We compute the volume of the N^2-1 dimensional set M_N of density matrices of size N with respect to the Bures measure and show that it is equal to that of a N^2-1 dimensional hyper-halfsphere of radius 1/2. For N=2 we obtain the volume of the Uhlmann 3-D hemisphere, embedded in R^4. We find also the area of the boundary of the set M_N and obtain analogous results for the smaller set of all real density matrices. An explicit formula for the Bures-Hall normalization constants is derived for an arbitrary N.
Ensembles of random density matrices determined by various probability measures are analysed. A simple and efficient algorithm to generate at random density matrices distributed according to the Bures measure is proposed. This procedure may serve as an initial step in performing Bayesian approach to quantum state estimation based on the Bures prior. We study the distribution of purity of random mixed states. The moments of the distribution of purity are determined for quantum states generated with respect to the Bures measure. This calculation serves as an exemplary application of the "deform-…
We compute the distribution of the purity for random density matrices (i.e.random mixed states) in a large quantum system, distributed according to the Bures measure. The full distribution of the purity is computed using a mapping to random matrix theory and then a Coulomb gas method. We find three regimes that correspond to two phase transitions in the associated Coulomb gas. The first transition is characterized by an explosion of the third derivative on the left of the transition point. The second transition is of first order, it is characterized by the detachement of a single charge of the…
We obtain two sided estimates for the Bures volume of an arbitrary subset of the set of $N\times N$ density matrices, in terms of the Hilbert-Schmidt volume of that subset. For general subsets, our results are essentially optimal (for large $N$). As applications, we derive in particular nontrivial lower and upper bounds for the Bures volume of sets of separable states and for sets of states with positive partial transpose. PACS numbers: 02.40.Ft, 03.65.Db, 03.65.Ud, 03.67.Mn
For certain infinite and finite-dimensional thermal systems, we obtain --- incorporating quantum-theoretic considerations into Bayesian thermostatistical investigations of Lavenda --- high-temperature expansions of priors over inverse temperature beta induced by volume elements ("quantum Jeffreys' priors) of Bures metrics. Similarly to Lavenda's results based on volume elements (Jeffreys' priors) of (classical) Fisher information metrics, we find that in the limit beta -> 0, the quantum-theoretic priors either conform to Jeffreys' rule for variables over [0,infinity], by being proportional to …
Extensive numerical integration results lead us to conjecture that the silver mean, that is, s = \sqrt{2}-1 = .414214 plays a fundamental role in certain geometries (those given by monotone metrics) imposable on the 15-dimensional convex set of two-qubit systems. For example, we hypothesize that the volume of separable two-qubit states, as measured in terms of (four times) the minimal monotone or Bures metric is s/3, and 10s in terms of (four times) the Kubo-Mori monotone metric. Also, we conjecture, in terms of (four times) the Bures metric, that that part of the 14-dimensional boundary of se…
The Riemannian Bures metric on the space of (normalized) complex positive matrices is used for parameter estimation of mixed quantum states based on repeated measurements just as the Fisher information in classical statistics. It appears also in the concept of purifications of mixed states in quantum physics. Here we determine its scalar curvature and Ricci tensor and prove a lower bound for the curvature on the submanifold of trace one matrices. This bound is achieved for the maximally mixed state, a further hint for the quantum statistical meaning of the scalar curvature.
