Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:quant-ph/0004035 · Physical Review A

Collective versus local measurements on two parallel or antiparallel spins

Serge Massar

Published Sep 19, 2000• 55 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We give a complete analysis of covariant measurements on two spins. We consider the cases of two parallel and two antiparallel spins, and we consider both collective measurements on the two spins and measurements that require only local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC). In all cases we obtain the optimal measurements for arbitrary fidelities. In particular, we show that if the aim is to determine as accurately as possible the direction in which the spins are pointing, it is best to carry out measurements on antiparallel spins (as already shown by Gisin and Popescu), second best to carry out measurements on parallel spins, and worst to be restricted to LOCC measurements. If the aim is to determine as accurately as possible a direction orthogonal to that in which the spins are pointing, it is best to carry out measurements on parallel spins, whereas measurements on antiparallel spins and LOCC measurements are both less suitable but equivalent.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.62.040101

Related papers

Optimal extraction of information from two spins

Lina Chang, Nan Li, Shunlong Luo +1 more

We revisit the issue of extracting information from parallel and antiparallel spins, as initiated by Gisin and Popescu [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 432 (1999)], from the viewpoint of parameter estimation. By comparing two fundamental figures of merit based on fidelity and quantum Fisher information for assessing information quality, we demonstrate that these criteria yield different strategies for optimally extracting spin information. A surprising observation is that while for a single spin, as well as for parallel spins, quantum Fisher information cannot be fully extracted by any uniform measurement, this is not the case for antiparallel spins. A simple uniform measurement fully extracting quantum Fisher information in antiparallel spins is identified. This reveals a significant feature of antiparallel spins from the perspective of Fisher information and provides an alternative illustration of the idea that antiparallel spins carry more information than parallel spins.

Physical Review A•Apr 18, 2014•15 citations

Estimation of pure qubits on circles

Samuel L. Braunstein, Sibasish Ghosh A, Simone Severini B

Gisin and Popescu [PRL, 83, 432 (1999)] have shown that more information about their direction can be obtained from a pair of anti-parallel spins compared to a pair of parallel spins, where the first member of the pair (which we call the pointer member) can point equally along any direction in the Bloch sphere. They argued that this was due to the difference in dimensionality spanned by these two alphabets of states. Here we consider similar alphabets, but with the first spin restricted to a fixed small circle of the Bloch sphere. In this case, the dimensionality spanned by the anti-parallel versus parallel alphabet is now equal. However, the anti-parallel alphabet is found to still contain more information in general. We generalize this to having N parallel spins and M anti-parallel spins. When the pointer member is restricted to a small circle these alphabets again span spaces of equal dimension, yet in general, more directional information can be found for sets with smaller |N-M| for any fixed total number of spins. We find that the optimal POVMs for extracting directional information in these cases can always be expressed in terms of the Fourier basis. Our results show that dimensionality alone cannot explain the greater information content in anti-parallel combinations of spins compared to parallel combinations. In addition, we describe an LOCC protocol which extract optimal directional information when the pointer member is restricted to a small circle and a pair of parallel spins are supplied.

arXiv:quant-ph/0412101•Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical•Feb 6, 2007•5 citations

Covariant quantum measurements that maximize the likelihood

Giulio Chiribella, Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano, Paolo Perinotti +1 more

We derive the class of covariant measurements that are optimal according to the maximum likelihood criterion. The optimization problem is fully resolved in the case of pure input states, under the physically meaningful hypotheses of unimodularity of the covariance group and measurability of the stability subgroup. The general result is applied to the case of covariant state estimation for finite dimension, and to the Weyl-Heisenberg displacement estimation in infinite dimension. We also consider estimation with multiple copies, and analyze the behavior of the likelihood versus the number of copies. A ``continuous-variable'' analog of the measurement of direction of the angular momentum with two antiparallel spins by Gisin and Popescu is given.

arXiv:quant-ph/0403083•Physical Review A•Dec 9, 2004•59 citations

Optimal estimation of three parallel spins with genuine and restricted collective measurements

