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Physical Review A

Broadcasting of imaginarity

Zijian Zhang, Nan Li, Shunlong Luo

Published Nov 26, 2024• 17 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recently, the resource theory of imaginarity was proposed, viewing the imaginary part of a quantum state as a basic resource leading to quantum advantages. As with other quantum resources such as correlations, coherence, and asymmetry, a natural question arises: Can imaginarity resource be broadcast by a real operation which is free in the resource theory of imaginarity? In this work, we introduce two concepts of imaginarity broadcasting. The first pertains to nonreal states, while the second is related to the imaginarity resource. For nonreal states, we demonstrate that a specific type of nonreal states can be broadcast. However, when it comes to broadcasting the imaginarity resource, we get a surprising result that any imaginarity resource can be perfectly broadcast via a real operation. By comparing different (no-)broadcasting theorems, we distinguish the resource theory of imaginarity from the resource theories of correlations, coherence, and asymmetry, and reveal certain distinctive features of the resource theory of imaginarity.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.110.052439

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Recently, the resource theory of imaginarity was proposed, viewing the imaginary part of a quantum state as a basic resource leading to quantum advantages. As with other quantum resources such as correlations, coherence, and asymmetry, a natural question arises: Can imaginarity resource be broadcast by a real operation which is free in the resource theory of imaginarity? In this work, we introduce two concepts of imaginarity broadcasting. The first pertains to nonreal states, while the second is related to the imaginarity resource. For nonreal states, we demonstrate that a specific type of nonreal states can be broadcast. However, when it comes to broadcasting the imaginarity resource, we get a surprising result that any imaginarity resource can be perfectly broadcast via a real operation. By comparing different (no-)broadcasting theorems, we distinguish the resource theory of imaginarity from the resource theories of correlations, coherence, and asymmetry, and reveal certain distinctive features of the resource theory of imaginarity.
Abstract Imaginarity has proven to be a valuable resource in various quantum information processing tasks. A natural question arises: can the imaginarity of quantum states be broadcast via real operations? In this work, we present explicit structures for nonreal states whose imaginarity can be broadcast and cloned. That is, for a nonreal state, its imaginarity can be cloned if and only if it is a direct sum of several maximally imaginary states under orthogonal transformation, and its imaginarity can be broadcast if and only if it is a direct sum of a real state and some nonreal qubit states which are mixtures of two orthogonal maximally imaginary states under orthogonal transformation. In particular, we show that for a nonreal pure state, its imaginarity cannot be broadcast unless it is a maximally imaginary state. Furthermore, we derive a trade-off relation on the imaginarity broadcasting of pure states in terms of the measure of irreversibility of quantum states concerning real operations and the geometric measure of imaginarity. In addition, we demonstrate that any faithful measure of imaginarity is not superadditive.
Wave-particle duality is one of the basic features of quantum mechanics, giving rise to the use of complex numbers in describing states of quantum systems and their dynamics and interaction. Since the inception of quantum theory, it has been debated whether complex numbers are essential or whether an alternative consistent formulation is possible using real numbers only. Here, we attack this long-standing problem theoretically and experimentally, using the powerful tools of quantum resource theories. We show that, under reasonable assumptions, quantum states are easier to create and manipulate if they only have real elements. This gives an operational meaning to the resource theory of imaginarity. We identify and answer several important questions, which include the state-conversion problem for all qubit states and all pure states of any dimension and the approximate imaginarity distillation for all quantum states. As an application, we show that imaginarity plays a crucial role in state discrimination, that is, there exist real quantum states that can be perfectly distinguished via local operations and classical communication but that cannot be distinguished with any nonzero probability if one of the parties has no access to imaginarity. We confirm this phenomenon experimentally with linear optics, discriminating different two-photon quantum states by local projective measurements. Our results prove that complex numbers are an indispensable part of quantum mechanics.
Imaginarity has shown to be an important resource in quantum information. The witness theory of quantum resource, such as entanglement witness, coherence witness, and imaginarity witness, has been established, in particular entanglement witness and coherence witness have been extensively explored. We present here another class of imaginarity witnesses beyond the one in [{Phys. Lett. A} \textbf{530}, 130135 (2025)]. Within our framework, any nonreal Hermitian operator under the reference basis is an imaginarity witness and only finite of them can detect all the imaginarity states. As the common approaches that were explored in the witness theories of entanglement and coherence, we then explore the relations between these imaginarity witnesses in different cases: (i) when they can detect common imaginary states, (ii) when they can detect the same sets of imaginary states, and (ii) when they obey the finer relation. Finally, we define an imaginarity measure in terms of witnesses, termed witnessed imaginarity, and prove that it coincides with both the trace norm of imaginarity and the robustness of imaginarity.
Abstract The resource theory of imaginarity studies the operational value of imaginary parts in quantum states, operations, and measurements. Here we introduce and study the distillation and conversion of imaginarity in distributed scenario. This arises naturally in bipartite systems where both parties work together to generate the maximum possible imaginarity on one of the subsystems. We give exact solutions to this problem for general qubit states and pure states of arbitrary dimension. We present a scenario that demonstrates the operational advantage of imaginarity: the discrimination of quantum channels without the aid of an ancillary system. We then link this scenario to local operations and classical communications(LOCC) discrimination of bipartite states. We experimentally demonstrate the relevant assisted distillation protocol, and show the usefulness of imaginarity in the aforementioned two tasks.
Abstract The use of imaginary numbers in modelling quantum mechanical systems encompasses the wave-like nature of quantum states. Here we introduce a resource theoretic framework for imaginarity, where the free states are taken to be those with density matrices that are real with respect to a fixed basis. This theory is closely related to the resource theory of coherence, as it is basis dependent, and the imaginary numbers appear in the off-diagonal elements of the density matrix. Unlike coherence however, the set of physically realizable free operations is identical to both completely resource non-generating (RNG) operations, and stochastically RNG operations. Moreover, the resource theory of imaginarity does not have a self-adjoint resource destroying map. After introducing and characterizing the free operations, we provide several measures of imaginarity, and give necessary and sufficient conditions for pure state transformations via physically consistent free operations in the single shot regime.
Complex numbers are widely used in both classical and quantum physics and are indispensable components for describing quantum systems and their dynamical behavior. Recently, the resource theory of imaginarity has been introduced, allowing for a systematic study of complex numbers in quantum mechanics and quantum information theory. In this work we develop theoretical methods for the resource theory of imaginarity, motivated by recent progress within theories of entanglement and coherence. We investigate imaginarity quantification, focusing on the geometric imaginarity and the robustness of imaginarity, and apply these tools to the state conversion problem in imaginarity theory. Moreover, we analyze the complexity of real and general operations in optical experiments, focusing on the number of unfixed wave plates for their implementation. We also discuss the role of imaginarity for local state discrimination, proving that any pair of real orthogonal pure states can be discriminated via local real operations and classical communication. Our study reveals the significance of complex numbers in quantum physics and proves that imaginarity is a resource in optical experiments.