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arXiv:2012.10080 · Physical Review A

Relative entropic uncertainty relation

Stefan Floerchinger, Tobias Haas, Ben Hoeber

Published Jun 4, 2021• 13 citations
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Abstract

Quantum uncertainty relations are formulated in terms of relative entropy between distributions of measurement outcomes and suitable reference distributions with maximum entropy. This type of entropic uncertainty relation can be applied directly to observables with either discrete or continuous spectra. We find that a sum of relative entropies is bounded from above in a nontrivial way, which we illustrate with some examples.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.103.062209

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Quantum uncertainty relations are formulated in terms of relative entropy between distributions of measurement outcomes and suitable reference distributions with maximum entropy. This type of entropic uncertainty relation can be applied directly to observables with either discrete or continuous spectra. We find that a sum of relative entropies is bounded from above in a nontrivial way, which we illustrate with some examples.
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The uncertainty principle sets a bound on our ability to predict the measurement outcomes of two incompatible observables which are measured on a quantum particle simultaneously. In quantum information theory, the uncertainty principle can be formulated in terms of the Shannon entropy. Entropic uncertainty bound can be improved by adding a particle which correlates with the measured particle. The added particle acts as a quantum memory. In this work, a method is provided for obtaining the entropic uncertainty relations in the presence of a quantum memory by using quantum coherence. In the method, firstly, one can use the quantum relative entropy of quantum coherence to obtain the uncertainty relations. Secondly, these relations are applied to obtain the entropic uncertainty relations in the presence of a quantum memory. In comparison with other methods this approach is much simpler. Also, for a given state, the upper bounds on the sum of the relative entropies of unilateral coherences are provided, and it is shown which one is tighter. In addition, using the upper bound obtained for unilateral coherence, the nontrivial upper bound on the sum of the entropies for different observables is derived in the presence of a quantum memory.
Entropic uncertainty relations express the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle by quantifying uncertainty in terms of entropy. Central questions include the derivation of lower bounds on the total uncertainty for given observables, the characterization of observables that allow strong uncertainty relations, and the construction of such relations for the case of several observables. We demonstrate how the stabilizer formalism can be applied to these questions. We show that the Maassen–Uffink entropic uncertainty relation is tight for the measurement in any pair of stabilizer bases. We compare the relative strengths of variance-based and various entropic uncertainty relations for dichotomic anticommuting observables.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has recently led to general measurement uncertainty relations for quantum systems: incompatible observables can be measured jointly or in sequence only with some unavoidable approximation, which can be quantified in various ways. The relative entropy is the natural theoretical quantifier of the information loss when a `true’ probability distribution is replaced by an approximating one. In this paper, we provide a lower bound for the amount of information that is lost by replacing the distributions of the sharp position and momentum observables, as they could be obtained with two separate experiments, by the marginals of any smeared joint measurement. The bound is obtained by introducing an entropic error function, and optimizing it over a suitable class of covariant approximate joint measurements. We fully exploit two cases of target observables: (1) n-dimensional position and momentum vectors; (2) two components of position and momentum along different directions. In (1), we connect the quantum bound to the dimension n; in (2), going from parallel to orthogonal directions, we show the transition from highly incompatible observables to compatible ones. For simplicity, we develop the theory only for Gaussian states and measurements.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle has a more precise formulation in terms of inequalities involving quantum entropies. Currently known entropic uncertainty relations are presented; they capture and extend Heisenberg's idea of the unpredictability of the outcomes of incompatible measurements. Distinct results are obtained for finite- and infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. Applications are surveyed, including the formulation of entanglement witnesses, current ideas about wave-particle duality, and the analysis of quantum cryptography.
A Gaussian distribution of a quantum state with continuous spectra is known to maximize the Shannon entropy at a fixed variance. Applying it to a pair of canonically conjugate quantum observables $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{x}$ and $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{p}$, the quantum entropic uncertainty relation can take a suggestive form, where the standard deviations ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{x}$ and ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{p}$ are featured explicitly. From the construction of the entropic uncertainty relation, it follows in a transparent manner that (i) the entropic uncertainty relation implies the Kennard-Robertson uncertainty relation in a modified form, ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{x}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{p}\ensuremath{\ge}\ensuremath{\hbar}{e}^{\mathcal{N}}/2$; (ii) the additional factor N\mathcal{N}N quantifies the quantum non-Gaussianity of the probability distributions of two observables; and (iii) the lower bound of the entropic uncertainty relation for a non-Gaussian continuous-variable (CV) mixed state becomes stronger with purity. The optimality of specific non-Gaussian CV states for the refined uncertainty relation has been investigated and the existence of a new class of CV quantum state is identified.