Studying the geometry of sets appearing in various problems of quantum information helps in understanding different parts of the theory. It is thus worthwhile to approach quantum mechanics from the angle of geometry -- this has already provided a multitude of interesting results. In this thesis I demonstrate results relevant to numerical ranges -- the sets of simultaneously attainable expectation values of several observables. In particular, I apply this notion in the problems related to uncertainty relations, entanglement detection, and determining bounds for the value of spectral gap. Apart from this, I present geometric structures helping with the question of state interconversion using channels commuting with a particular representation of a group.
Studying the geometry of sets appearing in various problems of quantum information helps in understanding different parts of the theory. It is thus worthwhile to approach quantum mechanics from the angle of geometry -- this has already provided a multitude of interesting results. In this thesis I demonstrate results relevant to numerical ranges -- the sets of simultaneously attainable expectation values of several observables. In particular, I apply this notion in the problems related to uncertainty relations, entanglement detection, and determining bounds for the value of spectral gap. Apart from this, I present geometric structures helping with the question of state interconversion using channels commuting with a particular representation of a group.
Noncommutativity lies in the heart of quantum theory and provides rich set of interesting questions in physics and mathematics. In this work I present some of them through the concept of Joint Numerical Range (JNR) - the set of simultaneously attainable averages of quantum observables, which in general need not commute. Full description of JNR geometry quickly becomes complex as the dimensionality of quantum system grows. In this thesis I present already existing results in the theory of JNR, generalizations of the formalism and applications of JNR in the theory of phase transitions and uncertainty relations.
The interplay between the quantum state space and a specific set of measurements can be effectively captured by examining the set of jointly attainable expectation values. This set is commonly referred to as the (convex) joint numerical range. In this work, we explore geometric properties of this construct for measurements represented by tensor products of Pauli observables, also known as Pauli strings. The structure of pairwise commutation and anticommutation relations among a set of Pauli strings determines a graph G, sometimes also called the frustration graph. We investigate the connection between the parameters of this graph and the structure of minimal ellipsoids encompassing the joint numerical range. Such an outer approximation can be very practical since ellipsoids can be handled analytically even in high dimensions. We find counterexamples to a conjecture from [C. de Gois, K. Hansenne and O. Gühne, arXiv:2207.02197], and answer an open question in [M. B. Hastings and R. O'Donnell, Proc. STOC 2022, pp. 776-789], which implies a new graph parameter that we call β(G). Besides, we develop this approach in different directions, such as comparison with graph-theoretic approaches in other fields, applications in quantum information theory, numerical methods, properties of the new graph parameter, etc. Our approach suggests many open questions that we discuss briefly at the end.
A geometric framework for quantum mechanics arose during the mid 1970s when authors such as Cantoni explored the notion of generalized transition probabilities, and Kibble promoted the idea that the space of pure quantum states provides a natural quantum mechanical analogue for classical phase space. This central idea can be seen easily since the projection of Schrödinger's equation from a Hilbert space into the space of pure spaces is a set of Hamilton's equations. Over the intervening years considerable work has been carried out by a variety of authors and a mature description of quantum mechanics in geometric terms has emerged with many applications. This current offering would seem ideally placed to review the last thirty years of progress and relate this to the most recent work in quantum entanglement. Bengtsson and Zyczkowski's beautifully illustrated volume, Geometry of Quantum States (referred to as GQS from now on) attempts to cover considerable ground in its 466 pages. Its topics range from colour theory in Chapter 1 to quantum entanglement in Chapter 15—to say that this is a whirlwind tour is, perhaps, no understatement. The use of the work 'introduction' in the subtitle of GQS , might suggest to the reader that this work be viewed as a textbook and I think that this interpretation would be incorrect. The authors have chosen to present a survey of different topics with the specific aim to introduce entanglement in geometric terms—the book is not intended as a pedagogical introduction to the geometric approach to quantum mechanics. Each of the fifteen chapters is a short, and mostly self-contained, essay on a particular aspect or application of geometry in the context of quantum mechanics with entanglement being addressed specifically in the final chapter. The chapters fall into three classifications: those concerned with the mathematical background, those which discuss quantum theory and the foundational aspects of the geometric framework, and applications of the geometric approach. The first four chapters contain the standard mathematics required to understand the rest of the material presented: specific areas in colour theory, set theory, probability theory, differential geometry and projective geometry are all covered with an eye to the material that follows. Chapter 5 starts the first real discussion of quantum theory in GQS and serves as an elegant, succinct introduction to the geometry which underlies quantum theory. This may be the most worthwhile chapter for the casual reader who wants to understand the key ideas in this field. Chapter 6 builds on the discussion in Chapter 5, introducing a group theoretic approach to understand coherent states and Chapter 7 describes a geometric tool in the form of an approach to complex projective geometry called 'the stellar representation'. Chapter 8 returns to a more purely quantum mechanical discussion as the authors turn to study the space of density matrices. This chapter completes the discussion which started in Chapter 5. Chapter 9 begins the part of the book concerned with applications of the geometric approach. From this point on the book aims, specifically, to prepare the reader for the material in Chapter 15 beginning with a discussion on the purification of mixed quantum states. In the succeeding chapters a definite choice has been made to present a geometric approach to certain quantum information problems. For example, Chapter 10 contains an extremely well formulated discussion of measurement and positive operator-valued measures with several well illustrated examples and Chapter 11 reopens the discussion of density matrices. Entropy and majorization are again revisited in Chapter 12 in much greater detail than in previous chapters. Chapters 13 and 14 concern themselves with a discussion of various metrics and their relation to the problem of distinguishing between probability distributions and their suitability as probability measures.
