Uncertainty relations play a central role in quantum mechanics. Entropic uncertainty relations in particular have gained significant importance within quantum information, providing the foundation for the security of many quantum cryptographic protocols. Yet, rather little is known about entropic uncertainty relations with more than two measurement settings. In this note we review known results and open questions.
Entropic uncertainty relations play an important role in both fundamentals and applications of quantum theory. Although they have been well-investigated in quantum theory, little is known about entropic uncertainty in generalized probabilistic theories (GPTs). The current study explores two types of entropic uncertainty relations, preparation and measurement uncertainty relations, in a class of GPTs which can be considered generalizations of quantum theory. Not only a method for obtaining entropic preparation uncertainty relations but also an entropic measurement uncertainty relation similar t…
Commutator-based entropic uncertainty relations in multidimensional position and momentum spaces are derived, twofold generalizing previous entropic uncertainty relations for one-mode states. They provide optimal lower bounds and imply the multidimensional variance-based uncertainty principle. The article concludes with an open conjecture.
Entropic uncertainty relations express the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle by quantifying uncertainty in terms of entropy. Central questions include the derivation of lower bounds on the total uncertainty for given observables, the characterization of observables that allow strong uncertainty relations, and the construction of such relations for the case of several observables. We demonstrate how the stabilizer formalism can be applied to these questions. We show that the Maassen-Uffink entropic uncertainty relation is tight for the measurement in any pair of stabilizer bases. We comp…
Uncertainty principle has a fundamental role in quantum theory. This principle states that it is not possible to measure two incompatible observers simultaneously. The uncertainty principle is expressed logically in terms of standard deviation of the measured observables. In quantum information it has been shown that the uncertainty principle can be expressed by means of Shannon's entropy. Entropic uncertainty relation can be improve by consider an additional particle as the quantum memory. In the presence of quantum memory the entropic uncertainty relation is called quantum memory assisted en…
The uncertainty principle is one of the key concepts in quantum theory. This principle states that it is not possible to measure two incompatible observables simultaneously and accurately. In quantum information theory, the uncertainty principle is formulated using the concept of entropy. In this work we consider the entropic uncertainty relation in the presence of quantum memory. We study the dynamics of entropic uncertainty bound for a two-qubit quantum system coupled to a spin chain with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and we investigate the effect of environmental parameters on the entro…
Reality of quantum observables, a feature of long-standing interest within foundations of quantum mechanics, has recently been quantified and deeply studied by means of entropic measures [Phys. Rev. A 97, 022107 (2018)]. However, there is no state-independent "reality trade-off" between noncommuting observables, as in certain systems all observables are real [Europhys. Lett. 112, 40005 (2015)]. We show that the entropic uncertainty relation in the presence of quantum memory [Nature Phys. 6, 659 (2010)] perfectly supplements the discussed notion of reality, rendering trade-offs between reality …
We study the dynamics of quantum-memory-assisted entropic uncertainty for a hybrid qutrit-qubit system interacting with fluctuating quantum scalar field in the background of expanding de Sitter space. We firstly derive the master equation that the system evolution obeys. As evolution time goes by, for different initial states, entropic uncertainty develops to different fixed values for different parameter values, whereas entanglement always decays to zero, and there exist monotonous relations between entropic uncertainty, entanglement and various parameters for a fixed initial state, but mixed…
This note shows how to apply the James-Stein estimator to the case of entropic uncertainty relations of more than two observables. A better result is found compared to applying the ordinary estimator and we find a more optimal model compared with experimental data. The theoretical bounds for entropic relations for entropic relations for more than two observables are shown to be improved.
We investigate quantum steering for multipartite systems by using entropic uncertainty relations. We introduce entropic steering inequalities whose violation certifies the presence of different classes of multipartite steering. These inequalities witness both steerable states and genuine multipartite steerable states. Furthermore, we study their detection power for several classes of states of a three-qubit system.
