53 research outputs found
Macroscopic thermodynamic reversibility in quantum many-body systems
The resource theory of thermal operations, an established model for small-scale thermodynamics, provides an extension of equilibrium thermodynamics to nonequilibrium situations. On a lattice of any dimension with any translation-invariant local Hamiltonian, we identify a large set of translation-invariant states that can be reversibly converted to and from the thermal state with thermal operations and a small amount of coherence. These are the spatially ergodic states, i.e., states that have sharp statistics for any translation-invariant observable, and mixtures of such states with the same thermodynamic potential. As an intermediate result, we show for a general state that if the gap between the min- and the max-relative entropies to the thermal state is small, then the state can be approximately reversibly converted to and from the thermal state with thermal operations and a small source of coherence. Our proof provides a quantum version of the Shannon-McMillan-Breiman theorem for the relative entropy and a quantum Stein’s lemma for ergodic states and local Gibbs states. Our results provide a strong link between the abstract resource theory of thermodynamics and more realistic physical systems as we achieve a robust and operational characterization of the emergence of a thermodynamic potential in translation-invariant lattice systems
Entropic Continuity Bounds & Eventually Entanglement-Breaking Channels
This thesis combines two parallel research directions: an exploration into the
continuity properties of certain entropic quantities, and an investigation
into a simple class of physical systems whose time evolution
is given by the repeated application of a quantum channel.
In the first part of the thesis, we present a general technique for
establishing local and uniform continuity bounds for Schur concave functions;
that is, for real-valued functions which are decreasing in the majorization
pre-order. Continuity bounds provide a quantitative measure of robustness,
addressing the following question: If there is some uncertainty or error in
the input, how much uncertainty is there in the output? Our technique uses a
particular relationship between majorization and the trace distance between
quantum states (or total variation distance, in the case of probability
distributions). Namely, the majorization pre-order attains a maximum and a
minimum over ε-balls in this distance. By tracing the path of the
majorization-minimizer as a function of the distance ε, we obtain the
path of ``majorization flow’’. An analysis of the derivatives of Schur
concave functions along this path immediately yields tight continuity bounds
for such functions.
In this way, we find a new proof of the Audenaert-Fannes continuity bound for
the von Neumann entropy, and the necessary and sufficient conditions for its
saturation, in a universal framework which extends to the other functions,
including the RĂ©nyi and Tsallis entropies. In particular, we prove a novel
uniform continuity bound for the α-Rényi entropy with α > 1 with
much improved dependence on the dimension of the underlying system and the
parameter α compared to previously known bounds. We show that this
framework can also be used to provide continuity bounds for other Schur
concave functions, such as the number of connected components of a certain
random graph model as a function of the underlying probability distribution,
and the number of distinct realizations of a random variable in some fixed
number of independent trials as a function of the underlying probability mass
function. The former has been used in modeling the spread of epidemics, while
the latter has been studied in the context of estimating measures of
biodiversity from observations; in these contexts, our continuity bounds
provide quantitative estimates of robustness to noise or data collection
errors.
In the second part, we consider repeated interaction systems, in which a
system of interest interacts with a sequence of probes, i.e. environmental
systems, one at a time. The state of the system after each interaction is
related to the state of the system before the interaction by the so-called
reduced dynamics, which is described by the action of a quantum channel. When
each probe and the way it interacts with the system is identical, the reduced
dynamics at each step is identical. In this scenario, under the additional
assumption that the reduced dynamics satisfies a faithfulness property, we
characterize which repeated interaction systems break any initially-present
entanglement between the system and an untouched reference, after finitely
many steps. In this case, the reduced dynamics is said to be eventually
entanglement-breaking. This investigation helps improve our
understanding of which kinds of noisy time evolution destroy entanglement.
When the probes and their interactions with the system are slowly-varying
(i.e. adiabatic), we analyze the saturation of Landauer's bound, an inequality
between the entropy change of the system and the energy change of the probes,
in the limit in which the number of steps tends to infinity and both the
difference between consecutive probes and the difference between their
interactions vanishes. This analysis proceeds at a fine-grained level by means
of a two-time measurement protocol, in which the energy of the probes is
measured before and after each interaction. The quantities of interest are
then studied as random variables on the space of outcomes of the energy
measurements of the probes, providing a deeper insight into the interrelations
between energy and entropy in this setting.Cantab Capital Institute for the Mathematics of Informatio
Point Information Gain and Multidimensional Data Analysis
We generalize the Point information gain (PIG) and derived quantities, i.e.
