Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2608.28946

On the entropy of a pseudo-density matrix

James Fullwood, Boyu Yang

quant-phSubmitted Aug 28, 2026• Announced Sep 1, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The pseudo-density matrix (PDM) formalism naturally extends the notion of density operator to the spatiotemporal domain. While PDMs are Hermitian and of unit trace, they admit negative eigenvalues when encoding temporal correlations unattainable for spacelike separated systems. Consequently, there have been various approaches to extending the von~Neumann entropy---which is only defined for positive operators---to PDMs. Here, we prove that there exists a unique extension of the von~Neumann entropy functional to Hermitian matrices of unit trace satisfying two simple assumptions: unitary invariance and strong additivity with respect to affine combinations within the interval $[-1,1]$, which we prove contains the eigenvalues of a PDM. We also prove that this unique extension of von~Neumann entropy to PDMs is subadditive for single qubit dynamics, and we analyze its behavior in a number of examples.

Comments
21 pages and 3 figures

Related papers

Quantum dynamics as a pseudo-density matrix

James Fullwood

While in relativity theory space evolves over time into a single entity known as spacetime, quantum theory lacks a standard notion of how to encapsulate the dynamical evolution of a quantum state into a single "state over time". Recently it was emphasized in the work of Fitzsimons, Jones and Vedral that if such a state over time is to encode not only spatial but also temporal correlations which exist within a quantum dynamical process, then it should be represented not by a density matrix, but rather, by a pseudo-density matrix . A pseudo-density matrix is a hermitian matrix of unit trace whose marginals are density matrices, and in this work, we make use a factorization system for quantum channels to associate a pseudo-density matrix with a quantum system which is to evolve according to a finite sequence of quantum channels. We then view such a pseudo-density matrix as the quantum analog of a local patch of spacetime, and we make an in-depth mathematical analysis of such quantum dynamical pseudo-density matrices and the properties they satisfy. We also show how to explicitly extract quantum dynamics from a given pseudo-density matrix, thus solving an open problem posed in the literature.

arXiv:2304.03954•Quantum•Apr 24, 2025•10 citations

Quantum correlations which imply causation

Joseph F. Fitzsimons, Jonathan A. Jones, Vlatko Vedral

In ordinary, non-relativistic, quantum physics, time enters only as a parameter and not as an observable: a state of a physical system is specified at a given time and then evolved according to the prescribed dynamics. While the state can, and usually does, extend across all space, it is only defined at one instant of time. Here we ask what would happen if we defined the notion of the quantum density matrix for multiple spatial and temporal measurements. We introduce the concept of a pseudo-density matrix (PDM) which treats space and time indiscriminately. This matrix in general fails to be positive for measurement events which do not occur simultaneously, motivating us to define a measure of causality that discriminates between spatial and temporal correlations. Important properties of this measure, such as monotonicity under local operations, are proved. Two qubit NMR experiments are presented that illustrate how a temporal pseudo-density matrix approaches a genuinely allowed density matrix as the amount of decoherence is increased between two consecutive measurements.

Scientific Reports•Dec 17, 2015•123 citations

Non-Hermitian Generalization of Rényi Entropy

Daili Li, Chao Zheng

From their conception to present times, different concepts and definitions of entropy take key roles in a variety of areas from thermodynamics to information science, and they can be applied to both classical and quantum systems. Among them is the Rényi entropy. It is able to characterize various properties of classical information with a unified concise form. We focus on the quantum counterpart, which unifies the von Neumann entropy, max- and min-entropy, collision entropy, etc. It can only be directly applied to Hermitian systems because it usually requires that the density matrices is normalized. For a non-Hermitian system, the evolved density matrix may not be normalized; i.e., the trace can be larger or less than one as the time evolution. However, it is not well-defined for the Rényi entropy with a non-normalized probability distribution relevant to the density matrix of a non-Hermitian system, especially when the trace of the non-normalized density matrix is larger than one. In this work, we investigate how to describe the Rényi entropy for non-Hermitian systems more appropriately. We obtain a concisely and generalized form of α-Rényi entropy, which we extend the unified order-α from finite positive real numbers to zero and infinity. Our generalized α-Rényi entropy can be directly calculated using both of the normalized and non-normalized density matrices so that it is able to describe non-Hermitian entropy dynamics. We illustrate the necessity of our generalization by showing the differences between ours and the conventional Rényi entropy for non-Hermitian detuning two-level systems.

