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arXiv:2601.20924

Resource-Theoretic Quantifiers of Weak and Strong Symmetry Breaking: Strong Entanglement Asymmetry and Beyond

Yuya Kusuki, Sridip Pal, Hiroyasu Tajima

hep-thcond-mat.stat-mechquant-phSubmitted Jan 28, 2026• Announced Jan 30, 2026• 0 citations• Revised Oct 5, 2026 (v3)
v1 · Jan 28, 2026v2 · Apr 6, 2026v3 · Oct 5, 2026
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Abstract

Quantifying how much a quantum state breaks a symmetry is essential for characterizing phases, nonequilibrium dynamics, and open-system behavior. For mixed states, however, conventional diagnostics of weak symmetry breaking can miss a stronger form of symmetry breaking associated with the possibility of exchanging conserved charges with an environment. We develop a resource theory of strong symmetry breaking by identifying the appropriate free states and free operations, and, for channels on a fixed system, by showing that the latter are precisely the operations realizable without exchanging the conserved charge with the environment. We systematically construct measures of strong symmetry breaking, including strong entanglement asymmetry and covariance matrices of symmetry generators, for a broad class of symmetry groups. We further completely characterize i.i.d. convertibility between arbitrary states under any compact Lie group strong symmetry. This identifies the combinations of resource-theoretically valid measures that quantify strong symmetry breaking for arbitrary states, including all mixed states. In particular, for $U(1)$ symmetry, if the states have positive variances of the conserved quantity and equal strong-symmetry periods, the conversion rate is completely determined by the variance ratio whenever the input is pure or the output is weak symmetric. Thus, for these state conversions, the variance of the conserved quantity plays an operational role analogous to that of entanglement entropy in entanglement theory or quantum Fisher information in the resource theory of weak asymmetry. We further show how weak symmetry breaking is irreversibly converted into strong symmetry breaking in open-system dynamics. We illustrate the framework with examples from quantum field theory, strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking, and a strong-symmetry analogue of Mpemba-type dynamics.

