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arXiv:2006.03087 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Fermionic systems for quantum information people

Szilárd Szalay, Zoltán Zimborás, Mihály Máté, Gergely Barcza, Christian Schilling, Örs Legeza

Published May 28, 2021• 38 citations
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Abstract

Abstract The operator algebra of fermionic modes is isomorphic to that of qubits, the difference between them is twofold: the embedding of subalgebras corresponding to mode subsets and multiqubit subsystems on the one hand, and the parity superselection in the fermionic case on the other. We discuss these two fundamental differences extensively, and illustrate these through the Jordan–Wigner representation in a coherent, self-contained, pedagogical way, from the point of view of quantum information theory. Our perspective leads us to develop useful new tools for the treatment of fermionic systems, such as the fermionic (quasi-)tensor product, fermionic canonical embedding, fermionic partial trace, fermionic products of maps and fermionic embeddings of maps. We formulate these by direct, easily applicable formulas, without mode permutations, for arbitrary partitionings of the modes. It is also shown that fermionic reduced states can be calculated by the fermionic partial trace, containing the proper phase factors. We also consider variants of the notions of fermionic mode correlation and entanglement, which can be endowed with the usual, local operation based motivation, if the parity superselection rule is imposed. We also elucidate some other fundamental points, related to joint map extensions, which make the parity superselection inevitable in the description of fermionic systems.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8121/ac0646

