We investigate the fundamental limits of entanglement generation under bipartite Hamiltonian dynamics when only finite physical resources-specifically, bounded energy variance-are available. Using the relative entropy of entanglement, we derive a closed analytical expression for the instantaneous entanglement generation rate for arbitrary pure states and Hamiltonians expressed in the Schmidt basis. We find that constraints based solely on the mean energy of the Hamiltonian are insufficient to bound the entanglement generation rate, whereas imposing a variance constraint ensures a finite and well-defined maximum. We fully characterize the Hamiltonians that achieve this optimal rate, establishing a direct relation between their imaginary components in the Schmidt basis and the structure of the optimal initial states. For systems without ancillas, we obtain a closed-form expression for the maximal rate in terms of the surprisal variance of the Schmidt coefficients and identify the family of optimal states and Hamiltonians. We further extend our analysis to scenarios where Alice and Bob may employ local ancillary systems: using a matrix-analytic framework and a refined description of the Hamiltonians allowed by the physical constraints, we derive an explicit optimization formula and characterize the attainable enhancement in entanglement generation.
We investigate the fundamental limits of entanglement generation under bipartite Hamiltonian dynamics when only finite physical resources-specifically, bounded energy variance-are available. Using the relative entropy of entanglement, we derive a closed analytical expression for the instantaneous entanglement generation rate for arbitrary pure states and Hamiltonians expressed in the Schmidt basis. We find that constraints based solely on the mean energy of the Hamiltonian are insufficient to bound the entanglement generation rate, whereas imposing a variance constraint ensures a finite and well-defined maximum. We fully characterize the Hamiltonians that achieve this optimal rate, establishing a direct relation between their imaginary components in the Schmidt basis and the structure of the optimal initial states. For systems without ancillas, we obtain a closed-form expression for the maximal rate in terms of the surprisal variance of the Schmidt coefficients and identify the family of optimal states and Hamiltonians. We further extend our analysis to scenarios where Alice and Bob may employ local ancillary systems: using a matrix-analytic framework and a refined description of the Hamiltonians allowed by the physical constraints, we derive an explicit optimization formula and characterize the attainable enhancement in entanglement generation.
The speed limit on entanglement is defined as the maximal rate at which entanglement can be generated or degraded in a physical process. We derive the speed limits on entanglement, using the relative entropy of entanglement and trace-distance entanglement, for unitary and arbitrary quantum dynamics, where we assume that the dynamics of the closest separable state can be approximately described by the closest separable dynamics of the actual dynamics of the system. For the unitary dynamics of isolated bipartite systems which are described by pure states, the rate of entanglement production is bounded by the product of fluctuations of the system's driving Hamiltonian and the surprisal operator, with an additional term reflecting the time-dependent nature of the closest separable state. Removing restrictions on the purity of the input and on the unitarity of the evolution, the two terms in the bound get suitably altered. Furthermore, we find a lower bound on the time required to generate or degrade a certain amount of entanglement by arbitrary quantum dynamics. We demonstrate the tightness of our speed limits on entanglement by considering quantum processes of practical interest.
We explore methods to generate quantum coherence through unitary evolutions, by introducing and studying the coherence generating capacity of Hamiltonians. This quantity is defined as the maximum derivative of coherence that can be achieved by a Hamiltonian. By adopting the relative entropy of coherence as our figure of merit, we evaluate the maximal coherence generating capacity with the constraint of a bounded Hilbert-Schmidt norm for the Hamiltonian. Our investigation yields closed-form expressions for both Hamiltonians and quantum states that induce the maximal derivative of coherence under these conditions. Specifically, for qubit systems, we solve this problem comprehensively for any given Hamiltonian, identifying the quantum states that lead to the largest coherence derivative induced by the Hamiltonian. Our investigation enables a precise identification of conditions under which quantum coherence is optimally enhanced, offering valuable insights for the manipulation and control of quantum coherence in quantum systems.
The notion of capacity of entanglement is the quantum information theoretic counterpart of the heat capacity which is defined as the second cumulant of the entanglement spectrum. Given any bipartite pure state, we can define the capacity of entanglement as the variance of the modular Hamiltonian in the reduced state of any of the subsystems. Here, we study the dynamics of this quantity under a nonlocal Hamiltonian. Specifically, we address the following question: Given an arbitrary nonlocal Hamiltonian, what is the capacity of entanglement that the system can possess? As a useful application, we show that the quantum speed limit for creating the entanglement is not only governed by the fluctuation in the nonlocal Hamiltonian, but also depends inversely on the time average of the square root of the capacity of entanglement. Furthermore, we discuss this quantity for a general self-inverse Hamiltonian and provide a bound on the rate of capacity of entanglement. Towards the end, we generalize the capacity of entanglement for bipartite mixed states based on the relative entropy of entanglement and show that the above definition reduces to the capacity of entanglement for pure bipartite states. Our results can have several applications in diverse areas of physics.
We investigate the speed at which entanglement can be generated by an interaction parameter encoded in a two-qubit Hamiltonian, quantified by the derivative of concurrence with respect to the coupling parameter. For arbitrary pure two-qubit states evolving under a general nonlocal interaction, we derive a bound relating this entanglement speed to the quantum Fisher information (QFI). Specifically, we show that ∣∂gC∣≤FQ(g)1−C2, where FQ(g) is the QFI associated with estimation of the parameter. This establishes FQ1−C2 as an upper bound on the speed of entanglement generation in parameter space. We further derive the saturation conditions and identify the states and dynamical regimes for which equality is attained. At saturation, concurrence evolves at the maximum rate permitted by the distinguishability of the underlying quantum state. These results reveal a direct connection between quantum metrology and entanglement generation, showing that the same information-theoretic quantity that governs parameter-estimation precision also limits the speed at which entanglement resources can be created.
