Distillation of entanglement by projection on permutationally invariant subspaces

We consider distillation of entanglement from two qubit states which are mixtures of three mutually orthogonal states: two pure entangled states and one pure product state. We distill entanglement from such states by projecting n copies of the state on permutationally invariant subspace and then applying one-way hashing protocol. We find analytical expressions for the rate of the protocol. We also generalize this method to higher dimensional systems. To get analytical expression for two qubit case, we faced a mathematical problem of diagonalizing a family of matrices enjoying some symmetries w.r.t. to symmetric group. We have solved this problem in two ways: (i) directly, by use of Schur-Weyl decomposition and Young symmetrizers (ii) showing that the problem is equivalent to a problem of diagonalizing adjacency matrices in a particular instance of a so called algebraic association scheme.Comment: 22 pages, comments welcom

Multipartite Quantum States and their Marginals

Subsystems of composite quantum systems are described by reduced density matrices, or quantum marginals. Important physical properties often do not depend on the whole wave function but rather only on the marginals. Not every collection of reduced density matrices can arise as the marginals of a quantum state. Instead, there are profound compatibility conditions -- such as Pauli's exclusion principle or the monogamy of quantum entanglement -- which fundamentally influence the physics of many-body quantum systems and the structure of quantum information. The aim of this thesis is a systematic and rigorous study of the general relation between multipartite quantum states, i.e., states of quantum systems that are composed of several subsystems, and their marginals. In the first part, we focus on the one-body marginals of multipartite quantum states; in the second part, we study general quantum marginals from the perspective of entropy.Comment: PhD thesis, ETH Zurich. The first part contains material from arXiv:1208.0365, arXiv:1204.0741, and arXiv:1204.4379. The second part is based on arXiv:1302.6990 and arXiv:1210.046

Randomized Dynamical Decoupling Strategies and Improved One-Way Key Rates for Quantum Cryptography

The present thesis deals with various methods of quantum error correction. It is divided into two parts. In the first part, dynamical decoupling methods are considered which have the task of suppressing the influence of residual imperfections in a quantum memory. The suppression is achieved by altering the dynamics of an imperfect quantum memory with the help of a sequence of local unitary operations applied to the qudits. Whereas up to now the operations of such decoupling sequences have been constructed in a deterministic fashion, strategies are developed in this thesis which construct the operations by random selection from a suitable set. Furthermore, it is investigated if and how the discussed decoupling strategies can be employed to protect a quantum computation running on the quantum memory. The second part of the thesis deals with quantum error-correcting codes and protocols for quantum key distribution. The focus is on the BB84 and the 6-state protocol making use of only one-way communication during the error correction and privacy amplification steps. It is shown that by adding additional errors to the preliminary key (a process called noisy preprocessing) followed by the use of a structured block code, higher secure key rates may be obtained. For the BB84 protocol it is shown that iterating the combined preprocessing leads to an even higher gain.Comment: PhD thesis, 223 pages, TU Darmstadt; http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/1389

Applications of coherent classical communication and the Schur transform to quantum information theory

Quantum mechanics has led not only to new physical theories, but also a new understanding of information and computation. Quantum information began by yielding new methods for achieving classical tasks such as factoring and key distribution but also suggests a completely new set of quantum problems, such as sending quantum information over quantum channels or efficiently performing particular basis changes on a quantum computer. This thesis contributes two new, purely quantum, tools to quantum information theory--coherent classical communication in the first half and an efficient quantum circuit for the Schur transform in the second half.Comment: 176 pages. Chapters 1 and 4 are a slightly older version of quant-ph/0512015. Chapter 2 is quant-ph/0205057 plus unpublished extensions (slightly outdated by quant-ph/0511219) and chapter 3 is quant-ph/0307091, quant-ph/0412126 and change. Chapters 5-8 are based on quant-ph/0407082, but go much furthe