We exploit results on the classical Stieltjes moment problem to obtain completely explicit necessary and sufficient conditions for the photon number distribution p(n) of a radiation field mode to be classical. These conditions are given in two forms - respectively local and global in the individual photon number probabilities. Central to the first approach is the recognition of the important fact that the quantities n!p(n) are moments of a quasiprobability distribution, notwithstanding the fact that p(n)'s can by themselves be considered as a probability distribution over the nonnegative integers. This leads to local classicality conditions involving p(n)'s for only a small number of values of n. This local approach enables us to present detailed quantitative statements on the connection between nonclassicality and oscillations in the photon number distribution. The second approach is in terms of the traditional factorial moments of p(n). Equivalence of the two approaches is established.
One of the most striking features of quantum theory is the existence of entangled states, responsible for Einstein's so called "spooky action at a distance". These states emerge from the mathematical formalism of quantum theory, but to date we do not have a clear idea of the physical principles that give rise to entanglement. Why does nature have entangled states? Would any theory superseding classical theory have entangled states, or is quantum theory special? One important feature of quantum theory is that it has a classical limit, recovering classical theory through the process of decoheren…
A necessary and sufficient condition for characterization and quantification of entanglement of any bipartite Gaussian state belonging to a special symmetry class is given in terms of classicality measures of one-party states. For Gaussian states whose local covariance matrices have equal determinants it is shown that separability of a two-party state and classicality of one party state are completely equivalent to each other under a nonlocal operation, allowing entanglement features to be understood in terms of any available classicality measure.
Within the decoherent histories formulation of quantum mechanics, we investigate necessary conditions for decoherence of arbitrarily long histories. We prove that fine-grained histories of arbitrary length decohere for all classical initial states if and only if the unitary evolution preserves classicality of states (using a natural formal definition of classicality). We give a counterexample showing that this equivalence does not hold for coarse-grained histories.
In the last few years one realized that if the state of a bipartite system can be written as $\sum_{i,j}p_{ij}|a_{i}>< a_{i}|\otimes |b_{j}> < b_{j}|$, where $\{|a_{i}> \}$ and $\{|b_{j}> \}$ form orthonormal basis for the subsystems and $\{p_{ij}\}$ is a probability distribution, then it possesses at most classical correlations. In this article we introduce a nonlinear witness providing a sufficient condition for classicality of correlations (absence of quantum discord) in a broad class of two-qubit systems. Such witness turns out to be necessary and sufficient condition in the case of Bell-d…
Preparation and measurement of physical systems are the operational building blocks of any physical experiment, and to describe them is the first purpose of any physical theory. It is remarkable that, in some situations, even when only preparation and measurement devices of a single system are present and they are uncharacterized, it is possible to distinguish between the behaviours of quantum and classical systems relying only on observational data. Certifying the physical origin of measurement statistics in the prepare and measure scenario is of primal importance for developing quantum netwo…
We consider the information flow on a system's observable $X$ corresponding to a positive-operator valued measure under a quantum measurement process $Y$ described by a completely positive instrument from the viewpoint of the relative entropy. We establish a sufficient condition for the relative-entropy conservation law which states that the averaged decrease in the relative entropy of the system's observable $X$ equals the relative entropy of the measurement outcome of $Y$, i.e. the information gain due to measurement. This sufficient condition is interpreted as an assumption of classicality …
We introduce the quantum-house effect, a non-local phenomenon which apparently does not require quantum discord to be present. It suffices for the effect if neither subsystem of a bipartite system is in a pure state. This way, the quantum-house effect completely fills the gap between trivial correlations and quantum discord. However, we discuss why the situation is more subtle than that, by showing that in a concrete cryptographic setting called "the quantum-house game", the ability to produce quantum discord is in fact necessary for the quantum-house effect to work. Then, we suggest a princip…
In the context of the decoherent histories approach to quantum theory, it is shown that a class of macroscopic configurations consisting of histories of local densities (number, momentum, energy) exhibit negligible interference. This follows from the close connection of the local densities with the corresponding exactly conserved (and so exactly decoherent) quantities, and also from the observation that the eigenstates of local densities (averaged over a sufficiently large volume) remain approximate eigenstates under time evolution. The result is relevant to the derivation of hydrodynamic equa…
Modern quantum information theory provides new tools for investigating the decoherence-induced "classicality" of open quantum systems. Recent observation that almost all quantum states bear non-classical correlations [A. Ferraro {\it et al}, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 81}, 052318 (2010)] distinguishes the zero-discord classicality essentially as a pathology of the Markovian bipartite-systems realm. Nevertheless, we formally construct such a classical model and its variant that represents a matter-of-principle formal proof, i.e. a sufficient condition for the, otherwise not obvious, existence of the Mar…
