finite dimensional Hilbert space, using a similar method as Diaconis and Saloff-Coste in the case of classical primitive Markov chains, and Temme, Pastawski and Kastoryano in the case of primitive QMS. This leads to new bounds on the decoherence rates of decohering QMS. Additionally, we apply our results to the study of the tensorization of HC in non-commutative spaces in terms of the completely bounded norms (CB norms) recently introduced by Beigi and King for unital and trace preserving QMS. We generalize their results to the case of a general primitive QMS and provide estimates on the (weak) constants.
Abstract We generalize the concepts of weak quantum logarithmic Sobolev inequality (LSI) and weak hypercontractivity (HC), introduced in the quantum setting by Olkiewicz and Zegarlinski, to the case of non-primitive quantum Markov semigroups (QMS). The originality of this work resides in that this new notion of hypercontractivity is given in terms of the so-called amalgamated Lp\mathbb {L}_pLp​ L p norms introduced recently by Junge and Parcet in the context of operator spaces theory. We make three main contributions. The first one is a version of Gross’ integration lemma: we prove that (weak) HC implies (weak) LSI. Surprisingly, the converse implication differs from the primitive case as we show that LSI implies HC but with a weak constant equal to the cardinal of the center of the decoherence-free algebra. Building on the first implication, our second contribution is the fact that strong LSI and therefore strong HC do not hold for non-trivially primitive QMS. This implies that the amalgamated Lp\mathbb {L}_pLp​ L p norms are not uniformly convex for 1≤p≤21\le p \le 21≤p≤2 1 ≤ p ≤ 2 . As a third contribution, we derive universal bounds on the (weak) logarithmic Sobolev constants for a QMS on a finite dimensional Hilbert space, using a similar method as Diaconis and Saloff-Coste in the case of classical primitive Markov chains, and Temme, Pastawski and Kastoryano in the case of primitive QMS. This leads to new bounds on the decoherence rates of decohering QMS. Additionally, we apply our results to the study of the tensorization of HC in non-commutative spaces in terms of the completely bounded norms (CB norms) recently introduced by Beigi and King for unital and trace preserving QMS. We generalize their results to the case of a general primitive QMS and provide estimates on the (weak) constants.
We prove a noncommutative ppp-Poincaré inequality for GNS-detailed-balance quantum Markov semigroups (QMSs) on non-tracial σσσ-finite von Neumann algebras, assuming only the existence of a spectral gap. Extending the semi-commutative results of Huang and Tropp, we first establish the inequality for tracial von Neumann algebras. We use Markov dilations to obtain chain-rule estimates for Dirichlet forms and amalgamated free products to define an appropriate noncommutative derivation. We then extend the result to QMSs satisfying GNS detailed balance on non-tracial σσσ-finite von Neumann algebras, using Haagerup's reduction and Kosaki's interpolation theorem. As applications, we recover sub-exponential concentration inequalities and estimate the Lipschitz and completely bounded Lipschitz diameters of the QMSs.
