arXiv subjects

Bjarne Bergh

Publications and source records attributed to Bjarne Bergh.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Permutation Invariant Optimization Problems in Quantum Information Theory: A Framework for Channel Fidelity and Beyond

Exploiting permutation invariance to reduce the exponential scaling of semidefinite programs in quantum information has emerged as a powerful computational technique. In this work, we develop a systematic framework for using this reduction via Schur-Weyl duality for optimization problems, and establish methods that allow one to work fully inside the permutation invariant subspace while performing operations such as (partially) applying channels and taking (partial) traces, or computing expressions like the quantum relative entropy. We then apply our techniques to the problem of computing efficient lower bounds on the channel fidelity over $n$ parallel uses of a quantum channel. The algorithm, which we call symmetric seesaw method, exploits permutation-invariant codes to yield improved lower bounds on the channel fidelity over $n$ uses of the depolarizing and amplitude-damping channel in the regime of tens of channel uses, and was used in [arxiv:2604.27042] to demonstrate non-asymptotic superactivation of quantum capacity for $n = 17$. An implementation of our methods, aimed at being suitable for various quantum information theoretic optimization problems, is also available as an open-source Python package.

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arXiv2026

Onset of superactivation of quantum capacity

Superactivation of quantum capacity is the phenomenon whereby two quantum channels, each with zero quantum capacity, can exhibit a strictly positive capacity when used in tandem. In this work, we explore superactivation in the previously unexplored non-asymptotic regime of finitely many channel uses. We give a definition of finite-blocklength superactivation and propose numerical methods that can certify it. Then, focusing on the 50% erasure and positive-partial-transpose channels considered in the original work on superactivation, we show that as few as 17 uses of the joint channel already enable qubit transmission with a fidelity unattainable by any number of uses of either channel alone, demonstrating a strong finite-blocklength form of superactivation and opening the door to experimental demonstration.

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arXiv2026

Strong converse bounds on the classical identification capacity of the qubit depolarizing channel

A strong converse bound for the classical identification capacity of a quantum channel is an upper bound on the asymptotic identification rate of classical messages sent through the channel, such that, above this rate, the probability of an identification error necessarily converges to one. Converse bounds for identification are notoriously difficult to obtain for fully quantum channels. The only previously known converse bound, due to Atif, Pradhan and Winter [Int.~J.~Quantum Inf.~22(5):2440013, 2024], has the unsatisfactory feature of remaining strictly positive even for a completely noisy channel, for which identification is clearly impossible. We derive strong (and hence also weak) converse bounds, for the qubit depolarizing channel with noise parameter $p$, that vanish as $p\to 1$, thereby yielding the correct behavior in the completely noisy limit. Moreover, in the setting of simultaneous classical identification under the constraint of complete product measurements, our converse bound matches the corresponding achievability bound, and establishes that in this case the identification capacity equals the classical capacity of the channel.

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arXiv2026

Discriminating idempotent quantum channels

We study binary discrimination of idempotent quantum channels. When the two channels share a common full-rank invariant state, we show that a simple image inclusion condition completely determines the asymptotic behavior: when it holds, a broad family of channel divergences collapse to a closed-form, single-letter expression, regularization is unnecessary, and all error exponents (Stein/Chernoff/strong-converse) are explicitly computable with no adaptive advantage. Crucially, this yields the strong converse property for this channel family, which is an important open problem for general channels. When the inclusion fails, asymmetric exponents become infinite, implying perfect asymptotic discrimination. We apply the results to GNS-symmetric channels, showing discrimination rates for large number of self iterations converge exponentially fast to those of the corresponding idempotent peripheral projections. If the two channels do not share a common invariant state, we provide a single-letter converse bound on the regularized sandwiched Rényi cb-divergence, which suffices to establish a strong converse upper bound on the Stein exponents.

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arXiv2025

Composite Classical and Quantum Channel Discrimination

We study the problem of binary composite channel discrimination in the asymmetric setting, where the hypotheses are given by fairly arbitrary sets of channels, and samples do not have to be identically distributed. In the case of quantum channels we prove: (i) a characterization of the Stein exponent for parallel channel discrimination strategies and (ii) an upper bound on the Stein exponent for adaptive channel discrimination strategies. We further show that already for classical channels this upper bound can sometimes be achieved and be strictly larger than what is possible with parallel strategies. Hence, there can be an advantage of adaptive channel discrimination strategies with composite hypotheses for classical channels, unlike in the case of simple hypotheses. Moreover, we show that classically this advantage can only exist if the sets of channels corresponding to the hypotheses are non-convex. As a consequence of our more general treatment, which is not limited to the composite i.i.d. setting, we also obtain a generalization of previous composite state discrimination results.

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arXiv2025

Generalized Quantum Stein's Lemma and Reversibility of Quantum Resource Theories for Classical-Quantum Channels

We extend the recent proof of the Generalized Quantum Stein's Lemma by Hayashi and Yamasaki [arXiv:2408.02722] to classical-quantum (c-q) channels. We analyze the composite hypothesis testing problem of testing a c-q channel $\mathcal{E}^{\otimes n}$ against a sequence of sets of c-q channels $(\mathcal{S}_n)_n$ (satisfying certain natural assumptions), under parallel strategies. We prove that the optimal asymptotic asymmetric error exponent is given by the regularization of Umegaki channel divergence, minimized over $\mathcal{S}_n$. This allows us to prove the reversibility of resource theories of classical-quantum channels in a natural framework, where the distance between channels (and hence also the notion of approximate interconvertibility of channels) is measured in diamond norm, and the set of free operations is the set of all asymptotically resource non-generating superchannels. The results we obtain are similar to the ones in the concurrent and independent work by Hayashi and Yamasaki [arXiv:2509.07271]. However the proof of the direct part of the GQSL uses different arguments and techniques to deal with the challenges that arise from dealing with c-q channels.

