44 research outputs found
Reliable channel-adapted error correction: Bacon-Shor code recovery from amplitude damping
We construct two simple error correction schemes adapted to amplitude damping noise for Bacon-Shor codes and investigate their prospects for fault-tolerant implementation. Both consist solely of Clifford gates and require far fewer qubits, relative to the standard method, to achieve correction to a desired order in the damping rate. The first, employing on
Representation of quantum states as points in a probability simplex associated to a SIC-POVM
The quantum state of a -dimensional system can be represented by the
probabilities corresponding to a SIC-POVM, and then this distribution of
probability can be represented by a vector of in a simplex, we
will call this set of vectors . Other way of represent a
-dimensional system is by the corresponding Bloch vector also in
, we will call this set of vectors . In this paper it
is proved that with the adequate scaling . Also we
indicate some features of the shape of .Comment: 12 pages. Added journal referenc
Reliable channel-adapted error correction: Bacon-Shor code recovery from amplitude damping
We construct two simple error correction schemes adapted to amplitude damping noise for Bacon-Shor codes and investigate their prospects for fault-tolerant implementation. Both consist solely of Clifford gates and require far fewer qubits, relative to the standard method, to achieve exact correction to a desired order in the damping rate. The first, employing one-bit teleportation and single-qubit measurements, needs only one-fourth as many physical qubits, while the second, using just stabilizer measurements and Pauli corrections, needs only half. The improvements stem from the fact that damping events need only be detected, not corrected, and that effective phase errors arising due to undamped qubits occur at a lower rate than damping errors. For error correction that is itself subject to damping noise, we show that existing fault-tolerance methods can be employed for the latter scheme, while the former can be made to avoid potential catastrophic errors and can easily cope with damping faults in ancilla qubits
Minimal Informationally Complete Measurements for Pure States
We consider measurements, described by a positive-operator-valued measure
(POVM), whose outcome probabilities determine an arbitrary pure state of a
D-dimensional quantum system. We call such a measurement a pure-state
informationally complete (PSI-complete) POVM. We show that a measurement with
2D-1 outcomes cannot be PSI-complete, and then we construct a POVM with 2D
outcomes that suffices, thus showing that a minimal PSI-complete POVM has 2D
outcomes. We also consider PSI-complete POVMs that have only rank-one POVM
elements and construct an example with 3D-2 outcomes, which is a generalization
of the tetrahedral measurement for a qubit. The question of the minimal number
of elements in a rank-one PSI-complete POVM is left open.Comment: 2 figures, submitted for the Asher Peres festschrif
A simple construction of complex equiangular lines
A set of vectors of equal norm in represents equiangular lines
if the magnitudes of the inner product of every pair of distinct vectors in the
set are equal. The maximum size of such a set is , and it is conjectured
that sets of this maximum size exist in for every . We
describe a new construction for maximum-sized sets of equiangular lines,
exposing a previously unrecognized connection with Hadamard matrices. The
construction produces a maximum-sized set of equiangular lines in dimensions 2,
3 and 8.Comment: 11 pages; minor revisions and comments added in section 1 describing
a link to previously known results; correction to Theorem 1 and updates to
reference
The curious nonexistence of Gaussian 2-designs
2-designs -- ensembles of quantum pure states whose 2nd moments equal those
of the uniform Haar ensemble -- are optimal solutions for several tasks in
quantum information science, especially state and process tomography. We show
that Gaussian states cannot form a 2-design for the continuous-variable
(quantum optical) Hilbert space L2(R). This is surprising because the affine
symplectic group HWSp (the natural symmetry group of Gaussian states) is
irreducible on the symmetric subspace of two copies. In finite dimensional
Hilbert spaces, irreducibility guarantees that HWSp-covariant ensembles (such
as mutually unbiased bases in prime dimensions) are always 2-designs. This
property is violated by continuous variables, for a subtle reason: the
(well-defined) HWSp-invariant ensemble of Gaussian states does not have an
average state because the averaging integral does not converge. In fact, no
Gaussian ensemble is even close (in a precise sense) to being a 2-design. This
surprising difference between discrete and continuous quantum mechanics has
important implications for optical state and process tomography.Comment: 9 pages, no pretty figures (sorry!
A toy model for quantum mechanics
The toy model used by Spekkens [R. Spekkens, Phys. Rev. A 75, 032110 (2007)]
to argue in favor of an epistemic view of quantum mechanics is extended by
generalizing his definition of pure states (i.e. states of maximal knowledge)
and by associating measurements with all pure states. The new toy model does
not allow signaling but, in contrast to the Spekkens model, does violate
Bell-CHSH inequalities. Negative probabilities are found to arise naturally
within the model, and can be used to explain the Bell-CHSH inequality
violations.Comment: in which the author breaks his vow to never use the words "ontic" and
"epistemic" in publi
A Quantum-Bayesian Route to Quantum-State Space
In the quantum-Bayesian approach to quantum foundations, a quantum state is
viewed as an expression of an agent's personalist Bayesian degrees of belief,
or probabilities, concerning the results of measurements. These probabilities
obey the usual probability rules as required by Dutch-book coherence, but
quantum mechanics imposes additional constraints upon them. In this paper, we
explore the question of deriving the structure of quantum-state space from a
set of assumptions in the spirit of quantum Bayesianism. The starting point is
the representation of quantum states induced by a symmetric informationally
complete measurement or SIC. In this representation, the Born rule takes the
form of a particularly simple modification of the law of total probability. We
show how to derive key features of quantum-state space from (i) the requirement
that the Born rule arises as a simple modification of the law of total
probability and (ii) a limited number of additional assumptions of a strong
Bayesian flavor.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Foundations of Physics; this is a
condensation of the argument in arXiv:0906.2187v1 [quant-ph], with special
attention paid to making all assumptions explici
Extended quantum conditional entropy and quantum uncertainty inequalities
Quantum states can be subjected to classical measurements, whose
incompatibility, or uncertainty, can be quantified by a comparison of certain
entropies. There is a long history of such entropy inequalities between
position and momentum. Recently these inequalities have been generalized to the
tensor product of several Hilbert spaces and we show here how their derivations
can be shortened to a few lines and how they can be generalized. All the
recently derived uncertainty relations utilize the strong subadditivity (SSA)
theorem; our contribution relies on directly utilizing the proof technique of
the original derivation of SSA.Comment: 4 page
A Survey of Finite Algebraic Geometrical Structures Underlying Mutually Unbiased Quantum Measurements
The basic methods of constructing the sets of mutually unbiased bases in the
Hilbert space of an arbitrary finite dimension are discussed and an emerging
link between them is outlined. It is shown that these methods employ a wide
range of important mathematical concepts like, e.g., Fourier transforms, Galois
fields and rings, finite and related projective geometries, and entanglement,
to mention a few. Some applications of the theory to quantum information tasks
are also mentioned.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure to appear in Foundations of Physics, Nov. 2006 two
more references adde