5+5 pages; 3+1 figures. Comments welcome!; v2: added comparison to thermodynamics and application to quantum statistical mechanics, expanded appendix, minor corrections, close to published version
I show that non-decreasing entropy provides a necessary and sufficient condition to convert the state of a physical system into a different state by a reversible transformation that acts on the system of interest and a further "catalyst" whose state has to remain invariant exactly in the transition. This statement is proven both in the case of finite-dimensional quantum mechanics, where von~Neumann entropy is the relevant entropy, and in the case of systems whose states are described by probability distributions on finite sample spaces, where Shannon entropy is the relevant entropy. The results give an affirmative resolution to the (approximate) "catalytic entropy conjecture" introduced by Boes et al. [PRL 122, 210402 (2019)]. They provide a complete single-shot characterization without external randomness of von Neumann entropy and Shannon entropy. I also compare the results to the setting of phenomenological thermodynamics and show how they can be used to obtain a quantitative single-shot characterization of Gibbs states in quantum statistical mechanics.
We present a model in which, due to the quantum nature of the signals controlling the implementation time of successive unitary computational steps, \emph{physical} irreversibility appears in the execution of a \emph{logically} reversible computation.
Catalysts are substances that assist transformation of other resourceful objects without being consumed in the process. However, the fact that their `catalytic power' is limited and can be depleted is often overlooked, especially in the recently developing theories on catalysis of quantum randomness utilizing building correlation with catalyst. In this work, we establish a resource theory of one-shot catalytic randomness in which uncorrelatedness is consumed in catalysis of randomness. We do so by completely characterizing bipartite unitary operators that can be used to implement catalysis of …
I theoretically investigate how the entanglement properties of a two-mode squeezed vacuum state (TMSVS) can be enhanced by operating quantum-optical catalysis on each mode of the TMSVS. The quantum-optical catalysis is simply mixing one photon at the beam splitter and post-select the beam-splitter (BS) output based on detection of one photon, first proposed by Lvovsky and Mlynek [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 250401 (2002)]. I find that there exists some enhancement in the entanglement properties (namely, entanglement entropy, second-order Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlation, and the fidelity of quantu…
The relation between entropy and information has great significance for computation. Based on the strict reversibility of the laws of microphysics, Landauer (1961), Bennett (1973), Priese (1976), Fredkin and Toffoli (1982), Feynman (1985) and others envisioned a reversible computer that cannot allow any ambiguity in backward steps of a calculation. It is this backward capacity that makes reversible computing radically different from ordinary, irreversible computing. The proposal aims at a higher kind of computer that would give the actual output of a computation together with the original inpu…
We propose a method to speed up the quantum adiabatic algorithm using catalysis by many-body delocalization. This is applied to random-field antiferromagnetic Ising spin models. The algorithm is catalyzed in such a way that the evolution approximates a Heisenberg model in the middle of its course, and the model is in a delocalized phase. We show numerically that we can speed up the standard algorithm for finding the ground state of the random-field Ising model using this idea. We also demonstrate that the speedup is due to gap amplification, even though the underlying model is not frustration-…
The reversible computation paradigm aims to provide a new foundation for general classical digital computing that is capable of circumventing the thermodynamic limits to the energy efficiency of the conventional, non-reversible digital paradigm. However, to date, the essential rationale for and analysis of classical reversible computing (RC) has not yet been expressed in terms that leverage the modern formal methods of non-equilibrium quantum thermodynamics (NEQT). In this paper, we begin developing an NEQT-based foundation for the physics of reversible computing. We use the framework of Gorin…
Quantum operations provide a general description of the state changes allowed by quantum mechanics. The reversal of quantum operations is important for quantum error-correcting codes, teleportation, and reversing quantum measurements. We derive information-theoretic conditions and equivalent algebraic conditions that are necessary and sufficient for a general quantum operation to be reversible. We analyze the thermodynamic cost of error correction and show that error correction can be regarded as a kind of ``Maxwell demon,'' for which there is an entropy cost associated with information obtain…
