Abstract This chapter is devoted to the discussion of quantum maps. We present three equivalent definitions of a quantum map and important examples, including the depolarizing channel, amplitude damping, and dephasing. We briefly describe the inversion recovery and the Ramsey experiment, two experimental techniques designed to measure the relaxation and coherence time of a qubit. We present the Kraus representation of a quantum map, and we show that quantum maps arise when the dynamics of an additional system are averaged out, a result known as Stinespring’s dilation theorem. Lastly, we present the Choi-Jamiolkowki isomorphism
Abstract This chapter is devoted to the discussion of quantum maps. We present three equivalent definitions of a quantum map and important examples, including the depolarizing channel, amplitude damping, and dephasing. We briefly describe the inversion recovery and the Ramsey experiment, two experimental techniques designed to measure the relaxation and coherence time of a qubit. We present the Kraus representation of a quantum map, and we show that quantum maps arise when the dynamics of an additional system are averaged out, a result known as Stinespring’s dilation theorem. Lastly, we present the Choi-Jamiolkowki isomorphism
Abstract In this chapter we visit the ‘church of the larger Hilbert space’: we take a closer look at the relationship of pure and mixed quantum states via purification, and discuss a similar connection between completely positive and trace-preserving (CPTP) maps and unitary dynamics on a larger Hilbert space. We show that such CPTP maps, which represent quantum channels, are equivalent to operations admitting a Kraus decomposition, as well as to unitary dynamics on a larger Hilbert space with factoring initial condition, the famous Stinespring dilation of quantum operations. In this context we introduce the Choi-Jamiołkowski isomorphism, which expresses a duality between maps between two Hilbert spaces and states on tensor products of these Hilbert spaces, and we review several important examples of quantum channels such as the dephasing channel, amplitude-damping channel, and depolarizing channel. Finally, we examine operations that are not possible in quantum theory, focusing on the no-cloning theorem.
In this dissertation we are interested in the dynamics of open quantum systems in the context of quantum information. First, we investigate the dynamics of one qubit at the regime where an inverse evolution is not well defined. This limit is widely used and explored in this work, called as the limit of non-bijectivity. We demonstrate how to compute a completely positive inverse evolution, based on the theory of recovery maps, here to be the Petz recovery map. The analyzed evolutions are the typical decoherence processes: dephasing, depolarizing and amplitude damping channels in the regime of non-bijectivity. To measure how efficient the Petz can be recovering a random quantum state, we use the fidelity function as the figure of merit. Also, we quantify how non-invertible a dynamics is compared to another. As an application for this formalism, in the second part of this work we show how we can explore recovery maps in the context of non-Markovian evolutions, in order to minimize memory effects. We demonstrate that recovering maps can be useful under certain constraints to simulate a non-Markovian evolution by an “almost” Markovian one. We demonstrate that there exists a strong dependence between the success of this strategy and the initial correlations between system and environment.
We investigate the problem of reversing quantum dynamics, specifically via optimal Petz recovery maps. We focus on typical decoherence channels, such as dephasing, depolarizing, and amplitude damping. We illustrate how well a physically implementable recovery map simulates an inverse evolution. We extend this idea to explore the use of recovery maps as an approximation of inverse maps, and apply it in the context of non-Markovian dynamics. We show how this strategy attenuates non-Markovian effects, such as the backflow of information.
It is not surprising that our language should be incapable of describing processes occurring within atoms, for, as has been remarked, it was invented to describe the experiences of daily life, … Fortunately, mathematics is not subject to this limitation, and it has been possible to invent a mathematical scheme–the quantum theory–which seems entirely adequate for the treatment of atomic processes. Werner Heisenberg, The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory (1930) In this chapter we introduce the mathematical structure of quantum theory, for a finite number of systems and finite dimension, starting from three simple Hilbert-space postulates, and based on the intuitive notions of state, transformation, and effect, within a causal context. Such notions will be formalized in a general non-causal context in Chapter 3, which is devoted to the informational framework. We will assume the reader has a basic knowledge of matrix analysis and of operators over Hilbert spaces. Comments about the extension to infinite dimensions, continuous outcome-spaces, and infinitely many systems can be found in the notes at the end of the chapter. From the three simple Hilbert-space postulates, the present chapter extracts six principles, which will become the postulates for quantum theory in the axiomatic derivation presented in Part III of the book. In addition, we will take the opportunity to present and explore many relevant features of the theory – including its convex and causal structure, the Choi–Jamiołkowski isomorphism, and relevant notions, such as those of POVM, complete positivity of maps, quantum operation and channels, entangled states, state discrimination, tomography of states, and transformations. The purification principle will open the stage to the dilation theorems of the theory of quantum open systems, along with other consequences, such as the existence of faithful and steering states, the theorem of no information without disturbance, quantum teleportation, and more. We will review the quantum no-cloning and no-programming theorems, and finally provide a thorough derivation of the theory of quantum channel inversion, which is the backbone of the general theory of quantum error correction in quantum information. Additional interesting topics will be classical information theory as a restriction of quantum information theory, and a critical reconsideration of the von Neumann postulate and the notion of observable.
We provide an overview of standard "projective" quantum measurements with the goal of elucidating connections between theory and experiment. We make use of a unitary "Stinespring" representation of measurements on a dilated Hilbert space that includes both the physical degrees of freedom and those of the measurement apparatus. We explain how this unitary representation (i) is guaranteed by the axioms of quantum mechanics, (ii) relates to both the Kraus and von Neumann representations, and (iii) corresponds to the physical time evolution of the system and apparatus during the measurement process. The Stinespring representation also offers significant conceptual insight into measurements, helps connects theory and experiment, is particularly useful in describing protocols involving midcircuit measurements and outcome-dependent operations, and establishes that all quantum operations are compatible with relativistic locality, among other insights.
We present a learning task for quantum channels that exhibits an exponential separation in query complexity (in terms of the number of qubits) between two access models: i) black-box channel access and ii) access to a Stinespring dilation unitary of the channel along with its inverse. We consider the task of learning how close the unknown channel is to the set of unitary channels. This is characterized by the \textit{optimal average gate fidelity (OAGF)}, defined as the average gate fidelity maximized over all unitary channels. For constant Kraus rank and a dilation environment of dimension polylog(d), we provide an algorithm that estimates the OAGF to fixed additive accuracy using polylog(d) queries to the Stinespring dilation unitary and its inverse. In contradistinction, under the black-box access model, this estimation requires at least Ω(d) queries, even for channels of constant Kraus rank and constant additive accuracy. As a corollary, we rule out a universal simulator that uses only poly(logd,q) queries to the unknown channel to approximate the output of arbitrary q-query algorithms with access to a randomly-sampled Stinespring dilation unitary and its inverse, even to sufficiently small constant error. These results demonstrate that access to the system-environment joint evolution and its inverse can provide an exponential advantage in estimating an intrinsic property of a quantum channel.