2,726 research outputs found
Quantum Entanglement and Projective Ring Geometry
The paper explores the basic geometrical properties of the observables
characterizing two-qubit systems by employing a novel projective ring geometric
approach. After introducing the basic facts about quantum complementarity and
maximal quantum entanglement in such systems, we demonstrate that the
1515 multiplication table of the associated four-dimensional matrices
exhibits a so-far-unnoticed geometrical structure that can be regarded as three
pencils of lines in the projective plane of order two. In one of the pencils,
which we call the kernel, the observables on two lines share a base of Bell
states. In the complement of the kernel, the eight vertices/observables are
joined by twelve lines which form the edges of a cube. A substantial part of
the paper is devoted to showing that the nature of this geometry has much to do
with the structure of the projective lines defined over the rings that are the
direct product of copies of the Galois field GF(2), with = 2, 3 and 4.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures Fig. 3 improved, typos corrected; Version 4:
Final Version Published in SIGMA (Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry:
Methods and Applications) at http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA
Commutativity, comeasurability, and contextuality in the Kochen-Specker arguments
If noncontextuality is defined as the robustness of a system's response to a
measurement against other simultaneous measurements, then the Kochen-Specker
arguments do not provide an algebraic proof for quantum contextuality. Namely,
for the argument to be effective, (i) each operator must be uniquely associated
with a measurement and (ii) commuting operators must represent simultaneous
measurements. However, in all Kochen-Specker arguments discussed in the
literature either (i) or (ii) is not met. Arguments meeting (i) contain at
least one subset of mutually commuting operators which do not represent
simultaneous measurements and hence fail to physically justify the functional
composition principle. Arguments meeting (ii) associate some operators with
more than one measurement and hence need to invoke an extra assumption
different from noncontextuality.Comment: 27 pages, 1 figur
Quantum Probability Theory
The mathematics of classical probability theory was subsumed into classical
measure theory by Kolmogorov in 1933. Quantum theory as nonclassical
probability theory was incorporated into the beginnings of noncommutative
measure theory by von Neumann in the early thirties, as well. To precisely this
end, von Neumann initiated the study of what are now called von Neumann
algebras and, with Murray, made a first classification of such algebras into
three types. The nonrelativistic quantum theory of systems with finitely many
degrees of freedom deals exclusively with type I algebras. However, for the
description of further quantum systems, the other types of von Neumann algebras
are indispensable. The paper reviews quantum probability theory in terms of
general von Neumann algebras, stressing the similarity of the conceptual
structure of classical and noncommutative probability theories and emphasizing
the correspondence between the classical and quantum concepts, though also
indicating the nonclassical nature of quantum probabilistic predictions. In
addition, differences between the probability theories in the type I, II and
III settings are explained. A brief description is given of quantum systems for
which probability theory based on type I algebras is known to be insufficient.
These illustrate the physical significance of the previously mentioned
differences.Comment: 28 pages, LaTeX, typos removed and some minor modifications for
clarity and accuracy made. This is the version to appear in Studies in the
History and Philosophy of Modern Physic
Selective and Efficient Quantum Process Tomography
In this paper we describe in detail and generalize a method for quantum
process tomography that was presented in [A. Bendersky, F. Pastawski, J. P.
Paz, Physical Review Letters 100, 190403 (2008)]. The method enables the
efficient estimation of any element of the --matrix of a quantum process.
Such elements are estimated as averages over experimental outcomes with a
precision that is fixed by the number of repetitions of the experiment.
Resources required to implement it scale polynomically with the number of
qubits of the system. The estimation of all diagonal elements of the
--matrix can be efficiently done without any ancillary qubits. In turn,
the estimation of all the off-diagonal elements requires an extra clean qubit.
The key ideas of the method, that is based on efficient estimation by random
sampling over a set of states forming a 2--design, are described in detail.
Efficient methods for preparing and detecting such states are explicitly shown.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
Partially Unbiased Entangled Bases
In this contribution we group the operator basis for d^2 dimensional Hilbert
space in a way that enables us to relate bases of entangled states with single
particle mutually unbiased state bases (MUB), each in dimensionality d. We
utilize these sets of operators to show that an arbitrary density matrix for
this d^2 dimensional Hilbert space system is analyzed by via d^2+d+1
measurements, d^2-d of which involve those entangled states that we associate
with MUB of the d-dimensional single particle constituents. The number
lies in the middle of the number of measurements needed for bipartite
state reconstruction with two-particle MUB (d^2+1) and those needed by
single-particle MUB [(d^2+1)^2].Comment: 5 page
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