Based on the monogamy of entanglement, we develop the technique of quantum conditioning to build an {\it additive} entanglement measure: the conditional entanglement of mutual information. Its {\it operational} meaning is elaborated to be the minimal net "flow of qubits" in the process of partial state merging. The result and conclusion can also be generalized to multipartite entanglement cases.
A variety of new measures of quantum Renyi mutual information and quantum Renyi conditional entropy have recently been proposed, and some of their mathematical properties explored. Here, we show that the Renyi mutual information attains operational meaning in the context of composite hypothesis testing, when the null hypothesis is a fixed bipartite state and the alternate hypothesis consists of all product states that share one marginal with the null hypothesis. This hypothesis testing problem occurs naturally in channel coding, where it corresponds to testing whether a state is the output of …
Uncertainty relations are often considered to be a measure of incompatibility of noncommuting observables. However, such a consideration is not valid in general, motivating the need for an alternate measure that applies to any set of noncommuting observables. We present an operational approach to quantifying incompatibility without invoking uncertainty relations. Our measure aims to capture the incompatibility of noncommuting observables as manifest in the non-orthogonality of their eigenstates. We prove that this measure has all the desired properties: it is zero when the observables commute,…
We propose an operational measure of distance of two quantum states, which conversely tells us their closeness. This is defined as a sum of differences in partial knowledge over a complete set of mutually complementary measurements for the two states. It is shown that the measure is operationally invariant and it is equivalent to the Hilbert-Schmidt distance. The operational measure of distance provides a remarkable interpretation of the information distance between quantum states.
We present a new quantum communication complexity protocol, the promise--Quantum Random Access Code, which allows us to introduce a new measure of unbiasedness for bases of Hilbert spaces. The proposed measure possesses a clear operational meaning and can be used to investigate whether a specific number of mutually unbiased bases exist in a given dimension by employing Semi--Definite Programming techniques.
We revisit the problem of asymmetric binary hypothesis testing against a composite alternative hypothesis. We introduce a general framework to treat such problems when the alternative hypothesis adheres to certain axioms. In this case we find the threshold rate, the optimal error and strong converse exponents (at large deviations from the threshold) and the second order asymptotics (at small deviations from the threshold). We apply our results to find operational interpretations of various Renyi information measures. In case the alternative hypothesis is comprised of bipartite product distribu…
Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), which are such that the inner product between two vectors in different orthogonal bases is a constant equal to 1/sqrt{d), with d the dimension of the finite Hilbert space, are becoming more and more studied for applications such as quantum tomography and cryptography, and in relation to entangled states and to the Heisenberg-Weil group of quantum optics. Complete sets of MUBs of cardinality d+1 have been derived for prime power dimensions d=p^m using the tools of abstract algebra. Presumably, for non prime dimensions the cardinality is much less. Here we reinter…
A new measure of information in quantum mechanics is proposed which takes into account that for quantum systems the only feature known before an experiment is performed are the probabilities for various events to occur. The sum of the individual measures of information for mutually complementary observations is invariant under the choice of the particular set of complementary observations and conserved if there is no information exchange with an environment. That operational quantum information invariant results in N bits of information for a system consisting of N qubits.
