arXiv subjects

Aby Philip

Publications and source records attributed to Aby Philip.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

PPT Entanglement with Correlated Catalysis: Monotones and Irreversibility

Quantum catalysts can overcome otherwise impossible quantum state transformations without being consumed, and allowing them to become correlated with the output makes this assistance substantially more powerful. This raises a fundamental question for entanglement theory: which limitations on state manipulation remain when such correlated catalysts are freely available? We answer this question in the positive-partial-transpose (PPT) resource theory, which allows a substantially broader class of operations than local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We identify general conditions under which regularized relative-entropy measures become strongly superadditive, and use them to construct monotones that constrain correlated catalytic PPT transformations without any knowledge of the catalyst. In particular, we prove that the regularized PPT relative entropy is fully additive and strongly superadditive, resolving an open problem in entanglement theory. Most importantly, these constraints show that even arbitrary correlated catalysts cannot restore asymptotic reversibility: for an explicit state, the optimal entanglement distillation rate remains strictly smaller than the entanglement cost. Thus, substantial catalytic assistance does not remove some of the fundamental limitations of mixed-state entanglement manipulation.

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arXiv2026

Entanglement battery and entanglement catalyst in local state discrimination problems

In this work, we study the limitations and advantages of using entanglement battery and entanglement catalyst in local state discrimination problems. We consider both cases of such tools, i.e., exact and approximate cases. We show that to distinguish any set of orthogonal pure bipartite entangled states perfectly under local operations and classical communication using an (exact) entanglement battery or an (exact) entanglement catalyst, it is necessary to consider that the cardinality of the set must be smaller than the total dimension of the given Hilbert space. Then, we construct a nontrivial case where an exact entanglement battery can provide huge advantage. We also construct other nontrivial cases where exact or approximate entanglement battery or entanglement catalyst can be useful. In fact, we find that the approximate tools are particularly useful in the local discrimination of certain sets which can be derived from many-copy indistinguishable ensembles.

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arXiv2026

Witness robustness: An operational quantifier of measurement resources via free state discrimination

We introduce the witness robustness of quantum measurements, a resource quantifier whose admissible noise consists of tuples of free-state witnesses rather than physical measurements. We establish its operational interpretation: it quantifies the maximal advantage that a measurement can provide over free measurements in discriminating an ensemble composed entirely of free states. Unlike the standard and generalized robustnesses, the witness robustness is not faithful in general, reflecting the fact that a resourceful measurement need not be useful when only free states can be prepared. We identify conditions under which faithfulness is recovered and show that, in resource theories admitting a resource-destroying map, the witness robustness vanishes for every measurement. We also establish fundamental properties, including convexity and monotonicity. Finally, we derive analytical results for projective measurements in single-qubit magic and for binary pure-state projective measurements in the two-qubit PPT entanglement theory.

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arXiv2026

Resourcefulness without Resource: Geometric Origins and Robustness

A prevailing intuition holds that quantum protocols using only free states confer no operational advantage. This intuition is contradicted by free-state discrimination gaps in which restricted measurements fail to optimally distinguish even orthogonal free states. Known instances include nonlocality without entanglement and, more recently, nonstabilizerness without magic. We trace these examples to a single convex-geometric mechanism: whenever the set of free measurements is closed, convex, and strict subset the set of all measurements, and the free states is a convex set with an interior, a gap-witnessing ensemble can be drawn entirely from the free states. The resulting gap is operationally rigid: no finite-dimensional assistance -- catalyst or quantum memory -- can asymptotically improve the discrimination rate beyond the single-shot restricted limit. By contrast, non-free ensembles admit memory-assisted attacks that fully erase the gap, exposing a sharp operational asymmetry between free and resource-carrying ensembles.

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arXiv2026

Asymptotic Limits of Entanglement Transmission

Reliable distribution of quantum entanglement over long distances is a central challenge in quantum information science, fundamentally limited by decoherence in noisy communication channels. In this work, we investigate the asymptotic limits of entanglement distribution across homogeneous linear repeater chains with arbitrary intermediate LOCC processing. We establish a strict dichotomy: the asymptotic preservation of entanglement over arbitrarily long distances is possible if and only if the underlying quantum channel admits a correctable subspace. For channels lacking such a subspace, we prove that the transmitted state converges exponentially fast to the set of separable states, rendering standard LOCC filtering insufficient. To counteract this exponential degradation, we analyze ``networks'' employing parallel channel uses per link. We derive a fundamental lower bound on the required number of parallel channel uses per elementary link, proving that for broad classes of channels without a correctable subspace, the number of parallel channels per link must scale at least logarithmically with the number of intermediate stations to sustain a non-zero amount of entanglement. This provides a code-independent bound for the number of physical links for the considered homogeneous one-way architecture. For depolarizing noise below the corresponding coding threshold, the logarithmic lower bound is achievable.

