How well one can copy an arbitrary qubit? To answer this question we consider two arbitrary vectors in a two-dimensional state space and an abstract copying transformation which will copy these two vectors. If the vectors are orthogonal, then perfect copies can be made. If they are not, then errors will be introduced. The size of the error depends on the inner product of the two original vectors. We derive a lower bound for the amount of noise induced by quantum copying. We examine both copying transformations which produce one copy and transformations which produce many, and show that the quality of each copy decreases as the number of copies increases.
We investigate the problem of copying pure two-qubit states of a given degree of entanglement in an optimal way. Completely positive covariant quantum operations are constructed which maximize the fidelity of the output states with respect to two separable copies. These optimal copying processes hint at the intricate relationship between fundamental laws of quantum theory and entanglement.
Copying information is an elementary operation in classical information processing. However, copying seems rather different in the quantum regime. Since the discovery of the universal quantum cloning machine, much has been found from the fundamental point of view about quantum copying. But a basic question as to the utility of universal quantum cloning remains. We have considered its application in quantum state restoration by using cloning circuit for state estimation. It might be expected that classical information from the state estimation might help restore the quantum state that was distu…
Bell's inequalities in the form given by Wigner are derived from the so-called fundamental assumption of statistical mechanics. I then demonstrate the possible relationship between these inequalities and the second law, particularly if assuming the Pauli exclusion principle dictates the expected outcomes.
Although perfect copying of unknown quantum systems is forbidden by the laws of quantum mechanics, approximate cloning is possible. A natural way of realizing quantum cloning of photons is by stimulated emission. In this context the fundamental quantum limit to the quality of the clones is imposed by the unavoidable presence of spontaneous emission. In our experiment a single input photon stimulates the emission of additional photons from a source based on parametric down-conversion. This leads to the production of quantum clones with near optimal fidelity. We also demonstrate universality of …
Contextuality is one way of capturing the non-classicality of quantum theory. The contextual nature of a theory is often witnessed via the violation of non-contextuality inequalities---certain linear inequalities involving probabilities of measurement events. Using the exclusivity graph approach (one of the two main graph theoretic approaches for studying contextuality), it was shown [PRA 88, 032104 (2013); Annals of mathematics, 51-299 (2006)] that a necessary and sufficient condition for witnessing contextuality is the presence of an odd number of events (greater than three) which are either…
I derive the correlation function for a general theory of two-valued spin variables that satisfy the fundamental conservation law of angular momentum. The unique theory-independent correlation function is identical to the quantum mechanical correlation function. I prove that any theory of correlations of such discrete variables satisfying the fundamental conservation law of angular momentum violates the Bell's inequalities. Taken together with the Bell's theorem, this result has far reaching implications. No theory satisfying Einstein locality, reality in the EPR-Bell sense, and the validity o…
What can be more fascinating than {\it experimental metaphysics}, to quote one of Abner Shimony's enlightening expressions? Bell inequalities are at the heart of the study of nonlocality. I present a list of open questions, organised in three categories: fundamental; linked to experiments; and exploring nonlocality as a resource. New families of inequalities for binary outcomes are presented.
Intermediate states are known from intercept/resend eavesdropping in the BB84 quantum cryptographic protocol. But they also play fundamental roles in the optimal eavesdropping strategy on BB84 and in the CHSH inequality. We generalize the intermediate states to arbitrary dimension and consider intercept/resend eavesdropping, optimal eavesdropping on the generalized BB84 protocol and present a generalized CHSH inequality for two entangled quNits based on these states.
Full-correlation Bell-like inequalities represent an important subclass of Bell-like inequalities that have found applications in both a better understanding of fundamental physics and in quantum information science. Loosely speaking, these are inequalities where only measurement statistics involving all parties play a role. In this paper, we provide a framework for the study of a large family of such inequalities that are symmetrical with respect to arbitrary permutations of the parties. As an illustration of the power of our framework, we derive (i) a new family of Svetlichny inequalities fo…
According to the fundamental idea that a steering inequality can be constructed by just considering the measurements performed by Bob, and from the definitions of steering from Alice to Bob, a general scheme for designing two different kinds of linear steering inequalities (LSIs) is developed to detect the two-way steerability for bipartite system and the genuine multipartite two-way steerability for multipartite system, respectively. Besides the LSIs constructed from the known one-way criteria and the Bell operators, several other types of LSIs are also considered.
