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Journal of Physics Conference Series

Qubits and invariant theory

Ronald C. King, Trevor A. Welsh

Published Feb 28, 2006• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The invariants of a mixed two-qubit system are discussed. These are polynomials in the elements of the corresponding density matrix. They are counted by means of grouptheoretic branching rules and the Molien function is determined. The fundamental invariants are then explicitly constructed and the relations between them are found in the form of syzygies. In this way, complete sets of primary and secondary invariants are identified: there are 10 of the former and 15 of the latter.

DOI
10.1088/1742-6596/30/1/001

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The invariants of a mixed two-qubit system are discussed. These are polynomials in the elements of the corresponding density matrix. They are counted by means of grouptheoretic branching rules and the Molien function is determined. The fundamental invariants are then explicitly constructed and the relations between them are found in the form of syzygies. In this way, complete sets of primary and secondary invariants are identified: there are 10 of the former and 15 of the latter.
The local invariants of a mixed two-qubit system are discussed. These invariants are polynomials in the elements of the corresponding density matrix. They are counted by means of group-theoretic branching rules which relate this problem to one arising in spin-isospin nuclear shell models. The corresponding Molien series and a refinement in the form of a 4-parameter generating function are determined. A graphical approach is then used to construct explicitly a fundamental set of 21 invariants. Relations between them are found in the form of syzygies. By using these, the structure of the ring of local invariants is determined, and complete sets of primary and secondary invariants are identified: there are 10 of the former and 15 of the latter.
Local unitary equivalence serves as the cornerstone for classifying entanglement in bipartite quantum systems. Mathematically, it reduces to the study of polynomial invariants of the density matrix under the action of local unitary groups. The collection of all such polynomial invariants forms a ring, known as the invariant ring. However, identifying the complete generators of the invariant ring is the central issue. In 2007, for the two-qubit system, King et al fully characterized the structure of the invariant ring and determined its Cohen--Macaulay decomposition. In this paper, we revisit their work, with a focus on the computation of the Molien series and the construction of invariants. On one hand, we rigorously derive the Molien series via explicit contour integration over the maximal torus, filling in all previously omitted computational steps. On the other hand, we systematically construct all invariants using a graphical method, and then reduce the candidate set by applying various identities and algebraic relations, obtaining a generating set consisting of 21 invariants. This paper aims to make this important result more widely accessible to researchers in quantum information and invariant theory through the above discussions.
In the present paper few steps are undertaken towards the description of the qubit-qutrit pair - quantum bipartite system composed of two and three level subsystems. The computational difficulties with the construction of the local unitary polynomial invariants are discussed. Calculations of the Molien functions and Poincare series for the qubit-qubit and qubit-qutrit local unitary invariants are outlined and compared with the known results. The requirement of positive semi-definiteness of the density operator is formulated explicitly as a set of inequalities in five Casimir invariants of the algebra su(6).
We investigate means to describe the nonlocal properties of quantum systems and to test if two quantum systems are locally equivalent. For this we consider quantum systems that consist of several subsystems, especially multiple quantum bits, i.e., systems consisting of subsystems of dimension 2. We compute invariant polynomials, i.e., polynomial functions of the entries of the density operator that are invariant under local unitary operations. As an example, we consider a system of two quantum bits. We compute the Molien series for the corresponding representation, which gives information about the number of linearly independent invariants. Furthermore, we present a set of polynomials that generate all invariants (at least) up to degree 23. Finally, the use of invariants to check whether two density operators are locally equivalent is demonstrated.
Entangling properties of a mixed two-qubit system can be described by local homogeneous unitary invariant polynomials in the elements of the density matrix. The structure of the corresponding ring of invariant polynomials for a special subclass of states, the so-called mixed X-states, is established. It is shown that for the X-states there is an injective ring homomorphism of the quotient ring of SU(2)×SU(2)-invariant polynomials modulo its syzygy ideal to the SO(2) × SO(2)-invariant ring freely generated by five homogeneous polynomials of degrees 1, 1, 1, 2, 2.