Comments
97 pages, 4 figures, v3: substantially expanded with new results

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Quantifying how much a quantum state breaks a symmetry is essential for characterizing phases, nonequilibrium dynamics, and open-system behavior. For mixed states, however, conventional diagnostics of weak symmetry breaking can miss a stronger form of symmetry breaking associated with the possibility of exchanging conserved charges with an environment. We develop a resource theory of strong symmetry breaking by identifying the appropriate free states and free operations, and, for channels on a fixed system, by showing that the latter are precisely the operations realizable without exchanging the conserved charge with the environment. We systematically construct measures of strong symmetry breaking, including strong entanglement asymmetry and covariance matrices of symmetry generators, for a broad class of symmetry groups. We further completely characterize i.i.d. convertibility between arbitrary states under any compact Lie group strong symmetry. This identifies the combinations of resource-theoretically valid measures that quantify strong symmetry breaking for arbitrary states, including all mixed states. In particular, for U(1)U(1)U(1) symmetry, if the states have positive variances of the conserved quantity and equal strong-symmetry periods, the conversion rate is completely determined by the variance ratio whenever the input is pure or the output is weak symmetric. Thus, for these state conversions, the variance of the conserved quantity plays an operational role analogous to that of entanglement entropy in entanglement theory or quantum Fisher information in the resource theory of weak asymmetry. We further show how weak symmetry breaking is irreversibly converted into strong symmetry breaking in open-system dynamics. We illustrate the framework with examples from quantum field theory, strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking, and a strong-symmetry analogue of Mpemba-type dynamics.
Resource theories provide a universal framework for quantifying properties of quantum states, such as entanglement, magic, athermality, and asymmetry, as resources under various constraints encountered in quantum science. Since realistic settings typically impose several constraints at once, it is important to study multi-resource theories that combine them. Among these, combinations with asymmetry are especially natural, as symmetry is fundamental and ubiquitous in physics. Here we develop a general theory that treats combinations of finite-group asymmetry with a broad range of resource theories in a unified manner. Our key observation is that the effect of combining the two constraints is governed by the accessibility of symmetry information under the underlying resource theory: whether the information needed for the conversion can be extracted from the input and used to control free operations. If this can be done with asymptotically vanishing error, we show that the conversion rate of the combined theory equals the smaller of the rates of the two constituent theories, so combining them incurs no additional cost. This condition holds for LOCC on arbitrary mixed multipartite states, magic-state conversion of multiqubit systems under Clifford symmetries, and Gibbs-preserving operations. Thermal operations, being time-translation covariant, can access only limited symmetry information, giving an additional compatibility condition between the two symmetries. We also analyze symmetry imposed on elementary operations rather than only on the resulting channel. We establish analogous results for LOCC and thermal operations under suitable assumptions, and for magic when the symmetry is represented by Pauli operators. Finally, we show that finite-group symmetry does not reduce the asymptotic ergotropy per copy and hence introduces no new completely passive states.
In recent years, in quantum information theory, there has been a remarkable development in the general theoretical framework for studying symmetry in dynamics. This development, called resource theory of asymmetry, is expected to have a wide range of applications, from accurate time measurements to black-hole physics. Despite its importance, the foundation of resource theory of asymmetry still has room for expansion. An important problem is in quantifying the amount of resource. When the symmetry prescribed U(1) or R\mathbb{R}R, i.e., with a single conserved quantity, the quantum Fisher information is known as a resource measure that has suitable properties and a clear physical meaning related to quantum fluctuation of the conserved quantity. However, it is not clear what is the resource measure with such suitable properties when a general symmetry prevails for which there are multiple conserved quantities. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap. Specifically, we show that the quantum Fisher information matrix is a resource measure whenever a connected linear Lie group describes the symmetry. We also consider the physical meaning of this matrix and see which properties that the quantum Fisher information has when the symmetry is described by U(1) or R\mathbb{R}R can be inherited by the quantum Fisher information matrix.
Symmetry in mixed quantum states can manifest in two distinct forms: , where each individual pure state in the quantum ensemble is symmetric with the same charge, and , which applies only to the entire ensemble. This paper explores a novel type of spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) where a strong symmetry is broken to a weak one. While the SSB of a weak symmetry is measured by the long-ranged two-point correlation function, the strong-to-weak SSB (SWSSB) is measured by the . We prove that SWSSB is a universal property of mixed-state quantum phases, in the sense that the phenomenon of SWSSB is robust against symmetric low-depth local quantum channels. We also show that the symmetry breaking is “spontaneous” in the sense that the effect of a local symmetry-breaking measurement cannot be recovered locally. We argue that a thermal state at a nonzero temperature in the canonical ensemble (with fixed symmetry charge) should have spontaneously broken strong symmetry. Additionally, we study nonthermal scenarios where decoherence induces SWSSB, leading to phase transitions described by classical statistical models with bond randomness. In particular, the SWSSB transition of a decohered Ising model can be viewed as the “ungauged” version of the celebrated toric-code decodability transition. We confirm that, in the decohered Ising model, the SWSSB transition defined by the fidelity correlator is the only physical transition in terms of channel recoverability. We also comment on other (inequivalent) definitions of SWSSB, through correlation functions with higher Rényi indices.
Symmetry breaking underlies diverse phenomena from phase transitions in condensed matter to fundamental interactions in gauge theories. Despite many proposed indicators, a general quantification of symmetry breaking that is faithful, computable, and valid in the thermodynamic limit has remained elusive. Here, within quantum resource theory, we propose the quantum Fisher information (QFI) as such a measure. We demonstrate its utility by computing QFI for paradigmatic models: in the BCS superconductor, the QFI counts the number of Cooper pairs; in the transverse-field XY spin chains, it captures topological phase transition that has no local order parameter; and in quantum quench dynamics, it allows us to exactly derive the microscopic origin and conditions of the quantum Mpemba effect in terms of excitation propagation, including in the thermodynamic limit--beyond the reach of previous analyses. Our results show that the QFI, which is a complete resource monotone in the resource theory of asymmetry that plays the role of entanglement entropy in entanglement theory, faithfully captures symmetry breaking in condensed-matter systems. These results highlight the QFI as a universal and physically meaningful diagnostic of symmetry breaking in both equilibrium and non-equilibrium quantum many-body systems.
Quantifying physical concepts in terms of the ultimate performance of a given task has been central to theoretical progress, as illustrated by thermodynamic entropy and entanglement entropy, which quantify irreversibility and quantum correlations, respectively. Symmetry breaking is equally universal yet lacks such an operational quantification. While an operational characterization of symmetry breaking through asymptotic state-conversion efficiency is a central goal of the resource theory of asymmetry (RTA), such a characterization has so far been completed only for the U(1) group among continuous symmetries. Here, we identify the complete measure of symmetry breaking for a general continuous symmetry described by any compact Lie group. Specifically, we show that the asymptotic conversion rate between many copies of pure states in RTA is determined by the quantum geometric tensor, thereby establishing it as the complete measure of symmetry breaking. As an immediate consequence of our conversion rate formula, we also resolve the Marvian-Spekkens conjecture on conditions for reversible conversion in RTA, which has remained unproven for over a decade. Leveraging the connection between symmetry breaking and the theory of quantum reference frames, we also systematically introduce a standardized reference state for frameness based on our asymptotic conversion theory. In addition, by applying our analysis to a standard quantum-thermodynamic scenario, we show that asymptotic state conversion in contact with heat baths generally requires macroscopic coherence in the thermodynamic limit.
Quantum maps are fundamental to quantum information theory and open quantum systems. Covariant or weakly symmetric quantum maps, in particular, play a key role in defining quantum evolutions that respect thermodynamics, establish free operations in resource theories, and are consistent with transformations of quantum reference frames. To implement quantum maps in the laboratory, one typically engineers a physical dilation, which corresponds to a unitary evolution entangling the system with an environment. This work systematically explores how weak symmetries of quantum maps manifest in their dilations. We demonstrate that for various classes of physical dilations, including Hamiltonian-driven dilations and short-time collision models that simulate Markovian open quantum dynamics, weak symmetries always lead to strong symmetries in the dilated evolution, resulting in conserved quantities in the system-environment space. We also characterize the subspace where these symmetries arise using Krylov subspaces. Moreover, we show that some different types of physical dilations have no constraints on the dilated evolution, requiring no strong symmetry. Finally, we complement our findings with a variety of illustrative and pedagogical examples. Our results provide essential guidelines for constructing physical dilations of quantum maps, offering a comprehensive understanding of how symmetries shape their implementations in a laboratory or on a quantum computer.