We introduce three measures which quantify the degree to which quantum systems possess the robustness exhibited by classical systems when subjected to continuous observation. Using these we show that for a fixed environmental interaction the level of robustness depends on the measurement strategy, or unravelling, and that no single strategy is maximally robust in all ways.
At the heart of quantum thermodynamics lies a fundamental question about what is genuine "quantum" in quantum heat engines and how to seek this quantumness, so that thermodynamical tasks could be performed more efficiently compared with classical protocols. Here, using the concept of $P$-representability, we define a function called classicality, which quantifies the degree of non-classicality of bosonic modes. This function allows us to explore the role of non-classicality in quantum heat engines and design optimal protocols for work extraction. For two specific cycles, a quantum Otto and a g…
One of the fundamental questions in the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics is the role played by coherence in energetic processes that occur at the quantum level. Here, we address this issue by investigating two different quantum versions of the first law of thermodynamics, derived from the classical definitions of work and heat. By doing so, we find out that there exists a mathematical inconsistency between both scenarios. We further show that the energetic contribution of the dynamics of coherence is the key ingredient to establish the consistency. Some examples involving two-level ato…
We explain in detail the quantum-to-classical transition for the cosmological perturbations using only the standard rules of quantum mechanics: the Schrodinger equation and Born's rule applied to a subsystem. We show that the conditioned, i.e. intrinsic, pure state of the perturbations, is driven by the interactions with a generic environment, to become increasingly localized in field space as a mode exists the horizon during inflation. With a favourable coupling to the environment, the conditioned state of the perturbations becomes highly localized in field space due to the expansion of space…
We analyse dynamical large deviations of quantum trajectories in Markovian open quantum systems in their full generality. We derive a {\em quantum level-2.5 large deviation principle} for these systems, which describes the joint fluctuations of time-averaged quantum jump rates and of the time-averaged quantum state for long times. Like its level-2.5 counterpart for classical continuous-time Markov chains (which it contains as a special case) this description is both {\em explicit and complete}, as the statistics of arbitrary time-extensive dynamical observables can be obtained by contraction f…
Unravelling physics beyond the standard model with classical and quantum anomaly detection
IBM Research（IBM研究院）；ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；Autonomous University of Barcelona（巴塞罗那自治大学）；European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)（欧洲核子研究组织（CERN））；PASQAL SAS（PASQAL SAS公司）
The paper studies a class of quantum stochastic differential equations, modeling an interaction of a system with its environment in the quantum noise approximation. The space representing quantum noise is the symmetric Fock space over L^2(R_+). Using the isomorphism of this space with the space of square-integrable functionals of the Poisson process, the equations can be represented as classical stochastic differential equations, driven by Poisson processes. This leads to a discontinuous dynamical state reduction which we compare to the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber model. A purely quantum object, the…
Consistent dynamics which couples classical and quantum degrees of freedom exists, provided it is stochastic. This dynamics is linear in the hybrid state, completely positive and trace preserving. One application of this is to study the back-reaction of quantum fields on space-time which does not suffer from the pathologies of the semi-classical equations. Here we introduce several toy models in which to study hybrid classical-quantum evolution, including a qubit coupled to a particle in a potential, and a quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to a classical one. We present an unravelling approa…
We consider the quantum-to-classical transition for macroscopic systems coupled to their environments. By applying Born's Rule, we are led to a particular set of quantum trajectories, or an unravelling, that describes the state of the system from the frame of reference of the subsystem. The unravelling involves a branch dependent Schmidt decomposition of the total state vector. The state in the subsystem frame, the conditioned state, is described by a Poisson process that involves a non-linear deterministic effective Schrodinger equation interspersed with quantum jumps into orthogonal states. …
Condensed matter physics at room temperature usually assumes that electrons in conductors can be described as spatially narrow wave packets - in contrast to what the Schrödinger equation would predict. How a finite-temperature environment can localize wave functions is still being debated. Here, we represent the environment by a fluctuating potential and investigate different unravellings of the Lindblad equation that describes the one-dimensional tight-binding model in the presence of such a potential. While all unravellings show a fast loss of phase coherence, only part of them lead to narro…
London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London（伦敦纳米技术中心，伦敦大学学院）；School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds（利兹大学物理与天文学学院）
We study the evolution of an open quantum system using a Langevin unravelling of the density matrix evolution over matrix product states. As the strength of coupling to and temperature of the environment is increased, we find a transition where the entanglement of the individual trajectories saturates, permitting a classical simulation of the system for all times. This is the Hamiltonian open system counterpart of the saturation in entanglement found in random circuits with projective or weak measurements. If a system is open, there is a limit to the advantage in simulating its behaviour on a …
In recent years, quantum computers and algorithms have made significant progress indicating the prospective importance of quantum computing (QC). Especially combinatorial optimization has gained a lot of attention as an application field for near-term quantum computers, both by using gate-based QC via the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm and by quantum annealing using the Ising model. However, demonstrating an advantage over classical methods in real-world applications remains an active area of research. In this work, we investigate the robustness verification of ReLU networks, which…
Non-locality consists in the existence of non-classical correlations between local measurements. So far, it has been investigated mostly in isolated quantum systems. Here we show that non-local correlations are present, can be detected and might be robust against noise also in many-body open quantum systems, both in the steady-state and in the transient regime. We further discuss the robustness of non-local correlations when the open quantum system undergoes repeated measurements, a relevant scenario for quantum cryptography.