Entropy•Oct 30, 2022•21 citations

Quantum Correlations in Time Domain

Suman Mandal, Supervisor Prof. Prasanta K. Panigrahi

Quantum correlations have a very fundamental significance in the field of quantum computation and quantum information theory. Though it is very well defined in the study of spatially separated systems, quantum mechanics allows for the full range of correlation between temporally separated systems too. In this project, our aim is to study it's notion in the time domain. Recently Joseph F. Fitzsimon et al. has given a new approach to the study of quantum correlation in the time domain by introducing the concept of Pseudo-Density Matrix (PDM) whereas, a very fundamental development on the temporal correlation has been done by Legget- Garg in 1985( which can't be accounted by any macro-realist theory). Here, we set out to understand the PDM notion for different cases and the significance of it to hold the correlations in time domain using a quantifying tool. This study is extended to find out the correspondences or incompatibility of it with Legget-Garg inequality and Concurrence - a measure of quantum entanglement.

•Apr 1, 2017•0 citations

Maps on Quantum States in -algebras Preserving von Neumann Entropy or Schatten -norm of Convex Combinations

Marcell Gaál

Abstract Very recently, Karder and Petek completely described maps on density matrices (positive semidefinite matrices with unit trace) preserving certain entropy-like convex functionals of any convex combination. As a result, maps could be characterized that preserve von Neumann entropy or Schatten $p$ -norm of any convex combination of quantum states (whose mathematical representatives are the density matrices). In this note we consider these latter two problems on the set of invertible density operators, in a much more general setting, on the set of positive invertible elements with unit trace in a $C^{\ast }$ -algebra.

Canadian Mathematical Bulletin•Mar 22, 2018•3 citations

Randomized Linear Algebra Approaches to Estimate the Von Neumann Entropy of Density Matrices

Eugenia-Maria Kontopoulou, Gregory Dexter, Wojciech Szpankowski A +2 more

, named after John von Neumann, is an extension of the classical concept of entropy to the field of quantum mechanics. From a numerical perspective, von Neumann entropy can be computed simply by computing all eigenvalues of a density matrix, an operation that could be prohibitively expensive for large-scale density matrices. We present and analyze three randomized algorithms to approximate von Neumann entropy of real density matrices: our algorithms leverage recent developments in the Randomized Numerical Linear Algebra (RandNLA) literature, such as randomized trace estimators, provable bounds for the power method, and the use of random projections to approximate the eigenvalues of a matrix. All three algorithms come with provable accuracy guarantees and our experimental evaluations support our theoretical findings showing considerable speedup with small loss in accuracy.

