An explicit expression for the temperature of an open two-level quantum system is obtained as a function of local properties, under the hypothesis of weak interaction with the environment. This temperature is defined for both equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium states, and coincides with the environment temperature if the system reaches thermal equilibrium with a heat reservoir. Additionally, we show that within this theoretical framework the total entropy production can be partitioned into two contributions: one due to heat transfer, and another, associated to internal irreversibilities, related to the loss of internal coherence by the qubit. The positiveness of the heat capacity is established, as well as its consistency with the well known results at thermal equilibrium. We apply these concepts to two different systems, and show that they behave in analogous ways as their classical counterparts.
The time evolution of a two-level quantum mechanical system can be geometrically described using the Bloch sphere. By mapping the Bloch sphere evolution onto the dynamics of oscillating electric dipoles, we provide a physically intuitive link between classical electromagnetism and the electric dipole transitions of atomic & molecular physics.
The two-qubit pure state is explicitly parameterized by three unit 2-spheres and a phase factor. For separable states, two of the three unit spheres are the Bloch spheres of each qubit. The third sphere parameterizes the degree and phase of concurrence, an entanglement measure. This sphere may be considered a variable complex imaginary unit where the stereographic projection maps the qubit-A Bloch sphere to a complex plane with this variable imaginary unit. This Bloch sphere model gives a consistent description of the two-qubit pure states for both separable and entangled states. We argue that…
m-Qubit states are imbedded in $\mathfrak{Cl}_{2^m}$ Clifford algebras. Their probability spectra then depend on $O(2m)$ or $O(2m+1)$ invariants. Parameter domains for $O(2m(+1))-$ vector and tensor configurations, generalizing the notion of a Bloch sphere, are derived.
A scheme for implementing the discrete-time quantum walk on the Bloch sphere is proposed, which is closely related to the SU(2) group. A spin cluster serves as the walker, whereas its location on the Bloch sphere is described by the spin coherent state. An additional spin that interacts with the spin cluster plays the role of a coin, whose state determines the rotation of the spin cluster. The Wigner function is calculated to visualize the movement of the walker on the Bloch sphere, with which the probability distribution and the standard deviation are also achieved. The quadratic enhancement …
We show how the Majorana representation can be used to express the pure states of an N-qubit system as points on the Bloch sphere. We compare this geometrical representation of N-qubit states with an alternative one, proposed recently by the present authors.
Three unit spheres were used to represent the two-qubit pure states. The three spheres are named the base sphere, entanglement sphere, and fiber sphere. The base sphere and entanglement sphere represent the reduced density matrix of the base qubit and the non-local entanglement measure, concurrence, while the fiber sphere represents the fiber qubit via a simple rotation under a local single-qubit unitary operation; however, in an entangled bipartite state, the fiber sphere has no information on the reduced density matrix of the fiber qubit. When the bipartite state becomes separable, the base …
Entanglement is an important concept in quantum information, quantum communication, and quantum computing. We provide a geometrical analysis of entanglement and separability for all the rank-2 quantum mixed states: complete analysis for the bipartite states, and partial analysis for the multipartite states. For each rank-2 mixed state, we define its unique Bloch sphere, that is spanned by the eigenstates of its density matrix. We characterize those Bloch spheres into exactly five classes of entanglement and separability, give examples for each class, and prove that those are the only classes.
For a quantum system governed by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, we studied the problem of obtaining an optimum Hamiltonian that generates nonunitary transformations of a given initial state into a certain final state in the smallest time $τ$. The analysis is based on the relationship between the states of the two-dimensional subspace of the Hilbert space spanned by the initial and final states and the points of the two-dimensional complex Bloch sphere.
In this paper we present a simple algorithm for representation of statistical data of any origin by complex probability amplitudes. Numerical simulation with Mathematica-6 is performed. The Bloch's sphere is used for visualization of results of numerical simulation. On the one hand, creation of such a quantum-like (QL) representation and its numerical approval is an important step in clarification of extremely complicated interrelation between classical and quantum randomness. On the other hand, it opens new possibilities for application the mathematical formalism of QM in other domains of sci…
We discuss a generalization to 2 qubits of the standard Bloch sphere representation for a single qubit, in the framework of Hopf fibrations of high dimensional spheres by lower dimensional spheres. The single qubit Hilbert space is the 3-dimensional sphere S3. The S2 base space of a suitably oriented S3 Hopf fibration is nothing but the Bloch sphere, while the circular fibres represent the qubit overall phase degree of freedom. For the two qubits case, the Hilbert space is a 7-dimensional sphere S7, which also allows for a Hopf fibration, with S3 fibres and a S4 base. A main striking result is…
The properties of the geometric phases between three quantum states are investigated in a high-dimensional Hilbert space using the Majorana representation of symmetric quantum states. We found that the geometric phases between the three quantum states in an N-state quantum system can be represented by N-1 spherical triangles on the Bloch sphere. The parameter dependence of the geometric phase was analyzed based on this picture. We found that the geometric phase exhibits rich nonlinear behavior in a high-dimensional Hilbert space.
