No Arabic abstract
We connect two key concepts in quantum information: compatibility and divisibility of quantum channels. Two channels are compatible if they can be both obtained via marginalization from a third channel. A channel divides another channel if it reproduces its action by sequential composition with a third channel. (In)compatibility is of central importance for studying the difference between classical and quantum dynamics. The relevance of divisibility stands in its close relationship with the onset of Markovianity. We emphasize the simulability character of compatibility and divisibility, and, despite their structural difference, we find a set of channels -- self-degradable channels -- for which the two notions coincide. We also show that, for degradable channels, compatibility implies divisibility, and that, for anti-degradable channels, divisibility implies compatibility. These results motivate further research on these classes of channels and shed new light on the meaning of these two largely studied notions.
The Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph (PBR) theorem deals with the realism of the quantum states. It establishes that every pure quantum state is real, in the context of quantum ontological models. Specifically, by guaranteeing the property of not-Post-Peierls ($ eg$PP) compatibility (or antidistinguishability) for a particular set of states $P$, together with the ad hoc postulate known as Preparation Independence Postulate (PIP), the theorem establishes that these two properties imply the $psi$-onticity (realism) of the set of all pure states. This PBR result has triggered two particular lines of research: On the one hand, it has been possible to derive similar results without the use of the PIP, although at the expense of implying weaker properties than $psi$-onticity. On the other hand, it has also been proven that the property of $ eg$PP compatibility alone is an explicit witness of usefulness for the task known as conclusive exclusion of states. In this work, we explore the $ eg$PP compatibility of the set of states $P$, when $P$ is under the interaction of some noisy channels, which would consequently let us identify some noisy scenarios where it is still possible to perform the task of conclusive exclusion of states. Specifically, we consider the set $P$ of $n$-qubit states in interaction with an environment by means of i) individual and ii) collective couplings. In both cases, we analytically show that the phenomenon of achieving $ eg$PP compatibility, although reduced, it is still present. Searching for an optimisation of this phenomenon, we report numerical experiments up to $n=4$ qubits.
Trace decreasing quantum operations naturally emerge in experiments involving postselection. However, the experiments usually focus on dynamics of the conditional output states as if the dynamics were trace preserving. Here we show that this approach leads to incorrect conclusions about the dynamics divisibility, namely, one can observe an increase in the trace distance or the system-ancilla entanglement although the trace decreasing dynamics is completely positive divisible. We propose solutions to that problem and introduce proper indicators of the information backflow and the indivisibility. We also review a recently introduced concept of the generalized erasure dynamics that includes more experimental data in the dynamics description. The ideas are illustrated by explicit physical examples of polarization dependent losses.
We introduce the notion of compatibility dimension for a set of quantum measurements: it is the largest dimension of a Hilbert space on which the given measurements are compatible. In the Schrodinger picture, this notion corresponds to testing compatibility with ensembles of quantum states supported on a subspace, using the incompatibility witnesses of Carmeli, Heinosaari, and Toigo. We provide several bounds for the compatibility dimension, using approximate quantum cloning or algebraic techniques inspired by quantum error correction. We analyze in detail the case of two orthonormal bases, and, in particular, that of mutually unbiased bases.
In this work, we establish the connection between the study of free spectrahedra and the compatibility of quantum measurements with an arbitrary number of outcomes. This generalizes previous results by the authors for measurements with two outcomes. Free spectrahedra arise from matricial relaxations of linear matrix inequalities. A particular free spectrahedron which we define in this work is the matrix jewel. We find that the compatibility of arbitrary measurements corresponds to the inclusion of the matrix jewel into a free spectrahedron defined by the effect operators of the measurements under study. We subsequently use this connection to bound the set of (asymmetric) inclusion constants for the matrix jewel using results from quantum information theory and symmetrization. The latter translate to new lower bounds on the compatibility of quantum measurements. Among the techniques we employ are approximate quantum cloning and mutually unbiased bases.
Causality is a seminal concept in science: Any research discipline, from sociology and medicine to physics and chemistry, aims at understanding the causes that could explain the correlations observed among some measured variables. While several methods exist to characterize classical causal models, no general construction is known for the quantum case. In this work, we present quantum inflation, a systematic technique to falsify if a given quantum causal model is compatible with some observed correlations. We demonstrate the power of the technique by reproducing known results and solving open problems for some paradigmatic examples of causal networks. Our results may find applications in many fields: from the characterization of correlations in quantum networks to the study of quantum effects in thermodynamic and biological processes.