Functional inequalities constitute a very powerful toolkit in studying various problems arising in classical information theory, statistics and many-body systems. Extensions of these tools to the noncommutative setting have been introduced in the beginning of the 90's in order to study the asymptotic properties of certain quantum Markovian evolutions. In this thesis, we study various extensions and problems arising from the specific noncommutative nature of such processes. The first logarithmic Sobolev inequality to be proved, due to Gross, was for the Ornstein Uhlenbeck semigroup, that is the Brownian motion with friction on the real line. The generalization of this result to the quantum Ornstein Uhlenbeck semigroup was found very recently by Carlen and Maas, and de Palma and Huber by means of different techniques. The latter proof consists of a quantum generalization of the so-called entropy power inequality. Here, we consider another possible version of the entropy power inequality and use it to derive asymptotic properties of the frictionless quantum Brownian motion. The proof of Carlen and Maas discussed in the previous paragraph relies on their new quantum extension of the classical notion of displacement convexity. This is classically known to imply most of the usual functional inequalities such as the modified logarithmic Sobolev inequality and Poincaré's inequality. Here, we further study the framework introduced by Carlen and Maas. In particular, we show how displacement convexity implies quantum functional and transportation cost inequalities. The latter are then used to derive certain concentration inequalities of quantum states in the spirit of Bobkov and Goetze. These concentration inequalities are used in order to derive finite sample size bounds for the task of quantum parameter estimation. The main advantage of classical logarithmic Sobolev inequalities over other methods resides in their tensorization property: the strong log-Sobolev constant of the product of independent Markovian evolutions is equal to the maximum over the set of strong log-Sobolev constants of the individual evolutions. However, this property is strongly believed to fail in the non-commutative case, due to the non-multiplicativity of noncommutative Lp to Lq norms. In this thesis, we show tensorization of the logarithmic Sobolev constants for the simplest quantum Markov semigroup, namely the generalized depolarizing semigroup. Moreover, we consider a new general method to overcome the issue of tensorization for general primitive quantum Markov semigroups by looking at their contractivity properties under the completely bounded Lp to Lq norms. This method was first investigated in the restricted case of unital semigroups by Beigi and King. Noncommutative functional inequalities considered in the present literature only deal with primitive quantum Markovian semigroups which model memoryless irreversible dynamics converging to a specific faithful state. However, quantum Markov semigroups can in general display a much richer behavior referred to as decoherence: In particular, under some mild conditions, any such semigroup is known to converge to an algebra of observables which effectively evolve unitarily. Here, we introduce the concept of a decoherence-free logarithmic Sobolev inequality, and the related notion of hypercontractivity of the associated evolution, to study the decoherence rate of non-primitive quantum Markov semigroups. Moreover, we utilize the transference method recently introduced by Gao, Junge and LaRacuente, in order to find decoherence times associated to a class of decoherent Markovian evolutions of great importance in the field of quantum error protection, namely collective decoherence semigroups. Finally, we develop the notion of quantum reverse hypercontractivity, first introduced by Cubitt, Kastoryano, Montanaro and Temme in the unital case, and apply it in conjunction with the tensorization of the modified logarithmic Sobolev inequality for the generalized depolarizing semigroup in order to find strong converse rates in quantum hypothesis testing and for the classical capacity of classical-quantum channels. Moreover, the transference method also allows us to find strong converse bounds on the various capacities of quantum Markovian evolutions.
We introduce the notion of the BKM coercivity constant and show that the positivity of this constant governs the exponential relative entropy decay of the semigroup. Indeed, we prove that the modified log-Sobolev constant is equivalent to the BKM coercivity constant up to a constant depending on the asymptotic conditional expectation. We also discover that the BKM coercivity constants for matrix amplifications are already attained with a qubit auxiliary system, which also coincides with the GNS spectral gap of the generating Lindbladian. As a corollary, we establish a criterion that the complete modified log-Sobolev inequality holds if and only if the GNS gap of the semigroup is strictly positive. All the discussion above applies to quantum Markov semigroups that admit a faithful asymptotic conditional expectation as long-time equilibration, with no detailed balance condition assumed. As an application, we show the finite-dimensional Chen-Kastoryano-Gilyén Gibbs samplers always satisfy the complete modified log-Sobolev inequality.
Abstract We prove that every GNS-symmetric quantum Markov semigroup on a finite dimensional matrix algebra satisfies a modified log-Sobolev inequality. In the discrete time setting, we prove that every finite dimensional GNS-symmetric quantum channel satisfies a strong data processing inequality with respect to its decoherence free part. Moreover, we establish the first general approximate tensorization property of the relative entropy. This extends the famous strong subadditivity of the quantum entropy (SSA) of two subsystems to the general setting of two subalgebras. All three results are independent of the size of the environment and hence satisfy the tensorization property. They are obtained via a common, conceptually simple method for proving entropic inequalities via spectral or L2L_2L2​ L 2 -estimates. As an application, we combine our results on the modified log-Sobolev inequality and approximate tensorization to derive tight bounds for local generators.