We introduce new measures of multipartite quantum correlations based on classical correlations in mutually unbiased bases. These classical correlations are measured in terms of the classical mutual information, which has a clear operational meaning. We present sufficient conditions under which these measures are maximized. States that have previously been shown to be particularily important in the context of LOCC transformations fulfill these conditions and therefore maximize the correlation measures. In addition, we show how the new measures can be used to detect high-dimensional tripartite e…
We first consider quantum communication protocols between a sender Alice and a receiver Bob, which transfer Alice's quantum information to Bob by means of non-local resources, such as classical communication, quantum communication, and entanglement. In these protocols, we assume that Alice and Bob may have quantum side information, not transferred. In this work, these protocols are called the state transfer with quantum side information. We determine the optimal costs for non-local resources in the protocols, and study what the effects of the use of quantum side information are. Our results ca…
We will discuss the generalization of entropic uncertainty principles in terms of a game. The game involves k-players, each measuring one of k possible observables. The question is, what is the maximum number of players that can play such that their joint entropic uncertainties are tightened by the presence of non-classical correlations? We answer this question and relate it to the ratio of quantum mutual information to classical correlations. This game hence serves to construct an operational interpretation of the aforementioned ratio. It provides another example of quantum correlations provi…
Quantum steering has recently been formalized in the framework of a resource theory of steering, and several quantifiers have already been introduced. Here, we propose an information-theoretic quantifier for steering called intrinsic steerability, which uses conditional mutual information to measure the deviation of a given assemblage from one having a local hidden-state model. We thus relate conditional mutual information to quantum steering and introduce monotones that satisfy certain desirable properties. The idea behind the quantifier is to suppress the correlations that can be explained b…
Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) and symmetric informationally complete projectors (SICs) are crucial to many conceptual and practical aspects of quantum theory. Here, we develop their role in quantum nonlocality by: i) introducing families of Bell inequalities that are maximally violated by $d$-dimensional MUBs and SICs respectively, ii) proving device-independent certification of natural operational notions of MUBs and SICs, and iii) using MUBs and SICs to develop optimal-rate and nearly optimal-rate protocols for device independent quantum key distribution and device-independent quantum rando…
We consider the problem of evaluating the entanglement of non-Gaussian mixed states generated by photon subtraction from entangled squeezed states. The entanglement measures we use are the negativity and the logarithmic negativity. These measures possess the unusual property of being computable with linear algebra packages even for high-dimensional quantum systems. We numerically evaluate these measures for the non-Gaussian mixed states which are generated by photon subtraction with on/off photon detectors. The results are compared with the behavior of certain operational measures, namely the …
In this paper, we present a new entanglement monotone for bipartite quantum states. Its definition is inspired by the so-called intrinsic information of classical cryptography and is given by the halved minimum quantum conditional mutual information over all tripartite state extensions. We derive certain properties of the new measure which we call "squashed entanglement": it is a lower bound on entanglement of formation and an upper bound on distillable entanglement. Furthermore, it is convex, additive on tensor products, and superadditive in general. Continuity in the state is the only proper…
In order to analyze non-Markovianity of tripartite quantum states from a resource theoretical viewpoint, we introduce a class of quantum operations performed by three distant parties, and investigate an operational resource theory (ORT) induced it. A tripartite state is a free state if and only if it is a quantum Markov chain. We prove monotonicity of functions such as the conditional quantum mutual information, intrinsic information, squashed entanglement, a generalization of entanglement of purification, and the relative entropy of recovery. The ORT has five bound sets, each of which corresp…
Quantum information and computation may serve as a source of useful axioms and ideas for the quantum logic/quantum structures project of characterizing and classifying types of physical theories, including quantum mechanics and classical mechanics. The axiomatic approach of quantum structures may help isolate what aspects of quantum mechanics are responsible for what aspects of its greater-than-classical information processing power, and whether more general physical theories may escape some common limitations of classical and quantum theories. Also, by by helping us understand how existing qu…
We introduce a hierarchical classification of theories that describe systems with fundamentally limited information content. This property is introduced in an operational way and gives rise to the existence of mutually complementary measurements, i.e. a complete knowledge of future outcome in one measurement is at the expense of complete uncertainty in the others. This is characteristic feature of the theories and they can be ordered according to the number of mutually complementary measurements which is also shown to define their computational abilities. In the theories multipartite states ma…
Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), which are such that the inner product between two vectors in different orthogonal bases is constant equal to the inverse $1/\sqrt{d}$, with $d$ the dimension of the finite Hilbert space, are becoming more and more studied for applications such as quantum tomography and cryptography, and in relation to entangled states and to the Heisenberg-Weil group of quantum optics. Complete sets of MUBs of cardinality $d+1$ have been derived for prime power dimensions $d=p^m$ using the tools of abstract algebra (Wootters in 1989, Klappenecker in 2003). Presumably, for non pr…
