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Extreme Observables and Optimal Measurements in Quantum Theory

Erkka Haapasalo

Published Nov 21, 2015• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Optimization of quantum measurement processes has a pivotal role in carrying out better, more accurate or less disrupting, measurements and experiments on a quantum system. Especially, convex optimization, i.e., identifying the extreme points of the convex sets and subsets of quantum measuring devices plays an important part in quantum optimization since the typical figures of merit for measuring processes are affine functionals. In this thesis, we discuss results determining the extreme quantum devices and their relevance, e.g., in quantum-compatibility-related questions. Especially, we see that a compatible device pair where one device is extreme can be joined into a single apparatus essentially in a unique way. Moreover, we show that the question whether a pair of quantum observables can be measured jointly can often be formulated in a weaker form when some of the observables involved are extreme. Another major line of research treated in this thesis deals with convex analysis of special restricted quantum device sets, covariance structures or, in particular, generalized imprimitivity systems. Some results on the structure ofcovariant observables and instruments are listed as well as results identifying the extreme points of covariance structures in quantum theory. As a special case study, not published anywhere before, we study the structure of Euclidean-covariant localization observables for spin-0-particles. We also discuss the general form of Weyl-covariant phase-space instruments. Finally, certain optimality measures originating from convex geometry are introduced for quantum devices, namely, boundariness measuring how ‘close’ to the algebraic boundary of the device set a quantum apparatus is and the robustness of incompatibility quantifying the level of incompatibility for a quantum device pair by measuring the highest amount of noise the pair tolerates without becoming compatible. Boundariness is further associated to minimum-error discrimination of quantum devices, and robustness of incompatibility is shown to behave monotonically under certain compatibility-non-decreasing operations. Moreover, the value of robustness of incompatibility is given for a few special device pairs.

