The decoupling technique was originally developed for information-theoretical purposes. It describes the conditions under which the correlations in a bipartite state disappear if one part undergoes an evolution separated from the other. In the past years there has been enormous progress in understanding the foundations of statistical mechanics from first principles of quantum mechanics. By use of the decoupling technique we are able to reproduce and generalize major results of this development and to approach open problems. As a first application of the decoupling technique we generalize the result of [Popescu et al., Nat. Phys. 2, 754-758 (2006)] about the apparent validity of the postulate of equal a priori probabilities to states which may be correlated to a reference. We express it in a form which allows to apply recent results about random two-qubit interactions. We give a criterion for the apparent validity of the postulate which is tight up to differences between different entropy measures. Similarly, we generalize the result of [Linden et al., Phys. Rev. E 79, 061103 (2009)] about the independence of the temporal average of a quantum mechanical system of its initial state to initial states which may be correlated to a reference. We develop a criterion for whether a quantum-mechanical system has “forgotten” about its initial state which is tight up to differences between different entropy measures. We find that comparing two local entropies of just one particular state tells us whether generic initial states of the system have already evolved to the same state or not. After developing new bounds on the times which are necessary for entropy changes, we are able to provide lower bounds on the times which are necessary for a system to become independent of its initial state. We discover an intimate connection between a system becoming independent of its initial state and a loss of an observer’s knowledge about the state of the system. As a further application of the decoupling technique we find sufficient conditions under which a system stays close to its initial state for all times, thereby extending the result of [Gogolin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 040401 (2011)].
The decoupling technique was originally developed for information-theoretical purposes. It describes the conditions under which the correlations in a bipartite state disappear if one part undergoes an evolution separated from the other. In the past years there has been enormous progress in understanding the foundations of statistical mechanics from first principles of quantum mechanics. By use of the decoupling technique we are able to reproduce and generalize major results of this development and to approach open problems. As a first application of the decoupling technique we generalize the result of [Popescu et al., Nat. Phys. 2, 754-758 (2006)] about the apparent validity of the postulate of equal a priori probabilities to states which may be correlated to a reference. We express it in a form which allows to apply recent results about random two-qubit interactions. We give a criterion for the apparent validity of the postulate which is tight up to differences between different entropy measures. Similarly, we generalize the result of [Linden et al., Phys. Rev. E 79, 061103 (2009)] about the independence of the temporal average of a quantum mechanical system of its initial state to initial states which may be correlated to a reference. We develop a criterion for whether a quantum-mechanical system has “forgotten” about its initial state which is tight up to differences between different entropy measures. We find that comparing two local entropies of just one particular state tells us whether generic initial states of the system have already evolved to the same state or not. After developing new bounds on the times which are necessary for entropy changes, we are able to provide lower bounds on the times which are necessary for a system to become independent of its initial state. We discover an intimate connection between a system becoming independent of its initial state and a loss of an observer’s knowledge about the state of the system. As a further application of the decoupling technique we find sufficient conditions under which a system stays close to its initial state for all times, thereby extending the result of [Gogolin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 040401 (2011)].
If a quantum system A, which is initially correlated to another system, E, undergoes an evolution separated from E, then the correlation to E generally decreases. Here, we study the conditions under which the correlation disappears (almost) completely, resulting in a decoupling of A from E. We give a criterion for decoupling in terms of two smooth entropies, one quantifying the amount of initial correlation between A and E, and the other characterizing the mapping that describes the evolution of A. The criterion applies to arbitrary such mappings in the general one-shot setting. Furthermore, the criterion is tight for mappings that satisfy certain natural conditions. Decoupling has a number of applications both in physics and information theory, e.g., as a building block for quantum information processing protocols. As an example, we give a one-shot state merging protocol and show that it is essentially optimal in terms of its entanglement consumption/production.
If a quantum system A , which is initially correlated to another system, E , undergoes an evolution separated from E , then the correlation to E generally decreases. Here, we study the conditions under which the correlation disappears (almost) completely, resulting in a decoupling of A from E . We give a criterion for decoupling in terms of two smooth entropies, one quantifying the amount of initial correlation between A and E , and the other characterizing the mapping that describes the evolution of A . The criterion applies to arbitrary such mappings in the general one-shot setting. Furthermore, the criterion is tight for mappings that satisfy certain natural conditions. One-shot decoupling has a number of applications both in physics and information theory, e.g., as a building block for quantum information processing protocols. As an example, we give a one-shot state merging protocol and show that it is essentially optimal in terms of its entanglement consumption/production.
We present a unifying framework to the understanding of when and how quantum-mechanical systems become independent of their initial conditions and adapt macroscopic properties (like temperature) of the environment. By viewing this problem from a quantum information theory perspective, we are able to simplify it in a very natural and easy way. We first show that for any interaction between the system and the environment, and almost all initial states of the system, the question of how long the system retains memory of its initial conditions can be answered by studying the temporal evolution of just one special initial state. This special state thereby depends only on our knowledge of macroscopic parameters of the system. We provide a simple entropic inequality for this state that can be used to determine whether most states of the system have or have not become independent of their initial conditions after time t. We discuss applications of our entropic criterion to thermalization times in systems with an effective light cone and to quantum memories suffering depolarizing noise. We make a similar statement for almost all initial states of the environment and finally provide a sufficient condition for which a system never thermalizes but remains close to its initial state for all times.
