We prove a general limitation in quantum information that unifies the impossibility principles such as no-cloning and no-anticloning. Further, we show that for an unknown qubit one cannot design a universal Hadamard gate for creating equal superposition of the original and its complement state. Surprisingly, we find that Hadamard transformations exist for an unknown qubit chosen either from the polar or equatorial great circles. Also, we show that for an unknown qubit one cannot design a universal unitary gate for creating unequal superpositions of the original and its complement state. We discuss why it is impossible to design a controlled-NOT gate for two unknown qubits and discuss the implications of these limitations.
In this letter, we show the impossibility of the general operation introduced by Pati [3] using two different but consistent principles (i) no-signalling (ii) non increase of entanglement under LOCC.
In this work we show that the most general class of anti-unitary operators are nonphysical in nature through the existence of incomparable pure bipartite entangled states. It is also shown that a large class of inner-product-preserving operations defined only on the three qubits having spin-directions along x, y and z are impossible. If we perform such an operation locally on a particular pure bipartite state then it will exactly transform to another pure bipartite state that is incomparable with the original one. As subcases of the above results we find the nonphysical nature of universal exa…
We consider an infinite class of unambiguous quantum state discrimination problems on multipartite systems, described by Hilbert space $\cal{H}$, of any number of parties. Restricting consideration to measurements that act only on $\cal{H}$, we find the optimal global measurement for each element of this class, achieving the maximum possible success probability of $1/2$ in all cases. This measurement turns out to be both separable and unique, and by our recently discovered necessary condition for local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC), it is easily shown to be impossible b…
In this paper, we prove that it is impossible to construct a convariant quantum feedback control instruments which aim to correct the channel noise imposed on an unknown qubit. The proof is based on the searching for the optimal quantum control protocol and it turns out there exist no better %\textit{Complete Positive Trace %Preserving}(CPTP) maps complete positive and covariant quantum operations which provide a higher fidelity than the trivial Identity operators. The generalization of the investigation to bipartite entangled pure state is also included.
Controlled generation and manipulation of photon states encoded in their spatial degrees of freedom is a crucial ingredient in many quantum information tasks exploiting higher-than-two dimensional encoding. Here, we prove the impossibility to arbitrarily modify $d$-level state superpositions (qu$d$its) for $d>2$, encoded in the transverse modes of light, with optical components associated to the group of symplectic transforms (Gaussian operations). Surprisingly, we also provide an explicit construction of how non-Gaussian operations acting on mode subspaces do enable to overcome the limit $d=2…
Classical information encoded in composite quantum states can be completely hidden from the reduced subsystems and may be found only in the correlations. Can the same be true for quantum information? If quantum information is hidden from subsystems and spread over quantum correlation, we call it as masking of quantum information. We show that while this may still be true for some restricted sets of non-orthogonal quantum states, it is not possible for arbitrary quantum states. This result suggests that quantum qubit commitment -- a stronger version of the quantum bit commitment is not possible…
Quantum information theory is used to analize various non-linear operations on quantum states. The universal disentanglement machine is shown to be impossible, and partial (negative) results are obtained in the state-dependent case. The efficiency of the transformation of non-orthogonal states into orthogonal ones is discussed.
A well-recognised open conceptual problem in relativistic quantum field theory concerns the relation between measurement and causality. Naive generalisations of quantum measurement rules can allow for superluminal signalling ('impossible measurements'). This raises the problem of delineating physically allowed quantum measurements and operations. We analyse this issue in a recently proposed framework in which local measurements (in possibly curved spacetime) are described physically by coupling the system to a probe. We show that the state-update rule in this setting is consistent with causali…
Consider two parties: Alice and Bob and suppose that Bob is given a qubit system in a quantum state $ϕ$, unknown to him. Alice knows $ϕ$ and she is supposed to convince Bob that she knows $ϕ$ sending some test message. Is it possible for her to convince Bob providing him "zero knowledge" i. e. no information about $ϕ$ he has? We prove that there is no "zero knowledge" protocol of that kind. In fact it turns out that basing on Alice message, Bob (or third party - Eve - who can intercept the message) can synthetize a copy of the unknown qubit state $ϕ$ with nonzero probability. This "no-go" resu…
We study the possibility for a global unitary applied on an arbitrary number of qubits to be decomposed in a sequential unitary procedure, where an ancillary system is allowed to interact only once with each qubit. We prove that sequential unitary decompositions are in general impossible for genuine entangling operations, even with an infinite-dimensional ancilla, being the controlled-NOT gate a paradigmatic example. Nevertheless, we find particular nontrivial operations in quantum information that can be performed in a sequential unitary manner, as is the case of quantum error correction and …
