This paper treats the isometries of metric spaces of quantum states. In fact, we consider two metrics on the set of all quantum states, namely the Bures metric and that which comes from the trace-norm. We describe all the corresponding (nonlinear) isometries and also present similar results concerning the space of all (non-normalized) density operators.
This paper treats the isometries of metric spaces of quantum states. In fact, we consider two metrics on the set of all quantum states, namely the Bures metric and that which comes from the trace-norm. We describe all the corresponding (nonlinear) isometries and also present similar results concerning the space of all (non-normalized) density operators.
We prove dimension-independent Hyers--Ulam stability for surjective approximate isometries of the positive trace-class cone in both the trace and Bures metrics. Here ε≥0 is a uniform upper bound on the additive error in preserving distances. Such an approximate isometry is uniformly approximated by a Wigner symmetry (a unitary or antiunitary conjugation), with error at most 9ε/2 in the trace metric and 22ε in the Bures metric, even if it does not fix zero. For maps fixing zero, the trace bound improves to 3ε even under the hypothesis of δ-surjectivity, independently of δ. In infinite dimensions, we construct spectrum-preserving homeomorphisms of the full state space, including mixed states, whose distortions tend to zero in both metrics but which stay a fixed uniform distance from every Wigner symmetry. For state spaces, stability holds in each fixed finite dimension with a dimension-dependent modulus tending to zero as ε→0, but no such modulus can be chosen independently of dimension.
We prove that the topology on the density space with respect to a unital C*-algebra and a faithful induced by the C*-norm is finer than the Bures metric topology. We also provide an example when this containment is strict. Next, we provide a metric on the density space induced by a quantum metric in the sense of Rieffel and prove that the induced topology is the same as the topology induced by the Bures metric and C*-norm when the C*-algebra is assumed to be finite dimensional. Finally, we provide an example of when the Bures metric and induced quantum metric are not metric equivalent. Thus, we provide a bridge between these aspects of quantum information theory and noncommutative metric geometry.
In a unital C*-algebra with a faithful trace functional τ, the set Dτ(A) of positive ρ∈A of trace τ(ρ)=1 is an algebraic analogue of the space of density matrices (the set of all positive matrices of a fixed dimension of unit trace). Motivated by the literature concerning the metric properties of the space of density matrices, the present paper studies the density space Dτ(A) in terms of the Bures metric. Linear maps on A that map Dτ(A) back into itself are positive and trace preserving, hence, they may be viewed as an algebraic analogue of a quantum channel, which are studied intensely in the literature on quantum computing and quantum information theory. The main results in this paper are: (i) to establish that the Bures metric is indeed a metric, (ii) to prove that channels induce nonexpansive maps of the density space Dτ(A), (iii) to introduce and study channels on A that are locally contractive maps (which we call Bures contractions) on the metric space Dτ(A), and (iv) to analyse Bures contractions from the point of view of the Frobenius theory of cone preserving linear maps. Although the focus is on unital C*-algebras, an important class of examples is furnished by finite von Neumann algebras. Indeed, several of the C*-algebra results are established by first proving them for finite von Neumann algebras and then proving them for C*-algebras by embedding a C*-algebra A into its enveloping von Neumann algebra A∗∗.
An explicit parameterization for the state space of an n-level density matrix is given. The parameterization is based on the canonical coset decomposition of unitary matrices. We also compute, explicitly, the Bures metric tensor over the state space of two- and three-level quantum systems.