We determine the quantum states and measurements that optimize the accessible information in a reference frame alignment protocol associated with the groups U(1), corresponding to a phase reference, and $\mathbb{Z}_M$, the cyclic group of $M$ elements. Our result provides an operational interpretation for the $G$-asymmetry which is information-theoretic and which was thus far lacking. In particular, we show that in the limit of many copies of the bounded-size quantum reference frame, the accessible information approaches the Holevo bound. This implies that the rate of alignment of reference fr…
We give an operational definition of the quantum, classical and total amount of correlations in a bipartite quantum state. We argue that these quantities can be defined via the amount of work (noise) that is required to erase (destroy) the correlations: for the total correlation, we have to erase completely, for the quantum correlation one has to erase until a separable state is obtained, and the classical correlation is the maximal correlation left after erasing the quantum correlations. In particular, we show that the total amount of correlations is equal to the quantum mutual information, t…
The operational structure of quantum couplings and entanglements is studied and classified for semifinite von Neumann algebras. We show that the classical-quantum correspondences such as quantum encodings can be treated as diagonal semi-classical (d-) couplings, and the entanglements characterized by truly quantum (q-) couplings, can be regarded as truly quantum encodings. The relative entropy of the d-compound and entangled states leads to two different types of entropy for a given quantum state: the von Neumann entropy, which is achieved as the maximum of mutual information over all d-entang…
To find the essential nature of quantum theory has been an important problem for not only theoretical interest but also applications to quantum technologies. In those studies on quantum foundations, the notion of uncertainty plays a primary role among several stunning features of quantum theory. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate fundamental aspects of uncertainty. In particular, we address this problem focusing on convexity, which has an operational origin. We first try to reveal why in quantum theory similar bounds are often obtained for two types of uncertainty relations, namely, …
We study two operational approaches to quantifying incompatibility that depart significantly from the well known entropic uncertainty relation (EUR) formalism. Both approaches result in incompatibility measures that yield non-zero values even when the pair of incompatible observables commute over a subspace, unlike EURs which give a zero lower bound in such cases. Here, we explicitly show how these measures go beyond EURs in quantifying incompatibility: For any set of quantum observables, we show that both incompatibility measures are bounded from below by the corresponding EURs for the Tsalli…
The Wigner-Yanase skew information was proposed to quantify the information contained in quantum states with respect to a conserved additive quantity, and it was later extended to the Wigner-Yanase-Dyson skew informations. Recently, the Wigner-Yanase-Dyson skew informations have been recognized as valid resource measures for the resource theory of asymmetry, and their properties have been investigated from a resource-theoretic perspective. The Wigner-Yanse-Dyson skew informations have been further generalized to a class called metric-adjusted skew informations, and this general family of skew …
Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) constitute the canonical example of incompatible quantum measurements. One standard application of MUBs is the task known as quantum random access code (QRAC), in which classical information is encoded in a quantum system, and later part of it is recovered by performing a quantum measurement. We analyse a specific class of QRACs, known as the $2^{d} \to 1$ QRAC, in which two classical dits are encoded in a $d$-dimensional quantum system. It is known that among rank-1 projective measurements MUBs give the best performance. We show (for every $d$) that this cannot …
Quantum conditional mutual information and channel capacity
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）
We argue that the notion of pure sate within Standard Quantum Mechanics is presently applied within the specialized literature in relation to two mutually inconsistent definitions. While the first (operational purity) provides a basis-dependent definition which makes reference to the certain prediction of measurement outcomes, the latter (trace-invariant purity) provides a purely abstract invariant definition which lacks operational content. In this work we derive a theorem which exposes the serious inconsistencies existent within these two incompatible definitions of purity.
In this paper we consider the problem of extracting secret key from an eavesdropped source $p_{XYZ}$ at a rate given by the conditional mutual information. We investigate this question under three different scenarios: (i) Alice ($X$) and Bob ($Y$) are unable to communicate but share common randomness with the eavesdropper Eve ($Z$), (ii) Alice and Bob are allowed one-way public communication, and (iii) Alice and Bob are allowed two-way public communication. Distributions having a key rate of the conditional mutual information are precisely those in which a "helping" Eve offers Alice and Bob no…
For bipartite pure and mixed quantum states, in addition to the quantum mutual information, there is another measure of total correlation, namely, the entanglement of purification. We study the monogamy, polygamy, and additivity properties of the entanglement of purification for pure and mixed states. In this paper, we show that, in contrast to the quantum mutual information which is strictly monogamous for any tripartite pure states, the entanglement of purification is polygamous for the same. This shows that there can be genuinely two types of total correlation across any bipartite cross in …
Operational Limits of Gravity-Mediated Entanglement
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Ningbo University（宁波大学）；Beihua University（北华大学）；Nantong University（南通大学）；Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM)（伊朗基础科学研究所）
We use holographic methods to characterize the RG flow of quantum information in a Chern-Simons theory coupled to massive fermions. First, we use entanglement entropy and mutual information between strips to derive the dimension of the RG-driving operator and a monotonic c-function. We then display a scaling regime where, unlike in a CFT, the mutual information between strips changes non-monotonically with strip width, vanishing in both IR and UV but rising to a maximum at intermediate scales. The associated information transitions also contribute to non-monotonicity in the conditional mutual …