Insights from quantum information theory show that correlation measures based on quantum entropy are fundamental tools that reveal the entanglement structure of multipartite states. In that spirit, Groisman, Popescu, and Winter [Phys. Rev. A 72, 032317 (2005)PLRAAN1050-294710.1103/PhysRevA.72.032317] showed that the quantum mutual information I(A;B) quantifies the minimal rate of noise needed to erase the correlations in a bipartite state of quantum systems AB. Here, we investigate correlations in tripartite systems ABE. In particular, we are interested in the minimal rate of noise needed to apply to the systems AE in order to erase the correlations between A and B given the information in system E, in such a way that there is only negligible disturbance on the marginal BE. We present two such models of conditional decoupling, called deconstruction and conditional erasure cost of tripartite states ABE. Our main result is that both are equal to the conditional quantum mutual information I(A;B|E)-establishing it as an operational measure for tripartite quantum correlations.
Consider a bipartite system, of which one subsystem, A , undergoes a physical evolution separated from the other subsystem, R . One may ask under which conditions this evolution destroys all initial correlations between the subsystems A and R , i.e. decouples the subsystems. A quantitative answer to this question is provided by decoupling theorems , which have been developed recently in the area of quantum information theory. This paper builds on preceding work, which shows that decoupling is achieved if the evolution on A consists of a typical unitary, chosen with respect to the Haar measure, followed by a process that adds sufficient decoherence. Here, we prove a generalized decoupling theorem for the case where the unitary is chosen from an approximate two-design. A main implication of this result is that decoupling is physical, in the sense that it occurs already for short sequences of random two-body interactions, which can be modeled as efficient circuits. Our decoupling result is independent of the dimension of the R system, which shows that approximate two-designs are appropriate for decoupling even if the dimension of this system is large.
Recently, the possibility of investigating single molecule, or single spin observables, as well as the necessity of a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying quantum dynamics in order to obtain nanoscale devices and nanostructered materials suitable for quantum computing tasks, have revived the interest in foundational aspects of quantum statistical mechanics. This thesis aims to give a contribution to this field by re-considering the statistical characterization of a quantum system at the light of some paradigmatic changes in our understanding of quantum theory which have taken place in the last two decades. In particular the impressive development of quantum information theory has changed the perceptions of quantum entanglement: for a long time it has been considered a somewhat paradoxical property of the matter at the atomic scale, but now it is regarded as an essential and ubiquitous phenomenon whose consequences are affecting the very macroscopic world that we experience. Still the decoherence program has brought out the importance of considering a quantum system together with its environment in order to clarify some key aspects of quantum dynamics. Thus, we start from the idea that quantum correlations are ubiquitous and somewhat uncontrollable in systems with many degrees of freedom which are typically considered in statistical mechanics. As a consequence we assume the standpoint that quantum statistical mechanics has not to be based on the underlying idea of a collection of many, independent quantum systems but rather it has to emerge at the level of a global wavefunction (pure state) which describes the system as well as its environment as a whole. In order to investigate the consequences of these assumptions we study the equilibrium distribution of an isolated quantum system. This is defined, in analogy with the ergodic foundations of classical statistical mechanics, on the basis of the time evolution of the quantum state. Then, we study the emergence of thermodynamic properties in a quantum system by studying the probability distribution of some function of interests, as the entropy and the equilibrium state of a subsystem, on Ensembles of Pure States. Such a probability distribution is derived from the geometry of the Hilbert space, and the theoretical tools suitable for its characterization are developed. On the one hand we perform a numerical sampling of the ensemble distributions by employing Monte Carlo techniques, on the other hand simpler analytical approximation of the geometrical distributions are derived by means of a maximum entropy principle. Model systems composed of an ensemble of spins are chosen to illustrate the salient features which emerge from the developed theoretical framework: the main point is that the Ensemble Distributions of “thermodynamic observables” (entropy or equilibrium state of a subsystem) are sharply peaked around a typical value. From the analysis it emerges that each of the overwhelming majority of the wavefunctions which has appreciable weight in the considered ensemble, is characterized by the same value of the “macroscopic” functions. This is a striking evidence of the “typicality” of these properties. In the essence, our impossibility to know the state of the system in detail does not matter, just for the remarkable fact that almost all quantum states behave essentially in the same way. By virtue of this typicality the study of the behaviour of the typical values of the thermodynamic function become meaningful. Notably, under certain conditions, one recovers the results of standard statistical mechanics, that is, the equilibrium average of the state of a subsystem can be cast in the Boltzmann canonical form at the temperature given by the usual thermodynamical relation . In the second part of the thesis we consider the dynamical aspects of the equilibrium state of a subsystem interacting with its environment. The fluctuations around the equilibrium average critically depends on the entanglement between the system and the environment and on the form of the interaction Hamiltonian. The connection between the dynamics of the fluctuations of an observable at the equilibrium and the relaxation toward the equilibrium from a “non typical” initial value is also investigated with the aid of simple model systems. The study presented in this thesis was partly motivated by a critical analysis of the statistical methods available for the theoretical modelling of magnetic resonance experiments. One of these, the Stochastic Liouville Equation, has been employed in a work completed during the first year of my Ph.D. program in order to interpret some feature of a two dimensional electron spin resonance experiment, [Fresch B., Frezzato D., Moro G. J., Kothe G., Freed J. H.; J. Phys. Chem. B., 110, 24238, (2006)].