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arXiv2026

Advantage of flexible catalysis for entanglement and quantum thermodynamics

Understanding the fundamental limits of state convertibility is crucial for establishing the boundaries of quantum information processing and thermodynamic efficiency. While auxiliary systems, catalysts, can facilitate otherwise impossible transformations, standard catalysis rigidly requires the auxiliary system to return to its exact initial state. In this work, we investigate the power of flexible catalysis, where the catalyst evolves through a cycle of states, restoring its initial configuration only after a finite number of steps. Focusing on the regime of fixed, finite dimensions, we analyze the capabilities of flexible catalysis within the resource theories of entanglement and quantum thermodynamics. In the context of entanglement, we derive conditions limiting flexible catalysts, yet show that flexible catalysis can be strictly more powerful than same-dimensional standard catalysis: it enables deterministic transformations achievable by no standard catalyst of the same dimension, and it strictly increases the success probability of stochastic local operations and classical communication. A similar deterministic advantage arises in quantum thermodynamics, where flexible catalysis enables state transformations that are impossible with any standard catalyst of fixed dimension and Hamiltonian but become achievable via flexible catalysis.

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arXiv2025

ENTCALC: Toolkit for calculating geometric entanglement in multipartite quantum systems

We present entcalc, a Python and MATLAB package for estimating the geometric entanglement of multipartite quantum states. The package operates as follows: given a multipartite quantum state as input, it outputs an estimate of its geometric entanglement. For pure states, it computes the geometric entanglement together with an estimation error. For mixed states, it provides both lower and upper bounds on the geometric entanglement, thereby identifying an interval in which the true value lies. We provide several methods to compute the lower bound, enabling users to balance accuracy against computational cost. We apply entcalc to several representative examples, including for $3\otimes3$ PPT entangled states, mixtures of GHZ and W states, thermal states of selected three-qubit spin chains, and noisy GHZ and W states. We observe signatures of quantum phase transitions by quantifying entanglement in spin chains. We also demonstrate that entanglement between non-neighbouring sites can be activated by tuning the external magnetic field. In all tested cases, the gap between the lower and upper bounds is found to be very small, indicating that entcalc provides highly accurate estimates of the geometric entanglement for these states.

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arXiv2025

Robustness of quantum data hiding against entangled catalysts and memory

Quantum data hiding stores classical information in bipartite quantum states that are, in principle, perfectly distinguishable, yet remain almost indistinguishable without access to a quantum communication channel. Here, we investigate whether this limitation can be overcome when the communicating parties are assisted by additional quantum resources. We develop a general framework for state discrimination that unifies catalytic and memory-assisted local discrimination protocols and analyze their power to reveal hidden information. We prove that when the hiding states are separable, neither entangled catalysts nor quantum memory can increase the optimal discrimination probability, establishing the robustness of separable data-hiding schemes. In contrast, for some entangled states, a reusable quantum memory turns locally indistinguishable states into ones that can be discriminated almost perfectly. Our results delineate the fundamental limits of catalytic and memory-assisted state discrimination and identify separable encodings as a robust strategy for quantum data hiding.

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arXiv2025

Limiting one-way distillable secret key via privacy testing of extendible states

The notions of privacy tests and $k$-extendible states have both been instrumental in quantum information theory, particularly in understanding the limits of secure communication. In this paper, we determine the maximum probability with which an arbitrary $k$-extendible state can pass a privacy test, and we prove that it is equal to the maximum fidelity between an arbitrary $k$-extendible state and the standard maximally entangled state. Our findings, coupled with the resource theory of $k$-unextendibility, lead to an efficiently computable upper bound on the one-shot, one-way distillable key of a bipartite state, and we prove that it is equal to the best-known efficiently computable upper bound on the one-shot, one-way distillable entanglement. We also establish efficiently computable upper bounds on the one-shot, forward-assisted private capacity of channels. Extending our formalism to the independent and identically distributed setting, we obtain single-letter efficiently computable bounds on the $n$-shot, one-way distillable key of a state and the $n$-shot, forward-assisted private capacity of a channel. For some key examples of interest, our bounds are significantly tighter than other known efficiently computable bounds.

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arXiv2025

Optimality of universal conclusive entanglement concentration protocols

Entanglement concentration is essential for quantum technologies, yet rigorous bounds on the success probability for universal protocols (those requiring no prior knowledge about the input state) have remained underexplored. We establish such fundamental limits for conclusive protocols distilling a perfect Bell state from pure two-qubit states by deriving the optimal success probability starting with two copies of a state with known Schmidt basis and four copies of a state with unknown Schmidt basis, using concatenated two-qubit operations. We prove that a known protocol achieves these bounds, confirming its optimality. Crucially, universality imposes an inherent efficiency trade-off, yielding an average success probability of just 2/105 over Haar measure.