It is a well known fact that a quantum state $|ψ(θ,ϕ)>$ are represented by a point on the Bloch sphere, characterized by two parameters $θ$ and $ϕ$. Here in this work, we find out another impossible operation in quantum information theory . We name this impossibility as 'Impossibility of partial swapping of quantum information '. By this we mean that if two unknown quantum states are given at the input port, there exists no physical process, consistent with the principles of quantum mechanics, by which we can partially swap either of the two parameters $θ$ and $ϕ$ between these two quantum sta…
Non-unitary operations generated by an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian can be used to create quantum state manipulations which are impossible in Hermitian quantum mechanics. These operations include state preparation (or cooling) and non-orthogonal state discrimination. In this work we put a lower bound on the resources needed for the construction of some given non-unitary evolution. Passive systems are studied in detail and a general feature of such a system is derived. After interpreting our results using the singular value decomposition, several examples are studied analytically. In par…
The Gaussian quantum key distribution protocol based on coherent states and heterodyne detection [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 170504 (2004)] has the advantage that no active random basis switching is needed on the receiver's side. Its security is, however, not very satisfyingly understood today because the bounds on the secret key rate that have been derived from Heisenberg relations are not attained by any known scheme. Here, we address the problem of the optimal Gaussian individual attack against this protocol, and derive tight upper bounds on the information accessible to an eavesdropper. The opti…
It is known that distillation in continuous variable resource theories is impossible when restricted to Gaussian states and operations. To overcome this limitation, we enlarge the theories to include convex mixtures of Gaussian states and operations. This extension is operationally well-motivated since classical randomness is easily accessible. We find that resource distillation becomes possible for convex Gaussian resource theories-albeit in a limited fashion. We derive this limitation by studying the convex roof extension of a Gaussian resource measure and then go on to show that our bound i…
In this work, we show that 'splitting of quantum information' [6] is an impossible task from three different but consistent principles of unitarity of Quantum Mechanics, no-signalling condition and non increase of entanglement under Local Operation and Classical Communication.
We show a simple example of a secret sharing scheme encoding classical secret to quantum shares that can realize an access structure impossible by classical information processing with limitation on the size of each share. The example is based on quantum stabilizer codes.
It is impossible to discriminate four Bell states through local operations and classical communication (LOCC), if only one copy is provided. To complete this task, two copies will suffice and be necessary. When $n$ copies are provided, we show that the distillable entanglement is exactly $n-2$.
We discuss the possibility of creating money that is physically impossible to counterfeit. Of course, "physically impossible" is dependent on the theory that is a faithful description of nature. Currently there are several proposals for quantum money which have their security based on the validity of quantum mechanics. In this work, we examine Wiesner's money scheme in the framework of generalised probabilistic theories. This framework is broad enough to allow for essentially any potential theory of nature, provided that it admits an operational description. We prove that under a quantifiable …
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and recently derived many no-go theorems including the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem have corroborated the idea that we can never access quantum information without causing disturbance. Here we disprove this presumption by predicting a novel phenomenon, `quantum catalysis of information,' where a system enables an otherwise impossible task by exchanging information through a quantum communication channel. This fact implies that making use of quantum information does not always cause disturbance.
Non-locality is a powerful resource for various communication and information theoretic tasks, e.g., to establish a secret key between two parties, or to reduce the communication complexity of distributed computing. Typically, the more non-local a system is, the more useful it is as a resource for such tasks. We address the issue of non-locality distillation, i.e., whether it is possible to create a strongly non-local system by local operations on several weakly non-local ones. More specifically, we consider a setting where non-local systems can be realized via measurements on underlying share…
The no-masking theorem states that it is impossible to encode an arbitrary quantum state into the correlations between two subsystems so that no original information about is accessible in the marginal state of either subsystem. In this paper, we generalize this theorem to allow for failure of the protocol. We then bound the performance of a masking protocol when we are allowed a (probabilistic) approximate protocol.
It is always possible to decide, with one-sided error, whether two quantum states are the same under a specific unitary transformation. However we show here that it is {\em impossible} to do so if the transformation is anti-linear and non-singular. This result implies that unitary and anti-unitary operations exist on an unequal footing in quantum information theory.
