1,006 research outputs found
A constructive commutative quantum Lovasz Local Lemma, and beyond
The recently proven Quantum Lovasz Local Lemma generalises the well-known
Lovasz Local Lemma. It states that, if a collection of subspace constraints are
"weakly dependent", there necessarily exists a state satisfying all
constraints. It implies e.g. that certain instances of the kQSAT quantum
satisfiability problem are necessarily satisfiable, or that many-body systems
with "not too many" interactions are always frustration-free.
However, the QLLL only asserts existence; it says nothing about how to find
the state. Inspired by Moser's breakthrough classical results, we present a
constructive version of the QLLL in the setting of commuting constraints,
proving that a simple quantum algorithm converges efficiently to the required
state. In fact, we provide two different proofs, one using a novel quantum
coupling argument, the other a more explicit combinatorial analysis. Both
proofs are independent of the QLLL. So these results also provide independent,
constructive proofs of the commutative QLLL itself, but strengthen it
significantly by giving an efficient algorithm for finding the state whose
existence is asserted by the QLLL. We give an application of the constructive
commutative QLLL to convergence of CP maps.
We also extend these results to the non-commutative setting. However, our
proof of the general constructive QLLL relies on a conjecture which we are only
able to prove in special cases.Comment: 43 pages, 2 conjectures, no figures; unresolved gap in the proof; see
arXiv:1311.6474 or arXiv:1310.7766 for correct proofs of the symmetric cas
Engineering correlation and entanglement dynamics in spin systems
We show that the correlation and entanglement dynamics of spin systems can be
understood in terms of propagation of spin waves. This gives a simple, physical
explanation of the behaviour seen in a number of recent works, in which a
localised, low-energy excitation is created and allowed to evolve. But it also
extends to the scenario of translationally invariant systems in states far from
equilibrium, which require less local control to prepare. Spin-wave evolution
is completely determined by the system's dispersion relation, and the latter
typically depends on a small number of external, physical parameters.
Therefore, this new insight into correlation dynamics opens up the possibility
not only of predicting but also of controlling the propagation velocity and
dispersion rate, by manipulating these parameters. We demonstrate this
analytically in a simple, example system.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, REVTeX4 forma
Simple universal models capture all classical spin physics
Spin models are used in many studies of complex systems---be it condensed
matter physics, neural networks, or economics---as they exhibit rich
macroscopic behaviour despite their microscopic simplicity.
Here we prove that all the physics of every classical spin model is
reproduced in the low-energy sector of certain `universal models'.
This means that (i) the low energy spectrum of the universal model reproduces
the entire spectrum of the original model to any desired precision, (ii) the
corresponding spin configurations of the original model are also reproduced in
the universal model, (iii) the partition function is approximated to any
desired precision, and (iv) the overhead in terms of number of spins and
interactions is at most polynomial.
This holds for classical models with discrete or continuous degrees of
freedom.
We prove necessary and sufficient conditions for a spin model to be
universal, and show that one of the simplest and most widely studied spin
models, the 2D Ising model with fields, is universal.Comment: v1: 4 pages with 2 figures (main text) + 4 pages with 3 figures
(supplementary info). v2: 12 pages with 3 figures (main text) + 35 pages with
6 figures (supplementary info) (all single column). v2 contains new results
and major revisions (results for spin models with continuous degrees of
freedom, explicit constructions, examples...). Close to published version.
v3: minor typo correcte
Entanglement flow in multipartite systems
We investigate entanglement dynamics in multipartite systems, establishing a
quantitative concept of entanglement flow: both flow through individual
particles, and flow along general networks of interacting particles. In the
former case, the rate at which a particle can transmit entanglement is shown to
depend on that particle's entanglement with the rest of the system. In the
latter, we derive a set of entanglement rate equations, relating the rate of
entanglement generation between two subsets of particles to the entanglement
already present further back along the network. We use the rate equations to
derive a lower bound on entanglement generation in qubit chains, and compare
this to existing entanglement creation protocols.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, REVTeX format. Proof of lemma 3 corrected.