Entropic uncertainty and entanglement are two distinct aspects of quantum mechanical procedures. To estimate entropic uncertainty relations, entropies are used: the greater the entropy bound, the less effective the quantum operations and entanglement are. In this regard, we analyze the entropic uncertainty, entropic uncertainty lower bound, and concurrence dynamics in two non-interacting qubits. The exposure of two qubits is studied in two different qubit-noise configurations, namely, common qubit-noise and independent qubit-noise interactions. To include the noisy effects of the local externa…
We present the entropic uncertainty relations for multiple measurement settings in quantum mechanics. Those uncertainty relations are obtained for both cases with and without the presence of quantum memory. They take concise forms which can be proven in a unified method and easy to calculate. Our results recover the well known entropic uncertainty relations for two observables, which show the uncertainties about the outcomes of two incompatible measurements. Those uncertainty relations are applicable in both foundations of quantum theory and the security of many quantum cryptographic protocols…
We show that different entropic measures of fluctuations lead to contradictory uncertainty relations for two complementary observables. We apply Tsallis and Rényi entropies to the joint distribution emerging from a noisy simultaneous measurement of both observables as well as to the product of their individual statistics, either intrinsic or of operational origin.
Entropic uncertainty relations are underpinning to compute the quantitative security bound in quantum cryptographic applications, such as quantum random number generation (QRNG) and quantum key distribution (QKD). All security proofs derive a relation between the information accessible to the legitimate group and the maximum knowledge that an adversary may have gained, Eve, which exploits entropic uncertainty relations to lower bound Eve's uncertainty about the raw key generated by one party, Alice. The standard entropic uncertainty relations is to utilize the smooth min- and max-entropies to …
In this letter, the number-phase entropic uncertainty relation and the number-phase Wigner function of generalized coherent states associated to a few solvable quantum systems with nondegenerate spectra are studied. We also investigate time evolution of number-phase entropic uncertainty and Wigner function of the considered physical systems with the help of temporally stable Gazeau-Klauder coherent states.
Quantum uncertainty relations are formulated in terms of relative entropy between distributions of measurement outcomes and suitable reference distributions with maximum entropy. This type of entropic uncertainty relation can be applied directly to observables with either discrete or continuous spectra. We find that a sum of relative entropies is bounded from above in a nontrivial way, which we illustrate with some examples.
Uncertainty relations have become the trademark of quantum theory since they were formulated by Bohr and Heisenberg. This review covers various generalizations and extensions of the uncertainty relations in quantum theory that involve the Rényi and the Shannon entropies. The advantages of these entropic uncertainty relations are pointed out and their more direct connection to the observed phenomena is emphasized. Several remaining open problems are mentioned
One unique feature of quantum mechanics is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that the outcomes of two incompatible measurements cannot simultaneously achieve arbitrary precision. In an information-theoretic context of quantum information, the uncertainty principle can be formulated as entropic uncertainty relations with two measurements for a quantum bit (qubit) in two-dimensional system. New entropic uncertainty relations are studied for a higher-dimensional quantum state with multiple measurements, the uncertainty bounds can be tighter than that expected from two measurement…
We consider entropic uncertainty relations for outcomes of the measurements of a quantum state in 3 or more mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), chosen from the standard construction of MUBs in prime dimension. We show that, for any choice of 3 MUBs and at least one choice of a larger number of MUBs, the best possible entropic uncertainty relation can be only marginally better than the one that trivially follows from the relation by Maassen and Uffink (PRL, 1987) for 2 bases.
Uncertainty relations are among the unique fingerprints of quantum physics, being direct expression of non-commutativity and complementarity. Entropic uncertainty relations arise in quantum information theory as the most natural expression of the uncertainty principle and have proven themselves important tools for cryptographic security proofs. An open question has been how strong entropic uncertainty relations can be. Here we answer this question by showing that there exist observables that obey maximally strong entropic uncertainty relations in high dimensional Hilbert spaces. Actually, we s…
In this paper, we study entropic uncertainty relations on a finite-dimensional Hilbert space and provide several tighter bounds for multi-measurements, with some of them also valid for Rényi and Tsallis entropies besides the Shannon entropy. We employ majorization theory and actions of the symmetric group to obtain an {\it admixture bound} for entropic uncertainty relations for multi-measurements. Comparisons among all bounds for multi-measurements are shown in figures in our favor.