Changhao Yi, Kai Zhou, Zhibo Hou +2 more

Collective measurements on identical and independent quantum systems can offer advantages in information extraction compared with individual measurements. However, little is known about the distinction between restricted collective measurements and genuine collective measurements in the multipartite setting. In this work we establish a rigorous performance gap based on a simple and old estimation problem, the estimation of a random spin state given three parallel spins. Notably, we derive an analytical formula for the maximum estimation fidelity of biseparable measurements and clarify its fidelity gap from genuine collective measurements. Moreover, we clarify the structure of optimal biseparable measurements. It turns out the maximum estimation fidelity can be achieved by two- and one-copy measurements assisted by one-way communication in one direction, but not the other way. Our work reveals a rich landscape of multipartite nonclassicality in quantum measurements instead of quantum states and is expected to trigger further studies.

arXiv:2412.03383•Physical Review A•Jun 5, 2025•0 citations

Full-state information-disturbance tradeoff for direction estimation with antiparallel spin-coherent pairs

Massimiliano F. Sacchi

We determine the optimal information--disturbance tradeoff for estimating an unknown spatial direction encoded in two antiparallel spins. Rotational covariance reduces the optimization over all instruments to a finite-dimensional Choi problem: a positive seed operator obeys one trace constraint for each irreducible sector of the input representation, while both the directional score and the operation fidelity are linear functionals of this seed. For two antiparallel spin-$1/2$ particles, whose physical representation decomposes as $0\oplus1$, we derive the two-multiplier dual problem and characterize the optimal instrument from the kernel vectors of the dual slack operator. The optimal operation is a covariant filter with scalar--vector coherence and is generally not a convex interpolation between the identity channel and a measure-and-reprepare strategy. At maximum information we recover the Gisin--Popescu score, but the least disturbing output state is optimized independently, giving a smaller disturbance than both the parallel-spin benchmark and antiparallel measure-and-reprepare. We also formulate the parallel benchmark and, as a central extension of the method, treat antiparallel spin-coherent states of arbitrary spin $j$. In this case the signal coherently occupies all sectors $\ell=0,\ldots,2j$ of $j\otimes j$, the endpoint information is governed by nearest-neighbor sector coherences, and the endpoint disturbance is obtained from an explicit finite block-diagonal eigenvalue problem.

quant-pharXiv:2606.18040•Physical Review A•Jun 17, 2026•0 citations

Experimental Optimal Orienteering via Parallel and Antiparallel Spins

Jun-Feng Tang, Zhibo Hou, Jiangwei Shang +4 more

Antiparallel spins are superior in orienteering to parallel spins. This intriguing phenomenon is tied to entanglement associated with quantum measurements rather than quantum states. Using photonic systems, we experimentally realize the optimal orienteering protocols based on parallel spins and antiparallel spins, respectively. The optimal entangling measurements for decoding the direction information from parallel spins and antiparallel spins are realized using photonic quantum walks, which is a useful idea that is of wide interest in quantum information processing and foundational studies. Our experiments clearly demonstrate the advantage of antiparallel spins over parallel spins in orienteering. In addition, entangling measurements can extract more information than local measurements even if no entanglement is present in the quantum states.