We explore the geometric interpretation of a diabatic, two-photon Raman process as a rotation on the Bloch sphere for a pseudo-spin-1/2 system. The spin state of a spin-1/2 quantum system can be described by a point on the surface of the Bloch sphere, and its evolution during a Raman pulse is a trajectory on the sphere determined by properties of the optical beams: the pulse area, the relative intensities and phases, and the relative frequencies. We experimentally demonstrate key features of this model with a $^{87}$Rb spinor Bose-Einstein condensate, which allows us to examine spatially depen…
An arbitrarily dense discretisation of the Bloch sphere of complex Hilbert states is constructed, where points correspond to bit strings of fixed finite length. Number-theoretic properties of trigonometric functions (not part of the quantum-theoretic canon) are used to show that this constructive discretised representation incorporates many of the defining characteristics of quantum systems: completementarity, uncertainty relationships and (with a simple Cartesian product of discretised spheres) entanglement. Unlike Meyer's earlier discretisation of the Bloch Sphere, there are no orthonormal t…
A two-sphere ("Bloch" or "Poincare") is familiar for describing the dynamics of a spin-1/2 particle or light polarization. Analogous objects are derived for unitary groups larger than SU(2) through an iterative procedure that constructs evolution operators for higher-dimensional SU in terms of lower-dimensional ones. We focus, in particular, on the SU(4) of two qubits which describes all possible logic gates in quantum computation. For a general Hamiltonian of SU(4) with 15 parameters, and for Hamiltonians of its various sub-groups so that fewer parameters suffice, we derive Bloch-like rotatio…
In this study for particular states of bipartite quantum system in 2n?2m dimensional Hilbert space state, similar to m or n-qubit density matrices represented in Bloch sphere we call them generalized Bloch sphere states(GBSS), we give an efficient optimization procedure so that analytic evaluation of quantum discord can be performed. Using this optimization procedure, we find an exact analytical formula for the optimum positive operator valued measure (POVM) that maximize the measure of the classical correlation for these states. The presented optimization procedure also is used to show that f…
CALA-$n$: A Quantum Library for Realizing Cost-Effective 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-bit Gates on IBM Quantum Computers using Bloch Sphere Approach, Clifford+T Gates, and Layouts
A Bloch sphere is the geometrical representation of an arbitrary two-dimensional Hilbert space. Possible classes of entanglement and separability for the pure and mixed states on the Bloch sphere were suggested by [M. Boyer, R. Liss, T. Mor, PRA 95, 032308 (2017)]. Here we construct a Bloch sphere for the Hilbert space spanned by one of the ground states of Kitaev's toric code model and one of its closest product states. We prove that this sphere contains only one separable state, thus belonging to the fourth class suggested by the said paper. We furthermore study the topological order of the …
Quantum teleportation is the transfer of quantum information between two locations by the use of shared entanglement. Current teleportation schemes broadly fall under one of two categories, of either qubit or continuous variables teleportation. Spin coherent states on spin ensembles can be teleported under the continuous variables approximation for states with small deviations from a given polarization. However, for spin coherent states with large deviations, no convenient teleportation protocol exists. Recently, we introduced a teleportation scheme where a spin coherent state lying on the equ…
We analyze qubit decoherence in the framework of geometric quantum mechanics. In this framework the qubit density operators are represented by probability distributions which are also the Kähler functions on the Bloch sphere. Interestingly, the complete positivity of the quantum evolution is recovered as ellipticity of the second order differential operator (deformed Laplacian) which governs the evolution of the probability distribution.
