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arXiv:quant-ph/0107085

Impossibility of comparing and sorting quantum states

Arul, A. John

Published Jul 17, 2001• 6 citations
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Abstract

Is there any point of principle that prohibits us from doing one or more forms of quantum information processing? It is now well known that an unknown quantum state can neither be copied nor deleted perfectly. Given a set of states which are not necessarily orthogonal, is it possible to compare any two states from the set, given some reasonable ordering of such states? Is it possible to sort them in some specific order? In the context of quantum computation, it is shown here that there is no quantum circuit implementing a unitary transformation, for comparing and sorting an unrestricted set of quantum states.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0107085

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Is there any point of principle that prohibits us from doing one or more forms of quantum information processing? It is now well known that an unknown quantum state can neither be copied nor deleted perfectly. Given a set of states which are not necessarily orthogonal, is it possible to compare any two states from the set, given some reasonable ordering of such states? Is it possible to sort them in some specific order? In the context of quantum computation, it is shown here that there is no quantum circuit implementing a unitary transformation, for comparing and sorting an unrestricted set of quantum states.
Pati and Braunstein defined a deleting machine and showed the impossibility of deleting one of two identical copies of an unknown quantum state. So far, no one has defined two non-identical copies of a quantum state, of course no one has discussed the impossibility of deleting one of two non-identical copies of an unknown quantum state. In this paper, we define u∣ψ>u|ψ>u∣ψ> and U∣ψ>U|ψ>U∣ψ>, where uuu and UUU are any unitary operators, as two unitary copies of a quantum state ∣ψ>|ψ>∣ψ>, and show that it is impossible to delete one of two unitary copies of an unknown state.
Suppose we are given two identical copies of an unknown quantum state and we wish to delete one copy from among the given two copies. The quantum no-deletion principle restricts us from perfectly deleting a copy but it does not prohibit us from deleting a copy approximately. Here we construct two types of a ``universal quantum deletion machine'' which approximately deletes a copy such that the fidelity of deletion does not depend on the input state. The two types of universal quantum deletion machines are (1) a conventional deletion machine described by one unitary operator and (2) a modified deletion machine described by two unitary operators. Here it is shown that the modified deletion machine deletes a qubit with fidelity 3∕43∕43∕4, which is the maximum limit for deleting an unknown quantum state. In addition to this we also show that the modified deletion machine retains the qubit in the first mode with average fidelity 0.77 (approx.) which is slightly greater than the fidelity of measurement for two given identical states, showing how precisely one can determine its state [S. Massar and S. Popescu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 1259 (1995)]. We also show that the deletion machine itself is input state independent, i.e., the information is not hidden in the deleting machine, and hence we can delete the information completely from the deletion machine.
Copying the quantum states is contradictory to classical information processing since the fundamental difference between classical and quantum information is that while classical information can be copied perfectly, quantum information cannot. However, this statement does not rule out the risk of building a device that can reproduce a set of quantum states. This paper investigates the naturally arising question of how well or under what conditions one can copy and measure an arbitrary quantum superposition of states. The CNOT and XOR operation-based quantum circuit is presented that exhibits entanglement of states and allows for measuring the doubled qubits.
A quantum analog of the fundamental classical not gate is a quantum gate that would transform any input qubit state onto an orthogonal state. Intriguingly, this universal NOT gate is forbidden by the laws of quantum physics. This striking phenomenon has far-reaching implications concerning quantum information processing and encoding information about directions and reference frames into quantum states. It also triggers the question of under what conditions the preparation of quantum states orthogonal to input states becomes possible. Here we report on experimental demonstration of orthogonalization of partly unknown single- and two-qubit quantum states. A state orthogonal to an input state is conditionally prepared by quantum filtering, and the only required information about the input state is a mean value of a single arbitrary operator. We show that perfect orthogonalization of partly unknown two-qubit entangled states can be performed by applying the quantum filter to one of the qubits only.