Can one certify the preparation of a coherent, many-body quantum state by measurements with bounded accuracy in the presence of noise and decoherence? Here, we introduce a criterion to assess the fragility of large-scale quantum states which is based on the distinguishability of orthogonal states after the action of very small amounts of noise. States which do not pass this criterion are called asymptotically incertifiable. We show that, if a coherent quantum state is asymptotically incertifiable, there exists an incoherent mixture (with entropy at least log 2) which is experimentally indistinguishable from the initial state. The Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states are examples of such asymptotically incertifiable states. More generally, we prove that any so-called macroscopic superposition state is asymptotically incertifiable. We also provide examples of quantum states that are experimentally indistinguishable from highly incoherent mixtures, i.e., with an almost-linear entropy in the number of qubits. Finally we show that all unique ground states of local gapped Hamiltonians (in any dimension) are certifiable.
Can one certify the preparation of a coherent, many-body quantum state by measurements with bounded accuracy in the presence of noise and decoherence? Here, we introduce a criterion to assess the fragility of large-scale quantum states, which is based on the distinguishability of orthogonal states after the action of very small amounts of noise. States which do not pass this criterion are called asymptotically incertifiable. We show that if a coherent quantum state is asymptotically incertifiable, there exists an incoherent mixture (with entropy at least log 2) which is experimentally indistinguishable from the initial state. The Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger states are examples of such asymptotically incertifiable states. More generally, we prove that any so-called macroscopic superposition state is asymptotically incertifiable. We also provide examples of quantum states that are experimentally indistinguishable from highly incoherent mixtures, i.e. with an almost-linear entropy in the number of qubits. Finally, we show that all unique ground states of local gapped Hamiltonians (in any dimension) are certifiable.
Macroscopic quantum superpositions are widely believed to be unobservable because large systems cannot be perfectly isolated from their environments. Here, we show that even under perfect isolation, intrinsic unitary dynamics in generic many-body systems, as analyzed through the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and random matrix theory, can suppress the observable signatures of macroscopic coherence. Using the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state as a representative example, we demonstrate that while fully correlated measurements can initially distinguish a macroscopic superposition from its corresponding classical mixture, generic many-body evolution renders them operationally indistinguishable for most times. By analyzing both distinguishability measures and established quantifiers of macroscopic quantumness, we find that equilibration not only hides coherence from accessible observables but also suppresses the corresponding signatures of macroscopic quantumness, in particular within the additive-local framework considered here. These results identify unitary thermalization, independent of environmental decoherence, as a fundamental mechanism that limits the observation of macroscopic quantum effects.
We study the stability of superpositions of macroscopically distinct quantum states under decoherence. We introduce a class of quantum states with entanglement features similar to Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, but with an inherent stability against noise and decoherence. We show that in contrast to GHZ states, these so-called concatenated GHZ states remain multipartite entangled even for macroscopic numbers of particles and can be used for quantum metrology in noisy environments. We also propose a scalable experimental realization of these states using existing ion-trap setups.
The detection and characterization of quantum coherence is of fundamental importance both in the foundations of quantum theory as well as for the rapidly developing field of quantum technologies, where coherence has been linked to quantum advantage. Typical approaches for detecting coherence employ {\it coherence witnesses} -- observable quantities whose expectation value can be used to certify the presence of coherence. By design, coherence witnesses are only able to detect coherence for some, but not all, possible states of a quantum system. In this work we construct protocols capable of detecting the presence of coherence in an {\it unknown} pure quantum state
∣ψ⟩. Having access to
m copies of an unknown pure state
∣ψ⟩ we show that the sample complexity of any experimental procedure for detecting coherence with constant probability of success
≥2/3 is
Θ(c(∣ψ⟩)−1), where
c(∣ψ⟩) is the geometric measure of coherence of
∣ψ⟩. However, assuming access to the unitary
Uψ which prepares the unknown state
∣ψ⟩, and its inverse
Uψ†, we devise a coherence detecting protocol that employs amplitude-amplification {\it a la} Grover, and uses a quadratically smaller number
O(c(∣ψ⟩)−1/2) of samples. Furthermore, by augmenting amplitude amplification with phase estimation we obtain an experimental estimation of upper bounds on the geometric measure of coherence within additive error
ε with a sample complexity that scales as
O(1/ε) as compared to the
O(1/ε2) sample complexity of Monte Carlo estimation methods. The average number of samples needed in our amplitude estimation protocol provides a new operational interpretation for the geometric measure of coherence. Finally, we also derive bounds on the amount of noise our protocols are able to tolerate.
High-dimensional entanglement certification: bounding relative entropy of entanglement in
2d+1 experiment-friendly measurements
Entanglement -- the coherent correlations between parties in a joint quantum system -- is well-understood and quantifiable in the two-dimensional, two-party case. Higher (>2)-dimensional entangled systems hold promise in extending the capabilities of various quantum information applications. Despite the utility of such systems, methods for quantifying high-dimensional entanglement are more limited and experimentally challenging. We review entanglement certification approaches and the large number of -- often difficult -- measurements required to apply them. We present a novel certification method whose measurement requirements scale linearly with subsystem dimension (scaling with the square-root of the system dimension) and which requires only a single complex measurement. The certification method places a lower-bound on the relative entropy of entanglement of any maximally correlated state thereby certifying system entanglement. A lower bound is also shown for any maximally correlated state in the presence of noise -- the expected experimental case. We discuss experimental realization of all required measurements.
Quantification of coherence lies at the heart of quantum information processing and fundamental physics.Exact evaluation of coherence measures generally needs a full reconstruction of the density matrix, which becomes intractable for large-scale multipartite systems.Here, we propose a systematic theoretical approach to efficiently estimating lower and upper bounds of coherence in multipartite states.Under the stabilizer formalism, the lower bound is determined by the spectrum estimation method with a small number of measurements, and the upper bound is determined by a single measurement.We verify our theory with a four-qubit optical quantum system.We experimentally implement various multiqubit entangled states, including the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state, the cluster state, and the W state, and show how their coherences are efficiently inferred from measuring a few observables.