We present an analysis of the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage processes based on the methods of differential geometry. The present work was inspired by an excellent article by Bruce W. Shore et al. (R. G. Unanyan, B. W. Shore, and K. Bergmann Phys. Rev. A \textbf{59}, 2910 (1999)). We demonstrate how a purely geometric interpretation of the adiabatic passage in quantum tripod systems as a Riemannian parallel transport of the dark state vector along the Bloch sphere allows describing the evolution of the system for a given sequence of Stokes, pump and control laser excitation pulses. In comb…
By use of a generalized Bloch vector construction, we study the decoherence of a system composed of two interacting qubits in a general noisy environment. In particular, we investigate the effects of correlations in the noise acting on distinct qubits. Our treatment of the two-qubit system by use of the generalized Bloch vector leads to tractable analytic equations for the dynamics of the 4-level Bloch vector and allows for the application of geometrical concepts from the well known 2-level Bloch sphere. We find that in the presence of correlated or anticorrelated noise, the rate of decoherenc…
The Bloch sphere is a familiar and useful geometrical picture of the dynamics of a single spin or two-level system's quantum evolution. The analogous geometrical picture for three-level systems is presented, with several applications. The relevant SU(3) group and su(3) algebra are eight-dimensional objects and are realized in our picture as two four-dimensional manifolds describing the time evolution operator. The first, called the base manifold, is the counterpart of the S^2 Bloch sphere, whereas the second, called the fiber, generalizes the single U(1) phase of a single spin. Now four-dimens…
We find an optimal quantum cloning machine, which clones qubits of arbitrary symmetrical distribution around the Bloch vector with the highest fidelity. The process is referred to as phase-independent cloning in contrast to the standard phase-covariant cloning for which an input qubit state is a priori better known. We assume that the information about the input state is encoded in an arbitrary axisymmetric distribution (phase function) on the Bloch sphere of the cloned qubits. We find analytical expressions describing the optimal cloning transformation and fidelity of the clones. As an illust…
As is well known, when an SU(2) operation acts on a two-level system, its Bloch vector rotates without change of magnitude. Considering a system composed of two two-level systems, it is proven that for a class of nonlocal interactions of the two subsystems including σ_i\otimesσ_j (with i,j \in {x,y,z}) and the Heisenberg interaction, the geometric description of the motion is particularly simple: each of the two Bloch vectors follows an elliptical orbit within the Bloch sphere. The utility of this result is demonstrated in two applications, the first of which bears on quantum control via quant…
Extending the Bloch sphere model to an N-qubit system
Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha（卡斯蒂利亚-拉曼查大学）；Universidad de La Rioja（拉里奥哈大学）；Universidad Complutense de Madrid（马德里康普顿斯大学）；Roma Tre University（罗马三大学）；QSimov
Using the similarity between spin states on the Bloch sphere (BS) and polarization states on the Poincare sphere (PS), we construct higher-order spin states on the higher-order BS corresponding to higher-order polarization states of photons on the higher-order PS. We investigate the time evolution of higher-order spin states in a magnetic field and establish an extended form of the conventional Larmor precession. The results provide insights on coherent transfer from extended photons to extended spin qubit systems with spin and orbital angular momenta and the operation of extended spin qubits.
Understanding the evolution of a multi-qubit quantum system, or elucidating what portion of the Hilbert space is occupied by a quantum dataset becomes increasingly hard with the number of qubits. In this context, the visualisation of sets of multi-qubit pure quantum states on a single image can be helpful. However, the current approaches to visualization of this type only allow the representation of a set of single qubits (not allowing multi-qubit systems) or a just a single multi-qubit system (not suitable if we care about sets of states), sometimes with additional restrictions, on symmetry o…
The spinor representation of spin-1/2 states can equally well be mapped to a single unit quaternion, yielding a new perspective despite the equivalent mathematics. This paper first demonstrates a useable map that allows Bloch-sphere rotations to be represented as quaternionic multiplications, simplifying the form of the dynamical equations. Left-multiplications generally correspond to non-unitary transformations, providing a simpler (essentially classical) analysis of time-reversal. But the quaternion viewpoint also reveals a surprisingly large broken symmetry, as well as a potential way to re…
For many implementations of quantum computing, 1/f and other types of broad-spectrum noise are an important source of decoherence. An important step forward would be the ability to back out the characteristics of this noise from qubit measurements and to see if it leads to new physical effects. For certain types of qubits, the working point of the qubit can be varied. Using a new mathematical method that is suited to treat all working points, we present theoretical results that show how this degree of freedom can be used to extract noise parameters and to predict a new effect: noise-induced lo…
Finding control fields (pulse sequences) that can compensate for the dispersion in the parameters governing the evolution of a quantum system is an important problem in coherent spectroscopy and quantum information processing. The use of composite pulses for compensating for dispersion in system dynamics is widely known and applied. In this paper, we introduce new pulse elements for correcting pulse errors. These design methods are analytical and can be used to prove arbitrarily good robust performance. Furthermore, the time-to-compensation is superior to existing Fourier Synthesis Methods whi…
