Entanglement is sometimes helpful in distinguishing between quantum operations, as differences between quantum operations can become magnified when their inputs are entangled with auxiliary systems...
Entanglement is sometimes helpful in distinguishing between quantum operations, as differences between quantum operations can become magnified when their inputs are entangled with auxiliary systems. Bounds on the dimension of the auxiliary system needed to optimally distinguish quantum operations are known in several situations. For instance, the dimension of the auxiliary space never needs to exceed the dimension of the input space of the operations for optimal distinguishability, while no auxiliary system whatsoever is needed to optimally distinguish unitary operations. Another bound, which follows from work of R. Timoney , is that optimal distinguishability is always possible when the dimension of the auxiliary system is twice the number of operators needed to express the difference between the quantum operations in Kraus form. This paper provides an alternate proof of this fact that is based on concepts and tools that are familiar to quantum information theorists.
Abstract The characterization of transformations among entangled pure states via local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC) is a crucial problem in quantum information theory for both theoretical and practical reasons. As LOCC has a highly intricate structure, sometimes the larger set of separable (SEP) maps is considered, which has a mathematically much simpler description. In the literature, mainly SEP maps consisting of invertible Kraus operators have been taken into account. In this paper we show that the consideration of those maps is not sufficient when deciding whether a state can be mapped to another via general SEP transformations. This is done by providing explicit examples of transformations among pure three- and five-qubit states, which are feasible via SEP maps containing singular Kraus operators, however, not possible via SEP maps containing solely regular Kraus operators. The key point that allows to construct the SEP maps is to introduce projective measurements that occur with probability zero on the input state. The fact that it is not sufficient to consider SEP maps composed out of regular Kraus operators even in the case of pure state transformations, also affects the results on LOCC transformations among pure states. However, we show that non-invertible Kraus operators do not help in state transformations under LOCC with finitely many rounds of classical communication, i.e. the necessary and sufficient condition for SEP transformations with invertible Kraus operators is still a necessary condition for convertibility under finite-round LOCC. Moreover, we show that the results on transformations via SEP that are not possible with LOCC (including infinitely many rounds of classical communication) presented in Hebenstreit et al 2016 Phys. Rev. A 93, 012339 are not affected.
Entanglement fidelity quantifies how well a quantum channel preserves the correlations between a transmitted system and an inaccessible reference system. We derive closed-form expressions for the entanglement fidelity associated with several standard quantum noise models, including the random Pauli-X, dephasing, depolarizing, Werner-Holevo, generalized Pauli (Weyl), and amplitude-damping channels. For each model, we express the entanglement fidelity in terms of a general input density operator ρ, using Schumacher's Kraus-operator approach, which provides a channel-agnostic recipe applicable to any completely positive trace-preserving (CPTP) map with a finite Kraus representation. We then specialize to a communication scenario in which the source emits a two-letter parametric alphabet, thereby making explicit the dependence of entanglement preservation on both channel and source parameters. The resulting expressions enable direct comparisons of channel performance and rankings for representative families of input states, including common qubit states.