Restructured and expande
The Complexity of Relating Quantum Channels to Master Equations
Completely positive, trace preserving (CPT) maps and Lindblad master
equations are both widely used to describe the dynamics of open quantum
systems. The connection between these two descriptions is a classic topic in
mathematical physics. One direction was solved by the now famous result due to
Lindblad, Kossakowski Gorini and Sudarshan, who gave a complete
characterisation of the master equations that generate completely positive
semi-groups. However, the other direction has remained open: given a CPT map,
is there a Lindblad master equation that generates it (and if so, can we find
it's form)? This is sometimes known as the Markovianity problem. Physically, it
is asking how one can deduce underlying physical processes from experimental
observations.
We give a complexity theoretic answer to this problem: it is NP-hard. We also
give an explicit algorithm that reduces the problem to integer semi-definite
programming, a well-known NP problem. Together, these results imply that
resolving the question of which CPT maps can be generated by master equations
is tantamount to solving P=NP: any efficiently computable criterion for
Markovianity would imply P=NP; whereas a proof that P=NP would imply that our
algorithm already gives an efficiently computable criterion. Thus, unless P
does equal NP, there cannot exist any simple criterion for determining when a
CPT map has a master equation description.
However, we also show that if the system dimension is fixed (relevant for
current quantum process tomography experiments), then our algorithm scales
efficiently in the required precision, allowing an underlying Lindblad master
equation to be determined efficiently from even a single snapshot in this case.
Our work also leads to similar complexity-theoretic answers to a related
long-standing open problem in probability theory.Comment: V1: 43 pages, single column, 8 figures. V2: titled changed; added
proof-overview and accompanying figure; 50 pages, single column, 9 figure
Entanglement subvolume law for 2D frustration-free spin systems
Let be a frustration-free Hamiltonian describing a 2D grid of qudits with
local interactions, a unique ground state, and local spectral gap lower bounded
by a positive constant. For any bipartition defined by a vertical cut of length
running from top to bottom of the grid, we prove that the corresponding
entanglement entropy of the ground state of is upper bounded by
. For the special case of a 1D chain, our result provides a
new area law which improves upon prior work, in terms of the scaling with qudit
dimension and spectral gap. In addition, for any bipartition of the grid into a
rectangular region and its complement, we show that the entanglement
entropy is upper bounded as where
is the boundary of . This represents the first subvolume bound on
entanglement in frustration-free 2D systems. In contrast with previous work,
our bounds depend on the local (rather than global) spectral gap of the
Hamiltonian. We prove our results using a known method which bounds the
entanglement entropy of the ground state in terms of certain properties of an
approximate ground state projector (AGSP). To this end, we construct a new AGSP
which is based on a robust polynomial approximation of the AND function and we
show that it achieves an improved trade-off between approximation error and
entanglement
Zero-error channel capacity and simulation assisted by non-local correlations
Shannon's theory of zero-error communication is re-examined in the broader
setting of using one classical channel to simulate another exactly, and in the
presence of various resources that are all classes of non-signalling
correlations: Shared randomness, shared entanglement and arbitrary
non-signalling correlations. Specifically, when the channel being simulated is
noiseless, this reduces to the zero-error capacity of the channel, assisted by
the various classes of non-signalling correlations. When the resource channel
is noiseless, it results in the "reverse" problem of simulating a noisy channel
exactly by a noiseless one, assisted by correlations. In both cases, 'one-shot'
separations between the power of the different assisting correlations are
exhibited. The most striking result of this kind is that entanglement can
assist in zero-error communication, in stark contrast to the standard setting
of communicaton with asymptotically vanishing error in which entanglement does
not help at all. In the asymptotic case, shared randomness is shown to be just
as powerful as arbitrary non-signalling correlations for noisy channel
simulation, which is not true for the asymptotic zero-error capacities. For
assistance by arbitrary non-signalling correlations, linear programming
formulas for capacity and simulation are derived, the former being equal (for
channels with non-zero unassisted capacity) to the feedback-assisted zero-error
capacity originally derived by Shannon to upper bound the unassisted zero-error
capacity. Finally, a kind of reversibility between non-signalling-assisted
capacity and simulation is observed, mirroring the famous "reverse Shannon
theorem".Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure. Small changes to text in v2. Removed an
unnecessarily strong requirement in the premise of Theorem 1
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