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arXiv:2101.05752 · Physical Review A

Layers of classicality in the compatibility of measurements

Arindam Mitra

Published Aug 13, 2021• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The term ``layers of classicality'' in the context of quantum measurements was introduced by T. Heinosaari [Phys. Rev. A 93, 042118 (2016)]. The strongest layer among these consists of the sets of observables that can be broadcast and the weakest layer consists of the sets of compatible observables. There are several other layers in between those two layers. In this work, we study their physical and geometric properties and show the differences and similarities among the layers in these properties. In particular we show that (i) none of the layers of classicality respect transitivity property, (ii) the concept like degree of broadcasting similar to degree of compatibility does not exist, (iii) there exist informationally incomplete positive operator-valued measures that are not individually broadcastable, (iv) a set of broadcasting channels can be obtained through concatenation of broadcasting and nondisturbing channels, (v) unlike compatibility, other layers of classicality are not convex, in general. Finally, we discuss the relations among these layers. More specifically, we show that a specific type of concatenation relations among broadcasting channels decides the layer in which a pair of observables resides.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.104.022206

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The term ``layers of classicality'' in the context of quantum measurements was introduced by T. Heinosaari [Phys. Rev. A 93, 042118 (2016)]. The strongest layer among these consists of the sets of observables that can be broadcast and the weakest layer consists of the sets of compatible observables. There are several other layers in between those two layers. In this work, we study their physical and geometric properties and show the differences and similarities among the layers in these properties. In particular we show that (i) none of the layers of classicality respect transitivity property, (ii) the concept like degree of broadcasting similar to degree of compatibility does not exist, (iii) there exist informationally incomplete positive operator-valued measures that are not individually broadcastable, (iv) a set of broadcasting channels can be obtained through concatenation of broadcasting and nondisturbing channels, (v) unlike compatibility, other layers of classicality are not convex, in general. Finally, we discuss the relations among these layers. More specifically, we show that a specific type of concatenation relations among broadcasting channels decides the layer in which a pair of observables resides.
One of the central features of quantum theory is that there are pairs of quantum observables that cannot be measured simultaneously. This incompatibility of quantum observables is a necessary ingredient in several quantum phenomena, such as measurement uncertainty relations, violation of Bell inequalities, and steering. Two quantum observables that admit a simultaneous measurement are, in this respect, classical. A finer classification of classicality can be made by formulating four symmetric relations on the set of observables that are stronger than compatibility; they are broadcastability, one-side broadcastability, mutual nondisturbance, and nondisturbance. It is proven that the five relations form a hierarchy and their differences in terms of the required devices needed in a simultaneous measurement are explained. All four relations that are stronger than compatibility are completely characterized in the case of qubit observables.
Abstract Two quantum channels are called compatible if they can be obtained as marginals from a single broadcasting channel; otherwise they are incompatible. We derive a characterization of the compatibility relation in terms of concatenation and conjugation, and we show that all pairs of sufficiently noisy quantum channels are compatible. The complement relation of incompatibility can be seen as a unifying aspect for several important quantum features, such as impossibility of universal broadcasting and unavoidable measurement disturbance. We show that the concepts of entanglement breaking channel and antidegradable channel can be completely characterized in terms compatibility.
In many a traditional physics textbook, a quantum measurement is defined as a projective measurement represented by a Hermitian operator. In quantum information theory, however, the concept of a measurement is dealt with in complete generality and we are therefore forced to confront the more general notion of positive-operator valued measures (POVMs), which suffice to describe all measurements that can be implemented in quantum experiments. We study the (in)compatibility of such POVMs and show that quantum theory realizes all possible (in)compatibility relations among sets of POVMs. This is in contrast to the restricted case of projective measurements for which commutativity is essentially equivalent to compatibility. Our result therefore points out a fundamental feature with respect to the (in)compatibility of quantum observables that has no analog in the case of projective measurements.
Decoherence, when viewed in the Heisenberg picture, can turn incompatible measurements into jointly measurable ones. This provides an observable-level description of emergent classicality in terms of the incompatibility destroyed by a noise channel. The corresponding loss of incompatibility can be captured by the channel's \emph{compatibility region}---the observables in a probe class that become jointly measurable with every noisy observable. The geometry and volume of this region provide a refined operational way to compare noise channels. We apply this framework to decoherence channels, each of which acts by Schur multiplication with extreme points of the convex set of unit-diagonal positive semidefinite matrices. Restricting to extremals eliminates convex mixing and reveals subtle phase-dependent decoherence effects thar are not captured by damping rates or conventional coherence quantifiers. Such channels have a rigid dilation structure described by a rank-one operator frame, which reduces joint measurability to a positivity test, making the compatibility region analytically tractable, and its volume computable from the frame's Gram matrix. If the frame can be normalised to a minimal informationally complete (MIC) POVM, the compatibility region acquires a geometric interpretation in the associated probability representation of the quantum state space, familiar with Qbism. Among maximal-rank extremals, those associated with symmetric informationally complete (SIC) POVMs maximise the compatibility volume and hence destroy the greatest amount of incompatibility, providing an operational characterisation of the special role of SICs in terms of joint measurability. This leads to a new formulation of the well-known SIC existence problem as a joint measurability question for noisy mutually unbiased bases.
A pair of quantum channels is said to be incompatible if they cannot be realized as marginals of a single channel. This paper addresses the general structure of the incompatibility of completely positive channels with a fixed quantum input space and with general outcome operator algebras. We define a compatibility relation for such channels by identifying the composite outcome space as the maximal (projective) C*-tensor product of outcome algebras. We show theorems that characterize this compatibility relation in terms of the concatenation and conjugation of channels, generalizing the recent result for channels with quantum outcome spaces. These results are applied to the positive operator valued measures (POVMs) by identifying each of them with the corresponding quantum-classical (QC) channel. We also give a characterization of the maximality of a POVM with respect to the post-processing preorder in terms of the conjugate channel of the QC channel. We consider another definition of compatibility of normal channels by identifying the composite outcome space with the normal tensor product of the outcome von Neumann algebras. We prove that for a given normal channel, the class of normally compatible channels is upper bounded by a special class of channels called tensor conjugate channels. We show the inequivalence of the C*- and normal compatibility relations for QC channels, which originates from the possibility and impossibility of copying operations for commutative von Neumann algebras in C*- and normal compatibility relations, respectively.
One of the classical results concerning quantum channels is the characterization of entanglement-breaking channels [M. Horodecki, P. W. Shor, and M. B. Ruskai, Rev. Math. Phys. 15, 629 (2003)]. We address the question whether there exists a similar characterization on the level of quantum correlations which may go beyond entanglement. The answer is fully affirmative in the case of breaking quantum correlations down to the, so-called, QC (quantum-classical) type, while it is no longer true in the CC (classical-classical) case. The corresponding channels turn out to be measurement maps. Our study also reveals an unexpected link between quantum state and local correlation broadcasting and finite Markov chains. We present a possibility of broadcasting via non von Neumann measurements, which relies on the Perron-Frobenius theorem. Surprisingly, this is not the typical generalized controlled-not (c-not) gate scenario appearing naturally in this context.