We show that any unital qubit channel can be implemented by letting the input system interact unitarily with a $4$-dimensional environment in the maximally mixed state and then tracing out the environment. We also provide an example where the dimension of such an environment has to be at least $3$.
Classical capacity of unital qubit channels is well known, whereas that of nonunital qubit channels is not. We find lower and upper bounds on classical capacity of nonunital qubit channels by using a recently developed decomposition technique relating nonunital and unital positive qubit maps.
Quantum queue-channels arise naturally in the context of buffering in quantum networks, wherein the noise suffered by the quantum states depends on the time spent waiting in the buffer. It has been shown that the upper-bound on the classical capacity of an additive queue-channel has a simple expression, and is achievable for the erasure and depolarizing channels [IEEE JSAIT, 1(2):432-444]. In this paper, we characterise the classical capacity for the class of unital qubit queue-channels, and show that a simple product (non-entangled) decoding strategy is capacity-achieving. As an intermediate …
We consider a scenario where a party, say, Alice prepares a pure two-qubit (either maximally entangled or non-maximally entangled) state and sends one half of this state to another distant party, say, Bob through a qubit (either unital or non-unital) channel. Finally, the shared state is used as a teleportation channel. In this scenario, we focus on characterizing the set of qubit channels with respect to the final state's efficacy as a resource of quantum teleportation (QT) in terms of maximal average fidelity and fidelity deviation (fluctuation in fidelity values over the input states). Impo…
We address the problem of existence of completely positive trace preserving (CPTP) maps between two sets of density matrices. We refine the result of Alberti and Uhlmann and derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a unital channel between two pairs of qubit states which ultimately boils down to three simple inequalities.
We study the problem of optimal preparation of a bipartite entangled state, which remains entangled the longest time under action of local qubit noises. We show that for unital noises such a state is always maximally entangled, whereas for nonunital noises, it is not. We develop a decomposition technique relating nonunital and unital qubit channels, based on which we find the explicit form of the ultimately robust state for general local noises. We illustrate our findings by amplitude damping processes at finite temperature, for which the ultimately robust state remains entangled up to two tim…
Necessary and sufficient conditions for local creation of quantum discord
我们证明了局域信道不能产生量子不和谐(QD)的零量子态的大小$d\geq3$当且仅当它是一个完全消相干信道或它是一个非平凡的各向同性信道。对于量子比特的情况,这种性质是完全消相干通道或保持交换性的酉通道的额外特征。特别地,给出了完全消散通道和保持交换性的单位量子比特通道的精确形式。因此,我们的结果证实并改进了X. Hu等对$d\geq3$的情形推广了A. Streltsov et al.对于量子比特的情况。此外,它表明,一个本地通道无效QD在任何状态下,当且仅当它是一个完全消散通道。基于我们的研究结果,与量子点相关的量子信息处理问题的一些协议,特别是对于量子比特的情况下,将是实验上可行的。
The classical Second Law of Thermodynamics demands that an isolated system evolves with a non-diminishing entropy. This holds as well in quantum mechanics if the evolution of the energy-isolated system can be described by a unital quantum channel. At the same time, the entropy of a system evolving via a non-unital channel can, in principle, decrease. Here, we analyze the behavior of the entropy in the context of the H-theorem. As exemplary phenomena, we discuss the action of a Maxwell demon (MD) operating a qubit and the processes of heating and cooling in a two-qubit system. We further discus…
We consider an arbitrary qubit channel depending on a single parameter, which is to be estimated by a physical process. Using the quantum Fisher information per channel invocation to quantify the estimation accuracy, we consider various estimation protocols when the available initial states are mixed with very low purity. We compare a protocol using a single channel invocation on one out of $n$ qubits prepared in a particular correlated input state to the optimal protocol using uncorrelated input states, with the same initial state purity. We show that, to lowest order in initial-state purity,…
Maximally entangled states--a resource for quantum information processing--can only be shared through noiseless quantum channels, whereas in practice channels are noisy. Here we ask: Given a noisy quantum channel, what is the maximum attainable purity (measured by singlet fraction) of shared entanglement for single channel use and local trace preserving operations? We find an exact formula of the maximum singlet fraction attainable for a qubit channel and give an explicit protocol to achieve the optimal value. The protocol distinguishes between unital and nonunital channels and requires no loc…
We study reachable sets of open n-qubit quantum systems, whose coherent parts are under full unitary control, by adding as a further degree of incoherent control switchable Markovian noise on a single qubit. In particular, adding bang-bang control of amplitude damping noise (non-unital) allows the dynamic system to act transitively on the entire set of density operators. Thus one can transform any initial quantum state into any desired target state. Adding switchable bit-flip noise (unital) instead suffices to get all states majorised by the initial state. Our open-loop optimal control package…
We show that a configuration of four birefringent crystals and wave-plates can emulate almost any arbitrary unital channel for polarization qubits encoded in single photons, where the channel settings are controlled by the wave-plate angles. The scheme is applied to a single spatial mode and its operation is independent of the wavelength and the fine temporal properties of the input light. We implemented the scheme and demonstrated its operation by applying a dephasing environment to classical and quantum single-photon states with different temporal properties. The applied process was characte…
One of the most promising routes towards scalable quantum computing is a modular approach. We show that distinct surface code patches can be connected in a fault-tolerant manner even in the presence of substantial noise along their connecting interface. We quantify analytically and numerically the combined effect of errors across the interface and bulk. We show that the system can tolerate 14 times higher noise at the interface compared to the bulk, with only a small effect on the code's threshold and sub-threshold behavior, reaching threshold with $\sim 1 \%$ bulk errors and $\sim 10 \%$ inte…
Incompatibility and nonlocality are not only of foundational interest but also act as important resources for quantum information theory. In the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) scenario, the incompatibility of a pair of observables is known to be equivalent to Bell nonlocality. Here, we investigate these notions in the context of qubit channels. The Bell-CHSH inequality has a greater perspective--compared to any genuine tripartite nonlocality scenario--while determining the interplay between nonlocality breaking qubit channels and incompatibility breaking qubit channels. In the Bell-CHSH sce…
We investigate the coherence of quantum channels using the Choi-Jamiołkowski isomorphism. The relation between the coherence and the purity of the channel respects a duality relation. It characterizes the allowed values of coherence when the channel has certain purity. This duality has been depicted via the Coherence-Purity (Co-Pu) diagrams. In particular, we study the quantum coherence of the unital and non-unital qubit channels and find out the allowed region of coherence for a fixed purity. We also study coherence of different incoherent channels, namely, incoherent operation (IO), strictly…
We investigate the non-Markovian dynamics of a qubit-oscillator system embedded in a noisy environment by employing the hierarchical equations of motion approach. It is found that the decoherence rate of the whole qubit-oscillator-bath system can be significantly suppressed by enhancing the coupling strength between the qubit and the harmonic oscillator. Moreover, we find that the non-Markovian memory character of the bath is able to facilitate a robust quantum coherent dynamics in this qubit-oscillator-bath system. Our findings may be used to engineer some tunable coherent manipulations in me…
The first generation of multi-qubit quantum technologies will consist of noisy, intermediate-scale devices for which active error correction remains out of reach. To exploit such devices, it is thus imperative to use passive error protection that meets a careful trade-off between noise protection and resource overhead. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that single-qubit encoding can significantly enhance the robustness of entanglement and coherence of four-qubit graph states against local noise with a preferred direction. In particular, we explicitly show that local encoding provides a signi…