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arXiv:2404.16101 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Multivariate fidelities

Theshani Nuradha, Hemant K. Mishra, Felix Leditzky, Mark M. Wilde

Published Mar 27, 2025• 6 citations
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Abstract

Abstract The bivariate classical fidelity is a widely used measure of the similarity of two probability distributions. There exist a few extensions of the notion of the bivariate classical fidelity to more than two probability distributions; herein we call these extensions multivariate classical fidelities, with some examples being the Matusita multivariate fidelity and the average pairwise fidelity. Hitherto, quantum generalizations of multivariate classical fidelities have not been systematically explored, even though there are several well known generalizations of the bivariate classical fidelity to quantum states, such as the Uhlmann and Holevo fidelities. The main contribution of our paper is to introduce a number of multivariate quantum fidelities and show that they satisfy several desirable properties that are natural extensions of those of the Uhlmann and Holevo fidelities. We propose several variants that reduce to the average pairwise fidelity for commuting states, including the average pairwise z -fidelities, the multivariate semi-definite programming (SDP) fidelity, and a multivariate fidelity inspired by an existing secrecy measure. The second one is obtained by extending the SDP formulation of the Uhlmann fidelity to more than two states. All of these variants satisfy the following properties: (i) reduction to multivariate classical fidelities for commuting states, (ii) the data-processing inequality, (iii) invariance under permutations of the states, (iv) its values are in the interval [ 0 , 1 ] ; they are faithful, that is, their values are equal to one if and only if all the states are equal, and they satisfy orthogonality, that is their values are equal to zero if and only if the states are mutually orthogonal to each other, (v) direct-sum property, (vi) joint concavity, and (vii) uniform continuity bounds under certain conditions. Furthermore, we establish inequalities relating these different variants, indeed clarifying that all these definitions coincide with the average pairwise fidelity for commuting states. We also introduce another multivariate fidelity called multivariate log-Euclidean fidelity, which is a quantum generalization of the Matusita multivariate fidelity. We also show that it satisfies most of the desirable properties listed above, it is a function of a multivariate log-Euclidean divergence, and it has an operational interpretation in terms of quantum hypothesis testing with an arbitrarily varying null hypothesis. Lastly, we propose multivariate generalizations of Matsumoto’s geometric fidelity and establish several properties of them.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8121/adc645

