No Arabic abstract
Small, out-of-equilibrium, and quantum systems defy simple thermodynamic expressions. Such systems are exemplified by molecular switches, which exchange heat with a bath. These molecules can photoisomerize, or change conformation, or switch, upon absorbing light. The photoisomerization probability depends on kinetic details that couple the molecules energetics to its dissipation. Therefore, a simple, general, thermodynamic-style bound on the photoisomerization probability seems out of reach. We derive such a bound using a resource theory. The resource-theory framework is a set of mathematical tools, developed in quantum information theory, used to generalize thermodynamics to small and quantum settings. From this toolkit has been derived a generalization of the second law, the thermomajorization preorder. We use thermomajorization to upper-bound the photoisomerization probability. Then, we compare the bound with an equilibrium prediction and with a Lindbladian model. We identify a realistic parameter regime in which the Lindbladian evolution saturates the thermomajorization bound. We also quantify the energy coherence in the electronic degree of freedom, and we argue that this coherence cannot promote photoisomerization. This work illustrates how quantum-information-theoretic thermodynamics can elucidate complex quantum processes in nature, experiments, and synthetics.
Fault-tolerant schemes can use error correction to make a quantum computation arbitrarily ac- curate, provided that errors per physical component are smaller than a certain threshold and in- dependent of the computer size. However in current experiments, physical resource limitations like energy, volume or available bandwidth induce error rates that typically grow as the computer grows. Taking into account these constraints, we show that the amount of error correction can be opti- mized, leading to a maximum attainable computational accuracy. We find this maximum for generic situations where noise is scale-dependent. By inverting the logic, we provide experimenters with a tool to finding the minimum resources required to run an algorithm with a given computational accuracy. When combined with a full-stack quantum computing model, this provides the basis for energetic estimates of future large-scale quantum computers.
Quantum channels underlie the dynamics of quantum systems, but in many practical settings it is the channels themselves that require processing. We establish universal limitations on the processing of both quantum states and channels, expressed in the form of no-go theorems and quantitative bounds for the manipulation of general quantum channel resources under the most general transformation protocols. Focusing on the class of distillation tasks -- which can be understood either as the purification of noisy channels into unitary ones, or the extraction of state-based resources from channels -- we develop fundamental restrictions on the error incurred in such transformations and comprehensive lower bounds for the overhead of any distillation protocol. In the asymptotic setting, our results yield broadly applicable bounds for rates of distillation. We demonstrate our results through applications to fault-tolerant quantum computation, where we obtain state-of-the-art lower bounds for the overhead cost of magic state distillation, as well as to quantum communication, where we recover a number of strong converse bounds for quantum channel capacity.
We establish fundamental upper bounds on the amount of secret key that can be extracted from continuous variable quantum Gaussian states by using only local Gaussian operations, local classical processing, and public communication. For one-way communication, we prove that the key is bounded by the Renyi-$2$ Gaussian entanglement of formation $E_{F,2}^{mathrm{scriptscriptstyle G}}$, with the inequality being saturated for pure Gaussian states. The same is true if two-way public communication is allowed but Alice and Bob employ protocols that start with destructive local Gaussian measurements. In the most general setting of two-way communication and arbitrary interactive protocols, we argue that $2 E_{F,2}^{mathrm{scriptscriptstyle G}}$ is still a bound on the extractable key, although we conjecture that the factor of $2$ is superfluous. Finally, for a wide class of Gaussian states that includes all two-mode states, we prove a recently proposed conjecture on the equality between $E_{F,2}^{mathrm{scriptscriptstyle G}}$ and the Gaussian intrinsic entanglement, thus endowing both measures with a more solid operational meaning.
Quantum resource theories (QRTs) offer a highly versatile and powerful framework for studying different phenomena in quantum physics. From quantum entanglement to quantum computation, resource theories can be used to quantify a desirable quantum effect, develop new protocols for its detection, and identify processes that optimize its use for a given application. Particularly, QRTs revolutionize the way we think about familiar properties of physical systems like entanglement, elevating them from just being interesting from a fundamental point of view to being useful in performing practical tasks. The basic methodology of a general QRT involves partitioning all quantum states into two groups, one consisting of free states and the other consisting of resource states. Accompanying the set of free states is a collection of free quantum operations arising from natural restrictions on physical systems, and that consists of all the physical processes allowed by the resource theory and which acts invariantly on the set of free states. The QRT then studies what information processing tasks become possible using the restricted operations. Despite the large degree of freedom in how one defines the free states and free operations, unexpected similarities emerge among different QRTs in terms of resource measures and resource convertibility. As a result, objects that appear quite distinct on the surface, such as entanglement and quantum reference frames, appear to have great similarity on a deeper structural level. In this article we review the general framework of a quantum resource theory, focusing on common structural features, operational tasks, and resource measures. To illustrate these concepts, an overview is provided on some of the more commonly studied QRTs in the literature.
Matrix Product States (MPS) and Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS) are powerful analytical and numerical tools to assess quantum many-body systems in one and higher dimensions, respectively. While MPS are comprehensively understood, in PEPS fundamental questions, relevant analytically as well as numerically, remain open, such as how to encode symmetries in full generality, or how to stabilize numerical methods using canonical forms. Here, we show that these key problems, as well as a number of related questions, are algorithmically undecidable, that is, they cannot be fully resolved in a systematic way. Our work thereby exposes fundamental limitations to a full and unbiased understanding of quantum many-body systems using PEPS.