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arXiv2025

Analytic R\'enyi Entropy Bounds for Device-Independent Cryptography

Device-independent (DI) cryptography represents the highest level of security, enabling cryptographic primitives to be executed safely on uncharacterized devices. Moreover, with successful proof-of-concept demonstrations in randomness expansion, randomness amplification, and quantum key distribution, the field is steadily advancing toward commercial viability. Critical to this continued progression is the development of tighter finite-size security proofs. In this work, we provide a simple method to obtain tighter finite-size security proofs for protocols based on the CHSH game, which is the nonlocality test used in all of the proof-of-concept experiments. We achieve this by analytically solving key-rate optimization problems based on R\'enyi entropies, providing a simple method to obtain tighter finite-size key rates.

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arXiv2025

Digital Quantum Simulations of the Non-Resonant Open Tavis-Cummings Model

The open Tavis--Cummings model consists of $N$ quantum emitters interacting with a common cavity mode, accounts for losses and decoherence, and is frequently explored for quantum information processing and designing quantum devices. As $N$ increases, it becomes harder to simulate the open Tavis--Cummings model using traditional methods. To address this problem, we implement two quantum algorithms for simulating the dynamics of this model in the inhomogeneous, non-resonant regime, with up to three excitations in the cavity. We show that the implemented algorithms have gate complexities that scale polynomially, as $O(N^2)$ and $O(N^3)$, while the number of qubits used by these algorithms (space complexity) scales linearly as $O(N)$. One of these algorithms is the sampling-based wave matrix Lindbladization algorithm, for which we propose two protocols to implement its system-independent fixed interaction, resolving key open questions of [Patel and Wilde, Open Sys. & Info. Dyn., 30:2350014 (2023)]. We benchmark our results against a classical differential equation solver in a variety of scenarios and demonstrate that our algorithms accurately reproduce the expected dynamics.

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arXiv2024

Device-Independent Certification of Multipartite Distillable Entanglement

Quantum networks consist of various quantum technologies, spread across vast distances, and involve various users at the same time. Certifying the functioning and efficiency of the individual components is a task that is well studied and widely used. However, the power of quantum networks can only be realized by integrating all the required quantum technologies and platforms across a large number of users. In this work, we demonstrate how to certify the distillable entanglement available in multipartite states produced by quantum networks, without relying on the physical realization of its constituent components. We do so by using the paradigm of device independence.

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arXiv2024

Schrödinger as a Quantum Programmer: Estimating Entanglement via Steering

Quantifying entanglement is an important task by which the resourcefulness of a quantum state can be measured. Here, we develop a quantum algorithm that tests for and quantifies the separability of a general bipartite state by using the quantum steering effect, the latter initially discovered by Schrödinger. Our separability test consists of a distributed quantum computation involving two parties: a computationally limited client, who prepares a purification of the state of interest, and a computationally unbounded server, who tries to steer the reduced systems to a probabilistic ensemble of pure product states. To design a practical algorithm, we replace the role of the server with a combination of parameterized unitary circuits and classical optimization techniques to perform the necessary computation. The result is a variational quantum steering algorithm (VQSA), a modified separability test that is implementable on quantum computers that are available today. We then simulate our VQSA on noisy quantum simulators and find favorable convergence properties on the examples tested. We also develop semidefinite programs, executable on classical computers, that benchmark the results obtained from our VQSA. Thus, our findings provide a meaningful connection between steering, entanglement, quantum algorithms, and quantum computational complexity theory. They also demonstrate the value of a parameterized mid-circuit measurement in a VQSA.

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arXiv2021

Multipartite Intrinsic Non-Locality and Device-Independent Conference Key Agreement

In this work, we introduce multipartite intrinsic non-locality as a method for quantifying resources in the multipartite scenario of device-independent (DI) conference key agreement. We prove that multipartite intrinsic non-locality is additive, convex, and monotone under a class of free operations called local operations and common randomness. As one of our technical contributions, we establish a chain rule for two variants of multipartite mutual information, which we then use to prove that multipartite intrinsic non-locality is additive. This chain rule may be of independent interest in other contexts. All of these properties of multipartite intrinsic non-locality are helpful in establishing the main result of our paper: multipartite intrinsic non-locality is an upper bound on secret key rate in the general multipartite scenario of DI conference key agreement. We discuss various examples of DI conference key protocols and compare our upper bounds for these protocols with known lower bounds. Finally, we calculate upper bounds on recent experimental realizations of DI quantum key distribution.

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