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Abstract The bivariate classical fidelity is a widely used measure of the similarity of two probability distributions. There exist a few extensions of the notion of the bivariate classical fidelity to more than two probability distributions; herein we call these extensions multivariate classical fidelities, with some examples being the Matusita multivariate fidelity and the average pairwise fidelity. Hitherto, quantum generalizations of multivariate classical fidelities have not been systematically explored, even though there are several well known generalizations of the bivariate classical fidelity to quantum states, such as the Uhlmann and Holevo fidelities. The main contribution of our paper is to introduce a number of multivariate quantum fidelities and show that they satisfy several desirable properties that are natural extensions of those of the Uhlmann and Holevo fidelities. We propose several variants that reduce to the average pairwise fidelity for commuting states, including the average pairwise z -fidelities, the multivariate semi-definite programming (SDP) fidelity, and a multivariate fidelity inspired by an existing secrecy measure. The second one is obtained by extending the SDP formulation of the Uhlmann fidelity to more than two states. All of these variants satisfy the following properties: (i) reduction to multivariate classical fidelities for commuting states, (ii) the data-processing inequality, (iii) invariance under permutations of the states, (iv) its values are in the interval [ 0 , 1 ] ; they are faithful, that is, their values are equal to one if and only if all the states are equal, and they satisfy orthogonality, that is their values are equal to zero if and only if the states are mutually orthogonal to each other, (v) direct-sum property, (vi) joint concavity, and (vii) uniform continuity bounds under certain conditions. Furthermore, we establish inequalities relating these different variants, indeed clarifying that all these definitions coincide with the average pairwise fidelity for commuting states. We also introduce another multivariate fidelity called multivariate log-Euclidean fidelity, which is a quantum generalization of the Matusita multivariate fidelity. We also show that it satisfies most of the desirable properties listed above, it is a function of a multivariate log-Euclidean divergence, and it has an operational interpretation in terms of quantum hypothesis testing with an arbitrarily varying null hypothesis. Lastly, we propose multivariate generalizations of Matsumoto’s geometric fidelity and establish several properties of them.
We introduce a family of fidelities, termed generalized fidelity, which are based on the Riemannian geometry of the Bures-Wasserstein manifold. We show that this family of fidelities generalizes standard quantum fidelities such as Uhlmann-, Holevo-, and Matsumoto-fidelity and demonstrate that it satisfies analogous celebrated properties. The generalized fidelity naturally arises from a generalized Bures distance, the natural distance obtained by linearizing the Bures-Wasserstein manifold. We prove various invariance and covariance properties of generalized fidelity as the point of linearization moves along geodesic-related paths. We also provide a Block-matrix characterization and prove an Uhlmann-like theorem, as well as provide further extensions to the multivariate setting and to quantum Rényi divergences, generalizing Petz-, Sandwiched-, Reverse sandwiched-, and Geometric-Rényi divergences of order α.
Uhlmann's fidelity function is one of the most widely used similarity measures in quantum theory. One definition of this function is that it is the minimum classical fidelity associated with a quantum-to-classical measurement procedure of two quantum states. In 2010, Matsumoto introduced another fidelity function which is dual to Uhlmann's in the sense that it is the maximimum classical fidelity associated with a classical-to-quantum preparation procedure for two quantum states. Matsumoto's fidelity can also be defined using the well-established notion definition of the matrix geometric mean. In this work, we examine Matsumoto's fidelity through the lens of semidefinite programming to give simple proofs that it possesses many desirable properties for a similarity measure, including monotonicity under quantum channels, joint concavity, and unitary invariance. Finally, we provide a geometric interpretation of this fidelity in terms of the Riemannian space of positive definite matrices, and show how this picture can be useful in understanding some of its peculiar properties.
The notion of fidelity for quantum states is a measure of how much two states overlap. In the matrix formalism of quantum mechanics, states are represented by density operators, i.e., positive semi-definite matrices with trace equal to 1 in a complex Euclidean space Mn(C)M_n(\mathbb{C})Mn​(C). Felipe-Sosa and Felipe (2022) introduced the notion of quantum states on certain Krein spaces with indefinite metric induced by a fundamental symmetry JJJ, calling these JJJ-states. We define an analogous notion of measurement for JJJ-states to the regular quantum theory and use it to show that a notion of fidelity holds in the Krein setting. We also show that an analogous result to the Fuchs-Caves measurement holds in this setting. Following the developments of Bag, Rohilla, and Trivedi (2024), we then extend this definition of fidelity to UUU-quantum states on SSS-spaces. We demonstrate that the analogous geometric motivation holds in the Krein and SSS-space setting, as holds for quantum fidelity and geometric means of operators.
We propose an alternative fidelity measure (namely, a measure of the degree of similarity) between quantum states and benchmark it against a number of properties of the standard Uhlmann-Jozsa fidelity. This measure is a simple function of the linear entropy and the Hilbert-Schmidt inner product between the given states and is thus, in comparison, not as computationally demanding. It also features several remarkable properties such as being jointly concave and satisfying all of Jozsa's axioms. The trade-off, however, is that it is supermultiplicative and does not behave monotonically under quantum operations. In addition, metrics for the space of density matrices are identified and the joint concavity of the Uhlmann-Jozsa fidelity for qubit states is established.
The fidelity-based smooth min-relative entropy is a distinguishability measure that has appeared in a variety of contexts in prior work on quantum information, including resource theories like thermodynamics and coherence. Here we provide a comprehensive study of this quantity. First we prove that it satisfies several basic properties, including the dataprocessing inequality. We also establish connections between the fidelity-based smooth min-relative entropy and other widely used information-theoretic quantities, including smooth min-relative entropy and smooth sandwiched Rényi relative entropy, of which the sandwiched Rényi relative entropy and smooth max-relative entropy are special cases. After that, we use these connections to establish the second-order asymptotics of the fidelity-based smooth min-relative entropy and all smooth sandwiched Rényi relative entropies, finding that the first-order term is the quantum relative entropy and the second-order term involves the quantum relative entropy variance. Utilizing the properties derived, we also show how the fidelity-based smooth min-relative entropy provides one-shot bounds for operational tasks in general resource theories in which the target state is mixed, with a particular example being randomness distillation. The above observations then lead to second-order expansions of the upper bounds on distillable randomness, as well as the precise second-order asymptotics of the distillable randomness of particular classical–quantum states. Finally, we establish semi-definite programs for smooth maxrelative entropy and smooth conditional min-entropy, as well as a bilinear program for the fidelity-based smooth min-relative entropy, which we subsequently use to explore the tightness of a bound relating the last to the first.
Let ρρρ and σσσ be density operators on a separable Hilbert space. For 0<α<10<α<10<α<1, we study the directed trace-norm overlap Φα(ρ,σ)=∥ρασ1−α∥1Φ_α(ρ,σ)=\|ρ^ασ^{1-α}\|_1Φα​(ρ,σ)=∥ρασ1−α∥1​ and its symmetrized form Fα(ρ,σ)=12(Φα(ρ,σ)+Φ1−α(ρ,σ))\mathcal F_α(ρ,σ)=\frac12\bigl(Φ_α(ρ,σ)+Φ_{1-α}(ρ,σ)\bigr)Fα​(ρ,σ)=21​(Φα​(ρ,σ)+Φ1−α​(ρ,σ)). At α=12α=\tfrac12α=21​, both quantities coincide with the root Uhlmann--Jozsa fidelity. Our aim is not to introduce a new notion of fidelity, but to understand how these overlaps vary with the parameter and when equality occurs in the resulting inequalities. We first prove that α↦Φα(ρ,σ)α\mapstoΦ_α(ρ,σ)α↦Φα​(ρ,σ) is log-convex. This yields a sharp lower bound for Fα\mathcal F_αFα​ in terms of the root fidelity, together with a stronger intermediate geometric-mean bound. We also show that ΦαΦ_αΦα​ is the trace functional Qα,1/2Q_{α,1/2}Qα,1/2​ associated with the ααα-zzz Renyi divergence, which connects the directed overlap with the known ααα-zzz Renyi theory. We then determine the exact data-processing behavior of the symmetrized family. Universal monotonicity under quantum channels holds only at α=12α=\tfrac12α=21​; for every other value of ααα, it already fails under diagonal pinching of faithful real qubit states. In finite dimensions, we give a complete spectral description of the equality cases and provide explicit noncommuting examples. We also discuss some natural questions about overlap-preserving maps. Finally, we prove that the difference between the Petz overlap and the directed trace-norm overlap vanishes exactly when ρρρ and σσσ commute, without requiring either faithfulness or any additional support assumption.