For open systems, symmetric dynamics do not always lead to conservation laws. We show that, for a dynamic symmetry associated with a compact Lie group, one can derive new selection rules from entanglement theory. These selection rules apply to both closed and open systems as well as reversible and irreversible time evolutions. Our approach is based on an embedding of the system’s Hilbert space into a tensor product of two Hilbert spaces allowing for the symmetric dynamics to be simulated with local operations. The entanglement of the embedded states determines which transformations are forbidden because of the symmetry. In fact, every bipartite entanglement monotone can be used to quantify the asymmetry of the initial states. Moreover, where the dynamics is reversible, each of these monotones becomes a new conserved quantity.
For open systems, symmetric dynamics do not always lead to conservation laws. We show that, for a dynamic symmetry associated with a compact Lie group, one can derive new selection rules from entanglement theory. These selection rules apply to both closed and open systems as well as reversible and irreversible time evolutions. Our approach is based on an embedding of the system’s Hilbert space into a tensor product of two Hilbert spaces allowing for the symmetric dynamics to be simulated with local operations. The entanglement of the embedded states determines which transformations are forbidden because of the symmetry. In fact, every bipartite entanglement monotone can be used to quantify the asymmetry of the initial states. Moreover, where the dynamics is reversible, each of these monotones becomes a new conserved quantity.
Dynamical symmetries in closed systems lead to conservation laws and to selection rules that are based on those conservation laws. However, conservation laws are not applica- ble to open systems that undergo irreversible transformations. More general selection rules are needed to determine whether, given two states, the transition from one state to the other is possible. Characterizing the asymmetry properties of quantum states using quantum information theoretical tools and methods is particularly fruitful for this purpose. This thesis is concerned with the problem of finding new general selection rules that hold for both open and closed systems. The usual approach to this problem relies heavily on group theory and involves a detailed study of the structure of the symmetry group. In this thesis, we approach the problem in a completely new way. Our approach is to use entanglement to investigate the asymmetry properties of quantum states. In order to do that, we embed the system’s Hilbert space in a larger tensor product Hilbert space, whereby all symmetric states are mapped to separable states, asymmetric states are mapped to entangled states, and the symmetric transformations between two states are replaced by local operations on their bipartite images. Our method is not restricted to only a specific group but applies, in general, to all symmetries that are associated with semi-simple compact Lie groups and their associated Lie algebras. The mapping of the original states to bipartite states that act on the larger Hilbert space enables us to use the well studied theory of entanglement to investigate the consequences of dynamic symmetries. For example, the monotonicity condition on measures of entanglement provide us with new selection rules. Under reversible transfor- mations, the entanglement of the bipartite image states becomes a conserved quantity. These entanglement-based conserved quantities are new and different from the conserved quantities based on expectation values of the Hamiltonian symmetry generators.
Quantifying how much a quantum state breaks a symmetry is essential for characterizing phases, nonequilibrium dynamics, and open-system behavior. For mixed states, however, conventional diagnostics of weak symmetry breaking can miss a stronger form of symmetry breaking associated with the possibility of exchanging conserved charges with an environment. We develop a resource theory of strong symmetry breaking by identifying the appropriate free states and free operations, and, for channels on a fixed system, by showing that the latter are precisely the operations realizable without exchanging the conserved charge with the environment. We systematically construct measures of strong symmetry breaking, including strong entanglement asymmetry and covariance matrices of symmetry generators, for a broad class of symmetry groups. We further completely characterize i.i.d. convertibility between arbitrary states under any compact Lie group strong symmetry. This identifies the combinations of resource-theoretically valid measures that quantify strong symmetry breaking for arbitrary states, including all mixed states. In particular, for U(1) symmetry, if the states have positive variances of the conserved quantity and equal strong-symmetry periods, the conversion rate is completely determined by the variance ratio whenever the input is pure or the output is weak symmetric. Thus, for these state conversions, the variance of the conserved quantity plays an operational role analogous to that of entanglement entropy in entanglement theory or quantum Fisher information in the resource theory of weak asymmetry. We further show how weak symmetry breaking is irreversibly converted into strong symmetry breaking in open-system dynamics. We illustrate the framework with examples from quantum field theory, strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking, and a strong-symmetry analogue of Mpemba-type dynamics.