We address entropic uncertainty relations between time and energy or, more precisely, between measurements of an observable $G$ and the displacement $r$ of the $G$-generated evolution $e^{-ir G}$. We derive lower bounds on the entropic uncertainty in two frequently considered scenarios, which can be illustrated as two different guessing games in which the role of the guessers are fixed or not. In particular, our bound for the first game improves the previous result by Coles et al.. Our derivation uses as a subroutine a recently proposed novel algebraic method, which can in general be used to d…
The quantum entropic uncertainty relation and entanglement witness in the two-atom system coupling with the non-Markovian environments are studied by the time-convolutionless master-equation approach. The influence of non-Markovian effect and detuning on the lower bound of the quantum entropic uncertainty relation and entanglement witness is discussed in detail. The results show that, only if the two non-Markovian reservoirs are identical, increasing detuning and non-Markovian effect can reduce the lower bound of the entropic uncertainty relation, lengthen the time region during which the enta…
The Wehrl entropy is an entropy associated to the Husimi quasi-probability distribution. We discuss how it can be used to formulate entropic uncertainty relations and for a quantification of entanglement in continuous variables. We show that the Wehrl-Lieb inequality is closer to equality than the usual Białynicki-Birula and Mycielski entropic uncertainty relation almost everywhere. Furthermore, we show how a Wehrl mutual information can be used to obtain a measurable perfect witness for pure state bipartite entanglement, which additionally provides a lower bound on the entanglement entropy.
Under the scenario of generalized measurements, it can be questioned how much of quantum uncertainty can be attributed to measuring device, independent of the uncertainty in the measured system. On the course to answer the question, we suggest a new class of entropic uncertainty relation that differentiates quantum uncertainty from device imperfection due to the unsharpness of measurement. In order to quantify the unsharpness, we {suggest} and analyze the quantity that characterizes the uncertainty in the measuring device, based on Shannon entropy. Using the quantity, we obtain a new lower bou…
We improve the entropic uncertainty relations for position and momentum coarse-grained measurements. We derive the continuous, coarse-grained counterparts of the discrete uncertainty relations based on the concept of majorization. The obtained entropic inequalities involve two Rényi entropies of the same order, and thus go beyond the standard scenario with conjugated parameters. In a special case describing the sum of two Shannon entropies the majorization-based bounds significantly outperform the currently known results in the regime of larger coarse graining, and might thus be useful for ent…
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle shows that no one can specify the values of the non-commuting canonically conjugated variables simultaneously. However, the uncertainty relation is usually applied to two incompatible measurements. We present tighter bounds on both entropic uncertainty relation and information exclusion principle for multiple measurements in the presence of quantum memory. As applications, three incompatible measurements on Werner state and Horodecki's bound entangled state are investigated in details.
Uncertainty relations take a crucial and fundamental part in the frame of quantum theory, and are bringing on many marvelous applications in the emerging field of quantum information sciences. Especially, as entropy is imposed into the uncertainty principle, entropy-based uncertainty relations lead to a number of applications including quantum key distribution, entanglement witness, quantum steering, quantum metrology, and quantum teleportation. Herein, the history of the development of the uncertainty relations is discussed, especially focusing on the recent progress with regard to quantum-me…
We relate the principle of quantum-memory-assisted entropic uncertainty to quantum teleportation and show geometrically that any two-qubit state which lowers the upper bound of this uncertainty relation is useful for teleportation. We also explore the efficiency of this entropic uncertainty principle on witnessing entanglement in a general class of bosonic structured reservoirs. The entanglement regions witnessed by different estimates are determined, which may have no relation with the explicit form of the spectral density of the reservoir for certain special chosen sets of the initial states…
We provide an analytical proof of the entropic uncertainty relations presented by de Vicente and Sanchez-Ruiz in [Phys. Rev. A 77, 042110 (2008)] and also show that the replacement of Eq. (27) by Eq. (29) in that reference introduces solutions that do not take fully into account the contraints of the problem, which in turn leads to some mistakes in their treatment.
In presence of quantum memory [M. Berta, M. Christandl, R. Colbeck, J.M. Renes, and R. Renner, Nature Phys. 6, 659 (2010)] the lower bound of entropic uncertainty relation depends on amount of entanglement between the particle (on which two incompatible observable are measured) and the quantum memory. On other hand, fine grained uncertainty relation [J. Oppenheim and S. Wehner, Science 330, 1072 (2010)] gives the upper bound of winning non-local (CHSH) game. We construct similar kind of quantum game and relate two uncertainty relation for measurement of any two observable on the quantum system…
The limitation of simultaneous measurements of noncommuting observables can be eliminated when the measured particle is maximally entangled with a quantum memory. We present a proposal for testing this quantum-memory-assisted entropic uncertainty relation in a single nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) center in diamond only by local electronic measurements. As an application, this entropic uncertainty relation is used to witness entanglement between the electron and nuclear spins of the N-V center, which is close to the reach of currently available technology.