We reexamine a recent analysis in which, using the volume of the associated quantum steering ellipsoid (QES) as a measure, we sought to estimate the probability that a two-qubit state is separable. In the estimation process, we, in effect, sought to attach to states random with respect to Hilbert-Schmidt (HS) measure, the corresponding QES volumes. However, a study of the relations between HS and Bures ensembles and their well-supported separability probabilities of $\frac{8}{33}$ and $\frac{25}{341}$, respectively, now lead us to explore as a possible alternative measure, the QES volume divid…
We find, in an analysis involving four prior probabilities (p's), that the information-theoretic-based comparative noninformativity test devised by Clarke, and applied by Slater in a quantum setting, yields a ranking (p_{F_{q=1}} > p_{B} > p_{B_{q=1}trunc} >p_{F}) fully consistent with Srednicki's recently-stated criterion for priors of ``biasedness to pure states''. Two of the priors are formed by extending certain metrics of quantum-theoretic interest from three- to four-dimensions -- by incorporating the q-parameter (nonextensivity/Tsallis index/escort parameter). The three-dimensional metr…
Geometry near rank-changing points on the mixed-state manifold: Bures metric, conical singularities, and Lindblad dynamics
School of Physics, Southeast University（东南大学物理学院）；Hefei National Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学合肥国家实验室）；Department of physics, University of California, Merced（加州大学默塞德分校物理系）
Inequalities of Mandelstam-Tamm and Margolus-Levitin type provide lower bounds on the time it takes for a quantum system to evolve from one state into another. Knowledge of such bounds, called quantum speed limits, is of utmost importance in virtually all areas of physics, where determination of the minimum time required for a quantum process is of interest. Most Mandelstam-Tamm and Margolus-Levitin inequalities found in the literature have been derived from growth estimates for the Bures length, which is a statistical distance measure. In this paper we derive such inequalities by differential…
We define a new measure of quantum correlations in bipartite quantum systems given by the Bures distance of the system state to the set of classical states with respect to one subsystem, that is, to the states with zero quantum discord. Our measure is a geometrical version of the quantum discord. As the latter it quantifies the degree of non-classicality in the system. For pure states it is identical to the geometric measure of entanglement. We show that for mixed states it coincides with the optimal success probability of an ambiguous quantum state discrimination task. Moreover, the closest z…
We pursue a number of analytical directions, motivated to some extent initially by the possibility of developing a methodology for formally proving or disproving a certain conjecture of quantum-theoretical relevance (quant-ph/0308037). It asserts that the 15-dimensional volume occupied by the separable two-qubit density matrices is (\sqrt{2}-1)/3, as measured in terms of the statistical distinguishability metric (four times the Bures or minimal monotone metric). Somewhat disappointingly, however, the several various analyses that we report, though we hope of independent/autonomous interest, ap…
We investigate the possibility of deriving analytical formulas for the 15-dimensional separable volumes, in terms of any of a number of metrics of interest (Hilbert-Schmidt [HS], Bures,...), of the two-qubit (four-level) systems. This would appear to require 15-fold symbolic integrations over a complicated convex body (defined by both separability and feasibility constraints). The associated 15-dimensional integrands -- in terms of the Tilma-Byrd-Sudarshan Euler-angle-based parameterization of the 4 x 4 density matrices ρ(math-ph/0202002) -- would be the products of 12-dimensional Haar measure…
We report the results of certain integrations of quantum-theoretic interest, relying, in this regard, upon recently developed parameterizations of Boya et al of the n x n density matrices, in terms of squared components of the unit (n-1)-sphere and the n x n unitary matrices. Firstly, we express the normalized volume elements of the Bures (minimal monotone) metric for n = 2 and 3, obtaining thereby "Bures prior probability distributions" over the two- and three-state systems. Then, as an essential first step in extending these results to n > 3, we determine that the "Hall normalization constan…
The minimal Bures distance of a quantum state of a bipartite system AB to the set of classical states for subsystem A defines a geometric measure of quantum discord. When A is a qubit, we show that this geometric quantum discord is given in terms of the eigenvalues of a (2 n_B) x (2 n_B) hermitian matrix, n_B being the Hilbert space dimension of the other subsystem B. As a first application, we calculate the geometric discord for the output state of the DQC1 algorithm. We find that it takes its highest value when the unitary matrix from which the algorithm computes the trace has its eigenvalue…
The metric underlying the mixed state geometric phase in unitary and nonunitary evolution [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 85}, 2845 (2000); Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 93}, 080405 (2004)] is delineated. An explicit form for the line element is derived and shown to be related to an averaged energy dispersion in the case of unitary evolution. The line element is measurable in interferometry involving nearby internal states. Explicit geodesics are found in the single qubit case. It is shown how the Bures line element can be obtained by extending our approach to arbitrary decompositions of density operators. The…
