Fifty years of similarity relations: a survey of foundations and applications

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Zadeh's significant paper Similarity Relations and Fuzzy Orderings, an account of the development of similarity relations during this time will be given. Moreover, the main topics related to these fuzzy relations will be reviewed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Quantum Correlations in Systems of Indistinguishable Particles

We discuss quantum correlations in systems of indistinguishable particles in relation to entanglement in composite quantum systems consisting of well separated subsystems. Our studies are motivated by recent experiments and theoretical investigations on quantum dots and neutral atoms in microtraps as tools for quantum information processing. We present analogies between distinguishable particles, bosons and fermions in low-dimensional Hilbert spaces. We introduce the notion of Slater rank for pure states of pairs of fermions and bosons in analogy to the Schmidt rank for pairs of distinguishable particles. This concept is generalized to mixed states and provides a correlation measure for indistinguishable particles. Then we generalize these notions to pure fermionic and bosonic states in higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces and also to the multi-particle case. We review the results on quantum correlations in mixed fermionic states and discuss the concept of fermionic Slater witnesses. Then the theory of quantum correlations in mixed bosonic states and of bosonic Slater witnesses is formulated. In both cases we provide methods of constructing optimal Slater witnesses that detect the degree of quantum correlations in mixed fermionic and bosonic states.Comment: 46 pages, 4 eps figure

Is mereology empirical? Composition for fermions

How best to think about quantum systems under permutation invariance is a question that has received a great deal of attention in the literature. But very little attention has been paid to taking seriously the proposal that permutation invariance reflects a representational redundancy in the formalism. Under such a proposal, it is far from obvious how a constituent quantum system is represented. Consequently, it is also far from obvious how quantum systems compose to form assemblies, i.e. what is the formal structure of their relations of parthood, overlap and fusion. In this paper, I explore one proposal for the case of fermions and their assemblies. According to this proposal, fermionic assemblies which are not entangled -- in some heterodox, but natural sense of 'entangled' -- provide a prima facie counterexample to classical mereology. This result is puzzling; but, I argue, no more intolerable than any other available interpretative option.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figur

GHZ and W Entanglement Witnesses for the Non-interacting Fermi gas

The existence and nature of tripartite entanglement of a noninteracting Fermi gas (NIFG) is investigated. Three new classes of parameterized entanglement witnesses (EWs) are introduced with the aim of detecting genuine tripartite entanglement in the three-body reduced density matrix and discriminating between the presence of the two types of genuine tripartite entanglement, W\B and GHZ\W. By choosing appropriate EW operators, the problem of finding GHZ and W EWs is reduced to linear programming. Specifically, we devise new W EWs based on a spin-chain model with periodic boundary conditions, and we construct a class of parametrized GHZ EWs by linearly combining projection operators corresponding to all the different state-vector types arising for a three-fermion system. A third class of EWs is provided by a GHZ stabilizer operator capable of distinguishing W\B from GHZ\B entanglement, which is not possible with $W$ EWs. Implementing these classes of EWs, it is found that all states containing genuine tripartite entanglement are of W type, and hence states containing GHZ\W genuine tripartite entanglement do not arise. Some genuine tripartite entangled states that have a positive partial transpose (PPT) with respect to some bipartition are detected. Finally, it is demonstrated that a NIFG does not exhibit "pure" W\B genuine tripartite entanglement: three-party entanglement without any separable or biseparable admixture does not occur.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, minor changes, to appear in Physical Review

An algorithm to compute the transitive closure, a transitive approximation and a transitive opening of a proximity

A method to get the transitive closure, a transitive opening and a transitive approximation of a reflexive and symmetric fuzzy relation is presented. The method builds at the same time a binary partition tree for the output similarities.Peer ReviewedPreprin

Photon engineering for quantum information processing

We study distinguishing information in the context of quantum interference involving more than one parametric downconversion (PDC) source and in the context of polarization-entangled photon pairs based on PDC. We arrive at specific design criteria for two-photon sources so that when used as part of complex optical systems, such as photon-based quantum information processing schemes, distinguishing information between the photons is eliminated guaranteeing high visibility interference. We propose practical techniques which lead to suitably engineered two-photon states that can be realistically implemented with available technology. Finally, we study an implementation of the nonlinear-sign shift (NS) logic gate with PDC sources and show the effect of distinguishing information on the performance of the gate.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures. submitted to Quantum Information & Computatio

Computing a T-transitive lower approximation or opening of a proximity relation

Fuzzy Sets and Systems. IMPACT FACTOR: 1,181. Fuzzy Sets and Systems. IMPACT FACTOR: 1,181. Since transitivity is quite often violated even by decision makers that accept transitivity in their preferences as a condition for consistency, a standard approach to deal with intransitive preference elicitations is the search for a close enough transitive preference relation, assuming that such a violation is mainly due to decision maker estimation errors. In some way, the more number of elicitations, the more probable inconsistency is. This is mostly the case within a fuzzy framework, even when the number of alternatives or object to be classified is relatively small. In this paper we propose a fast method to compute a T-indistinguishability from a reflexive and symmetric fuzzy relation, being T any left-continuous t-norm. The computed approximation we propose will take O(n3) time complexity, where n is the number of elements under consideration, and is expected to produce a T-transitive opening. To the authors¿ knowledge, there are no other proposed algorithm that computes T-transitive lower approximations or openings while preserving the reflexivity and symmetry properties

An algorithm to compute the transitive closure, a transitive approximation and a transitive opening of a fuzzy proximity

A method to compute the transitive closure, a transitive opening and a transitive approximation of a reflexive and symmetric fuzzy relation is given. Other previous methods in literature compute just the transitive closure, some transitive approximations or some transitive openings. The proposed algorithm computes the three different similarities that approximate a proximity for the computational cost of computing just one. The shape of the binary partition tree for the three output similarities are the same.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version