Quantum Resource Theories (QRTs) provide a powerful framework for characterizing and quantifying quantum advantages in information processing. While most existing results focus on convex resource theories, many physically relevant resources such as non-Gaussianity and quantum discord naturally exhibit nonconvex structures. In this work, we conduct our study centered around projective robustness. We rigorously establish the dual representation of projective robustness through resource witness, which not only deepens the theoretical understanding of quantum resource quantification but also provides experimentally verifiable detection protocols for nonconvex resource theories. Moreover, we investigate the operational significance of projective robustness in general quantum resource theories without convexity constraints. Our analysis also reveals how projective robustness quantifies the advantage of resourceful states in fundamental quantum processing tasks, extending beyond conventional convex-resource settings. At last, we give an example which shows that projective robustness effectively quantifies quantum advantage in phase discrimination with nonconvex and non-orthogonal free states. It adapts to nonconvex structures, captures the correlation between phase shift and quantum advantage, and satisfies Theorem 1’s tight lower bound conclusion. Generalized robustness, however, fails here due to its reliance on convex closure transformation. The results demonstrate the broad applicability of projective robustness across both convex and nonconvex quantum resource theories, offering new perspectives on the fundamental limitations and potential of quantum resources in information processing.
Quantum Resource Theories (QRTs) provide a powerful framework for characterizing and quantifying quantum advantages in information processing. While most existing results focus on convex resource theories, many physically relevant resources such as non-Gaussianity and quantum discord naturally exhibit nonconvex structures. In this work, we conduct our study centered around projective robustness. We rigorously establish the dual representation of projective robustness through resource witness, which not only deepens the theoretical understanding of quantum resource quantification but also provides experimentally verifiable detection protocols for nonconvex resource theories. Moreover, we investigate the operational significance of projective robustness in general quantum resource theories without convexity constraints. Our analysis also reveals how projective robustness quantifies the advantage of resourceful states in fundamental quantum processing tasks, extending beyond conventional convex-resource settings. At last, we give an example which shows that projective robustness effectively quantifies quantum advantage in phase discrimination with nonconvex and non-orthogonal free states. It adapts to nonconvex structures, captures the correlation between phase shift and quantum advantage, and satisfies Theorem 1’s tight lower bound conclusion. Generalized robustness, however, fails here due to its reliance on convex closure transformation. The results demonstrate the broad applicability of projective robustness across both convex and nonconvex quantum resource theories, offering new perspectives on the fundamental limitations and potential of quantum resources in information processing.
Quantum resource theories (QRTs) provide a unified framework to analyze quantum properties as resources for achieving advantages in quantum information processing. The generalized robustness and the weight of resource have been gaining increasing attention as useful resource quantifiers. However, the existing analyses of these measures were restricted to the cases where convexity of the set of free states is assumed, and physically motivated resources do not necessarily satisfy this restriction. In this paper, we give characterizations of robustness- and weight-based measures in general QRTs without convexity restriction through two different yet related approaches. On the one hand, we characterize the generalized robustness and the weight of resource by introducing a nonlinear witness. We show a general construction of new witness observables that detect the resourcefulness of a given state from multiple copies of the state and, using these witnesses, we provide operational interpretations of the above resource measures even without any convexity assumption. On the other hand, we find that the generalized robustness and the weight of resource can also be interpreted as the worst-case maximum advantage in variants of channel-discrimination and channel-exclusion tasks, respectively, where the set of free states consists of several convex subsets corresponding to multiple restrictions. We further extend these results to QRTs for quantum channels and quantum instruments. These characterizations show that every quantum resource exhibits an advantage for the corresponding tasks, even in general QRTs without convexity assumption. Thus, we establish the usefulness of robustness-based and weight-based techniques beyond the conventional scope of convex QRTs, leading to a better understanding of the general structure of QRTs.
Identifying what quantum-mechanical properties are useful to untap a superior performance in quantum technologies is a pivotal question. Quantum resource theories provide a unified framework to analyze and understand such properties, as successfully demonstrated for entanglement and coherence. While these are examples of convex resources, for which quantum advantages can always be identified, many physical resources are described by a nonconvex set of free states and their interpretation has so far remained elusive. Here we address the fundamental question of the usefulness of quantum resources without convexity assumption, by providing two operational interpretations of the generalized robustness measure in general resource theories. First, we characterize the generalized robustness in terms of a nonlinear resource witness and reveal that any state is more advantageous than a free one in some multicopy channel discrimination task. Next, we consider a scenario where a theory is characterized by multiple constraints and show that the generalized robustness coincides with the worst-case advantage in a single-copy channel discrimination setting. Based on these characterizations, we conclude that every quantum resource state shows a qualitative and quantitative advantage in discrimination problems in a general resource theory even without any specification on the structure of the free states.
