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Physical Review A

Some analogies between quantum cloning and quantum deleting

Daowen Qiu

Published Apr 15, 2002• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We further verify the impossibility of deleting an arbitrary unknown quantum state, and also show it is impossible to delete two nonorthogonal quantum states as a consequence of unitarity of quantum mechanics. A quantum approximate (deterministic) deleting machine and a probabilistic (exact) deleting machine are constructed. The estimation for the global fidelity characterizing the efficiency of the quantum approximate deleting is given. We then demonstrate that unknown nonorthogonal states chosen from a set with their multiple copies can evolve into a linear superposition of multiple deletions and failure branches by a unitary process if and only if the states are linearly independent. It is notable that the proof for necessity is somewhat different from Pati's [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 2849 (1999)]. Another deleting machine for the input states that are unnecessarily linearly independent is also presented. The bounds on the success probabilities of these deleting machines are derived. So we expound some preliminary analogies between quantum cloning and deleting.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.65.052303

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We further verify the impossibility of deleting an arbitrary unknown quantum state, and also show it is impossible to delete two nonorthogonal quantum states as a consequence of unitarity of quantum mechanics. A quantum approximate (deterministic) deleting machine and a probabilistic (exact) deleting machine are constructed. The estimation for the global fidelity characterizing the efficiency of the quantum approximate deleting is given. We then demonstrate that unknown nonorthogonal states chosen from a set with their multiple copies can evolve into a linear superposition of multiple deletions and failure branches by a unitary process if and only if the states are linearly independent. It is notable that the proof for necessity is somewhat different from Pati's [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 2849 (1999)]. Another deleting machine for the input states that are unnecessarily linearly independent is also presented. The bounds on the success probabilities of these deleting machines are derived. So we expound some preliminary analogies between quantum cloning and deleting.
We construct a probabilistic cloning and deleting machine which, taking several copies of an input quantum state, can output a linear superposition of multiple cloning and deleting states. Since the machine can perform cloning and deleting in a single unitary evolution, the probabilistic cloning and other cloning machines proposed in the previous literature can be thought of as special cases of our machine. A sufficient and necessary condition for successful cloning and deleting is presented, and it requires that the copies of an arbitrarily presumed number of the input states are linearly independent. This simply generalizes some results for cloning. We also derive an upper bound for the success probability of the cloning and deleting machine.
Suppose we are given two identical copies of an unknown quantum state and we wish to delete one copy from among the given two copies. The quantum no-deletion principle restricts us from perfectly deleting a copy but it does not prohibit us from deleting a copy approximately. Here we construct two types of a ``universal quantum deletion machine'' which approximately deletes a copy such that the fidelity of deletion does not depend on the input state. The two types of universal quantum deletion machines are (1) a conventional deletion machine described by one unitary operator and (2) a modified deletion machine described by two unitary operators. Here it is shown that the modified deletion machine deletes a qubit with fidelity 3∕43∕43∕4, which is the maximum limit for deleting an unknown quantum state. In addition to this we also show that the modified deletion machine retains the qubit in the first mode with average fidelity 0.77 (approx.) which is slightly greater than the fidelity of measurement for two given identical states, showing how precisely one can determine its state [S. Massar and S. Popescu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 1259 (1995)]. We also show that the deletion machine itself is input state independent, i.e., the information is not hidden in the deleting machine, and hence we can delete the information completely from the deletion machine.
We first construct a probabilistic and approximate quantum cloning machine (PACM) and then clarify the relation between the PACM and other cloning machines. After that, we estimate the global fidelity of the approximate cloning that improves the previous estimation for the deterministic cloning machine; and also derive a bound on the success probability of producing perfect multiple clones. Afterwards, we further establish a more generalized probabilistic and approximate cloning and deleting machine (PACDM) and discuss the connections of the PACDM to some of the existing quantum cloning and deleting machines. Finally the global fidelity and a bound on the success probability of the PACDM are obtained. Summarily, the quantum devices established in this paper improve and also greatly generalize some of the existing machines.
Pati and Braunstein defined a deleting machine and showed the impossibility of deleting one of two identical copies of an unknown quantum state. So far, no one has defined two non-identical copies of a quantum state, of course no one has discussed the impossibility of deleting one of two non-identical copies of an unknown quantum state. In this paper, we define u∣ψ>u|ψ>u∣ψ> and U∣ψ>U|ψ>U∣ψ>, where uuu and UUU are any unitary operators, as two unitary copies of a quantum state ∣ψ>|ψ>∣ψ>, and show that it is impossible to delete one of two unitary copies of an unknown state.
Quantum mechanics put restriction on performing some task which we can do classically. One such restriction is that we cannot copy an arbitrary quantum state. This is known as No-cloning theorem. Although quantum mechanics forbid us to construct a perfect cloner, there is no restriction to construct an imperfect cloner. Therefore, we have constructed and studied a special kind of quantum cloning machine named as Hybrid quantum cloning machine which is nothing but a different combination of pre-existing quantum cloning machines. We showed that this hybrid quantum cloning machine sometime gives better quality copy than the pre-existing quantum cloners. Quantum entanglement is a very astonishing property in a multi-partite system and it is a very useful ingredient of quantum information theory. Therefore broadcasting (cloning) of entanglement is a very important subject to study. In this regard we have studied the broadcasting of entanglement using state dependent quantum cloning machine. Further, we have investigated the problem of secretly broadcasting of three-qubit entangled state between two distant partners. Linearity of quantum mechanics put another restriction on deletion of an arbitrary quantum state i.e. an arbitrary quantum state against a copy cannot be perfectly deleted. Like cloning machine one can construct an approximate deletion machine also. Therefore, we have constructed an universal deletion machine in the sense that the fidelity of deletion does not depend on the input state and showed that the fidelity of deletion is 3/4 . Further we showed that the fidelity of deletion depends on the blank state at the output and it can be improved from the value 3/4 for certain blank state. Moreover, we have studied the case where two cloned copies are given at the input of the deletion machine.
We envisage a novel quantum cloning machine, which takes an input state and produces an output state whose success branch can exist in a linear superposition of multiple copies of the input state and the failure branch can exist in a superposition of composite states independent of the input state. We prove that unknown nonorthogonal states chosen from a set SSS can evolve into a linear superposition of multiple clones and failure branches by a unitary process if and only if the states are linearly independent. We derive a bound on the success probability of the novel cloning machine. We argue that the deterministic and probabilistic clonings are special cases of our novel cloning machine.