We analyze many-body entanglement in interacting fermionic systems by using the M-body reduced density matrix. We demonstrate that if a particle number conserving fermionic Hamiltonian contains only up to M-body interaction terms, then its N-particle ground state cannot be maximally M-body entangled. As a key step in the proof, we show that the energy expectation value of a maximally M-body mixed state is equal to the spectral mean of the Hamiltonian on the corresponding N-particle subspace. We further demonstrate that the many-body entanglement structure of a ground state can place quantitative constraint on the interaction strength of its parent Hamiltonian. We illustrate the theorem and its implications in Hubbard and extended SYK models. Going beyond ground states, we analyze entanglement generation under unitary dynamics from Slater-determinant initial states in these models. We determine early-time growth and estimate entanglement saturation times. Finally, we derive explicit symmetry-refined saturation upper bounds for M-body entanglement in the presence of an Abelian symmetry.
How much classical information can a noisy optical channel carry when both signal energy and preshared entanglement are limited? This work gives an exact capacity frontier for this joint resource problem. It allows one to determine the best asymptotic communication rate, price the benefit of additional entanglement, and distinguish the effect of tolerating errors from that of changing how entanglement is supplied. Exact capacity under two resource constraints The setting is any fixed bosonic Gaussian channel Φ with finitely many input and output modes. Signal energy is measured by a positive quadratic Hamiltonian HG=21RTGR, with G>0 and ground energy E0; R collects the canonical quadratures. The budgets satisfy E≥E0 and P≥0. For an n-use code, the mean total signal energy is at most nE, while the same initially shared maximally entangled state has Schmidt rank Kn satisfying logKn≤nP. Thus P is a strictly supplied entanglement rate. Encoders may be arbitrary joint quantum operations, and decoding may be collective. The classical capacity is C(E,P)=maxU≥Vphysical21Tr(GU)≤E,SG(V)≤P[SG(ΦU)+SG(V)−SG(ΦcV)]. Here V is a Gaussian seed covariance, U is the average-input covariance, and U−V is the displacement-modulation covariance. A covariance is physical when V+iΩ/2≥0, where Ω is the canonical commutation matrix and the vacuum covariance is I/2. The notation SG denotes Gaussian von Neumann entropy, and Φc is the full complementary channel, including any environment purification. All logarithms are natural, so rates are in nats per channel use. This formula replaces optimization over arbitrary quantum block codes by a finite-dimensional covariance optimization. It supplies both an achievable rate and a converse against non-Gaussian, correlated encodings. At P=0, it also determines the unassisted capacity of general fixed finite-mode Gaussian channels, including channels without a passive decomposition into independent modes. The reduction specifies the exact capacity value; it does not require a closed-form optimizer for every device. Energy and strict entanglement supply respond differently to errors For a fixed allowed average error 0≤ε<1, the exact capacity under the mean-energy constraint is Cε(E,P)=C(E0+1−εE−E0,P). Allowing failure rescales the mean energy above the ground state, but leaves the strict initial entanglement budget unchanged. The proof uses an exponential strong converse for codes whose inputs obey a hard total-energy cutoff. In a different model, where a readable flag permits random entanglement supply constrained only on average, the work establishes an achievable bound and a strict small-supply advantage for thermal attenuation at positive energy and fixed nonzero error. That comparison identifies the operational importance of the supply rule; it is not a complete capacity characterization of the flagged model. The communication value of entanglement For a thermal attenuator, let 0<η<1 be the transmissivity, b>0 the output mean photon number for vacuum input, and N the input mean photon number. Write its capacity as CN(P), and define g(N)=(N+1)log(N+1)−NlogN. The gain from entanglement obeys the sharp bound 0≤CN(P)−CN(0)≤1+bηP. For every fixed N>0, the coefficient η/(1+b) is attained as the initial right derivative at P=0. In the low-photon limit, the stronger resource law is CN(P)−CN(0)=1+bηmin{P,g(N)}+O(N),N↓0. The remainder is uniform over P≥0 at fixed η and positive b. Noise therefore determines the conversion efficiency, while g(N)∼Nlog(1/N) sets the entanglement scale sufficient for saturation. This uniform limit concerns the entanglement budget, not a simultaneous limit of vanishing thermal noise. Multimode resource allocation and scope A coupled two-mode example demonstrates how the frontier can guide resource allocation. A global resource-price certificate proves that a legal covariance pair exceeds the entire common-passive-frame Gaussian profile hull by at least 10−5 nat per two-mode use at specified budgets. The comparison includes all common passive frames, local squeezing and average-resource mixtures. The mechanism is the freedom to choose different mode allocations for the seed and average input; the benchmark is this precisely defined Gaussian class, rather than all unentangled encodings. The universal scope is the stated family of fixed finite-mode Gaussian channels, positive quadratic signal costs and strict initial maximally entangled Schmidt-rank supply, with unrestricted joint encoding and collective decoding. The model has no feedback or credit for returned entanglement. The capacity frontier and its resource consequences provide a common way to assess optical communication designs under these operational constraints.