In this thesis we present methods to efficiently verify quantum many-body experiments. The first part focuses on the quantitative verification of graph state experiments from simple measurements. In particular, optimal bounds on the fidelity, purity and entropy from stabilizer measurements are derived as well as high-quality bounds on entanglement measures. Furthermore, we show how entanglement may be quantified in spin and cold atom many-body systems using standard experimental techniques only. The scheme requires no assumptions on the state in the laboratory, and a lower bound to the entanglement can be read off directly from the scattering cross section of neutrons deflected from solid state samples or the time-of-flight distribution of cold atoms in optical lattices, respectively. Quantum mechanics offers many interesting properties such as entanglement and non-locality. However, one can easily think of more general correlations than quantum correlations. This gives rise to the question if quantum correlations are the most general allowed in nature? In the last part we propose a new axiom we call macroscopic locality. The idea behind this axiom is that any physical theory should recover classical physics in the continuum limit (i.e., when a large number of particles is involved and our measurement devices fail to resolve discrete particles). We will show that this very intuitive axiom, together with the no-signaling principle, allows to recover many important results in quantum mechanics, like the universality of the Tsirelson bound, or the set of accessible two-point correlators. Moreover, we will provide a complete characterization of the correlations between two distant physical systems that arise out of both axioms and comment on its consistency.
In this thesis we present methods to efficiently verify quantum many-body experiments. The first part focuses on the quantitative verification of graph state experiments from simple measurements. In particular, optimal bounds on the fidelity, purity and entropy from stabilizer measurements are derived as well as high-quality bounds on entanglement measures. Furthermore, we show how entanglement may be quantified in spin and cold atom many-body systems using standard experimental techniques only. The scheme requires no assumptions on the state in the laboratory, and a lower bound to the entanglement can be read off directly from the scattering cross section of neutrons deflected from solid state samples or the time-of-flight distribution of cold atoms in optical lattices, respectively. Quantum mechanics offers many interesting properties such as entanglement and non-locality. However, one can easily think of more general correlations than quantum correlations. This gives rise to the question if quantum correlations are the most general allowed in nature? In the last part we propose a new axiom we call macroscopic locality. The idea behind this axiom is that any physical theory should recover classical physics in the continuum limit (i.e., when a large number of particles is involved and our measurement devices fail to resolve discrete particles). We will show that this very intuitive axiom, together with the no-signaling principle, allows to recover many important results in quantum mechanics, like the universality of the Tsirelson bound, or the set of accessible two-point correlators. Moreover, we will provide a complete characterization of the correlations between two distant physical systems that arise out of both axioms and comment on its consistency.
We show how entanglement may be quantified in spin and cold atom many-body systems using standard experimental techniques only. The scheme requires no assumptions on the state in the laboratory, and a lower bound to the entanglement can be read off directly from the scattering cross section of neutrons deflected from solid state samples or the time-of-flight distribution of cold atoms in optical lattices, respectively. This removes a major obstacle which so far has prevented the direct and quantitative experimental study of genuine quantum correlations in many-body systems: The need for a full characterization of the state to quantify the entanglement contained in it. Instead, the scheme presented here relies solely on global measurements that are routinely performed and is versatile enough to accommodate systems and measurements different from the ones we exemplify in this work.