We investigate the joint (separable) numerical range of multiple measurements, i.e., the regions of expectation values accessible with (separable) quantum states for given observables. This not only enables efficient entanglement detection, but also sheds light on the geometry of the set of quantum states. More precisely, in an experiment, if the confidence region for the obtained data and the separable numerical range are disjoint, entanglement is reliably detected. Generically, the success of such an experiment is more likely the smaller the separable numerical range is, compared to the standard numerical range of the observables measured. We quantify this relation using the ratio between these two volumes and show that it cannot be arbitrarily small, giving analytical bounds for any number of particles, local dimensions, as well as number of measurements. Moreover, we explicitly compute the volume of separable and standard numerical range for two locally traceless two-qubit product observables, which are of particular interest as they are easier to measure in practice. Furthermore, we consider typical volume ratios for generic observables and extreme instances.
Uncertainty relations are usually stated as bounds on selected combinations of variances, but the full covariance matrix contains substantially richer information about the geometry of quantum state space and about the operational capabilities of quantum systems. Here we characterize the covariance matrices attainable by a finite-dimensional canonical pair of observables related by the discrete Fourier transform, the natural analogue of position and momentum in a finite Hilbert space. We combine analytic arguments with convex-geometric and semidefinite-programming methods based on joint numerical ranges to describe the admissible region through unitary invariants, in particular the trace and determinant of the covariance matrix. This provides a systematic way to identify extremal states, generalizing the notion of minimum-uncertainty states, and to quantify how the discrete uncertainty geometry approaches its continuous counterpart with increasing dimension. We further show that the resulting covariance-matrix characterization has direct consequences for applications: it yields accuracy bounds for multi parameter estimation protocols and separability criteria for finite-dimensional bipartite systems, including discrete analogues of continuous-variable EPR-type witnesses. Our results establish a systematic and versatile platform for connecting uncertainty relations, convex quantum geometry, metrology, and entanglement detection in finite-dimensional systems.
Various physical phenomena have found use as resources in quantum information processing tasks, and the study of their properties is necessary to provide optimal methods to harness their power. The thesis presents a series of results aiming to characterise the quantitative and operational aspects of general quantum resources, and in particular to establish methods applicable to a variety of resources and emphasise the similarities in their characterisation. Our approach relies on the underlying convex structure of quantum resource theories, employing techniques from convex analysis and optimisation to gain a better understanding of both the fundamental properties of quantum resources as well as our ability to manipulate them efficiently in information processing protocols such as resource distillation. The first part of the thesis introduces a unified framework for resource quantification, establishing general properties of arbitrary convex quantum resource theories and providing insight into the common structure of many physically relevant resources. The second part of the thesis deals with the convex optimisation problems involved in the operational characterisation of two representative quantum resources, quantum entanglement and quantum coherence, where we in particular establish a detailed description of their distillation under several classes of operations, and introduce methods for the interconversion between the two resources. In the final part, we employ geometric methods to characterise the quantification of entanglement measures based on polynomial invariants and apply the results to investigate the monogamy properties of multipartite entanglement.