arXiv:2002.07364•Physical Review Letters•Feb 13, 2020•30 citations
We give a complete analysis of covariant measurements on two spins. We consider the cases of two parallel and two antiparallel spins, and we consider both collective measurements on the two spins and measurements that require only local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC). In all cases we obtain the optimal measurements for arbitrary fidelities. In particular, we show that if the aim is to determine as accurately as possible the direction in which the spins are pointing, it is best to carry out measurements on antiparallel spins (as already shown by Gisin and Popescu), second best to carry out measurements on parallel spins, and worst to be restricted to LOCC measurements. If the aim is to determine as accurately as possible a direction orthogonal to that in which the spins are pointing, it is best to carry out measurements on parallel spins, whereas measurements on antiparallel spins and LOCC measurements are both less suitable but equivalent.
We revisit the issue of extracting information from parallel and antiparallel spins, as initiated by Gisin and Popescu [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 432 (1999)], from the viewpoint of parameter estimation. By comparing two fundamental figures of merit based on fidelity and quantum Fisher information for assessing information quality, we demonstrate that these criteria yield different strategies for optimally extracting spin information. A surprising observation is that while for a single spin, as well as for parallel spins, quantum Fisher information cannot be fully extracted by any uniform measurement, this is not the case for antiparallel spins. A simple uniform measurement fully extracting quantum Fisher information in antiparallel spins is identified. This reveals a significant feature of antiparallel spins from the perspective of Fisher information and provides an alternative illustration of the idea that antiparallel spins carry more information than parallel spins.
Gisin and Popescu [PRL, 83, 432 (1999)] have shown that more information about their direction can be obtained from a pair of anti-parallel spins compared to a pair of parallel spins, where the first member of the pair (which we call the pointer member) can point equally along any direction in the Bloch sphere. They argued that this was due to the difference in dimensionality spanned by these two alphabets of states. Here we consider similar alphabets, but with the first spin restricted to a fixed small circle of the Bloch sphere. In this case, the dimensionality spanned by the anti-parallel versus parallel alphabet is now equal. However, the anti-parallel alphabet is found to still contain more information in general. We generalize this to having N parallel spins and M anti-parallel spins. When the pointer member is restricted to a small circle these alphabets again span spaces of equal dimension, yet in general, more directional information can be found for sets with smaller |N-M| for any fixed total number of spins. We find that the optimal POVMs for extracting directional information in these cases can always be expressed in terms of the Fourier basis. Our results show that dimensionality alone cannot explain the greater information content in anti-parallel combinations of spins compared to parallel combinations. In addition, we describe an LOCC protocol which extract optimal directional information when the pointer member is restricted to a small circle and a pair of parallel spins are supplied.
We derive the class of covariant measurements that are optimal according to the maximum likelihood criterion. The optimization problem is fully resolved in the case of pure input states, under the physically meaningful hypotheses of unimodularity of the covariance group and measurability of the stability subgroup. The general result is applied to the case of covariant state estimation for finite dimension, and to the Weyl-Heisenberg displacement estimation in infinite dimension. We also consider estimation with multiple copies, and analyze the behavior of the likelihood versus the number of copies. A ``continuous-variable'' analog of the measurement of direction of the angular momentum with two antiparallel spins by Gisin and Popescu is given.
Collective measurements on identical and independent quantum systems can offer advantages in information extraction compared with individual measurements. However, little is known about the distinction between restricted collective measurements and genuine collective measurements in the multipartite setting. In this work we establish a rigorous performance gap based on a simple and old estimation problem, the estimation of a random spin state given three parallel spins. Notably, we derive an analytical formula for the maximum estimation fidelity of biseparable measurements and clarify its fidelity gap from genuine collective measurements. Moreover, we clarify the structure of optimal biseparable measurements. It turns out the maximum estimation fidelity can be achieved by two- and one-copy measurements assisted by one-way communication in one direction, but not the other way. Our work reveals a rich landscape of multipartite nonclassicality in quantum measurements instead of quantum states and is expected to trigger further studies.
We determine the optimal information--disturbance tradeoff for estimating an unknown spatial direction encoded in two antiparallel spins. Rotational covariance reduces the optimization over all instruments to a finite-dimensional Choi problem: a positive seed operator obeys one trace constraint for each irreducible sector of the input representation, while both the directional score and the operation fidelity are linear functionals of this seed. For two antiparallel spin-1/21/21/2 particles, whose physical representation decomposes as 0⊕10\oplus10⊕1, we derive the two-multiplier dual problem and characterize the optimal instrument from the kernel vectors of the dual slack operator. The optimal operation is a covariant filter with scalar--vector coherence and is generally not a convex interpolation between the identity channel and a measure-and-reprepare strategy. At maximum information we recover the Gisin--Popescu score, but the least disturbing output state is optimized independently, giving a smaller disturbance than both the parallel-spin benchmark and antiparallel measure-and-reprepare. We also formulate the parallel benchmark and, as a central extension of the method, treat antiparallel spin-coherent states of arbitrary spin jjj. In this case the signal coherently occupies all sectors ℓ=0,…,2j\ell=0,\ldots,2jℓ=0,…,2j of j⊗jj\otimes jj⊗j, the endpoint information is governed by nearest-neighbor sector coherences, and the endpoint disturbance is obtained from an explicit finite block-diagonal eigenvalue problem.
Antiparallel spins are superior in orienteering to parallel spins. This intriguing phenomenon is tied to entanglement associated with quantum measurements rather than quantum states. Using photonic systems, we experimentally realize the optimal orienteering protocols based on parallel spins and antiparallel spins, respectively. The optimal entangling measurements for decoding the direction information from parallel spins and antiparallel spins are realized using photonic quantum walks, which is a useful idea that is of wide interest in quantum information processing and foundational studies. Our experiments clearly demonstrate the advantage of antiparallel spins over parallel spins in orienteering. In addition, entangling measurements can extract more information than local measurements even if no entanglement is present in the quantum states.