arXiv:1801.01072•IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)•Jun 1, 2018•15 citations
The pseudo-density matrix (PDM) formalism naturally extends the notion of density operator to the spatiotemporal domain. While PDMs are Hermitian and of unit trace, they admit negative eigenvalues when encoding temporal correlations unattainable for spacelike separated systems. Consequently, there have been various approaches to extending the vonNeumann entropy---which is only defined for positive operators---to PDMs. Here, we prove that there exists a unique extension of the vonNeumann entropy functional to Hermitian matrices of unit trace satisfying two simple assumptions: unitary invariance and strong additivity with respect to affine combinations within the interval [−1,1][-1,1][−1,1], which we prove contains the eigenvalues of a PDM. We also prove that this unique extension of von~Neumann entropy to PDMs is subadditive for single qubit dynamics, and we analyze its behavior in a number of examples.
While in relativity theory space evolves over time into a single entity known as spacetime, quantum theory lacks a standard notion of how to encapsulate the dynamical evolution of a quantum state into a single "state over time". Recently it was emphasized in the work of Fitzsimons, Jones and Vedral that if such a state over time is to encode not only spatial but also temporal correlations which exist within a quantum dynamical process, then it should be represented not by a density matrix, but rather, by a pseudo-density matrix . A pseudo-density matrix is a hermitian matrix of unit trace whose marginals are density matrices, and in this work, we make use a factorization system for quantum channels to associate a pseudo-density matrix with a quantum system which is to evolve according to a finite sequence of quantum channels. We then view such a pseudo-density matrix as the quantum analog of a local patch of spacetime, and we make an in-depth mathematical analysis of such quantum dynamical pseudo-density matrices and the properties they satisfy. We also show how to explicitly extract quantum dynamics from a given pseudo-density matrix, thus solving an open problem posed in the literature.
In ordinary, non-relativistic, quantum physics, time enters only as a parameter and not as an observable: a state of a physical system is specified at a given time and then evolved according to the prescribed dynamics. While the state can, and usually does, extend across all space, it is only defined at one instant of time. Here we ask what would happen if we defined the notion of the quantum density matrix for multiple spatial and temporal measurements. We introduce the concept of a pseudo-density matrix (PDM) which treats space and time indiscriminately. This matrix in general fails to be positive for measurement events which do not occur simultaneously, motivating us to define a measure of causality that discriminates between spatial and temporal correlations. Important properties of this measure, such as monotonicity under local operations, are proved. Two qubit NMR experiments are presented that illustrate how a temporal pseudo-density matrix approaches a genuinely allowed density matrix as the amount of decoherence is increased between two consecutive measurements.
From their conception to present times, different concepts and definitions of entropy take key roles in a variety of areas from thermodynamics to information science, and they can be applied to both classical and quantum systems. Among them is the Rényi entropy. It is able to characterize various properties of classical information with a unified concise form. We focus on the quantum counterpart, which unifies the von Neumann entropy, max- and min-entropy, collision entropy, etc. It can only be directly applied to Hermitian systems because it usually requires that the density matrices is normalized. For a non-Hermitian system, the evolved density matrix may not be normalized; i.e., the trace can be larger or less than one as the time evolution. However, it is not well-defined for the Rényi entropy with a non-normalized probability distribution relevant to the density matrix of a non-Hermitian system, especially when the trace of the non-normalized density matrix is larger than one. In this work, we investigate how to describe the Rényi entropy for non-Hermitian systems more appropriately. We obtain a concisely and generalized form of α-Rényi entropy, which we extend the unified order-α from finite positive real numbers to zero and infinity. Our generalized α-Rényi entropy can be directly calculated using both of the normalized and non-normalized density matrices so that it is able to describe non-Hermitian entropy dynamics. We illustrate the necessity of our generalization by showing the differences between ours and the conventional Rényi entropy for non-Hermitian detuning two-level systems.
Quantum correlations have a very fundamental significance in the field of quantum computation and quantum information theory. Though it is very well defined in the study of spatially separated systems, quantum mechanics allows for the full range of correlation between temporally separated systems too. In this project, our aim is to study it's notion in the time domain. Recently Joseph F. Fitzsimon et al. has given a new approach to the study of quantum correlation in the time domain by introducing the concept of Pseudo-Density Matrix (PDM) whereas, a very fundamental development on the temporal correlation has been done by Legget- Garg in 1985( which can't be accounted by any macro-realist theory). Here, we set out to understand the PDM notion for different cases and the significance of it to hold the correlations in time domain using a quantifying tool. This study is extended to find out the correspondences or incompatibility of it with Legget-Garg inequality and Concurrence - a measure of quantum entanglement.
Abstract Very recently, Karder and Petek completely described maps on density matrices (positive semidefinite matrices with unit trace) preserving certain entropy-like convex functionals of any convex combination. As a result, maps could be characterized that preserve von Neumann entropy or Schatten ppp -norm of any convex combination of quantum states (whose mathematical representatives are the density matrices). In this note we consider these latter two problems on the set of invertible density operators, in a much more general setting, on the set of positive invertible elements with unit trace in a C∗C^{\ast }C∗ -algebra.
, named after John von Neumann, is an extension of the classical concept of entropy to the field of quantum mechanics. From a numerical perspective, von Neumann entropy can be computed simply by computing all eigenvalues of a density matrix, an operation that could be prohibitively expensive for large-scale density matrices. We present and analyze three randomized algorithms to approximate von Neumann entropy of real density matrices: our algorithms leverage recent developments in the Randomized Numerical Linear Algebra (RandNLA) literature, such as randomized trace estimators, provable bounds for the power method, and the use of random projections to approximate the eigenvalues of a matrix. All three algorithms come with provable accuracy guarantees and our experimental evaluations support our theoretical findings showing considerable speedup with small loss in accuracy.