How state preparation can affect a quantum experiment: Quantum process tomography for open systems

We study the effects of preparation of input states in a quantum tomography experiment. We show that maps arising from a quantum process tomography experiment (called process maps) differ from the well know dynamical maps. The difference between the two is due to the preparation procedure that is necessary for any quantum experiment. We study two preparation procedures, stochastic preparation and preparation by measurements. The stochastic preparation procedure yields process maps that are linear, while the preparations using von Neumann measurements lead to non-linear processes, and can only be consistently described by a bi-linear process map. A new process tomography recipe is derived for preparation by measurement for qubits. The difference between the two methods is analyzed in terms of a quantum process tomography experiment. A verification protocol is proposed to differentiate between linear processes and bi-linear processes. We also emphasize the preparation procedure will have a non-trivial effect for any quantum experiment in which the system of interest interacts with its environment.Comment: 13 pages, no figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Completely Positive Maps and Classical Correlations

We expand the set of initial states of a system and its environment that are known to guarantee completely positive reduced dynamics for the system when the combined state evolves unitarily. We characterize the correlations in the initial state in terms of its quantum discord [H. Ollivier and W. H. Zurek, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 017901 (2001)]. We prove that initial states that have only classical correlations lead to completely positive reduced dynamics. The induced maps can be not completely positive when quantum correlations including, but not limited to, entanglement are present. We outline the implications of our results to quantum process tomography experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Quantum states, maps, measurements and entanglement

textThe structure of the set of density matrices, its linear transformations, generalized linear measurements, and entanglement are studied. The set of density matrices is shown to be a convex and stratified set with simplex and group symmetries. Generalized measurements for density matrices are shown to be reducible to one unitary transformation and one von Neumann measurement carried out with an ancillary system of fixed size. Linear maps of density matrices are considered and the volume of the set of maps is derived. Positive but not completely positive maps are studied in consideration of obtaining a test for entanglement in density matrices. Using the Jamiolkowski representation and Schmidt decomposition of the map eigen matrices, several properties of these maps are shown. An algebraic approach to constructing these positive but not completely positive maps is partially formulated. The positivity of the linear map describing the evolution of an open system and its dependence on the initialized to a zero-discord state, the evolution is shown to be given by a completely positive map. In quantum process tomography, the results obtained from a open system that is initially prepared using von Neumann measurements is shown to be described by a bi-linear map, not a linear map. A method for quantum process tomography is derived for qubit bi-linear maps. The difference between preparing states for an experiment by measurement and by stochastic process is analyzed, and it is shown that the two different methods will give fundamentally different outcomes.Physic