We give a new algorithm for computing the robustness of magic - a measure of the utility of quantum states as a computational resource. Our work is motivated by the magic state model of fault-tolerant quantum computation. In this model, all unitaries belong to the Clifford group. Non-Clifford operations are effected by injecting non-stabiliser states, which are referred to as magic states in this context. The robustness of magic measures the complexity of simulating such a circuit using a classical Monte Carlo algorithm. It is closely related to the degree negativity that slows down Monte Carl…
A comparative study of pairwise quantum coherence, quantum and classical correlations is addressed for non-nearest spin pairs of the 1D Heisenberg spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ XX chain. Following the Jordan-Wigner mapping, we diagonalise the hamiltonian of the chain and we check this procedure numerically as well. Using the "Pauli basis expansion" formalism we get the pairwise quantities studied in this work at any distance. We then, show the role of quantum correlations in revealing quantum phase transitions, the robustness of quantum discord to the temperature and the dominance of quantum correlations…
We introduce a way of quantifying how informative a quantum measurement is, starting from a resource-theoretic perspective. This quantifier, which we call the robustness of measurement, describes how much `noise' must be added to a measurement before it becomes completely uninformative. We show that this geometric quantifier has operational significance in terms of the advantage the measurement provides over guessing at random in an suitably chosen state discrimination game. We further show that it is the single-shot generalisation of the accessible information of a certain quantum-to-classica…
Verifying Adversarial Robustness in Quantum Machine Learning: from theory to physical validation via a software tool
Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院软件研究所）；Centre for Quantum Software and Information, University of Technology Sydney（悉尼科技大学量子软件与信息研究中心）
We consider quantum-classical hybrid machine learning in which large-scale input channels remain classical and small-scale working channels process quantum operations conditioned on classical input data. This does not require the conversion of classical (big) data to a quantum superposed state, in contrast to recently developed approaches for quantum machine learning. We performed optical experiments to illustrate a single-bit universal machine, which can be extended to a large-bit circuit for binary classification task. Our experimental machine exhibits quantum learning speed-up of approximat…
In this paper, we propose two semi-quantum dialogue (SQD) protocols by using single photons as the quantum carriers, where one requires the classical party to possess the measurement capability and the other does not have this requirement. The security towards active attacks from an outside Eve in the first SQD protocol is guaranteed by the complete robustness of present semi-quantum key distribution (SQKD) protocols, the classical one-time pad encryption, the classical party's randomization operation and the decoy photon technology. The information leakage problem of the first SQD protocol is…
We study the problem of robust performance of quantum systems under structured uncertainties. A specific feature of closed (Hamiltonian) quantum systems is that their poles lie on the imaginary axis and that neither a coherent controller nor physically relevant structured uncertainties can alter this situation. This changes for open systems where decoherence ensures asymptotic stability and creates a unique landscape of pure performance robustness, with the distinctive feature that closed-loop stability is secured by the underlying physics and needs not be enforced. This stability, however, is…
Dynamical heterogeneity and large deviations in the open quantum East glass model from tensor networks
University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学）；Centre for the Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of Quantum Non-Equilibrium Systems, University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学量子非平衡系统数学与理论物理中心）；Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik（马克斯·普朗克量子光学研究所）；Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST)（慕尼黑量子科学与技术中心）
Quantum Transfer Learning Shows Improved Robustness in Low-Data Regimes
Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701401, Taiwan（工程科学系，国立成功大学，台中701401，台湾）；Department of Physics, Chung Yuan Christian University, Chungli 32081, Taiwan（物理系， Chung Yuan Christian University， Chungli 32081，台湾）；Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Taipei 106319, Taiwan（理论科学研究中心物理组，台北106319，台湾）；Institute of Photonics Technologies, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan（光电科技研究所，国立清华大学，新竹30013，台湾）