Abstract Which quantum phenomena are advantageous for information processing tasks? By classifying quantum states and operations as resourceful versus non-resourceful, or free, the mathematical formalism of quantum resource theories helps to address such questions. For the task of discriminating channels applied to a probe state, it has been shown that under certain conditions—namely, the set of free states being convex in any dimension or possibly non-convex but finite dimensional—every resourceful probe state can provide an advantage, quantified by a resource monotone known as generalized robustness. In this work, bypassing the limitations of previous studies, we define the generalized robustness for an arbitrary resource theory and show that it admits two operational interpretations. Firstly, it provides an upper bound on the maximal advantage in channel discrimination tasks implemented on multiple copies of the probe states. Secondly, in many physically relevant theories, it quantifies the advantage in single-copy channel discrimination tasks in a worst case scenario. We further present a general construction of multi-copy resource witnesses and provide practical methods to bound the generalized robustness in experiments. Finally, we apply our results to a key case study in continuous variable quantum information: the resource theory of non-Gaussianity. This theory is naturally defined by a set of free states (Gaussian states) that is non-convex and infinite-dimensional. Our work then shows conclusively that all non-Gaussian states can provide an advantage in some channel discrimination task, even those that are simply mixtures of Gaussian states and are typically disregarded for other quantum information tasks. To illustrate our findings, we provide exact formulas for the robustness of non-Gaussianity of Fock states, along with an analysis of the robustness for a family of non-Gaussian states within the convex hull of Gaussian states.
We introduce the witness robustness of quantum measurements, a resource quantifier whose admissible noise consists of tuples of free-state witnesses rather than physical measurements. We establish its operational interpretation: it quantifies the maximal advantage that a measurement can provide over free measurements in discriminating an ensemble composed entirely of free states. Unlike the standard and generalized robustnesses, the witness robustness is not faithful in general, reflecting the fact that a resourceful measurement need not be useful when only free states can be prepared. We identify conditions under which faithfulness is recovered and show that, in resource theories admitting a resource-destroying map, the witness robustness vanishes for every measurement. We also establish fundamental properties, including convexity and monotonicity. Finally, we derive analytical results for projective measurements in single-qubit magic and for binary pure-state projective measurements in the two-qubit PPT entanglement theory.
A central problem in quantum resource theory is to give operational meaning to quantum resources that can provide clear advantages in certain physical tasks compared to the convex set of resource-free states. We propose to extend this basic principle by defining the relative superiority of resources over a specific convex set of resource states, also provide a relative advantage in physical tasks based on this extended principle. This allows the generalized robustness measure to quantify the relative maximal advantage due to a given resource state over a specific convex set of resource states in the subchannel discrimination, thereby showing that the operational interpretation of resource measures also holds in a relative perspective. In addition, we offer a new framework for defining the deficiency of a given state in physical tasks compared to the set of maximum resource states. The geometric measure we provide satisfies the conditions of the framework for quantum coherence and entanglement, and it accurately quantifies the minimal disadvantage due to a given state compared to maximumresourcestates inthe subchannel discrimination in certain situations. These two extensions and new interpretations expand the scope of quantum resource theories and provide a more comprehensive operational interpretation.
Resource theories provide a general framework for the characterization of properties of physical systems in quantum mechanics and beyond. Here we introduce methods for the quantification of resources in general probabilistic theories (GPTs), focusing in particular on the technical issues associated with infinite-dimensional state spaces. We define a universal resource quantifier based on the robustness measure, and show it to admit a direct operational meaning: in any GPT, it quantifies the advantage that a given resource state enables in channel discrimination tasks over all resourceless states. We show that the robustness acts as a faithful and strongly monotonic measure in any resource theory described by a convex and closed set of free states, and can be computed through a convex conic optimization problem. Specializing to continuous-variable quantum mechanics, we obtain additional bounds and relations, allowing an efficient computation of the measure and comparison with other monotones. We demonstrate applications of the robustness to several resources of physical relevance: optical nonclassicality, entanglement, genuine non-Gaussianity, and coherence. In particular, we establish exact expressions for various classes of states, including Fock states and squeezed states in the resource theory of nonclassicality and general pure states in the resource theory of entanglement, as well as tight bounds applicable in general cases.