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arXiv:quant-ph/0308043 · Physical Review Letters

Quantum Tensor Product Structures are Observable Induced

Paolo Zanardi A, Daniel A. Lidar, Seth Lloyd

Published Feb 10, 2004• 350 citations
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Abstract

It is argued that the partition of a quantum system into subsystems is dictated by the set of operationally accessible interactions and measurements. The emergence of a multipartite tensor product structure of the state space and the associated notion of quantum entanglement are then relative and observable induced. We develop a general algebraic framework aimed to formalize this concept.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.92.060402

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It is argued that the partition of a quantum system into subsystems is dictated by the set of operationally accessible interactions and measurements. The emergence of a multipartite tensor product structure of the state space and the associated notion of quantum entanglement are then relative and observable induced. We develop a general algebraic framework aimed to formalize this concept.
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Mathematical foundation of the novel concept of quantum tensor product by Zanardi et al is rigorously established. The concept of relative quantum entanglement is naturally introduced and its meaning is made clear both mathematically and physically. For a finite or an infinite dimensional vector space WWW the so called tensor product partition (TPP) is introduced on End(W)End(W)End(W), the set of endmorphisms of WWW, and a natural correspondence is constructed between the set of TPP's of End(W)End(W)End(W) and the set of tensor product structures (TPS's) of WWW. As a byproduct, it is shown that an arbitrarily given wave function belonging to an n-dimensional Hilbert space, nnn being not a prime number, can be interpreted as a separable state with respect to some man-made TPS, and thus a quantum entangled state of a many-body system with respect to the "God-given" TPS can be regarded as a quantum state without entanglement in some sense. The concept of standard set of observables is also introduced to probe the underlying structure of the object TPP and to establish its connection with practical physical measurement.
In early days of quantum theory it was believed that the results of measurements performed on two distant physical systems should be uncorrelated thus their quantum state should be separable it means described by a simple tensor product of the individual local state vectors or a tensor product of individual local density operators. It was shown many years ago by EPR that two systems which interacted in the past and separated afterwards had to be described in most cases by particular non-separable states which are called entangled. It was noticed by Zanardi et al. that a Hilbert space of possible state vectors of compound physical system could be partitioned in different way by introducing various tensor product structures induced by the experimentally accessible observables (interactions and measurements). Therefore a separable state in one partition could become entangled in different partition. In this sense the entanglement was relative to a particular set of experimental capabilities. Continuing this line of thought Torre et al. claimed to prove that for any separable state there existed strongly correlated physical observables therefore all quantum states were entangled. The same claims one may find in several recent papers. In this paper we will discuss in operational way the differences existing between separable, non-separable and entangled states and we will show that the conclusions of Torre et al. were unjustified. A sufficient condition for entanglement is the violation of BI-CHSH and/or steering inequalities. Since there exist experiments outside the quantum physics violating these inequalities therefore in the operational approach one cannot say that the entanglement is an exclusive quantum phenomenon.
Textbook quantum superposition refers to the feature that certain linear combinations of Hilbert space rays, each representing a valid quantum state, are themselves valid states. This notion is not operational, and it relies on the underlying Hilbert space formalism. Recent proposals for experimental tests of indefinite causal order, as well as tests probing the non-classicality of gravity, pivot on superposition, thereby calling for a theory-independent, operational formalisation of the concept. Here, we define superposition within the framework of Generalised Probabilistic Theories, based on observed statistics in prepare-and-measure experiments. Using this, we formulate three superposition principles to investigate which structural features of quantum theory carry over to other theories. We study conditions under which these principles carry over from subsystems to their compositions; to this end, we show that the quantum tensor product emerges as the largest composition rule for quantum systems respecting all three principles. Furthermore, we show how non-classical features such as entanglement and preparational uncertainty can be viewed as special forms of superposition.