A sufficient condition for a quantum state of a system of spin-1/2 particles (spin-1/2s) to admit a local hidden variable (LHV) description i.e. to be classical is the separability of the density matrix characterizing its state, but not all classical states are separable. This leads one to infer that separability and classicality are two different concepts. These concepts are examined here in the framework of a criterion for identifying classicality of a system of spin-1/2s based on the concept of joint quasiprobability (JQP) for the eigevalues of spin components. The said criterion identifies…
Classical and quantum physics impose different constraints on the joint probability distributions of observed variables in a causal structure. These differences mean that certain correlations can be certified as non-classical, which has both foundational and practical importance. Rather than working with the probability distribution itself, it can instead be convenient to work with the entropies of the observed variables. In the Bell causal structure with two inputs and outputs per party, a technique that uses entropic inequalities is known that can always identify non-classical correlations. …
We analyze the multitime statistics associated with pure dephasing systems repeatedly probed with sharp measurements, and search for measurement protocols whose statistics satisfies the Kolmogorov consistency conditions possibly up to a finite order. We find a rich phenomenology of quantum dephasing processes which can be interpreted in classical terms. In particular, if the underlying dephasing process is Markovian, we find sufficient conditions under which classicality at every order can be found: this can be reached by choosing the dephasing and measurement basis to be fully compatible or f…
We provide a detailed discussion about the unitary and reduced evolution induced by family of Hamiltonian models describing a multilevel system, with a ground state and a possibly multilevel excited sector, coupled to a multimode boson field via a rotating-wave interaction. We prove explicitly that the system, in the limit in which the coupling is flat with respect to the boson frequencies, is Markovian under sharp measurements in arbitrary bases; we also find necessary and sufficient conditions under which the process is classical, i.e. its family of multitime joint probability distributions …
To describe certain facets of non-classicality, it is necessary to quantify properties of operations instead of states. This is the case if one wants to quantify how well an operation detects non-classicality, which is a necessary prerequisite for its use in quantum technologies. To do so rigorously, we build resource theories on the level of operations, exploiting the concept of resource destroying maps. We discuss the two basic ingredients of these resource theories, the free operations and the free super-operations, which are sequential and parallel concatenations with free operations. This…
The experimental observation of a clear quantum signature of gravity is believed to be out of the grasp of current technology. However, several recent promising proposals to test the possible existence of non-classical features of gravity seem to be accessible by the state-of-art table-top experiments. Among them, some aim at measuring the gravitationally induced entanglement between two masses which would be a distinct non-classical signature of gravity. We explicitly study, in two of these proposals, the effects of decoherence on the system's dynamics by monitoring the corresponding degree o…
Quantum discord characterizes "non-classicality" of correlations in quantum mechanics. It has been proposed as the key resource present in certain quantum communication tasks and quantum computational models without containing much entanglement. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of non-zero quantum discord for any dimensional bipartite states. This condition is easily experimentally implementable. Based on this, we propose a geometrical way of quantifying quantum discord. For two qubits this results in a closed form of expression for discord. We apply our results…
An operational probabilistic theory where all systems are classical, and all pure states of composite systems are entangled, is constructed. The theory is endowed with a rule for composing an arbitrary number of systems, and with a nontrivial set of transformations. Hence, we demonstrate that the presence of entanglement is independent of the existence of incompatible measurements. We then study a variety of phenomena occurring in the theory -- some of them contradicting both Classical and Quantum Theories -- including: cloning, entanglement swapping, dense coding, additivity of classical capa…
We introduce a general condition sufficient for the validity of the original Bell inequality (1964) in a local hidden variable (LHV) frame. This condition can be checked experimentally and incorporates only as a particular case the assumption on perfect correlations or anticorrelations usually argued for this inequality in the literature. Specifying this general condition for a quantum bipartite case, we introduce the whole class of bipartite quantum states, separable and nonseparable, that (i) admit an LHV description under any bipartite measurements with two settings per site; (ii) do not ne…
The spin-$j$ Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment is studied with a view to understanding how classical behaviour emerges as $j \to \infty$. It is proposed that it is necessary to include detector error, which if it is be to viewed as an essential aspect of the emergence of classicality, should be both minimal, i.e., no more than necessary to wash out quantum mechanical behaviour, and agnostic, by which is meant that one should be able to ascribe it to error in the preparation of the state just as well as to the detector.Errors in the state preparation are discussed via the spin Wigner function.…
We present a non-linear inequality that completely characterizes the set of correlation functions obtained from bipartite quantum systems, for the case in which measurements on each subsystem can be chosen between two arbitrary dichotomic observables. This necessary and sufficient condition is the maximal strengthening of Cirel'son's bound.
