A collection of quantum channels is called incompatible if they cannot be obtained as marginals from a single channel. The no-cloning theorem is the most prominent instance of incompatibility of quantum channels. We show that every collection of incompatible channels can be more useful than compatible ones as preprocessings in a state discrimination task with multiple ensembles of states. This is done by showing that the robustness of channel incompatibility, which is a measure for incompatibility of channels, exactly quantifies the maximum advantage in the state discrimination. We also show that incompatibility of quantum measurement and channel has a similar operational interpretation. Finally, we demonstrate that our result with respect to channel incompatibility includes all other kinds of incompatibility as special cases.
A collection of quantum channels is called incompatible if they cannot be obtained as marginals from a single channel. The no-cloning theorem is the most prominent instance of incompatibility of quantum channels. We show that every collection of incompatible channels can be more useful than compatible ones as preprocessings in a state discrimination task with multiple ensembles of states. This is done by showing that the robustness of channel incompatibility, which is a measure for incompatibility of channels, exactly quantifies the maximum advantage in the state discrimination. We also show that incompatibility of quantum measurement and channel has a similar operational interpretation. Finally, we demonstrate that our result with respect to channel incompatibility includes all other kinds of incompatibility as special cases.
Some quantum measurements cannot be performed simultaneously; i.e., they are incompatible. Here we show that every set of incompatible measurements provides an advantage over compatible ones in a suitably chosen quantum state discrimination task. This is proven by showing that the robustness of incompatibility, a quantifier of how much noise a set of measurements tolerates before becoming compatible, has an operational interpretation as the advantage in an optimally chosen discrimination task. We also show that if we take a resource-theory perspective of measurement incompatibility, then the guessing probability in discrimination tasks of this type forms a complete set of monotones that completely characterize the partial order in the resource theory. Finally, we make use of previously known relations between measurement incompatibility and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering to also relate the latter with quantum state discrimination.
We introduce the notion of incompatibility witness for quantum channels, defined as an affine functional that is non-negative on all pairs of compatible channels and strictly negative on some incompatible pair. This notion extends the recent definition of incompatibility witnesses for quantum measurements. We utilize the general framework of channels acting on arbitrary finite-dimensional von Neumann algebras, thus allowing us to investigate incompatibility witnesses on measurement-measurement, measurement-channel, and channel-channel pairs. We prove that any incompatibility witness can be implemented as a state discrimination task in which some intermediate classical information is obtained before completing the task. This implies that any incompatible pair of channels gives an advantage over compatible pairs in some such state discrimination task.
Given a set of local dynamics, are they compatible with a global dynamics? We systematically formulate these questions as quantum channel marginal problems. These problems are strongly connected to the generalization of the no-signaling conditions to quantized inputs and outputs and can be understood as a general toolkit to study notions of quantum incompatibility. In fact, they include as special cases channel broadcasting, channel extendibility, measurement compatibility, and state marginal problems. After defining the notion of compatibility between global and local dynamics, we provide a solution to the channel marginal problem that takes the form of a semidefinite program. Using this formulation, we construct channel incompatibility witnesses, discuss their operational interpretation in terms of an advantage for a state-discrimination task, prove a gap between classical and quantum dynamical marginal problems, and show that the latter is irreducible to state marginal problems.
Incompatibility of quantum devices is one of the cornerstones of quantum theory, and the incompatibility of quantum measurements and channels has been linked to quantum advantage in certain information-theoretic tasks. In this work, we focus on the less well explored question of the incompatibility of quantum instruments, that is, devices that describe the measurement process in its entirety, accounting for both the classical measurement outcome and the quantum postmeasurement state. In particular, we focus on the recently introduced notion of parallel compatibility of instruments, which has been argued to be a natural notion of instrument compatibility. We introduce, in a manner similar to the case of measurements and channels, the incompatibility robustness of quantum instruments and derive universal bounds on it. We then prove that postprocessing of quantum instruments is a free operation for parallel compatibility. Last, we provide families of instruments for which our bounds are tight and families of compatible indecomposable instruments.
Abstract Recently, the projective robustness of quantum states was introduced in (Regula 2022 Phys. Rev. Lett. 128 110505). This demonstrates that the projective robustness is a useful resource monotone and can comprehensively characterize the capabilities and limitations of probabilistic protocols that manipulate quantum resources deterministically. In this paper, we will extend the projective robustness to any convex resource theory of quantum channels and measurements. First, we introduce the projective robustness of quantum channels and prove that it satisfies some good properties, especially sub-multiplicativity under any free quantum process. Moreover, we show that the projective robustness of channels quantifies the maximal advantage that a given channel outperforms all free channels in the simultaneous discrimination and exclusion of a fixed-state ensemble. Second, we define the projective robustness of quantum measurements and prove that it exactly quantifies the maximal advantage that a given measurement outperforms all free measurements in the simultaneous discrimination and exclusion of two fixed-state ensembles. Finally, within a specific channel resource setting based on measurement incompatibility, we show that the projective robustness of quantum channels coincides with the projective robustness of measurement incompatibility.
Several quantum channels may fail to admit an exact joint realization, a property known as incompatibility. Channel incompatibility unifies various quantum limitations, such as measurement uncertainty, the no-information-without-disturbance principle, and the no-cloning and no-broadcasting theorems. We address how accurately incompatible channels can be approximated by the marginals of a single joint channel, quantified by the minimum total diamond-norm error over all joint realizations. We establish two-sided bounds relating it to the generalized robustness of incompatibility (RoI), a noise-based resource quantifier of incompatibility. For identity channels, we determine both the RoI and the minimum total error exactly. The upper bound is attained by the optimal symmetric universal cloner, while the prefactor in the lower bound is asymptotically optimal as the dimension tends to infinity. Applying this result to measurement channels provides a unified, model-independent framework encompassing error-error and information-error-disturbance tradeoffs. Furthermore, our robustness-based evaluation of disturbance outperforms an algebraic bound for every non-trivial POVM in dimensions up to six.