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arXiv:2605.15036

Excitation Flow, Positivity, and Fisher Information for Open Subsystems of an $N$-Qubit Network

Tommy Chin, Sarah Shandera

quant-phSubmitted May 14, 2026• Announced May 15, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We derive closed-form propagators for any $K$-qubit subsystem of a closed $N$-qubit network with a single conserved excitation. A single transition amplitude simultaneously controls excitation flow between subsystems, the positivity and complete positivity of every propagator, the entanglement entropy of every subsystem, and the quantum Fisher information for global parameters. Positivity and complete positivity coincide, determined solely by the direction of excitation flow, independently of subsystem size, coherence, or entanglement structure. A propagator is positive and completely positive if and only if it contracts the subsystem state toward its fixed point. The ensemble of propagators collectively constrains global properties inaccessible to any single subsystem. For single-qubit subsystems, we characterize the ensemble's fixed-point distribution and domain of positivity, finding a band of states that lies inside the positivity domain of every propagator yet is never visited by the physical dynamics. The quantum Fisher information decomposes into state and process contributions over any observation window $[t_1,t_2]$, with the state contribution bounded while the process contribution grows secularly. The total Fisher information is minimal when all future propagators are nonpositive and not completely positive, and near its maximum when they are positive and completely positive.

Comments
17 pages, 9 figures

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Quantum Fisher information in a quenched p+ipp + ipp+ip superfluid
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