In a quantum change point problem, a source emitting particles in a fixed quantum state (default) switches to a different state at some stage, and the objective is to identify when the change happened by measuring a sequence of particles emitted from such a source. Motivated by entanglement-sharing protocols in quantum information, we study this problem within the paradigm of local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Here, we consider a source that emits entangled pairs in a default state, but starts producing another entangled state (mutation) at a later stage. Then, a sequence of entangled pairs prepared from such a source and shared between distant observers cannot be used for quantum information processing tasks as the identity of each entangled pair remains unknown. We show that identifying the change point using LOCC leads to the distillation of free entangled pairs. In particular, if the default and the mutation are mutually orthogonal, there exists an efficient LOCC protocol that identifies the change point without fail and distills a sufficiently large number of pairs. However, if they are nonorthogonal, there is a probability of failure. In this case, we compute the number of entangled pairs that may be obtained on average. We also consider a relaxation of the two-state problem where the mutation is not known a priori, but instead belongs to a known set. Here we show that local distinguishability plays a crucial role: if the default and the possible mutations are locally distinguishable, the problem reduces to the two-state problem with orthogonal states, but if not, one may still identify the mutation, the change point, and distill entanglement, as we illustrate with a concrete example.
Sudden changes are ubiquitous in nature. Identifying them is crucial for a number of applications in biology, medicine, and social sciences. Here we take the problem of detecting sudden changes to the quantum domain. We consider a source that emits quantum particles in a default state, until a point where a mutation occurs that causes the source to switch to another state. The problem is then to find out where the change occurred. We determine the maximum probability of correctly identifying the change point, allowing for collective measurements on the whole sequence of particles emitted by the source. Then, we devise online strategies where the particles are measured individually and an answer is provided as soon as a new particle is received. We show that these online strategies substantially underperform the optimal quantum measurement, indicating that quantum sudden changes, although happening locally, are better detected globally.
The detection of change points is a pivotal task in statistical analysis. In the quantum realm, it is a new primitive where one aims at identifying the point where a source that supposedly prepares a sequence of particles in identical quantum states starts preparing a mutated one. We obtain the optimal procedure to identify the change point with certainty-naturally at the price of having a certain probability of getting an inconclusive answer. We obtain the analytical form of the optimal probability of successful identification for any length of the particle sequence. We show that the conditional success probabilities of identifying each possible change point show an unexpected oscillatory behavior. We also discuss local (online) protocols and compare them with the optimal procedure.
Entanglement distillation is a fundamental operation in quantum information processing used to obtain higher-fidelity entangled pairs from a supply of less entangled quantum states using local operations aided by classical communication (LOCC). In a physically relevant setting, where states with an initial fidelity of
f0, probabilistically generated over multiple,
m, memory pairs distributed between two parties, Alice and Bob, are pairwise distilled, the optimal policy identifies the system-configuration dependent sequence of entanglement generation and distillation operations that need to be performed in order to minimize the expected time to reach some target fidelity
fT>f0. Here, we formulate and systematically analyze this task as a Markov decision problem and using a value iteration algorithm, obtain optimal deterministic policies that minimize the expected waiting time required to reach a target fidelity. Our results show that the expected waiting time under the optimal policy decreases with increasing generation probability
p and number of quantum memories
m - as expected. In contrast, it exhibits non-monotonic behavior with respect to
f0 for a fixed fidelity gap,
(Δf=fT−f0). While the optimal policy consistently outperforms baseline policies such as the greedy, nested and entanglement pumping policies, its relative advantage is regime-dependent, being determined by the system parameters (
p,f0,fT,m), and exhibits a nontrivial dependence on the fidelity gap
Δf. Our results highlight the value of formulating entanglement distillation as a Markov decision problem, enabling the systematic design of policies that achieve target fidelity thresholds for quantum information tasks in realistic resource-constrained settings.
Detecting a change point is a crucial task in statistics that has been recently extended to the quantum realm. A source state generator that emits a series of single photons in a default state suffers an alteration at some point and starts to emit photons in a mutated state. The problem consists in identifying the point where the change took place. In this Rapid Communication, we build a pseudo-on-demand single-photon source to prepare the photon sequences, and consider a learning agent that applies Bayesian inference on experimental data to solve this problem. This learning machine adjusts the measurement over each photon according to the past experimental results and finds the change position in an online fashion. Our results show that the local-detection success probability can be largely improved by using such a machine-learning technique. This protocol provides a tool for improvement in many applications where a sequence of identical quantum states is required.
There exist sets of multipartite orthogonal states which can not be distinguished by local operation and classical communication (LOCC). The simplest example is the set of four Bell states. The problem of characterizing a set in terms of distinguishability is a hard problem in general. For maximally entangled states, some results are known. Local cloning of entangled states by supplying necessary entanglement in the blank state is another idea that was introduced very recently. Interestingly there are sets of orthogonal entangled states which can be distinguished locally but can not be copied by local operation (even if necessary entanglement is supplied in the blank state) contrary to the fact that happens in the case of global operation.