Entanglement polygamy, like entanglement monogamy, is a fundamental property of multipartite quantum states. We investigate the polygamy relations related to the concurrence $C$ and the entanglement of formation $E$ for general $n$-qubit states. We extend the results in [Phys. Rev. A 90, 024304 (2014)] from the parameter region $α\leq0$ to $α\leqα_0$, where $0<α_0\leq2$ for $C$, and $0<α_0\leq\sqrt{2}$ for $E$.
Entanglement between two separate systems is a necessary resource to violate a Bell inequality in a test of local realism. We demonstrate that to overcome the Bell bound, this correlation must be accompanied by the entanglement between the constituent particles. This happens whenever a super-selection rule imposes a constraint on feasible local operations. As we show in an example, the necessary particle entanglement might solely result from their indistinguishability. Our result reveals a fundamental relation between the non-locality and the particle entanglement.
Characterising unknown quantum states and measurements is a fundamental problem in quantum information processing. In this Letter, we provide a novel scheme to self-test local quantum systems using non-contextuality inequalities. Our work leverages the graph-theoretic framework for contextuality introduced by Cabello, Severini, and Winter, combined with tools from mathematical optimisation that guarantee the unicity of optimal solutions. As an application, we show that the celebrated Klyachko-Can-Biniciogglu-Shumovsky inequality and its generalisation to contextuality scenarios with odd n-cycl…
We demonstrate that different kind of mesoscopic quantum states of light can be efficiently generated from a simple iterative scheme using homodyne heralding. These states exhibit strong non-classical features, and are of great interest for many applications such as quantum error-correcting codes or fundamental testings. On this basis we propose a protocol allowing a large loophole-free violation of a CHSH-type Bell inequality with a remarkable robustness to line losses.
Violation of a noncontextuality inequality or the phenomenon referred to `quantum contextuality' is a fundamental feature of quantum theory. In this article, we derive a novel family of noncontextuality inequalities along with their sum-of-squares decompositions in the simplest (odd-cycle) sequential-measurement scenario capable to demonstrate Kochen-Specker contextuality. The sum-of-squares decompositions allow us to obtain the maximal quantum violation of these inequalities and a set of algebraic relations necessarily satisfied by any state and measurements achieving it. With their help, we …
A theory of thermodynamics has been recently formulated and derived on the basis of Rényi entropy and its relative versions. In this framework, we define the concepts of partition function, internal energy and free energy, and fundamental quantum thermodynamical inequalities are deduced. In the context of Rényi's thermodynamics, the variational Helmholtz principle is stated and the condition of equilibrium is analyzed. The Rényi maximum entropy principle is formulated and the equality case is discussed. The obtained results reduce to the von Neumann ones when the Rényi entropic parameter $α$ a…
A fundamental problem is to understand why quantum theory only violates some noncontextuality (NC) inequalities and identify the physical principles that prevent higher-than-quantum violations. We prove that quantum theory only violates those NC inequalities whose exclusivity graphs contain, as induced subgraphs, odd cycles of length five or more, and/or their complements. In addition, we show that odd cycles are the exclusivity graphs of a well-known family of NC inequalities and that there is also a family of NC inequalities whose exclusivity graphs are the complements of odd cycles. We char…
Bell inequality with self-testing property has played an important role in quantum information field with both fundamental and practical applications. However, it is generally challenging to find Bell inequalities with self-testing property for multipartite states and actually there are not many known candidates. In this work, we propose a systematical framework to construct Bell inequalities from stabilizers which are maximally violated by general stabilizer states, with two observables for each local party. We show that the constructed Bell inequalities can self-test any stabilizer state whi…
Entanglement is at the heart of fundamental tests of quantum mechanics like tests of Bell-inequalities and, as discovered lately, of quantum computation and communication. Their technological advance made entangled photons play an outstanding role in entanglement physics. We give a generalized concept of qubit entanglement and review the state of the art of photonic experiments.