We construct inequalities between Rényi entropy and the indexes of coincidence of probability distributions, based on which we obtain improved state-dependent entropic uncertainty relations for general symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures (SIC-POVM) and mutually unbiased measurements (MUM) on finite dimensional systems. We show that our uncertainty relations for general SIC-POVMs and MUMs can be tight for sufficiently mixed states, and moreover, comparisons to the numerically optimal results are made via information diagrams.
In the history of quantum mechanics, various types of uncertainty relationships have been introduced to accommodate different operational meanings of Heisenberg uncertainty principle. We derive an optimized entropic uncertainty relation (EUR) that quantifies an amount of quantum uncertainty in the scenario of successive measurements. The EUR characterizes the limitation in the measurability of two different quantities of a quantum state when they are measured through successive measurements. We find that the bound quantifies the information between the two measurements and imposes a condition …
In this paper we derive a new quantum entropic uncertainty relation, bounding the conditional smooth quantum min entropy based on the result of a measurement using a two outcome POVM and the failure probability of a classical sampling strategy. Our relation works for systems of arbitrary finite dimension. We apply it to analyze a new source independent quantum random number generation protocol and show our relation provides optimistic results compared to prior work.
The limitation on obtaining precise outcomes of measurements performed on two non-commuting observables of a particle as set by the uncertainty principle in its entropic form, can be reduced in the presence of quantum memory. We derive a new entropic uncertainty relation based on fine- graining, which leads to an ultimate limit on the precision achievable in measurements performed on two incompatible observables in the presence of quantum memory. We show that our derived uncertainty relation tightens the lower bound set by entropic uncertainty for members of the class of two-qubit states with …
Quantum discord and quantum uncertainty are two important features of the quantum world. In this work, the relation between entropic uncertainty relation and the shareability of quantum discord is studied. First, by using tripartite quantum-memory-assisted entropic uncertainty relation, an upper bound for the shareability of quantum discord among different partites of a composite system is obtained. It is also shown that, for a specific class of tripartite states, the obtained relation could be expressed as monogamy of quantum discord. Moreover, it is illustrated that the relation could be gen…
The uncertainty principle brings out intrinsic quantum bounds on the precision of measuring non-commuting observables. Statistical outcomes in the measurement of incompatible observables reveal a trade-off on the sum of corresponding entropies. Massen-Uffink entropic uncertainty relation (Phys. Rev. Lett. 60, 1103 (1988)) constrains the sum of entropies associated with incompatible measurements. The entropic uncertainty principle in the presence of quantum memory (Nature Phys. 6, 659 (2010)) brought about a fascinating twist by showing that quantum side information, enabled due to entanglement…
The uncertainty principle, which bounds the uncertainties involved in obtaining precise outcomes for two complementary variables defining a quantum particle, is a crucial aspect in quantum mechanics. Recently, the uncertainty principle in terms of entropy has been extended to the case involving quantum entanglement. With previously obtained quantum information for the particle of interest, the outcomes of both non-commuting observables can be predicted precisely, which greatly generalises the uncertainty relation. Here, we experimentally investigated the entanglement-assisted entropic uncertai…
We consider two entropic uncertainty relations of position and momentum recently discussed in literature. By a suitable rescaling of one of them, we obtain a smooth interpolation of both for high-resolution and low-resolution measurements respectively. Because our interpolation has never been mentioned in literature before, we propose it as a candidate for an improved entropic uncertainty relation of position and momentum. Up to now, the author has neither been able to falsify nor prove the new inequality. In our opinion it is a challenge to do either one.
The uncertainty of measurement on a quantum system can be reduced in presence of quantum memory [M. Berta et. al. Nature Phys. {\bf 6}, 659 (2010)]. By measurement on quantum memory, some information (non-classical information) is inaccessible, hence, it limits the lower bound of entropic uncertainty relation. In the present work, we improve the lower bound of entropic uncertainty relation in presence of quantum memory by considering inaccessibility of non classical correlation at Bob side and also compare the lower bound given by M. Berta et. al. and our prescription for two different kind of…
Gaussian distribution of a quantum state with continuous spectrum is known to maximize the Shannon entropy at a fixed variance. Applying it to a pair of canonically conjugate quantum observables $\hat x$ and $\hat p$, quantum entropic uncertainty relation can take a suggestive form, where the standard deviations $σ_x$ and $σ_p$ are featured explicitly. From the construction, it follows in a transparent manner that: (i) the entropic uncertainty relation implies the Kennard-Robertson uncertainty relation in a modifed form, $σ_xσ_p\geq\hbar e^{\cal N}/2$; (ii) the additional factor ${\cal N}$ qua…
The effect of steering describes a possible action at a distance via measurements but characterizing the quantum states that can be used for this task remains difficult. We provide a method to derive sufficient criteria for steering from entropic uncertainty relations using generalized entropies. We demonstrate that the resulting criteria outperform existing criteria in several scenarios; moreover, they allow one to detect weakly steerable states.