A unifying framework for identifying distance and holonomy for decompositions of density operators is introduced. Parallelity between quantum ensembles is defined by minimizing this distance over allowed decompositions. The minimum is a property of a pair of states and coincides with the Bures distance. The parallelity condition imposes a connection (rule for parallel transport) that results in the Uhlmann holonomy for sequences of density operators. A distance and holonomy for spectral decompositions of density operators is identified as a sub-group restriction of the full decomposition freed…
In previous studies, we have explored the ansatz that the volume elements of the Bures metrics over quantum systems might serve as prior distributions, in analogy to the (classical) Bayesian role of the volume elements ("Jeffreys' priors") of Fisher information metrics. Continuing this work, we obtain exact Bures probabilities that the members of certain low-dimensional subsets of the fifteen-dimensional convex set of 4 x 4 density matrices are separable or classically correlated. The main analytical tools employed are symbolic integration and a formula of Dittmann (quant-ph/9908044) for Bures…
The Uhlmann-Jozsa fidelity (or, equivalently, the Bures distance) is a basic concept of quantum communication and quantum information, which however is very difficult to measure efficiently without recourse to quantum tomography. Here we propose a direct experimental method to estimate the fidelity between two unknown two-qubit mixed states via the measurement of the upper and lower bounds of the fidelity, which are referred to as the superfidelity and subfidelity, respectively. Our method enables a direct measurement of the first- and second-order overlaps between two arbitrary two-qubit stat…
In a previous study (quant-ph/9911058), several remarkably simple exact results were found, in certain specialized m-dimensional scenarios (m<5), for the a priori probability that a pair of qubits is unentangled/separable. The measure used was the volume element of the Bures metric (identically one-fourth the statistical distinguishability [SD] metric). Here, making use of a newly-developed (Euler angle) parameterization of the 4 x 4 density matrices (math-ph/0202002), we extend the analysis to the complete 15-dimensional convex set (C) of arbitrarily paired qubits -- the total SD volume of wh…
The presence of quantum correlations in a quantum state is related to the state response to local unitary perturbations. Such response is quantified by the distance between the unperturbed and perturbed states, minimized with respect to suitably identified sets of local unitary operations. In order to be a bona fide measure of quantum correlations, the distance function must be chosen among those that are contractive under completely positive and trace preserving maps. The most relevant instances of such physically well behaved metrics include the trace, the Bures, and the Hellinger distance. …
We consider a closed quantum system, initially at thermal equilibrium, driven by arbitrary external parameters. We derive a lower bound on the entropy production which we express in terms of the Bures angle between the nonequilibrium and the corresponding equilibrium state of the system. The Bures angle is an angle between mixed quantum states and defines a thermodynamic length valid arbitrarily far from equilibrium. As an illustration, we treat the case of a time-dependent harmonic oscillator for which we obtain analytic expressions for generic driving protocols.
The Mandelstam-Tamm quantum speed limit puts a bound on how fast a closed system in a pure state can evolve. In this paper, we derive several extensions of this quantum speed limit to closed systems in mixed states. We also compare the strengths of these extensions and examine their tightness. The most widely used extension of the Mandelstam-Tamm quantum speed limit originates in Uhlmann's energy dispersion estimate. We carefully analyze the underlying geometry of this estimate, an analysis that makes apparent that the Bures metric, or equivalently the quantum Fisher information, will rarely g…
Distance measures are indispensable tools in quantum information processing and quantum computing. This since they can be used to quantify to what extent information is preserved, or altered, by quantum processes. In this paper we propose a new distance measure for mixed quantum states, that we call the dynamic distance measure, and show that it is a proper distance measure. The dynamic distance measure is defined in terms of a measurable quantity, which make it very suitable for applications. In a final section we compare the dynamical distance measure with the well-known Bures distance.
We compute the volume of the convex N^2-1 dimensional set M_N of density matrices of size N with respect to the Hilbert-Schmidt measure. The hyper--area of the boundary of this set is also found and its ratio to the volume provides an information about the complex structure of M_N. Similar investigations are also performed for the smaller set of all real density matrices. As an intermediate step we analyze volumes of the unitary and orthogonal groups and of the flag manifolds.
We study a generalized amplitude damping channel when environment is initially in the single-qubit mixed state. Representing the affine transformation of the generalized amplitude damping by a three-dimensional volume, we plot explicitly the volume occupied by the channels simulatable by a single-qubit mixed-state environment. As expected, this volume is embedded in the total volume by the channels which is simulated by two-qubit enviroment. The volume ratio is approximately 0.08 which is much smaller than 3/8, the volume ratio for generalized depolarizing channels.