Contextuality is a natural generalization of nonlocality which does not need composite systems or spacelike separation and offers a wider spectrum of interesting phenomena. Most notably, in quantum mechanics there exist scenarios where the contextual behavior is independent of the quantum state. We show that the quest for an optimal inequality separating quantum from classical noncontextual correlations in an state-independent manner admits an exact solution, as it can be formulated as a linear program. We introduce the noncontextuality polytope as a generalization of the locality polytope, an…
Bell-type inequalities and violations thereof reveal the fundamental differences between standard probability theory and its quantum counterpart. In the course of previous investigations ultimate bounds on quantum mechanical violations have been found. For example, Tsirelson's bound constitutes a global upper limit for quantum violations of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) and the Clauser-Horne (CH) inequalities. Here we investigate a method for calculating the precise quantum bounds on arbitrary Bell-type inequalities by solving the eigenvalue problem for the operator associated with eac…
We study the fundamental properties of the quantum f-relative entropy, where f(.) is an operator convex function. We give the equality conditions under monotonicity and joint convexity, and these conditions are more general than, since they hold for a class of operator convex functions, and different for f(t) = -ln(t) from, the previously known conditions. The quantum f-entropy is defined in terms of the quantum f-relative entropy and we study its properties giving the equality conditions in some cases. We then show that the f-generalizations of the Holevo information, the entanglement-assiste…
The characterization of the set of quantum correlations is a problem of fundamental importance in quantum information. The question whether every proper (tight) Bell inequality is violated in Quantum theory is an intriguing one in this regard. Here, we make significant progress in answering this question, by showing that every tight Bell inequality is violated by 'Almost Quantum' correlations, a semi-definite programming relaxation of the set of quantum correlations. As a consequence, we show that many (classes of) Bell inequalities including two-party correlation Bell inequalities and multi-o…
Copying the quantum states is contradictory to classical information processing since the fundamental difference between classical and quantum information is that while classical information can be copied perfectly, quantum information cannot. However, this statement does not rule out the risk of building a device that can reproduce a set of quantum states. This paper investigates the naturally arising question of how well or under what conditions one can copy and measure an arbitrary quantum superposition of states. The CNOT and XOR operation-based quantum circuit is presented that exhibits e…
Sobolev-type inequalities have been extensively studied in the frameworks of real-valued functions and non-commutative $\mathbb{L}_p$ spaces, and have proven useful in bounding the time evolution of classical/quantum Markov processes, among many other applications. In this paper, we consider yet another fundamental setting - matrix-valued functions - and prove new Sobolev-type inequalities for them. Our technical contributions are two-fold: (i) we establish a series of matrix Poincaré inequalities for separably convex functions and general functions with Gaussian unitary ensembles inputs; and …
The R{é}nyi entropy is one of the important information measures that generalizes Shannon's entropy. The quantum R{é}nyi entropy has a fundamental role in quantum information theory, therefore, bounding this quantity is of vital importance. Another important quantity is R{é}nyi relative entropy on which R{é}nyi generalization of the conditional entropy, and mutual information are defined based. Thus, finding lower bound for R{é}nyi relative entropy is our goal in this paper. We use matrix inequalities to prove new bounds on the entropy of type $β$, R{é}nyi entropy.
The Platonic solids is the name traditionally given to the five regular convex polyhedra, namely the tetradron, the octahedron, the cube, the icosahedron and the dodecahedron. Perhaps strongly boosted by the towering historical influence of their namesake, these beautiful solids have, in well over two millenia, transcended traditional boundaries and entered the stage in a range of disciplines. Examples include natural philosophy and mathematics from classical antiquity, scientific modeling during the days of the european scientific revolution and visual arts ranging from the renaissance to mod…
We derive fundamental constraints for the Schur complement of positive matrices, which provide an operator strengthening to recently established information inequalities for quantum covariance matrices, including strong subadditivity. This allows us to prove general results on the monogamy of entanglement and steering quantifiers in continuous variable systems with an arbitrary number of modes per party. A powerful hierarchical relation for correlation measures based on the log-determinant of covariance matrices is further established for all Gaussian states, which has no counterpart among qua…
We survey the state of the art for the proof of the quantum Gaussian optimizer conjectures of quantum information theory. These fundamental conjectures state that quantum Gaussian input states are the solution to several optimization problems involving quantum Gaussian channels. These problems are the quantum counterpart of three fundamental results of functional analysis and probability: the Entropy Power Inequality, the sharp Young's inequality for convolutions, and the theorem "Gaussian kernels have only Gaussian maximizers." Quantum Gaussian channels play a key role in quantum communicatio…