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Abstract The operator algebra of fermionic modes is isomorphic to that of qubits, the difference between them is twofold: the embedding of subalgebras corresponding to mode subsets and multiqubit subsystems on the one hand, and the parity superselection in the fermionic case on the other. We discuss these two fundamental differences extensively, and illustrate these through the Jordan–Wigner representation in a coherent, self-contained, pedagogical way, from the point of view of quantum information theory. Our perspective leads us to develop useful new tools for the treatment of fermionic systems, such as the fermionic (quasi-)tensor product, fermionic canonical embedding, fermionic partial trace, fermionic products of maps and fermionic embeddings of maps. We formulate these by direct, easily applicable formulas, without mode permutations, for arbitrary partitionings of the modes. It is also shown that fermionic reduced states can be calculated by the fermionic partial trace, containing the proper phase factors. We also consider variants of the notions of fermionic mode correlation and entanglement, which can be endowed with the usual, local operation based motivation, if the parity superselection rule is imposed. We also elucidate some other fundamental points, related to joint map extensions, which make the parity superselection inevitable in the description of fermionic systems.
The characterization of entanglement is a fundamental issue for Quantum Information Theory. But the definition of entanglement depends on the notion of locality, and thus on the tensor product structure of the state space of the composite system. This notion is affected by the presence of superselection rules that restrict the accessible Hilbert space to a direct sum of subspaces. Indistinguishability of particles imposes one such restriction, namely to totally symmetric or totally antisymmetric states. The entanglement can in this case be defined with respect to partitions of modes in the second quantization formalism. For fermionic systems the Fock space of m modes is isomorphic to the space of m qubits, but the action of creation and annihilation operators is not local, due to their anticommutation. Conservation of the parity of fermion number imposes another relevant superselection rule. It requires that local physical observables commute with the local parity operator. Taking into account the considerations above, it is possible to define the set of separable states or equivalently the concept of entanglement for fermionic systems in a number of ways. Here we analyze systematically these possibilities and the relation among the various sets of separable states. We also discuss the behavior of the different classes when taking several copies of the state, as well as the characterization of the sets in terms of the usual criteria regarding the tensor product.
The anticommutation of Fermionic fields raises the problem of simulating the evolution of Fermionic systems by means of commuting quantum systems, say qubits. We tackle the issue considering local Fermionic modes as the elementary systems of an operational probabilistic theory. We show that the locality of Fermionic operations, namely operations on systems that are not causally connected must commute, implies the parity superselection rule, which inhibits the superposition of states with an even and an odd number of excitations. Accordingly we derive the largest probabilistic theory compatible with the parity superselection constraint and show that it lacks two distinctive traits of quantum theory, the local tomography and the monogamy of the entanglement. We generalize the notion of superselection rule to general probabilistic theories as sets of linear constraints on the convex set of states and prove a trade-off between the cardinality of the superselection rule and the degree of holism of the resulting theory. Within this scenario the Fermionic quantum theory and the real quantum theory can be regarded as superselected versions of the usual quantum theory. These results are published in Ref. [7] http://iopscience.iop.org/0295-5075/107/2/20009 and Ref. [8] http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217751X14300257. In the last three decades the relation between Fermionic systems and other quantum systems has been throughly investigated from both the computational and the physical point of view. In particular the puzzling anti-commuting nature of the Fermionic systems casts a shadow on the possibility of simulating the physical evolution of a bunch of Fermionic systems by means of commuting quantum systems—say qubits. This issue was raised by R. P. Feynman in 1982 [9], when in his seminal work on physical computation he wondered about the possibility of simulating Fermions by local quantum systems in interaction—what we would call nowadays a quantum computer. The problem is that of encoding the evolution of Fermionic fields onto localized quantum systems. A well-known encoding of N Fermionic systems into N qubits is given by the Jordan-Wigner transform (JWT) [14]. Such an encoding, based on the identification between the Fock space of N Fermions and the Hilbert space of N qubits, provides a -algebra isomorphism between the Fermionic anticommuting algebra and the commuting algebra of qubits. Such a correspondence has been a valuable instrument in modern solid state physics for solving the one dimensional XY spin-chains [18, 15] and then for the understanding of superconductivity and the quantum Hall effect. Moreover, a time-adaptive JWT has been introduced in Ref. [19], which allows to contract Fermionic unitary circuits with the same complexity as for the corresponding spin model. In quantum information science the JWT has been used to extend to the Fermionic case notions as entanglement [1], the entropic area law [24], and universal computation [5]. More recently the JWT, which originally regards one dimensional chains of spin-1=2 systems, has been generalized to any spin [3] and lattice [13] dimension. Despite its computational power, the JWT fails to solve completely the issue established by Feynman: physically local Fermionic operations are mapped into nonlocal quantum ones and viceversa. As noticed by many authors this can lead to ambiguities in defining the partial trace [16, 4, 17, 10], and in assessing
A reasonable quantum information theory for fermions must respect the parity superselection rule to comply with the special theory of relativity and the no-signaling principle. This rule restricts the possibility of any quantum state to have a superposition between even- and odd-parity fermionic states. thereby characterizing the set of physically allowed fermionic quantum states. Here we introduce the physically allowed quantum operations, in congruence with the parity superselection rule, that map the set of allowed fermionic states onto itself. We first introduce unitary and projective measurement operations of the fermionic states. We further extend the formalism to general quantum operations in the forms of Stinespring dilation, operator-sum representation, and axiomatic completely positive and trace-preserving maps. We explicitly show the equivalence between these three representations of fermionic quantum operations. We discuss the possible implications of our results in characterization of correlations in fermionic systems.
We give a fermionic Fock space description of embedded entangled qubits. Within this framework the problem of classification of pure state entanglement boils down to the problem of classifying spinors. The usual notion of separable states turns out to be just a special case of the one of pure spinors. By using the notion of single, double and mixed occupancy representation with intertwiners relating them a natural physical interpretation of embedded qubits is found. As an application of these ideas one can make a physical sound meaning of some of the direct sum structures showing up in the context of the so-called black-hole/qubit correspondence. We discuss how the usual invariants for qubits serving as measures of entanglement can be obtained from invariants for spinors in an elegant manner. In particular a detailed case study for recovering the invariants for four-qubits within a spinorial framework is presented. We also observe that reality conditions on complex spinors defining Majorana spinors for embedded qubits boil down to self-conjugate states under the Wootters spin flip operation. Finally we conduct a study on the explicit structure of Spin(16,C)\text{Spin}(16,\mathbb{C})Spin(16,C) invariant polynomials related to the structure of possible measures of entanglement for fermionic systems with eight modes. Here we find an algebraically independent generating set of the generalized stochastic local operations and classical communication invariants and calculate their restriction to the dense orbit. We point out the special role the largest exceptional group E8{E}_{8}E8​ is playing in these considerations.
Local fermionic mode (LFM) based quantum computation has pure state spaces that are isomorphic, via the Jordan-Wigner representation, to qubit state spaces, but its compositional structure is subtly different. Indeed, the algebraic formalism specifying how to embed fermionic systems underlies a notion of parallel composition, for which, in general, the usual interchange law of monoidal categories fails. We give a categorical account of this phenomenon. Starting from the CAR-algebraic semantics of fermionic gate application, we show that LFM processes form a symmetric premonoidal category whose centre is precisely the even, parity-preserving subcategory. The same processes can alternatively be organized with the ordinary tensor product and a fermionic presymmetry that is natural exactly on even maps. To reason diagrammatically in this latter presentation, we introduce pronaps, a relaxation of the notion of prop, in which permutations are not-necessarily-natural, and use them to organize a hierarchy of fragments of the fermionic ZW calculus relevant to the study of fermionic circuits on physically motivated gate-sets. We then extend scalable diagrammatic notation to pronaps. In this setting, syntactic sugars inspired by SZX and GSA are defined, with the specificity that matrix arrows encode minors and determinants, while graph triangles encode pfaffians of principal submatrices. These constructions yield elegant normal forms and completeness proofs for our presentations of the EoW, FoW, EW, and FW fragments. In particular, the FW presentation gives a new normal form for the matchgate fragment, distinct from the rWGS-X normal form of the planar-W (pW) presentation of the same category. The resulting framework connects fermionic circuit semantics, diagrammatic rewriting with scalable notations, and the algebra of determinants and pfaffians.
We analyze fermionic modes as fundamental entities for quantum information processing. To this end we construct a density operator formalism on the underlying Fock space and demonstrate how it can be naturally and unambiguously equipped with a notion of subsystems in the absence of a global tensor product structure. We argue that any apparent similarities between fermionic modes and qubits are superficial and can only be applied in limited situations. In particular, we discuss the ambiguities that arise from different treatments of this subject. Our results are independent of the specific context of the fermionic fields as long as the canonical anticommutation relations are satisfied, e.g., in relativistic quantum fields or fermionic trapped ions.