Quantum entanglement of pure states is usually quantified via the entanglement entropy, the von Neumann entropy of the reduced state. Entanglement entropy is closely related to entanglement distillation, a process for converting quantum states into singlets, which can then be used for various quantum technological tasks. The relation between entanglement entropy and entanglement distillation has been known only for the asymptotic setting, and the meaning of entanglement entropy in the single-copy regime has so far remained open. Here we close this gap by considering entanglement catalysis. We …
We consider the manipulation of multipartite entangled states in the limit of many copies under quantum operations that asymptotically cannot generate entanglement. As announced in [Brandao and Plenio, Nature Physics 4, 8 (2008)], and in stark contrast to the manipulation of entanglement under local operations and classical communication, the entanglement shared by two or more parties can be reversibly interconverted in this setting. The unique entanglement measure is identified as the regularized relative entropy of entanglement, which is shown to be equal to a regularized and smoothed versio…
We review the physical foundations of Landauer's Principle, which relates the loss of information from a computational process to an increase in thermodynamic entropy. Despite the long history of the Principle, its fundamental rationale and proper interpretation remain frequently misunderstood. Contrary to some misinterpretations of the Principle, the mere transfer of entropy between computational and non-computational subsystems can occur in a thermodynamically reversible way without increasing total entropy. However, Landauer's Principle is not about general entropy transfers; rather, it mor…
We describe separable joint states on bipartite quantum systems that cannot be prepared by any thermodynamically reversible classical one-way communication protocol. We argue that the joint state of two synchronized microscopic clocks is always of this type when it is considered from the point of view of an ``ignorant'' observer who is not synchronized with the other two parties. We show that the entropy generation of a classical one-way synchronization protocol is at least ΔS = \hbar^2/(4ΔE Δt)^2 if Δt is the time accuracy of the synchronism and ΔE is the energy bandwidth of the clocks. This …
Quantum measurement of a system can change its mean energy, as well as entropy. A selective measurement (classical or quantum) can be used as a "Maxwell's demon" to power a single-temperature heat engine, by decreasing the entropy. Quantum mechanically, so can a non-selective measurement, despite increasing the entropy of a thermal state. The maximal amount of work extractable following the measurement is given by the change in free energy: $W_{max}^{(non-)sel.}=ΔE_{meas}-T_{Bath}ΔS_{meas}^{(non-)sel.}$. This follows from the "generalized 2nd law for nonequilibrium initial state" [Hasegawa et.…
All the laws of physics are time-reversible. Time arrow emerges only when ensembles of classical particles are treated probabilistically, outside of physics laws, and the entropy and the second law of thermodynamics are introduced. In quantum physics, no mechanism for a time arrow has been proposed despite its intrinsic probabilistic nature. In consequence, one cannot explain why an electron in an excited state will "spontaneously" transition into a ground state as a photon is created and emitted, instead of continuing in its reversible unitary evolution. To address such phenomena, we introduc…
Bridging the second law of thermodynamics and microscopic reversible dynamics has been a longstanding problem in statistical physics. We here address this problem on the basis of quantum many-body physics, and discuss how the entropy production saturates in isolated quantum systems under unitary dynamics. First, we rigorously prove the saturation of the entropy production in the long time regime, where a total system can be in a pure state. Second, we discuss the non-negativity of the entropy production at saturation, implying the second law of thermodynamics. This is based on the eigenstate t…
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases (or does not change) by time in an isolated system. As microscopic physical laws are reversible, the origin of irreversibility is not straightforward. Although the outcome of a measurement on a pure quantum state is not fully predictable due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, quantum and finite entropy uncertainties are thought to be fundamentally different. We propose to calculate the predictability of measurements comprising both quantum and entropic uncertainties. We show that the unpredictability of measurements is identi…
Consider a source E of pure quantum states with von Neumann entropy S. By the quantum source coding theorem, arbitrarily long strings of signals may be encoded asymptotically into S qubits/signal (the Schumacher limit) in such a way that entire strings may be recovered with arbitrarily high fidelity. Suppose that classical storage is free while quantum storage is expensive and suppose that the states of E do not fall into two or more orthogonal subspaces. We show that if E can be compressed with arbitrarily high fidelity into A qubits/signal plus any amount of auxiliary classical storage then …