We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for separability of mixed states. As a result we obtain a simple criterion of separability for $2\times2$ and $2\times3$ systems. Here, the positivity of the partial transposition of a state is necessary and sufficient for its separability. However, it is not the case in general. Some examples of mixtures which demonstrate the utility of the criterion are considered.
In a recent paper (quant-ph/0102133) Chen, Liang, Li and Huang suggest a necessary and sufficient separability criterion, which is supposedly practical in judging the separability of any mixed state. In this note we briefly recapitulate their main result and show that it is a reformulation of the problem rather than a practical criterion.
In this paper we introduce a criterion for the characterization of Entanglement Witness for multipartite quantum systems. Our approach is based on the characterization of the "tangent space" to the set of pure product states.
The necessary and sufficient condition of separability of a mixed state of any systems is presented, which is practical in judging the separability of a mixed state. This paper also presents a method of finding the disentangled decomposition of a separable mixed state.
We introduce an operational procedure to determine, with arbitrary probability and accuracy, optimal entanglement witness for every multipartite entangled state. This method provides an operational criterion for separability which is asymptotically necessary and sufficient. Our results are also generalized to detect all different types of multipartite entanglement.
In this note, we discuss a closed-form necessary and sufficient condition for any two-qubit state to show hidden nonlocality w.r.t the Bell-CHSH inequality. This is then used to numerically compute the relative volume of states showing hidden Bell-CHSH non-locality , among all two-qubit states with one-sided reduction maximally mixed.
We present a necessary and sufficient condition for the separability of multipartite quantum states, this criterion also tells us how to write a multipartite separable state as a convex sum of separable pure states. To work out this criterion, we need to solve a set of equations, actually it is easy to solve these quations analytically if the density matrix of the given quantum state has few nonzero eigenvalues.
We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for separability of mixed states of n-particle systems. The conditions are formulated in terms of maps which are positive on product states of $n-1$ particles. The method of providing of the maps on the basis of unextendable product bases is provided. The three qubit state problem is reformulated in the form suggesting possibility of explicite characterisation of all maps needed for separability condition.
Pati (Physics Letters A, 2000) derived a sufficient condition for the existence of Schmidt decomposition in tripartite Hilbert spaces. In this paper, we show that the condition is erroneous by demonstrating some counter-examples. Moreover, we suitably modify the condition and provide a correctness proof. We also show for the first time how this can be generalized to $n$-partite Hilbert spaces for any $n\geq 2$. Finally, we prove that this condition is also a necessary condition.
It is shown that in order for the solutions of the Lindblad equation never to give a decreasing von Neumann entropy, it is necessary and sufficient that the operators appearing in this equation should be unitary linear combinations of their adjoints. In this case, these operators may be replaced with Hermitian operators, without changing the evolution of density matrices.
We solve the problem of whether a set of quantum tests reveals state-independent contextuality and use this result to identify the simplest set of the minimal dimension. We also show that identifying state-independent contextuality graphs [R. Ramanathan and P. Horodecki, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 040404 (2014)] is not sufficient for revealing state-independent contextuality.
In this paper we derived the precise formula in a sine function form of the norm of the amplitude in the desired state, and by means of he precise formula we presented the necessary and sufficient phase condition for any quantum algorithm with arbitrary phase rotations. We also showed that the phase condition: identical rotation angles, is a sufficient but not a necessary phase condition.
