4,317 research outputs found
Discording power of quantum evolutions
We introduce the discording power of a unitary transformation, which assesses
its capability to produce quantum discord, and analyze in detail the generation
of discord by relevant classes of two-qubit gates. Our measure is based on the
Cartan decomposition of two-qubit unitaries and on evaluating the maximum
discord achievable by a unitary upon acting on classical-classical states at
fixed purity. We found that there exist gates which are perfect discorders for
any value of purity, and that they belong to a class of operators that includes
the $\sqrt{{SWAP}}. Other gates, even those universal for quantum computation,
do not posses the same property: the CNOT, for example, is a perfect discorder
only for states with low or unit purity, but not for intermediate values. The
discording power of a two-qubit unitary also provides a generalization of the
corresponding measure defined for entanglement to any value of the purity.Comment: accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter
Maximum-likelihood method in quantum estimation
The maximum-likelihood method for quantum estimation is reviewed and applied
to the reconstruction of density matrix of spin and radiation as well as to the
determination of several parameters of interest in quantum optics.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
Quantum Tomography
This is the draft version of a review paper which is going to appear in
"Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics"Comment: To appear in "Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics". Some figs
with low resolutio
A multi-epoch spectroscopic study of the BAL quasar APM 08279+5255: I. C IV absorption variability
Broad Absorption Lines indicate gas outflows with velocities from thousands
km/s to about 0.2 the speed of light, which may be present in all quasars and
may play a major role in the evolution of the host galaxy. The variability of
absorption patterns can provide informations on changes of the density and
velocity distributions of the absorbing gas and its ionization status. We
collected 23 photometrical and spectro-photometrical observations at the 1.82m
Telescope of the Asiago Observatory since 2003, plus other 5 spectra from the
literature. We analysed the evolution in time of the equivalent width of the
broad absorption feature and two narrow absorption systems, the correlation
among them and with the R band magnitude. We performed a structure function
analysis of the equivalent width variations. We present an unprecedented
monitoring of a broad absorption line quasar based on 28 epochs in 14 years.
The shape of broad absorption feature shows a relative stability, while its
equivalent width slowly declines until it sharply increases during 2011. In the
same time the R magnitude stays almost constant until it sharply increases
during 2011. The equivalent width of the narrow absorption redwards of the
systemic redshift only shows a decline. The broad absorption behaviour suggests
changes of the ionisation status as the main cause of variability. We show for
the first time a correlation of this variability with the R band flux. The
different behaviour of the narrow absorption system might be due to
recombination time delay. The structure function of the absorption variability
has a slope comparable with typical optical variability of quasars. This is
consistent with variations of the 200 A ionising flux originating in the inner
part of the accretion disk.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, to appear on Astronomy & Astrophysic
Dynamics of quantum correlations in colored environments
We address the dynamics of entanglement and quantum discord for two non
interacting qubits initially prepared in a maximally entangled state and then
subjected to a classical colored noise, i.e. coupled with an external
environment characterized by a noise spectrum of the form . More
specifically, we address systems where the Gaussian approximation fails, i.e.
the sole knowledge of the spectrum is not enough to determine the dynamics of
quantum correlations. We thus investigate the dynamics for two different
configurations of the environment: in the first case the noise spectrum is due
to the interaction of each qubit with a single bistable fluctuator with an
undetermined switching rate, whereas in the second case we consider a
collection of classical fluctuators with fixed switching rates. In both cases
we found analytical expressions for the time dependence of entanglement and
quantum discord, which may be also extended to a collection of flcutuators with
random switching rates. The environmental noise is introduced by means of
stochastic time-dependent terms in the Hamiltonian and this allows us to
describe the effects of both separate and common environments. We show that the
non-Gaussian character of the noise may lead to significant effects, e.g.
environments with the same power spectrum, but different configurations, give
raise to opposite behavior for the quantum correlations. In particular,
depending on the characteristics of the environmental noise considered, both
entanglement and discord display either a monotonic decay or the phenomena of
sudden death and revivals. Our results show that the microscopic structure of
environment, besides its noise spectrum, is relevant for the dynamics of
quantum correlations, and may be a valid starting point for the engineering of
non-Gaussian colored environments.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure
Quantum Monte Carlo Study of an Interaction-Driven Band Insulator to Metal Transition
We study the transitions from band insulator to metal to Mott insulator in
the ionic Hubbard model on a two dimensional square lattice using determinant
Quantum Monte Carlo. Evaluation of the temperature dependence of the
conductivity demonstrates that the metallic region extends for a finite range
of interaction values. The Mott phase at strong coupling is accompanied by
antiferromagnetic (AF) order. Inclusion of these intersite correlations changes
the phase diagram qualitatively compared to dynamical mean field theory.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure
High efficiency tomographic reconstruction of quantum states by quantum nondemolition measurements
We propose a high efficiency tomographic scheme to reconstruct an unknown
quantum state of the qubits by using a series of quantum nondemolition (QND)
measurements. The proposed QND measurements of the qubits are implemented by
probing the the stationary transmissions of the dispersively-coupled resonator.
It is shown that only one kind of QND measurements is sufficient to determine
all the diagonal elements of the density matrix of the detected quantum state.
The remaining non-diagonal elements of the density matrix can be determined by
other spectral measurements by beforehand transferring them to the diagonal
locations using a series of unitary operations. Compared with the pervious
tomographic reconstructions based on the usual destructively projective (DP)
measurements (wherein one kind of such measurements could only determine one
diagonal element of the density matrix), the present approach exhibits
significantly high efficiency for N-qubit (N > 1). Specifically, our generic
proposal is demonstrated by the experimental circuit-quantumelectrodynamics
(circuit-QED) systems with a few Josephson charge qubits.Comment: 9pages,4figure
Metallic phase in the two-dimensional ionic Hubbard model
We investigate the phases of the ionic Hubbard model in a two-dimensional
square lattice using determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC). At half-filling,
when the interaction strength or the staggered potential dominate we find Mott
and band insulators, respectively. When these two energies are of the same
order we find a metallic region. Charge and magnetic structure factors
demonstrate the presence of antiferromagnetism only in the Mott region,
although the externally imposed density modulation is present everywhere in the
phase diagram. Away from half-filling, other insulating phases are found.
Kinetic energy correlations do not give clear signals for the existence of a
bond-ordered phase
Improving information/disturbance and estimation/distortion trade-offs with non universal protocols
We analyze in details a conditional measurement scheme based on linear
optical components, feed-forward loop and homodyne detection. The scheme may be
used to achieve two different tasks. On the one hand it allows the extraction
of information with minimum disturbance about a set of coherent states. On the
other hand, it represents a nondemolitive measurement scheme for the
annihilation operator, i.e. an indirect measurement of the Q-function. We
investigate the information/disturbance trade-off for state inference and
introduce the estimation/distortion trade-off to assess estimation of the
Q-function. For coherent states chosen from a Gaussian set we evaluate both
information/disturbance and estimation/distortion trade-offs and found that non
universal protocols may be optimized in order to achieve better performances
than universal ones. For Fock number states we prove that universal protocols
do not exist and evaluate the estimation/distortion trade-off for a thermal
distribution.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures; published versio
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