We review the notion of complementarity of observables in quantum mechanics, as formulated and studied by Paul Busch and his colleagues over the years. In addition, we provide further clarification on the operational meaning of the concept, and present several characterisations of complementarity - some of which new - in a unified manner, as a consequence of a basic factorisation lemma for quantum effects. We work out several applications, including the canonical cases of position-momentum, position-energy, number-phase, as well as periodic observables relevant to spatial interferometry. We close the paper with some considerations of complementarity in a noisy setting, focusing especially on the case of convolutions of position and momentum, which was a recurring topic in Pauls work on operational formulation of quantum measurements and central to his philosophy of unsharp reality.
Measurement uncertainty relations are lower bounds on the errors of any approximate joint measurement of two or more quantum observables. The aim of this paper is to provide methods to compute optimal bounds of this type. The basic method is semidefinite programming, which we apply to arbitrary finite collections of projective observables on a finite dimensional Hilbert space. The quantification of errors is based on an arbitrary cost function, which assigns a penalty to getting result $x$ rather than y, for any pair (x,y). This induces a notion of optimal transport cost for a pair of probability distributions, and we include an appendix with a short summary of optimal transport theory as needed in our context. There are then different ways to form an overall figure of merit from the comparison of distributions. We consider three, which are related to different physical testing scenarios. The most thorough test compares the transport distances between the marginals of a joint measurement and the reference observables for every input state. Less demanding is a test just on the states for which a true value is known in the sense that the reference observable yields a definite outcome. Finally, we can measure a deviation as a single expectation value by comparing the two observables on the two parts of a maximally entangled state. All three error quantities have the property that they vanish if and only if the tested observable is equal to the reference. The theory is illustrated with some characteristic examples.
We investigate the encoding of higher-dimensional logic into quantum states. To that end we introduce finite-function-encoding (FFE) states which encode arbitrary $d$-valued logic functions and investigate their structure as an algebra over the ring of integers modulo $d$. We point out that the polynomiality of the function is the deciding property for associating hypergraphs to states. Given a polynomial, we map it to a tensor-edge hypergraph, where each edge of the hypergraph is associated with a tensor. We observe how these states generalize the previously defined qudit hypergraph states, especially through the study of a group of finite-function-encoding Pauli stabilizers. Finally, we investigate the structure of FFE states under local unitary operations, with a focus on the bipartite scenario and its connections to the theory of complex Hadamard matrices.
The aim of the paper is to study the question whether or not equilibrium states exist in open quantum systems that are embedded in at least two environments and are described by a non-Hermitian Hamilton operator $cal H$. The eigenfunctions of $cal H$ contain the influence of exceptional points (EPs) as well as that of external mixing (EM) of the states via the environment. As a result, equilibrium states exist (far from EPs). They are different from those of the corresponding closed system. Their wavefunctions are orthogonal although the Hamiltonian is non-Hermitian.
The linear superposition principle in quantum mechanics is essential for several no-go theorems such as the no-cloning theorem, the no-deleting theorem and the no-superposing theorem. It remains an open problem of finding general forbidden principles to unify these results. In this paper, we investigate general quantum transformations forbidden or permitted by the superposition principle for various goals. First, we prove a no-encoding theorem that forbids linearly superposing of an unknown pure state and a fixed state in Hilbert space of finite dimension. Two general forms include the no-cloning theorem, the no-deleting theorem, and the no-superposing theorem as special cases. Second, we provide a unified scheme for presenting perfect and imperfect quantum tasks (cloning and deleting) in a one-shot manner. This scheme may yield to fruitful results that are completely characterized with the linear independence of the input pure states. The generalized upper bounds for the success probability will be proved. Third, we generalize a recent superposing of unknown states with fixed overlaps when multiple copies of the input states are available.