We extend to arbitrarily coupled pairs of qubits (two-state quantum systems) and qutrits (three-state quantum systems) our earlier study (quant-ph/0207181), which was concerned with the simplest instance of entangled quantum systems, pairs of qubits. As in that analysis -- again on the basis of numerical (quasi-Monte Carlo) integration results, but now in a still higher-dimensional space (35-d vs. 15-d) -- we examine a conjecture that the Bures/SD (statistical distinguishability) probability that arbitrarily paired qubits and qutrits are separable (unentangled) has a simple exact value, u/(v P…
Employing the volume of quantum steering ellipsoids (QSEs) as a measure on the fifteen-dimensional convex set of two-qubit states, we estimate the ratio of the integral of the measure over the separable states to its integral over all (separable and entangled) states to be 0.0288. This can be contrasted with the considerably larger separability ratios (probabilities) of $\frac{8}{33} = \frac{2^3}{3 \cdot 11} \approx 0.242424$ and $\frac{25}{341}=\frac{5^2}{11 \cdot 31} \approx 0.0733138$ that various forms of evidence point to with the use of the prominent Hilbert-Schmidt and Bures measures, r…
Paralleling our recent computationally-intensive work for the case N=4 (quant-ph/0308037), we undertake the task for N=6 of computing to high numerical accuracy, the formulas of Sommers and Zyczkowski (quant-ph/0304041) for the (N^2-1)-dimensional volume and (N^2-2)-dimensional hyperarea of the (separable and nonseparable) N x N density matrices, based on the Bures (minimal monotone) metric. At the same time, we estimate the unknown volumes and hyperareas based on a number of other monotone metrics of interest. Additionally, we estimate -- but with perhaps unavoidably diminished accuracy -- al…
The problem of of how many entangled or, respectively, separable states there are in the set of all quantum states is investigated. We study to what extent the choice of a measure in the space of density matrices describing N--dimensional quantum systems affects the results obtained. We demonstrate that the link between the purity of the mixed states and the probability of entanglement is not sensitive to the measure chosen. Since the criterion of partial transposition is not sufficient to distinguish all separable states for N > 6, we develop an efficient algorithm to calculate numerically th…
It is known that mixed quantum states are highly entropic states of imperfect knowledge (i.e., incomplete information) about a quantum system, while pure quantum states are states of perfect knowledge (i.e., complete information) with vanishing von Neumann entropy. In this paper, we propose an information geometric theoretical construct to describe and, to a certain extent, understand the complex behavior of evolutions of quantum systems in pure and mixed states. The comparative analysis is probabilistic in nature, it uses a complexity measure that relies on a temporal averaging procedure alon…
We generalize the Fubini-Study method for pure-state complexity to generic quantum states by taking Bures metric or quantum Fisher information metric on the space of density matrices as the complexity measure. Due to Uhlmann's theorem, we show that the mixed-state complexity exactly equals the purification complexity measured by the Fubini-Study metric for purified states but without explicitly applying any purification. We also find the purification complexity is non-increasing under any trace-preserving quantum operations. We also study the mixed Gaussian states as an example to explicitly i…
IBM-HBCU Quantum Center, Howard University（IBM-HBCU 量子中心，霍华德大学）；Tulane University（杜兰大学）；Quantum Information Science Group, Oak Ridge National Laboratory（橡树岭国家实验室量子信息科学组）；United States Army Research Laboratory（美国陆军研究实验室）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）
We consider the properties of a specific distribution of mixed quantum states of arbitrary dimension that can be biased towards a specific mean purity. In particular, we analyze mixtures of Haar-random pure states with Dirichlet-distributed coefficients. We analytically derive the concentration parameters required to match the mean purity of the Bures and Hilbert--Schmidt distributions in any dimension. Numerical simulations suggest that this value recovers the Hilbert--Schmidt distribution exactly, offering an alternative and intuitive physical interpretation for ensembles of Hilbert--Schmidt…
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…
A natural measure in the space of density matrices describing N-dimensional quantum systems is proposed. We study the probability P that a quantum state chosen randomly with respect to the natural measure is not entangled (is separable). We find analytical lower and upper bounds for this quantity. Numerical calculations give P = 0.632 for N=4 and P=0.384 for N=6, and indicate that P decreases exponentially with N. Analysis of a conditional measure of separability under the condition of fixed purity shows a clear dualism between purity and separability: entanglement is typical for pure states, …
Topological and geometrical properties of the set of mixed quantum states in the N-dimensional Hilbert space are analysed. Assuming that the corresponding classical dynamics takes place on the sphere we use the vector SU(2) coherent states and the generalised Husimi distributions to define the Monge distance between arbitrary two density matrices. The Monge metric has a simple semiclassical interpretation and induces a non-trivial geometry. Among all pure states the distance from the maximally mixed state ρ_*, proportional to the identity matrix, admits the largest value for the coherent state…
This paper aims to study the $\a$-volume of $\cK$, an arbitrary subset of the set of $N\times N$ density matrices. The $\a$-volume is a generalization of the Hilbert-Schmidt volume and the volume induced by partial trace. We obtain two-side estimates for the $\a$-volume of $\cK$ in terms of its Hilbert-Schmidt volume. The analogous estimates between the Bures volume and the $\a$-volume are also established. We employ our results to obtain bounds for the $\a$-volume of the sets of separable quantum states and of states with positive partial transpose (PPT). Hence, our asymptotic results provide…
