No Arabic abstract
We consider the manipulation of multipartite entangled states in the limit of many copies under quantum operations that asymptotically cannot generate entanglement. As announced in [Brandao and Plenio, Nature Physics 4, 8 (2008)], and in stark contrast to the manipulation of entanglement under local operations and classical communication, the entanglement shared by two or more parties can be reversibly interconverted in this setting. The unique entanglement measure is identified as the regularized relative entropy of entanglement, which is shown to be equal to a regularized and smoothed version of the logarithmic robustness of entanglement. Here we give a rigorous proof of this result, which is fundamentally based on a certain recent extension of quantum Steins Lemma proved in [Brandao and Plenio, Commun. Math. 295, 791 (2010)], giving the best measurement strategy for discriminating several copies of an entangled state from an arbitrary sequence of non-entangled states, with an optimal distinguishability rate equal to the regularized relative entropy of entanglement. We moreover analyse the connection of our approach to axiomatic formulations of the second law of thermodynamics.
This work is originally a Cambridge Part III essay paper. Quantum complexity arises as an alternative measure to the Fubini metric between two quantum states. Given two states and a set of allowed gates, it is defined as the least complex unitary operator capable of transforming one state into the other. Starting with K qubits evolving through a k-local Hamiltonian, it is possible to draw an analogy between the quantum system and an auxiliary classical system. Using the definition of complexity to define a metric for the classical system, it is possible to relate its entropy with the quantum complexity of the K qubits, defining the Second Law of Quantum Complexity. The law states that, if it is not already saturated, the quantum complexity of a system will increase with an overwhelming probability towards its maximum value. In the context of AdS/CFT duality and the ER=EPR conjecture, the growth of the volume of the Einstein Rosen bridge interior is proportional to the quantum complexity of the instantaneous state of the conformal field theory. Therefore, the interior of the wormhole connecting two entangled CFT will grow as a natural consequence of the complexification of the boundary state.
The distillable entanglement of a bipartite quantum state does not exceed its entanglement cost. This well known inequality can be understood as a second law of entanglement dynamics in the asymptotic regime of entanglement manipulation, excluding the possibility of perpetual entanglement extraction machines that generate boundless entanglement from a finite reserve. In this paper, I establish a refined second law of entanglement dynamics that holds for the non-asymptotic regime of entanglement manipulation.
The second law of classical thermodynamics, based on the positivity of the entropy production, only holds for deterministic processes. Therefore the Second Law in stochastic quantum thermodynamics may not hold. By making a fundamental connection between thermodynamics and information theory we will introduce a new way of defining the Second Law which holds for both deterministic classical and stochastic quantum thermodynamics. Our work incorporates information well into the Second Law and also provides a thermodynamic operational meaning for negative and positive entropy production.
Theoretical methods for empirical state determination of entangled two-level systems are analyzed in relation to information theory. We show that hidden variable theories would lead to a Shannon index of correlation between the entangled subsystems which is larger that that predicted by quantum mechanics. Canonical representations which have maximal correlations are treated by the use of Schmidt decomposition of the entangled states, including especially the Bohm singlet state and the GHZ entangled states. We show that quantum mechanics does not violate locality, but does violate realism.
Sommerfeld called the first part of the second law to be the entropy axiom, which is about the existence of the state function entropy. It was usually thought that the second part of the second law, which is about the non-decreasing nature of entropy of thermally isolated systems, did not follow from the first part. In this note, we point out the surprise that the first part in fact implies the second part.