How much of the uncertainty in predicting measurement outcomes for non-commuting quantum observables is genuinely quantum mechanical? We provide a natural decomposition of the total entropic uncertainty of two non-commuting observables into a classical component, and an intrinsically quantum mechanical component. We show that the total quantum component in a state is never lower or upper bounded by any state-independent quantities, but instead admits "purity-based" lower bounds that generalize entropic formulations such as the Maassen-Uffink relation. These relations reveal a non-trivial inter…
The entropic uncertainty relations are a very active field of scientific inquiry. Their applications include quantum cryptography and studies of quantum phenomena such as correlations and non-locality. In this work we find entanglement-dependent entropic uncertainty relations in terms of the Tsallis entropies for states with a fixed amount of entanglement. Our main result is stated as Theorem~\ref{th:bound}. Taking the special case of von Neumann entropy and utilizing the concavity of conditional von Neumann entropies, we extend our result to mixed states. Finally we provide a lower bound on t…
We present a family of entropic uncertainty relations for pointer-based simultaneous measurements of conjugate observables. The lower bounds of these relations explicitly incorporate the influence of the measurement apparatus. We achieve this by using a mathematical theorem which states that the information entropy of convoluted probability distributions is bound from below. As a consequence of these results we can straightforwardly show that appropriately squeezed states are minimal entropy states for simultaneous measurements.
We study entropic uncertainty relations by using stepwise linear functions and quadratic functions. Two kinds of improved uncertainty lower bounds are constructed: the state-independent one based on the lower bound of Shannon entropy and the tighter state-dependent one based on the majorization techniques. The analytical results for qubit and qutrit systems with two or three measurement settings are explicitly derived, with detailed examples showing that they outperform the existing bounds. The case with the presence of quantum memory is also investigated.
In this paper, we show an interesting connection between a quantum sampling technique and quantum uncertainty. Namely, we use the quantum sampling technique, introduced by Bouman and Fehr, to derive a novel entropic uncertainty relation based on smooth min entropy, the binary Shannon entropy of an observed outcome, and the probability of failure of a classical sampling strategy. We then show two applications of our new relation. First, we use it to develop a simple proof of a version of the Maassen and Uffink uncertainty relation. Second, we show how it may be applied to quantum random number …
Uncertainty relations provide constraints on how well the outcomes of incompatible measurements can be predicted, and, as well as being fundamental to our understanding of quantum theory, they have practical applications such as for cryptography and witnessing entanglement. Here we shed new light on the entropic form of these relations, showing that they follow from a few simple entropic properties, including the data processing inequality. We prove these relations without relying on the exact expression for the entropy, and hence show that a single technique applies to several entropic quanti…
The uncertainty principle can be expressed in entropic terms, also taking into account the role of entanglement in reducing uncertainty. The information exclusion principle bounds instead the correlations that can exist between the outcomes of incompatible measurements on one physical system, and a second reference system. We provide a more stringent formulation of both the uncertainty principle and the information exclusion principle, with direct applications for, e.g., the security analysis of quantum key distribution, entanglement estimation, and quantum communication. We also highlight a f…
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle forms a fundamental element of quantum mechanics. Uncertainty relations in terms of entropies were initially proposed to deal with conceptual shortcomings in the original formulation of the uncertainty principle and, hence, play an important role in quantum foundations. More recently, entropic uncertainty relations have emerged as the central ingredient in the security analysis of almost all quantum cryptographic protocols, such as quantum key distribution and two-party quantum cryptography. This review surveys entropic uncertainty relations that capture Heis…
We derive a new memory-assisted entropic uncertainty relation for non-degenerate Hermitian observables where both quantum correlations, in the form of conditional von Neumann entropy, and quantum discord between system and memory play an explicit role. Our relation is `universal', in the sense that it does not depend on the specific observable, but only on properties of the quantum state. We contrast such an uncertainty relation with previously known memory-assisted relations based on entanglement and correlations. Further, we present a detailed comparative study of entanglement- and discord-a…