This thesis is devoted to the theoretical characterization and generation of strongly correlated many-body states from the perspective of quantum information theory.We first study the entanglement properties of general many-body states and define a new measure for multipartite entanglement, the "Localizable Entanglement (LE)".It quantifies the maximal entanglement that can be localized, on average, between two parties by performing local measurements on the other parties.This measure provides knowledge of the "entanglement length", which is of particular importance in the context of quantum repeaters for long-distance quantum communication.We prove upper and lower bounds on LE in terms of two-body correlation functions and develop a method for the numerical computation of LE in one-dimensional spin systems.We analyze the localizable entanglement in various spin systems and observe characteristic features for a quantum phase transition such as a diverging entanglement length.In the second part of the thesis we focus on a specific many-body system: ultra-cold atoms in an optical lattice.This system is a promising candidate for the first physical realization of a "quantum simulator", but the temperature in current experiments is still too high.We propose, analyze and compare several schemes to cool the atoms close to the ground state of the strong interaction regime.In particular, we devise an algorithmic cooling protocol that combines occupation number filtering with spin-dependent lattice shifts.In addition, we propose two different physical realizations of filtering and also design protocols that generate an ensemble of quantum registers for quantum computation.In the third part we propose how to create entanglement in small atomic clouds by deforming and rotating the harmonic trapping potential.The resulting states are entangled in their motional degrees of freedom and can be identified with strongly correlated fractional quantum Hall states.For the case of two, three and four atoms we show how to adiabatically transform the unentangled ground state into the desired entangled state.We further discuss characteristic features of these states and propose how to create and detect them experimentally using an optical lattice setup. A Proof of the lower bound on LEA.1 Theorem on connected correlation functions and local measurements . . . . . . . . .
Quantum mechanics is nonlocal, meaning it cannot be described by any classical local hidden variable model. In this thesis we study two aspects of quantum nonlocality. Part I addresses the question of what classical resources are required to simulate nonlocal quantum correlations. We start by constructing new local models for noisy entangled quantum states. These constructions exploit the connection between nonlocality and Grothendieck's inequality, first noticed by Tsirelson. Next, we consider local models augmented by a limited amount of classical communication. After generalizing Bell inequalities to this setting, we show that (i) one bit of communication is sufficient to simulate the correlations of projective measurements on a maximally entangled state of two qubits, and (ii) five bits of communication are sufficient to simulate the joint correlation of two-outcome measurements on any bipartite quantum state. The latter result can be interpreted as a stronger (constrained) version of Grothendieck's inequality. In part II, we investigate the monogamy of nonlocal correlations. In a setting where three parties, A, B, and C, share an entangled quantum state of arbitrary dimension, we: (i) bound the trade-off between AB's and AC's violation of the CHSH inequality, obtaining an intriguing generalization of Tsirelson's bound, and (ii) demonstrate that forcing B and C to be classically correlated prevents A and B from violating certain Bell inequalities. We study not only correlations that arise within quantum theory, but also arbitrary correlations that do not allow signaling between separate groups of parties. These results are based on new techniques for obtaining Tsirelson bounds, or bounds on the quantum value of a Bell inequality, and have applications to interactive proof systems and cryptography.
The verification and quantification of experimentally created entanglement by simple measurements, especially between distant particles, is an important basic task in quantum processing. When composite systems are subjected to local measurements the measurement data will exhibit correlations, whether these systems are classical or quantum. Therefore, the observation of correlations in the classical measurement record does not automatically imply the presence of quantum correlations in the system under investigation. In this study, we explore the question of when correlations, or other measurement data, are sufficient to guarantee the existence of a certain amount of quantum correlations in the system and when additional information, such as the degree of purity of the system, is needed to do so. Various measurement settings are discussed, both numerically and analytically. Exact results and lower bounds on the least entanglement consistent with the observations are presented. The approach is suitable both for the bi-partite and the multi-partite setting.