Point information entropy (PIE) and Point information entropy density (PIED),
for the case of R\'enyi entropy and simulate the behavior of PIG for typical
distributions. We also use these methods for the analysis of multidimensional
datasets. We demonstrate the main properties of PIE/PIED spectra for the real
data on the example of several images, and discuss possible further utilization
in other fields of data processing.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure
Cumulant Generating Function of Codeword Lengths in Variable-Length Lossy Compression Allowing Positive Excess Distortion Probability
This paper considers the problem of variable-length lossy source coding. The
performance criteria are the excess distortion probability and the cumulant
generating function of codeword lengths. We derive a non-asymptotic fundamental
limit of the cumulant generating function of codeword lengths allowing positive
excess distortion probability. It is shown that the achievability and converse
bounds are characterized by the R\'enyi entropy-based quantity. In the proof of
the achievability result, the explicit code construction is provided. Further,
we investigate an asymptotic single-letter characterization of the fundamental
limit for a stationary memoryless source.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1701.0180
Variance of Relative Surprisal as Single-Shot Quantifier
The variance of (relative) surprisal, also known as varentropy, so far mostly plays a role in information theory as quantifying the leading-order corrections to asymptotic independent and identically distributed (IID) limits. Here, we comprehensively study the use of it to derive single-shot results in (quantum) information theory. We show that it gives genuine sufficient and necessary conditions for approximate state transitions between pairs of quantum states in the single-shot setting, without the need for further optimization. We also clarify its relation to smoothed min and max entropies, and construct a monotone for resource theories using only the standard (relative) entropy and variance of (relative) surprisal. This immediately gives rise to enhanced lower bounds for entropy production in random processes. We establish certain properties of the variance of relative surprisal, which will be useful for further investigations, such as uniform continuity and upper bounds on the violation of subadditivity. Motivated by our results, we further derive a simple and physically appealing axiomatic single-shot characterization of (relative) entropy, which we believe to be of independent interest. We illustrate our results with several applications, ranging from interconvertibility of ergodic states, over Landauer erasure to a bound on the necessary dimension of the catalyst for catalytic state transitions and Boltzmann’s H theorem
Asymptotic Reversibility of Thermal Operations for Interacting Quantum Spin Systems via Generalized Quantum Stein's Lemma
For quantum spin systems in any spatial dimension with a local, translation-invariant Hamiltonian, we prove that asymptotic state convertibility from a quantum state to another one by a thermodynamically feasible class of quantum dynamics, called thermal operations, is completely characterized by the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence rate, if the state is translation-invariant and spatially ergodic. Our proof consists of two parts and is phrased in terms of a branch of the quantum information theory called the resource theory. First, we prove that any states, for which the min and max RĂ©nyi divergences collapse approximately to a single value, can be approximately reversibly converted into one another by thermal operations with the aid of a small source of quantum coherence. Second, we prove that these divergences collapse asymptotically to the KL divergence rate for any translation-invariant ergodic state. We show this via a generalization of the quantum Stein's lemma for quantum hypothesis testing beyond independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) situations. Our result implies that the KL divergence rate serves as a thermodynamic potential that provides a complete characterization of thermodynamic convertibility of ergodic states of quantum many-body systems in the thermodynamic limit, including out-of-equilibrium and fully quantum situations
Catalysis in Quantum Information Theory
Catalysts open up new reaction pathways which can speed up chemical reactions
while not consuming the catalyst. A similar phenomenon has been discovered in
quantum information science, where physical transformations become possible by
utilizing a (quantum) degree of freedom that remains unchanged throughout the
process. In this review, we present a comprehensive overview of the concept of
catalysis in quantum information science and discuss its applications in
various physical contexts.Comment: Review paper; Comments and suggestions welcome
Characterization of non-perturbative qubit channel induced by a quantum field
In this work we provide some characterization of the quantum channel induced
by non-perturbative interaction between a single qubit with a quantized
massless scalar field in arbitrary globally hyperbolic curved spacetimes. The
qubit interacts with the field via Unruh-DeWitt detector model and we consider
two non-perturbative regimes: (i) when the interaction is very rapid,
effectively at a single instant in time (\textit{delta-coupled detector}); and
(ii) when the qubit has degenerate energy level (\textit{gapless detector}). We
organize the results in terms of quantum channels and Weyl algebras of
observables in the algebraic quantum field theory (AQFT). We collect various
quantum information-theoretic results pertaining to these channels, such as
entropy production of the field and the qubit, recoverability of the qubit
channels, and causal propagation of noise due to the interactions. We show that
by treating the displacement and squeezing operations as elements of the Weyl
algebra, we can generalize existing non-perturbative calculations involving the
qubit channels to non-quasifree Gaussian states in curved spacetimes with
little extra effort and provide transparent interpretation of these unitaries
in real space. We also generalize the existing result about cohering and
decohering power of a quantum channel induced by the quantum field to curved
spacetimes in a very compact manner.Comment: 22 pages + 3 pages of references; 3 figures, RevTeX4-2; v3: fixed
citation
Asymptotic reversibility of thermal operations for interacting quantum spin systems via generalized quantum Stein’s lemma
For quantum spin systems in any spatial dimension with a local, translation-invariant Hamiltonian, we prove that asymptotic state convertibility from a quantum state to another one by a thermodynamically feasible class of quantum dynamics, called thermal operations, is completely characterized by the Kullback–Leibler (KL) divergence rate, if the state is translation-invariant and spatially ergodic. Our proof consists of two parts and is phrased in terms of a branch of the quantum information theory called the resource theory. First, we prove that any states, for which the min and max Rényi divergences collapse approximately to a single value, can be approximately reversibly converted into one another by thermal operations with the aid of a small source of quantum coherence. Second, we prove that these divergences collapse asymptotically to the KL divergence rate for any translation-invariant ergodic state. We show this via a generalization of the quantum Stein's lemma for quantum hypothesis testing beyond independent and identically distributed situations. Our result implies that the KL divergence rate serves as a thermodynamic potential that provides a complete characterization of thermodynamic convertibility of ergodic states of quantum many-body systems in the thermodynamic limit, including out-of-equilibrium and fully quantum situations
Axiomatic relation between thermodynamic and information-theoretic entropies
Thermodynamic entropy, as defined by Clausius, characterizes macroscopic observations of a system based on phenomenological quantities such as temperature and heat. In contrast, information-theoretic entropy, introduced by Shannon, is a measure of uncertainty. In this Letter, we connect these two notions of entropy, using an axiomatic framework for thermodynamics [Lieb, Yngvason, Proc. Roy. Soc.(2013)]. In particular, we obtain a direct relation between the Clausius entropy and the Shannon entropy, or its generalisation to quantum systems, the von Neumann entropy. More generally, we find that entropy measures relevant in non-equilibrium thermodynamics correspond to entropies used in one-shot information theory
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