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Optimization of quantum measurement processes has a pivotal role in carrying out better, more accurate or less disrupting, measurements and experiments on a quantum system. Especially, convex optimization, i.e., identifying the extreme points of the convex sets and subsets of quantum measuring devices plays an important part in quantum optimization since the typical figures of merit for measuring processes are affine functionals. In this thesis, we discuss results determining the extreme quantum devices and their relevance, e.g., in quantum-compatibility-related questions. Especially, we see that a compatible device pair where one device is extreme can be joined into a single apparatus essentially in a unique way. Moreover, we show that the question whether a pair of quantum observables can be measured jointly can often be formulated in a weaker form when some of the observables involved are extreme. Another major line of research treated in this thesis deals with convex analysis of special restricted quantum device sets, covariance structures or, in particular, generalized imprimitivity systems. Some results on the structure ofcovariant observables and instruments are listed as well as results identifying the extreme points of covariance structures in quantum theory. As a special case study, not published anywhere before, we study the structure of Euclidean-covariant localization observables for spin-0-particles. We also discuss the general form of Weyl-covariant phase-space instruments. Finally, certain optimality measures originating from convex geometry are introduced for quantum devices, namely, boundariness measuring how ‘close’ to the algebraic boundary of the device set a quantum apparatus is and the robustness of incompatibility quantifying the level of incompatibility for a quantum device pair by measuring the highest amount of noise the pair tolerates without becoming compatible. Boundariness is further associated to minimum-error discrimination of quantum devices, and robustness of incompatibility is shown to behave monotonically under certain compatibility-non-decreasing operations. Moreover, the value of robustness of incompatibility is given for a few special device pairs.
Measurements play an integral part in any scientific theory. Indeed, the observations revealing causal behaviour and symmetries in our world of experience lie at the heart of determining the truth or the falsity of scientific hypotheses. In this regard, quantum theory provides one of the most stringently tested and comprehensive description of the natural world. This thesis is an examination of the mathematical structures of quantum measurements with an emphasis on the measurement implementations of different operational devices: quantum observables, channels and instruments. The measurability of all the quantum properties a system bears is, in principle, guaranteed by quantum measurement theory. However, as physical processes, measurements are constrained by the laws of physics and it has been long known that certain conservation laws can inhibit the measurements of some of the quantum observables. In this work it is shown that such constraints stem from the fact that the measured observables inherit the symmetries of the measurement devices implementing them. A quantum measurement set-up can implement a multitude of operational devices as a function of the initial state of the apparatus. In other words, one can realize various maps – even incompatible ones – simply by controlling the apparatus’ state. Due its close resemblance with the classical analogue, this operation is often referred as quantum programming. In this thesis the capabilities and restrictions of quantum programming are explored using a measurement-theoretic approach. Moreover, quantitative methods are developed to address the mutual relations between the programming states of an arbitrary pair of observables or channels.
Convex sets of quantum states and processes play a central role in quantum theory and quantum information. Many important examples of convex sets in quantum theory are spectrahedra, that is, sets of positive operators subject to affine constraints. These examples include sets of quantum states with given expectation values of some observables of interest, sets of multipartite quantum states with given marginals, sets of quantum measurements, channels, and multitime quantum processes, as well as sets of higher-order quantum maps and quantum causal structures. This contribution provides a characterisation of the extreme points of general spectrahedra, and bounds on the ranks of the corresponding operators. The general results are applied to several special cases, and are used to retrieve classic results such as Choi's characterisation of the extreme quantum channels, Parhasarathy's characterisation of the extreme quantum states with given marginals, and the quantum version of Birkhoff's theorem for qubit unital channels. Finally, we propose a notion of positive operator valued measures (POVMs) with general affine constraints for their normalisation, and we characterise the extremal POVMs.
Measurement incompatibility--the impossibility of jointly measuring certain quantum observables--is a fundamental resource for quantum information processing. We develop a graph-theoretic framework for quantifying this resource for large families of binary measurements, including Pauli observables on multi-qubit systems and kkk-body Majorana observables on nnn-mode fermionic systems. To each set of observables we associate an anti-commutativity graph, whose vertices represent observables and whose edges indicate pairs that anti-commute. In this representation, the incompatibility robustness--the minimal amount of classical noise required to render the set jointly measurable--becomes a graph invariant. We derive general bounds on this invariant in terms of the Lovász number, clique number, and fractional chromatic number, and show that the Lovász number yields the correct asymptotic scaling for kkk-body Majorana observables. For line graphs L(G)L(G)L(G), which naturally arise in the characterisation of exactly solvable spin models, we obtain spectral bounds on the robustness expressed through the energy and skew-energy of the underlying graph GGG. These bounds become tight for highly symmetric graphs, leading to closed formulas for several graph families. Finally, we identify structural conditions under which the robustness is determined by a simple function of the graph's maximum degree and the number of vertices and edges, and show that such extremal cases occur only when combinatorial structures such as Hadamard, conference or weighing matrices exist.
Convex sets of quantum states and processes play a central role in quantum theory and quantum information. Many important examples of convex sets in quantum theory are spectrahedra, that is, sets of positive operators satisfying affine constraints. These examples include sets of quantum states with given expectation values of a set of observables, sets of multipartite quantum states with given marginals, sets of quantum measurements, channels and multitime quantum processes, as well as sets of higher-order quantum maps and quantum causal structures. This contribution provides a characterization of the extreme points of general spectrahedra, and bounds on the ranks of the corresponding operators. The general results are applied to several special cases, and then used to retrieve classic results such as Choi’s characterization of the extreme quantum channels, Parthasarathy’s characterization of the extreme quantum states with given marginals and the quantum version of Birkhoff’s theorem for qubit unital channels. Finally, we propose a notion of positive operator valued measures (POVMs) with general affine constraints for their normalization, and we characterize the extremal POVMs.
A robustness measure for incompatibility of quantum devices in the lines of the robustness of entanglement is proposed. The concept of general robustness measures is first introduced in general convex-geometric settings and these ideas are then applied to measure how incompatible a given pair of quantum devices is. The robustness of quantum incompatibility is calculated in three special cases: a pair of Fourier-coupled rank-1 sharp observables, a pair of decodable channels, where decodability means left-invertibility by a channel, and a pair consisting of a rank-1 sharp observable and a decodable channel.
Decoherence, when viewed in the Heisenberg picture, can turn incompatible measurements into jointly measurable ones. This provides an observable-level description of emergent classicality in terms of the incompatibility destroyed by a noise channel. The corresponding loss of incompatibility can be captured by the channel's \emph{compatibility region}---the observables in a probe class that become jointly measurable with every noisy observable. The geometry and volume of this region provide a refined operational way to compare noise channels. We apply this framework to decoherence channels, each of which acts by Schur multiplication with extreme points of the convex set of unit-diagonal positive semidefinite matrices. Restricting to extremals eliminates convex mixing and reveals subtle phase-dependent decoherence effects thar are not captured by damping rates or conventional coherence quantifiers. Such channels have a rigid dilation structure described by a rank-one operator frame, which reduces joint measurability to a positivity test, making the compatibility region analytically tractable, and its volume computable from the frame's Gram matrix. If the frame can be normalised to a minimal informationally complete (MIC) POVM, the compatibility region acquires a geometric interpretation in the associated probability representation of the quantum state space, familiar with Qbism. Among maximal-rank extremals, those associated with symmetric informationally complete (SIC) POVMs maximise the compatibility volume and hence destroy the greatest amount of incompatibility, providing an operational characterisation of the special role of SICs in terms of joint measurability. This leads to a new formulation of the well-known SIC existence problem as a joint measurability question for noisy mutually unbiased bases.