The study of thermal operations allows one to investigate the ultimate possibilities of quantum states and of nanoscale thermal machines. Whilst fairly general, these results typically do not apply to continuous variable systems and do not take into account that, in many practically relevant settings, system-environment interactions are effectively bilinear. Here we tackle these issues by focusing on Gaussian quantum states and channels. We provide a complete characterisation of the most general Gaussian thermal operation acting on an arbitrary number of bosonic modes, which turn out to be all…
It is known that to imperfectly clone a phase-set of states uncorrelatedly is impossible due to the linearity and the hermitian-preservation of quantum operations deterministically shown by D'Ariano et al. In this paper we address uncorrelated cloning in probabilistic cases. We show that there exists a linear and hermitian-preserving probabilistic map to imperfectly clone a phase-set of states uncorrelatedly. It is pointed out that the existence of such a map is due to the difference between non-unit-trace output operators and normalized (unit-trace) output operators inherent to probabilistic …
Suppose that two distant parties Alice and Bob share an entangled state $ρ_{AB}$, and they want to exchange the subsystems of $ρ_{AB}$ by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). In general, this LOCC task (i.e. the LOCC transformation of $ρ_{AB} \to Vρ_{AB} V$ with $V$ being a swap operator) is impossible deterministically, but becomes possible probabilistically. In this paper, we study how the optimal probability is related to the amount of entanglement in the framework of positive partial transposed (PPT) operations, and numerically show a remarkable class of states whose probab…
We give a non-technical introduction of the basic concepts of Quantum Information Theory along the distinction between possible and impossible machines. We then proceed to describe the mathematical framework of Quantum Information Theory. The capacities of a quantum channel for classical and for quantum information are defined in a unified scheme, and a mathematical characterization of all teleportation and dense coding schemes is given.
Unconditionally secure non-relativistic bit commitment is known to be impossible in both the classical and the quantum world. However, when committing to a string of n bits at once, how far can we stretch the quantum limits? In this letter, we introduce a framework of quantum schemes where Alice commits a string of n bits to Bob, in such a way that she can only cheat on a bits and Bob can learn at most b bits of information before the reveal phase. Our results are two-fold: we show by an explicit construction that in the traditional approach, where the reveal and guess probabilities form the s…
Masking of quantum information means that information is hidden from a subsystem and spread over a composite system. Modi et al. proved in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 230501 (2018)] that this is true for some restricted sets of nonorthogonal quantum states and it is not possible for arbitrary quantum states. In this paper, we discuss the problem of masking quantum information encoded in pure and mixed states, respectively. Based on an established necessary and sufficient condition for a set of pure states to be masked by an operator, we find that there exists a set of four states that can not be ma…
We analyze potential violations of causality in Unruh DeWitt-type detector models in relativistic quantum information. We proceed by first studying the relation between faster-than-light signaling and the causal factorization of the dynamics for multiple detector-field interactions. We show in what way spatially extended non-relativistic detector models predict superluminal propagation of the field's initial conditions. We draw parallels between this characteristic of detector models, stemming from their non-relativistic dynamics, and Sorkin's "impossible measurements on quantum fields" arXiv:…
We study mechanisms that allow one to synchronize the quantum phase of two qubits relative to a fixed basis. Starting from one qubit in a fixed reference state and the other in an unknown state, we find that contrary to the impossibility of perfect quantum cloning, the quantum-phase can be synchronized perfectly through a joined unitary operation. When both qubits are initially in a pure unknown state, perfect quantum-phase synchronization through unitary operations becomes impossible. In this situation we determine the maximum average quantum-phase synchronization fidelity, the distribution o…
The accessible information decreases under quantum operations. We analyzed the connection between quantum operations and accessible information. We show that a general quantum process cannot be operated accurately. Futhermore, an unknown state of a closed quantum system can not be operated arbitrarily by a unitary quantum operation.
Limits of nonlinear in quantum mechanics are studied. Impossibility of physical implementation of the transformation $\varrho^{\otimes n} \to \varrho^{n}$ in quantum mechanics is proved. For sake of further analysis the simplest notion of structural completely positive approximation (SCPA) and structural physical approximations (SPA) of unphysical map are introduced. Both always exist for linear hermitian maps and can be optimised under natural assumptions. However it is shown that some intuitively natural SPA of the nonlinear operation $\varrho^{\otimes 2} \to \varrho^{2}$ that was already pr…
Inofrmation-theoretical restrictions on information transferred in the measurement of object S by information system O are studied. It is shown that such constraints, induced by Heisenberg commutation relations, result in the loss of information about the purity of S state. Consequently, it becomes impossible for O to discriminate pure and mixed S states. In individual events this effect is manifested by the stochastic outcomes of pure S state measurement, i.e. the collapse of pure S state.