We show that the monogamy of entanglement is a sufficient phenomenon in every physical theory, if the quantum key distribution is to be safe on the grounds of such theory. To do so we present the QKD protocol that is safe in any physical theory under the assumption of the monogamous entanglement only. The necessity of this condition is also discussed.
Measurement incompatibility is the most basic resource that distinguishes quantum from classical physics. Contextuality is the critical resource behind the power of some models of quantum computation and is also a necessary ingredient for many applications in quantum information. A fundamental problem is thus identifying when incompatibility produces contextuality. Here, we show that, given a structure of incompatibility characterized by a graph in which nonadjacent vertices represent incompatible ideal measurements, the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a quantum realiza…
Contextuality is a signature of operational nonclassicality in the outcome statistics of an experiment. This notion of nonclassicality applies to a breadth of physical phenomena. Here, we establish its relation to two fundamental nonclassical entities in quantum theory; measurement incompatibility and steering. We show that each is necessary and sufficient the failure of operational contextuality. We exploit the established connection to contextuality to provide a novel approach to problems in measurement incompatibility and steering.
We consider the Cavalcanti-Foster-Fuwa-Wiseman inequality~\cite{achsh} which is a necessary and sufficient steerability condition for two-qubit states with two measurement settings on each side. We derive the criterion which an arbitrary two-qubit state must satisfy in order to violate this inequality, and obtain its maximum attainable violation in quantum mechanics. The derived condition on the state parameters enables us to establish a tight monogamy relation for two-qubit steering.
In this paper we present the necessary and sufficient conditions of separability for multipartite pure states. These conditions are very simple, and they don't require Schmidt decomposition or tracing out operations. We also give a necessary condition for a local unitary equivalence class for a bipartite system in terms of the determinant of the matrix of amplitudes and explore a variance as a measure of entanglement for multipartite pure states.
We present a necessary and sufficient product criterion for bipartite quantum states based on the rank of realignment matrix of density matrix. Then, this approach is generalized to multipartite systems. We first introduce the concept of semiproduct in a similar manner to the semiseparable and prove that semiproduct is equivalent to fully product. Therefore, a quantum state is bipartite product with respect to all possible partitions implies fully product which is different from the case of separability. For pure states, it can easily be seen that several necessary and sufficient separability …
Necessary and sufficient conditions for bipartite entanglement are derived, which apply to arbitrary Hilbert spaces. Motivated by the concept of witnesses, optimized entanglement inequalities are formulated solely in terms of arbitrary Hermitian operators, which makes them useful for applications in experiments. The needed optimization procedure is based on a separability eigenvalue problem, whose analytical solutions are derived for a special class of projection operators. For general Hermitian operators, a numerical implementation of entanglement tests is proposed. It is also shown how to id…
Recently, [{arXiv:0810.3134}] is accepted and published. We show that any $N$-qubit state which is diagonal in the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger basis is full $N$-qubit entangled state if and only if no partial transpose of the multiqubit state is positive with respect to any partition.
In the study of quantum nonlocality, one obstacle is that the analytical criterion for identifying the boundaries between quantum and postquantum correlations has not yet been given, even in the simplest Bell scenario. We propose a plausible, analytical, necessary and sufficient condition ensuring that a nonlocal quantum correlation in the simplest scenario is an extremal boundary point. Our extremality condition amounts to certifying an information-theoretical quantity; the probability of guessing a measurement outcome of a distant party optimized using any quantum instrument. We show that th…
We investigate the freezing phenomenon of quantum discord occurring in phase damping noise processes. By relating the expression of the time variation of the discord to the convex function of relative entropy, we obtain the necessary and sufficient conditions of the phenomenon for standard Bell-diagonal states. These conditions are applicable also to the phenomenon occurring in a non-Markovian dephasing process. Moreover, we show that the same condition and phenomenon coincide in a new sort of Bell-diagonal states beyond the standard form.
We obtain, using the Birman-Schwinger method, a series of necessary conditions for the existence of at least one bound state applicable to arbitrary central potentials in the context of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. These conditions yield a monotonic series of lower limits on the "critical" value of the strength of the potential (for which a first bound state appears) which converges to the exact critical strength. We also obtain a sufficient condition for the existence of bound states in a central monotonic potential which yield an upper limit on the critical strength of the potential.
