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arXiv:2506.10215

Isoholonomic inequalities and speed limits for cyclic quantum systems

Ole Sönnerborn

Published Jun 11, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum speed limits set fundamental lower bounds on the time required for a quantum system to evolve between states. Traditional bounds, such as those by Mandelstam-Tamm and Margolus-Levitin, rely on state distinguishability and become trivial for cyclic evolutions where the initial and final states coincide. In this work, we explore an alternative approach based on isoholonomic inequalities, which bound the length of closed trajectories in the state space in terms of their holonomy. Building on a gauge-theoretic framework for mixed-state geometric phases, we extend the concept of isoholonomic inequalities to closed curves of isospectral and isodegenerate density operators. This allows us to derive a new quantum speed limit that remains nontrivial for cyclic evolutions. Our results reveal deep connections between the temporal behavior of cyclic quantum systems and holonomy.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2506.10215

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Quantum speed limits set fundamental lower bounds on the time required for a quantum system to evolve between states. Traditional bounds, such as those by Mandelstam-Tamm and Margolus-Levitin, rely on state distinguishability and become trivial for cyclic evolutions where the initial and final states coincide. In this work, we explore an alternative approach based on isoholonomic inequalities, which bound the length of closed trajectories in the state space in terms of their holonomy. Building on a gauge-theoretic framework for mixed-state geometric phases, we extend the concept of isoholonomic inequalities to closed curves of isospectral and isodegenerate density operators. This allows us to derive a new quantum speed limit that remains nontrivial for cyclic evolutions. Our results reveal deep connections between the temporal behavior of cyclic quantum systems and holonomy.
Abstract. Inequalities of Mandelstam-Tamm and Margolus-Levitin type provide lower bounds on the time it takes for a quantum system to evolve from one state into another. Knowledge of such bounds, called quantum speed limits, is of utmost importance in virtually all areas of physics, where determination of the minimum time required for a quantum process is of interest. Most Mandelstam-Tamm and Margolus-Levitin inequalities found in the literature have been derived from growth estimates for the Bures length, which is a statistical distance measure. In this paper we derive such inequalities by differential geometric methods, and we compare the obtained quantum speed limits with those involving the Bures length. We also characterize the Hamiltonians which optimize the evolution time for generic finite-level quantum systems. 1.
Inequalities of Mandelstam–Tamm (MT) and Margolus–Levitin (ML) type provide lower bounds on the time that it takes for a quantum system to evolve from one state into another. Knowledge of such bounds, called quantum speed limits, is of utmost importance in virtually all areas of physics, where determination of the minimum time required for a quantum process is of interest. Most MT and ML inequalities found in the literature have been derived from growth estimates for the Bures length, which is a statistical distance measure. In this paper we derive such inequalities by differential geometric methods, and we compare the quantum speed limits obtained with those involving the Bures length. We also characterize the Hamiltonians which optimize the evolution time for generic finite-level quantum systems.
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The Mandelstam-Tamm and Margolus-Levitin inequalities play an important role in the study of quantum-mechanical processes in nature since they provide general limits on the speed of dynamical evolution. However, to date there has been only one derivation of the Margolus-Levitin inequality. In this paper, alternative geometric derivations for both inequalities are obtained from the statistical distance between quantum states. The inequalities are shown to hold for unitary evolution of pure and mixed states, and a counterexample to the inequalities is given for evolution described by completely positive trace-preserving maps. The counterexample shows that there is no quantum speed limit for nonunitary evolution.
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Quantum speed limits describe how fast a system can evolve from one state to another. There are several well-known quantum speed limits such as the Mandelstam–Tamm and Margolus–Levitin bounds which were originally derived for pure states and are not always tight for mixed states. In this thesis a stronger bound is derived for mixed qubit states, which has been shown to be tight, by using additional information about the system. We chose to focus on a single qubit and use the Bloch representation to describe its evolution geometrically. Due to both the energy and the purity of the system being conserved under unitary time evolution, the Bloch vector moves in a circle. By expressing the fidelity between the initial and final state in terms of Bloch vectors, we can derive a stricter quantum speed limit for mixed qubit states. This new lower bound depends on both fidelity and purity and is tighter than the Margolus–Levitin bound. The result shows that taking conserved quantities like purity into account can lead to improved quantum speed limits and similar ideas might be useful for more complex systems as well.