Limits of nonlinear in quantum mechanics are studied. Impossibility of physical implementation of the transformation $\varrho^{\otimes n} \to \varrho^{n}$ in quantum mechanics is proved. For sake of further analysis the simplest notion of structural completely positive approximation (SCPA) and structural physical approximations (SPA) of unphysical map are introduced. Both always exist for linear hermitian maps and can be optimised under natural assumptions. However it is shown that some intuitively natural SPA of the nonlinear operation $\varrho^{\otimes 2} \to \varrho^{2}$ that was already proven to be unphysical is impossible. It is conjectured that there exist no SPA of the operation $\varrho^{\otimes n} \to \varrho^{n}$ at all. It is pointed out that, on the other hand, it is physically possible to measure the trace of the second power of the state $Tr(\varrho^{2})$ if only two copies of the system are available. This gives the interpretation of one of Tsallis entropy as mean value of some ``multicopy'' observable. The (partial) generalisation of this idea shows that each of higher order Tsallis entropies can be measured with help of only two multicopy observables. Following this observations the notion of multicopy entanglement witnesses is defined and first example is provided. Finally, with help of multicopy observables simple method of spectrum state estimation is pointed out and discussed.
Limits of nonlinear in quantum mechanics are studied. Impossibility of physical implementation of the transformation ϱ⊗n→ϱn in quantum mechanics is proved. For sake of further analysis the simplest notion of structural completely positive approximation (SCPA) and structural physical approximations (SPA) of unphysical map are introduced. Both always exist for linear hermitian maps and can be optimised under natural assumptions. However it is shown that some intuitively natural SPA of the nonlinear operation ϱ⊗2→ϱ2 that was already proven to be unphysical is impossible. It is conjectured that there exist no SPA of the operation ϱ⊗n→ϱn at all. It is pointed out that, on the other hand, it is physically possible to measure the trace of the second power of the state Tr(ϱ2) if only two copies of the system are available. This gives the interpretation of one of Tsallis entropy as mean value of some ``multicopy'' observable. The (partial) generalisation of this idea shows that each of higher order Tsallis entropies can be measured with help of only two multicopy observables. Following this observations the notion of multicopy entanglement witnesses is defined and first example is provided. Finally, with help of multicopy observables simple method of spectrum state estimation is pointed out and discussed.
Limits of state transformations in quantum mechanics are studied. Impossibility of physical implementation of the transformation ${\ensuremath{\varrho}}^{\ensuremath{\bigotimes}n}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\varrho}}^{n}$ in quantum mechanics is proved. The most natural notions of structural completely positive approximation and structural physical approximations of nonphysical map are introduced. It is shown that these always exist for linear Hermitian maps and can be optimized under natural conditions. It is pointed out that it is physically possible to measure in a simple way the traces of nth power of quantum state $\mathrm{Tr}({\ensuremath{\varrho}}^{n})$ if only joint measurements on n copies of the system are allowed. This gives the interpretation of Tsallis entropies as values of ``multicopy'' observables. Following this observations, the notion of multicopy entanglement witnesses is defined and examples are provided. Finally, using notion of multicopy observable, a simple method of spectrum state estimation is discussed.
In quantum information processing it may be possible to have efficient computation and secure communication beyond the limitations of classical systems. In a fundamental point of view, however, evolution of quantum systems by the laws of quantum mechanics is more restrictive than classical systems, identified to a specific form of dynamics, that is, unitary transformations and, consequently, positive and completely positive maps to subsystems. This also characterizes classes of disallowed transformations on quantum systems, among which positive but not completely maps are of particular interest as they characterize entangled states, a general resource in quantum information processing. Structural physical approximation offers a systematic way of approximating those non-physical maps, positive but not completely positive maps, with quantum channels. Since it has been proposed as a method of detecting entangled states, it has stimulated fundamental problems on classifications of positive maps and the structure of Hermitian operators and quantum states, as well as on quantum measurement such as quantum design in quantum information theory. It has developed efficient and feasible methods of directly detecting entangled states in practice, for which proof-of-principle experimental demonstrations have also been performed with photonic qubit states. Here, we present a comprehensive review on quantum information processing with structural physical approximations and the related progress. The review mainly focuses on properties of structural physical approximations and their applications toward practical information applications.
The structural physical approximation (SPA) to a positive map is considered to be one of the most important methods to detect entanglement in the real physical world. We first show that an arbitrary entanglement witness (EW) W can be constructed from a separable density matrix $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ in the form of $W=\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{-}{c}_{\ensuremath{\sigma}}I$, where ${c}_{\ensuremath{\sigma}}$ is a non-negative number and I is the identity matrix. Following the general form of EWs from separable states, we show a sufficient condition and a sufficient and necessary condition in low dimensions of that SPAs to positive maps do not define entanglement-breaking channels. We show that either the SPA of an EW or the SPA of the partial transposition of the EW in low dimensions is an entanglement-breaking channel. We give sufficient conditions of violating the SPA conjecture [Phys. Rev. A 78, 062105 (2008)]. Our results indicate that the SPA conjecture is independent of whether or not positive maps are optimal.