Bit commitment protocols whose security is based on the laws of quantum mechanics alone are generally held to be impossible. In this paper we give a strengthened and explicit proof of this result. We extend its scope to a much larger variety of protocols, which may have an arbitrary number of rounds, in which both classical and quantum information is exchanged, and which may include aborts and resets. Moreover, we do not consider the receiver to be bound to a fixed "honest" strategy, so that "anonymous state protocols", which were recently suggested as a possible way to beat the known no-go re…
The ability to distill quantum coherence is pivotal for optimizing the performance of quantum technologies; however, such a task cannot always be accomplished with certainty. Here we develop a general framework of probabilistic distillation of quantum coherence in a one-shot setting, establishing fundamental limitations for different classes of free operations. We first provide a geometric interpretation for the maximal success probability, showing that under maximally incoherent operations (MIO) and dephasing-covariant incoherent operations (DIO) the problem can be simplified into efficiently…
Counterfactual quantum communication is unique in its own way that allows remote parties to transfer information without sending any message carrier in the channel. Although no message carrier travels in the channel at the time of successful information transmission, it is impossible to transmit information faster than the speed of light, thus without an information carrier. In this paper, we address an important question What carries the information in counterfactual quantum communication? and optimize the resource efficiency of the counterfactual quantum communication in terms of the number …
In a secure bit commitment protocol involving only classical physics, A commits either a 0 or a 1 to B. If quantum information is used in the protocol, A may be able to commit a state of the form $α\ket{0} + β\ket{1}$. If so, she can also commit mixed states in which the committed bit is entangled with other quantum states under her control. We introduce here a quantum cryptographic primitive, {\it bit commitment with a certificate of classicality} (BCCC), which differs from standard bit commitment in that it guarantees that the committed state has a fixed classical value. We show that no unco…
In relativistic Quantum Field Theory (QFT) ideal measurements of certain observables are physically impossible without violating causality. This prompts two questions: i) can a given observable be ideally measured in QFT, and ii) if not, in what sense can it be measured? Here we formulate a necessary and sufficient condition that any measurement, and more generally any state update (quantum operation), must satisfy to respect causality in real scalar QFT. We argue that for unitary `kicks' and operations involving 1-parameter families of Kraus operators, e.g. Gaussian measurements, the only cau…
We investigate how originally localized two pieces of quantum information represented by a tensor product of two unknown qudit states are delocalized by performing two-qudit global unitary operations. To characterize the delocalization power of global unitary operations on quantum information, we analyze the necessary and sufficient condition to deterministically relocalize one of the two pieces of quantum information to its original Hilbert space by using only LOCC. We prove that this LOCC one-piece relocalization is possible if and only if the global unitary operation is local unitary equiva…
Unconditionally secure non-relativistic bit commitment is known to be impossible in both the classical and the quantum worlds. But when committing to a string of n bits at once, how far can we stretch the quantum limits? In this paper, we introduce a framework for quantum schemes where Alice commits a string of n bits to Bob in such a way that she can only cheat on a bits and Bob can learn at most b bits of information before the reveal phase. Our results are two-fold: we show by an explicit construction that in the traditional approach, where the reveal and guess probabilities form the securi…
We investigate the situation in which no information can be transferred from a quantum system B to a quantum system A, even though both interact with a common system C.
Key to realising quantum computers is minimising the resources required to build logic gates into useful processing circuits. While the salient features of a quantum computer have been shown in proof-of-principle experiments, difficulties in scaling quantum systems have made more complex operations intractable. This is exemplified in the classical Fredkin (controlled-SWAP) gate for which, despite theoretical proposals, no quantum analogue has been realised. By adding control to the SWAP unitary, we use photonic qubit logic to demonstrate the first quantum Fredkin gate, which promises many appl…
We found that the Wigner-Yanase skew information, which has been recently proposed as a measure of coherence in [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{113}, 170401(2014)], can increase under a class of operations which may be interpreted as incoherent following the framework of Baumgratz et al., while being phase sensitive.
Let us consider two quantum systems: system A and system B. Suppose that a classical information is encoded to quantum states of the system A and we distribute this information to both systems by making them interact with each other. We show that it is impossible to achieve this goal perfectly if the strength of interaction between the quantum systems is smaller than a quantity that is determined by noncommutativity between a Hamiltonian of the system A and the states (density operators) used for the information encoding. It is a consequence of a generalized Winger-Araki-Yanase theorem which e…
Using unstable particles which decay by emitting neutrinos, we propose a quantum bit commitment protocol that is humanly impossible to break. Neutrinos carry away quantum information, but their interaction with matter is so weak that it would take an astronomically-sized machine just to catch them, not to mention performing controlled unitary operations on them. As a result quantum information is lost, and cheating is not possible even if the participants had access to the most powerful quantum computers that could ever be built. Therefore, for all practical purposes, our new protocol is as go…
