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Chinese Physics Letters

Fisher Information of Wavefunctions: Classical and Quantum

Luo Shun-Long

Published Nov 29, 2006• 23 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A parametric quantum mechanical wavefunction naturally induces parametric probability distributions by taking absolute square, and we can consider its classical Fisher information. On the other hand, it also induces parametric rank-one projections which may be viewed as density operators, and we can talk about its quantum Fisher information. Among many versions of quantum Fisher information, there are two prominent ones. The first, defined via a quantum score function, was introduced by Helstrom in 1967 and is well known. The second, defined via the square root of the density operator, has its origin in the skew information introduced by Wigner and Yanase in 1963 and remains relatively unnoticed. This study is devoted to investigating the relationships between the classical Fisher information and these two versions of quantum Fisher information for wavefunctions. It is shown that the two versions of quantum Fisher information differ by a factor 2 and that they dominate the classical Fisher information. The non-coincidence of these two versions of quantum Fisher information may be interpreted as a manifestation of quantum discord. We further calculate the difference between the Helstrom quantum Fisher information and the classical Fisher information, and show that it is precisely the instantaneous phase fluctuation of the wavefunctions.

DOI
10.1088/0256-307x/23/12/001

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A parametric quantum mechanical wavefunction naturally induces parametric probability distributions by taking absolute square, and we can consider its classical Fisher information. On the other hand, it also induces parametric rank-one projections which may be viewed as density operators, and we can talk about its quantum Fisher information. Among many versions of quantum Fisher information, there are two prominent ones. The first, defined via a quantum score function, was introduced by Helstrom in 1967 and is well known. The second, defined via the square root of the density operator, has its origin in the skew information introduced by Wigner and Yanase in 1963 and remains relatively unnoticed. This study is devoted to investigating the relationships between the classical Fisher information and these two versions of quantum Fisher information for wavefunctions. It is shown that the two versions of quantum Fisher information differ by a factor 2 and that they dominate the classical Fisher information. The non-coincidence of these two versions of quantum Fisher information may be interpreted as a manifestation of quantum discord. We further calculate the difference between the Helstrom quantum Fisher information and the classical Fisher information, and show that it is precisely the instantaneous phase fluctuation of the wavefunctions.
In classical statistics, the Fisher information is unique in the sense that it is essentially the only monotone Riemannian metric on the space of probability densities. In quantum theory, this uniqueness breaks down, and there are many natural quantum analogues of the Fisher information, among which two particular versions distinguish themselves by their intuitive and informational significance: The first has its origin in the skew information introduced by Wigner and Yanase in 1963 in the context of quantum measurement, and is defined via the square root of the density operator. The second arises from Helstrom's study of quantum detection in 1967, and is defined via the symmetric logarithmic derivative. The aim of this paper is to compare these two versions of quantum Fisher information, and to establish two informational inequalities relating them.
In classical statistics,the Fisher information is unique in the sense that it is essentially the only monotone Riemannian metric on the space of probability densities.In quantum theory,this uniqueness breaks down,and there are many natural quantum analogues of the Fisher information,among which two particular versions distinguish themselves by their intuitive and informational significance:The first has its origin in the skew information introduced by Wigner and Yanase in 1963 in the context of quantum measurement,and is defined via the square root of the density operator. The second arises from Helstrom's study of quantum detection in 1967,and is defined via the symmetric logarithmic derivative.The aim of this paper is to compare these two versions of quantum Fisher information,and to establish two informational inequalities relating them.
Two classically equivalent expressions of mutual information of probability distributions (classical bipartite states) diverge when extended to quantum systems, and this difference has been employed to define quantum discord, a quantifier of quantum correlations beyond entanglement. Similarly, equivalent expressions of classical Fisher information of parameterized probability distributions diverge when extended to quantum states, and this difference may be exploited to characterize the complex nature of quantum states. By complexity of quantum states, we mean some hybrid nature which intermingles the classical and quantum features. It is desirable to quantify complexity of quantum states from various perspectives. In this work, we pursue the idea of discord and introduce an information-theoretic quantifier of complexity for quantum states (relative to the Hamiltonian that drives the evolution of quantum systems) via the notion of Fisher discord, which is defined by the difference between two important versions of quantum Fisher information: the quantum Fisher information defined via the symmetric logarithmic derivatives and the Wigner-Yanase skew information defined via the square roots of quantum states. We reveal basic properties of the quantifier of complexity, and compare it with some other quantifiers of complexity. In particular, we show that equilibrium states (or stable states, which commute with the Hamiltonian of the quantum system) and all pure states exhibit zero complexity in this setting. As illustrations, we evaluate the complexity for various prototypical states in both discrete and continuous-variable quantum systems.
The classical Fisher information, F, in one dimension is given in the literature as: Integral dx d(x) [ d/dx ln( d(x) ) ]2 ((1)) where d(x) is the spatial probability density. For quantum mechanics, (1) uses d(x)=W*(x)W(x) for quantum mechanics, where W(x) is the complex wavefunction. The Cramer Rao inequality is used to show how 1/ F is related to the variance of d(x). For a bound state wavefunction, which is real, one may show Fisher’s information leads to Integral dx v(x)v(x) d(x) which is proportional to the average kinetic energy. Using the correspondence principle, d(x), for high energy levels, should approach C/v(x) where v(x) is the classical velocity. On the other hand, using the definition of F directly with d(x)=C/v(x) leads to a different result. This seems unusual. We try to investigate in this note to see that quantum features exist even in the high energy limit. The Fisher information calculated with W(x)W(x)=C/v(x) seems to capture quantum information, while that with d(x)=C/v(x), information about the envelope function.