Very recently, a conjecture saying that the so-called structural physical approximations (SPAs) to optimal positive maps (optimal entanglement witnesses) give entanglement breaking (EB) maps (separable states) has been posed (Korbicz et al 2008 Phys. Rev. A 78 062105). The main purpose of this contribution is to explore this subject. First, we extend the set of entanglement witnesses supporting the conjecture. Then, we ask whether SPAs constructed from other than the depolarizing channel maps also lead to EB maps and show that in general this is not the case. On the other hand, we prove an interesting fact that for any positive map Λ, there exists an EB channel Φ such that the SPA of Λ constructed with the aid of Φ is again an EB channel. Finally, we ask similar questions in the case of continuous variable systems. We provide a simple way of constructing SPA and prove that in the case of the transposition map it gives the EB channel.
Accurately estimating high-order moments of quantum states is an elementary precondition for many crucial tasks in quantum computing, such as entanglement spectroscopy, entropy estimation, spectrum estimation, and predicting nonlinear features from quantum states. But in reality, inevitable quantum noise prevents us from accessing the desired value. In this paper, we address this issue by systematically analyzing the feasibility and efficiency of extracting high-order moments from noisy states. We first show that there exists a quantum protocol capable of accomplishing this task if and only if the underlying noise channel is invertible. We then establish a method for deriving protocols that attain optimal sample complexity using quantum operations and classical postprocessing only. Our protocols, in contrast to conventional ones, incur lower overheads and avoid sampling different quantum operations due to a novel technique called the “‘observable shift method,” making the protocols strong candidates for practical use on current quantum devices. The proposed method also indicates the power of entangled protocols in retrieving high-order information, whereas in the existing methods, entanglement does not help. We further construct the protocol for large quantum systems to retrieve the depolarizing channels, making the proposed method scalable. Our work contributes to a deeper understanding of how quantum noise could affect high-order information extraction and provides guidance on how to tackle it. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
In the past century, experimental discoveries have witnessed phenomena in Nature which challenge our everyday classical intuition. In order to explain these facts, quantum theory was developed, which so far has been able to reproduce the observed results. However, I believe that our understanding of quantum mechanics can be significantly improved by the search for an operational meaning behind its mathematical formulation, which would help to identify the limitations and possibilities of the theory for information processing. An intriguing property of quantum theory is its intrinsic randomness. Indeed, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in 1935 questioned the completeness of quantum theory. They argued the possibility of the existence of a complete theory where variables to which we have not access determine the behaviour of physical systems, and the randomness observed in quantum mechanics is then due to our ignorance of these variables. These hidden variables theories, however, were proved not to be enough for explaining the predictions of quantum theory, as shown in the no-go theorems by Bell on quantum-nonlocality and by Kochen and Specker on quantum-contextuality. In the past decades, many experiments have corroborated the nonlocal and contextual character of Nature. However, no intuition behind these phenomena has been found, in particular about what limits their strength. In fact, special relativity alone would allow for phenomena which are more nonlocal than what quantum theory allows. Hence, much effort has been devoted to find the physical properties of quantum theory that restricts these phenomena. In this thesis, we study the constraints that arise on nonlocal and contextual phenomena when a certain exclusiveness structure compatible with quantum theory is imposed in the space of events. Here, an event denotes the situation where an outcome is obtained given that a measurement is performed on the physical system. Regarding nonlocality, we introduce a notion of orthogonality that states that events involving different outcomes of the same local measurement are exclusive, and construct constraints that the correlations among observers should satisfy. We denote this by Local Orthogonality principle (LO), which is the first intrinsically multipartite principle for bounding quantum correlations. We prove that LO identifies the supra-quantum character of some bipartite and multipartite correlations, and gets close to the quantum boundary. When studying contextuality, the same abstract event may correspond to outcomes of different measurements, which introduces a non-trivial structure in the space of events. For its study, we develop a general formalism for contextuality scenarios in the spirit of the recent approach by Cabello, Severini and Winter. In our framework, nonlocality arises as a particular case of contextuality, which allows us to study a generalization of LO. Both in nonlocality and contextuality, we find close connections to problems in combinatorics and hence use graph-theoretical tools for studying correlations. Finally, this thesis also studies the detection of nonlocal correlations. Most results on quantum nonlocality focus on few particles' experiments, while less is known about the detection of quantum nonlocality in many-body systems. Standard many-body observables involve correlations among few particles, while there is still no multipartite Bell inequality to test nonlocality merely from these data. In this thesis, we provide the first proposal for nonlocality detection in many-body systems using two-body correlations. We construct families of Bell inequalities from two-body correlators, which can detect nonlocality for systems with large number of constituents. In addition, we prove violations by systems which are relevant in nuclear and atomic physics, and show how to test these inequalities by measuring global spin components, hence opening the problem to experimental realizations.