We represent a two-qubit density matrix in the basis of Pauli matrix tensor products, with the coefficients constituting a Bloch matrix, analogous to the single qubit Bloch vector. We find the quantum state positivity requirements on the Bloch matrix components, leading to three important inequalities, allowing us to parametrize and visualize the two-qubit state space. Applying the singular value decomposition naturally separates the degrees of freedom to local and nonlocal, and simplifies the positivity inequalities. It also allows us to geometrically represent a state as two entangled Bloch …
Composite pulse sequences, which produce arbitrary pre-defined rotations of a two-state system at an angle $θ$ on the Bloch sphere, are presented. The composite sequences can contain arbitrarily many pulses and can compensate experimental errors in the pulse amplitude and duration to any desired order. A special attention is devoted to two classes of $π/2$ sequences --- symmetric and asymmetric --- the phases of which are given by simple formulas in terms of rational multiples of $π$ for any number of constituent pulses. This allows one to construct arbitrarily accurate $π/2$ composite rotatio…
Caustics are optical phenomena which occur when a family of rays creates an envelope of divergent intensity. Here we show that caustic surfaces also appear when a real or complex field is mapped to its order parameter manifold. We study these structures in the context of spin-1/2 fields, where the order parameter manifold is the Bloch sphere. These generic structures are a manifestation of catastrophe theory and are stable with respect to perturbations. The corresponding field configurations are also stable and represent a new type of topological defect. Equations governing the conditions for …
1-qubit quantum states form a space called the three-dimensional Bloch ball. To compute Holevo capacity, Voronoi diagrams in the Bloch ball with respect to the quantum divergence have been used as a powerful tool. These diagrams basically treat mixed quantum states corresponding to points in the interior of the Bloch ball. Due to the existence of logarithm in the quantum divergence, the diagrams are not defined on pure quantum states corresponding to points on the two-dimensional sphere. This paper first defines the Voronoi diagrams for pure quantum states on the Bloch sphere by the Fubini-Stu…
We consider here the predictions of quantum theory and local hidden variables for the correlations obtained by measuring a pair of qubits by projections defined by randomly chosen axes separated by a given angle θ. The predictions of local hidden variable models for projective measurements on qubits correspond to binary colourings of the Bloch sphere with antipodal points oppositely coloured. We prove Bell inequalities separating the predictions of all local hidden variable models from the singlet correlations predicted by quantum theory for all θin the range 0 < θ< π/3. We raise and explore t…
Università di Cagliari（卡利亚里大学）；Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics, Polish Academy of Sciences（波兰科学院理论与应用信息学研究所）
We introduce a framework suitable for describing pattern recognition task using the mathematical language of density matrices. In particular, we provide a one-to-one correspondence between patterns and pure density operators. This correspondence enables us to: i) represent the Nearest Mean Classifier (NMC) in terms of quantum objects, ii) introduce a Quantum Classifier (QC). By comparing the QC with the NMC on different 2D datasets, we show the first classifier can provide additional information that are particularly beneficial on a classical computer with respect to the second classifier.
The geometric interpretation of (pseudo)spin 1/2 systems on the Bloch sphere has been appreciated across different areas ranging from condensed matter to quantum information and high energy physics. Although similar notions for larger Hilbert spaces are established in mathematics, they have been so far less explored beyond the two-level case for practical usage in condensed matter settings, or have involved restrictions to sub manifolds within the full Hilbert space. We here employ a coherence vector description to theoretically characterize a general N-level system on the higher dimensional g…
Geometric algebra is a mathematical structure that is inherent in any metric vector space, and defined by the requirement that the metric tensor is given by the scalar part of the product of vectors. It provides a natural framework in which to represent the classical groups as subgroups of rotation groups, and similarly their Lie algebras. In this article we show how the geometric algebra of a six-dimensional real Euclidean vector space naturally allows one to construct the special unitary group on a two-qubit (quantum bit) Hilbert space, in a fashion similar to that used in the well-establish…
In this work, we study the Wigner phase-space representation of qubit states encoded in continuous variables (CV) by using the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) mapping. We explore a possible connection between resources for universal quantum computation in discrete-variable (DV) systems, i.e. non-stabilizer states, and negativity of the Wigner function in CV architectures, which is a necessary requirement for quantum advantage. In particular, we show that the lowest Wigner logarithmic negativity of qubit states encoded in CV with the GKP mapping corresponds to encoded stabilizer states, while t…
Bloch-vector spaces for $N$-level systems are investigated from the spherical-coordinate point of view in order to understand their geometrical aspects. We show that the maximum radius in each direction, which is due to the construction of the Bloch-vector space, is determined by the minimum eigenvalue of the corresponding observable (orthogonal generator of SU(N)). From this fact, we reveal the dual property of the structure of the Bloch-vector space; if in some direction the space reachs the large sphere (pure state), then in the opposite direction the space can only get to the small sphere,…