THESIS SUMMARYTEXT:This thesis is made of two parts. In the first one, the issue of entanglement in many body systems is addressed. The concept of entanglement and some of the recent progress on the study of entropy of entanglement in many body quantum systems are reviewed. Emphasis is placed on the scaling properties of entropy for one-dimensional models at quantum phase transitions. Then, we focus on the area-law scaling of the entanglement entropy. An explicit computation in arbitrary dimensions of the entanglement entropy of the ground state of a discretized scalar free field theory that shows the expected area law result is also presented. For this system, it is shown that area law scaling is a manifestation of a deeper reordering of the vacuum produced by majorization relations.To finish this first part, the issue of how simple can a quantum system be such as to give a highly entangled ground state is addressed. In particular, we propose a Hamiltonian of a XX model with a ground state whose entropy scales linearly with the size of the block. It provides a simple example of a one dimensional system of spin-1/2 particles with nearest neighbour interactions that violates area-law for the entanglement entropy.The second part of this thesis deals with the problem of simulating quantum mechanics for highly entangled systems. Two different approaches to this issue are considered. One consists of using ultra-cold atoms systems as quantum simulators. With this aim, some experimental techniques related to cold atoms that allow to simulate strongly correlated many body quantum systems are reviewed an explicit example of simulation is presented. In particular, we analyze how to achieve a Mott state of Laughlin wave functions in an optical lattice and study the consequences of considering anharmonic corrections to each single site potential expansion that were not taken into account until now.Finally, a different approach to simulate strongly correlated systems is considered: to use small quantum computers to simulate them. An explicit quantum algorithm that creates the Laughlin state for an arbitrary number of particles n in the case of falling fraction equal to one is presented. We further prove the optimality of the circuit using permutation theory arguments and we compute exactly how entanglement develops along the action of each gate. We also discuss its experimental feasibility decomposing the qudits and the gates in terms of qubits and two qubit-gates as well as the generalization to arbitrary falling fraction.KEYWORDS: Entanglement, Many body quantum systems, Quantum Information Condensed Matter, Cold atoms, Spin chains, Quantum simulator, Quantum computation.
Physics has two main ambitions: to predict and to understand. Indeed, physics aims for the prediction of all natural phenomena. Prediction entails modeling the correlation between an action, the input, and what is subsequently observed, the output.Understanding, on the other hand, involves developing insightful principles and models that can explain the widest possible varietyof correlations present in nature. Remarkably, advances in both prediction and understanding foster our physical intuition and, as a consequence, novel and powerful applications are discovered. Quantum mechanics is a very successful physical theory both in terms of its predictive power as well as in its wide applicability. Nonetheless and despite many decades of development, we do not yet have a proper physical intuition of quantum phenomena. I believe that improvements in our understanding of quantum theory will yield better, and more innovative, protocols and vice versa.This dissertation aims at advancing our understanding and developing novel protocols. This is done through four approaches. The first one is to study quantum theory within a broad family of theories. In particular, we study quantum theory within the family of locally quantum theories. We found out that the principle that singles out quantum theory out of this family, thus connecting quantum local and nonlocal structure, is dynamical reversibility. This implies that the viability of large scale quantum computing can be based on concrete physical principles that can be experimentally tested at a local level without needing to test millions of qubits simultaneously. The second approach is to study quantum correlations from a black box perspective thus making as few assumptions as possible. The strategy is to study the completeness of quantum predictions by benchmarking them against alternative models. Three main results and applications come out of our study. Firstly, we prove that performing complete amplification of randomness starting from a source of arbitrarily weak randomness - a task that is impossible with classical resources - is indeed possible via nonlocality. This establishes in our opinion the strongest evidence for a truly random event in nature so far. Secondly, we prove that there exist finite events where quantum theory gives predictions as complete as any no-signaling theory can give, showing that the completeness of quantum theory is not an asymptotic property. Finally, we prove that maximally nonlocal theories can never be maximally random while quantum theory can, showing a trade-off between the nonlocality of a theory and its randomness capabilities. We also prove that quantum theory is not unique in this respect. The third approach we follow is to study quantum correlations in scenarios where some parties have a restriction on the available quantum degrees of freedom. The future progress of semi-device-independent quantum information depends crucially on our ability to bound the strength of these correlations. Here we provide a full characterization via a complete hierarchy of sets that approximate the target set from the outside. Each set can be in turn characterized using standard numerical techniques. One application of our work is certifying multidimensional entanglement device-independently.The fourth approach is to confront quantum theory with computer science principles. In particular, we establish two interesting implications for quantum theory results of raising the Church-Turing thesis to the level of postulate. Firstly, we show how different preparations of the same mixed state, indistinguishable according to the quantum postulates, become distinguishable when prepared computably. Secondly, we identify a new loophole for Bell-like experiments: if some parties in a Bell-like experiment use private pseudorandomness to choose their measurement inputs, the computational resources of an eavesdropper have to be limited to observe a proper violation of non locality.