In closed systems, dynamical symmetries lead to conservation laws. However, conservation laws are not applicable to open systems that undergo irreversible transformations. More general selection rules are needed to determine whether, given two states, the transition from one state to the other is possible. The usual approach to the problem of finding such rules relies heavily on group theory and involves a detailed study of the structure of the respective symmetry group. We approach the problem in a completely new way by using entanglement to investigate the asymmetry properties of quantum states. To this end, we embed the space state of the system in a tensor product Hilbert space, whereby symmetric transformations between two states are replaced with local operations on their bipartite images.The embedding enables us to use the well-studied theory of entanglement to investigate the consequences of dynamic symmetries. Moreover, under reversible transformations, the entanglement of the bipartite image states becomes a conserved quantity. These entanglement-based conserved quantities are new and different from the conserved quantities based on expectation values of the Hamiltonian symmetry generators. Our method is not group-specific and applies to general symmetries associated with any semi-simple Lie group.
The asymmetry properties of a state relative to some symmetry group specify how and to what extent the given symmetry is broken by the state. Characterizing these is found to be surprisingly useful for addressing a very common problem: to determine what follows from a system's dynamics (possibly open) having that symmetry. We demonstrate and exploit the fact that the asymmetry properties of a state can be understood in terms of information-theoretic concepts. We show that for a pure state $\ensuremath{\psi}$ and a symmetry group G, they are completely specified by the characteristic function of the state, defined as ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{\ensuremath{\psi}}(g)\ensuremath{\equiv}\ensuremath{\langle}\ensuremath{\psi}|U(g)|\ensuremath{\psi}\ensuremath{\rangle}$, where $g\ensuremath{\in}G$ and U is the unitary representation of interest. Based on this observation, we study several important problems about the interconversion of pure states under symmetric dynamics, such as determining the conditions for reversible transformations, deterministic irreversible transformations, and asymptotic transformations.
If a system undergoes symmetric dynamics, then the final state of the system can only break the symmetry in ways in which it was broken by the initial state, and its measure of asymmetry can be no greater than that of the initial state. It follows that for the purpose of understanding the consequences of symmetries of dynamics, in particular, complicated and open-system dynamics, it is useful to introduce the notion of a state's asymmetry properties, which includes the type and measure of its asymmetry. We demonstrate and exploit the fact that the asymmetry properties of a state can also be understood in terms of information-theoretic concepts, for instance in terms of the state's ability to encode information about an element of the symmetry group. We show that the asymmetry properties of a pure state psi relative to the symmetry group G are completely specified by the characteristic function of the state, defined as chi_psi(g)= where g\in G and U is the unitary representation of interest. For a symmetry described by a compact Lie group G, we show that two pure states can be reversibly interconverted one to the other by symmetric operations if and only if their characteristic functions are equal up to a 1-dimensional representation of the group. Characteristic functions also allow us to easily identify the conditions for one pure state to be converted to another by symmetric operations (in general irreversibly) for the various paradigms of single-copy transformations: deterministic, state-to-ensemble, stochastic and catalyzed.
Invariant operator-valued tensor fields on Lie groups are considered. These define classical tensor fields on Lie groups by evaluating them on a quantum state. This particular construction, applied on the local unitary group U(n) × U(n), may establish a method for the identification of entanglement monotone candidates by deriving invariant functions from tensors being by construction invariant under local unitary transformations. In particular, for n = 2, we recover the purity and a concurrence related function (Wootters 1998) as a sum of inner products of symmetric and anti-symmetric parts of the considered tensor fields. Moreover, we identify a distinguished entanglement monotone candidate by using a non-linear realization of the Lie algebra of SU(2) × SU(2). The functional dependence between the latter quantity and the concurrence is illustrated for a subclass of mixed states parametrized by two variables.