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arXiv2025

Continuity bounds for quantum entropies arising from a fundamental entropic inequality

We establish a tight upper bound for the difference in von Neumann entropies between two quantum states, $ρ_1$ and $ρ_2$. This bound is expressed in terms of the von Neumann entropies of the mutually orthogonal states derived from the Jordan-Hahn decomposition of the difference operator $(ρ_1 - ρ_2)$. This yields a novel entropic inequality that implies the well-known Audenaert-Fannes (AF) inequality. In fact, it also leads to a refinement of the AF inequality. We employ this inequality to obtain a uniform continuity bound for the quantum conditional entropy of two states whose marginals on the conditioning system coincide. We additionally use it to derive a continuity bound for the quantum relative entropy in both variables. Interestingly, the fundamental entropic inequality is also valid in infinite dimensions.

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arXiv2024

Robustness of Fixed Points of Quantum Channels and Application to Approximate Quantum Markov Chains

Given a quantum channel and a state which satisfy a fixed point equation approximately (say, up to an error $\varepsilon$), can one find a new channel and a state, which are respectively close to the original ones, such that they satisfy an exact fixed point equation? It is interesting to ask this question for different choices of constraints on the structures of the original channel and state, and requiring that these are also satisfied by the new channel and state. We affirmatively answer the above question, under fairly general assumptions on these structures, through a compactness argument. Additionally, for channels and states satisfying certain specific structures, we find explicit upper bounds on the distances between the pairs of channels (and states) in question. When these distances decay quickly (in a particular, desirable manner) as $\varepsilon\to 0$, we say that the original approximate fixed point equation is rapidly fixable. We establish rapid fixability, not only for general quantum channels, but also when the original and new channels are both required to be unitary, mixed unitary or unital. In contrast, for the case of bipartite quantum systems with channels acting trivially on one subsystem, we prove that approximate fixed point equations are not rapidly fixable. In this case, the distance to the closest channel (and state) which satisfy an exact fixed point equation can depend on the dimension of the quantum system in an undesirable way. We apply our results on approximate fixed point equations to the question of robustness of quantum Markov chains (QMC) and establish the following: For any tripartite quantum state, there exists a dimension-dependent upper bound on its distance to the set of QMCs, which decays to zero as the conditional mutual information of the state vanishes.

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arXiv2024

Parallelization of Adaptive Quantum Channel Discrimination in the Non-Asymptotic Regime

We investigate the performance of parallel and adaptive quantum channel discrimination strategies for a finite number of channel uses. It has recently been shown that, in the asymmetric setting with asymptotically vanishing type I error probability, adaptive strategies are asymptotically not more powerful than parallel ones. We extend this result to the non-asymptotic regime with finitely many channel uses, by explicitly constructing a parallel strategy for any given adaptive strategy, and bounding the difference in their performances, measured in terms of the decay rate of the type II error probability per channel use. We further show that all parallel strategies can be optimized over in time polynomial in the number of channel uses, and hence our result can also be used to obtain a poly-time-computable asymptotically tight upper bound on the performance of general adaptive strategies.

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arXiv2023

Infinite Dimensional Asymmetric Quantum Channel Discrimination

We study asymmetric binary channel discrimination, for qantum channels acting on separable Hilbert spaces. We establish quantum Stein's lemma for channels for both adaptive and parallel strategies, and show that under finiteness of the geometric Rényi divergence between the two channels for some $α> 1$, adaptive strategies offer no asymptotic advantage over parallel ones. One major step in our argument is to demonstrate that the geometric Rényi divergence satisfies a chain rule and is additive for channels also in infinite dimensions. These results may be of independent interest. Furthermore, we not only show asymptotic equivalence of parallel and adaptive strategies, but explicitly construct a parallel strategy which approximates a given adaptive $n$-shot strategy, and give an explicit bound on the difference between the discrimination errors for these two strategies. This extends the finite dimensional result from [B. Bergh et al., arxiv:2206.08350]. Finally, this also allows us to conclude, that the chain rule for the Umegaki relative entropy in infinite dimensions, recently shown in [O. Fawzi, L. Gao, and M. Rahaman, arxiv:2212.14700v2] given finiteness of the max divergence between the two channels, also holds under the weaker condition of finiteness of the geometric Rényi divergence. We give explicit examples of channels which show that these two finiteness conditions are not equivalent.

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arXiv2021

Entanglement detection in quantum many-body systems using entropic uncertainty relations

We study experimentally accessible lower bounds on entanglement measures based on entropic uncertainty relations. Experimentally quantifying entanglement is highly desired for applications of quantum simulation experiments to fundamental questions, e.g., in quantum statistical mechanics and condensed-matter physics. At the same time it poses a significant challenge because the evaluation of entanglement measures typically requires the full reconstruction of the quantum state, which is extremely costly in terms of measurement statistics. We derive an improved entanglement bound for bipartite systems, which requires measuring joint probability distributions in only two different measurement settings per subsystem, and demonstrate its power by applying it to currently operational experimental setups for quantum simulation with cold atoms. Examining the tightness of the derived entanglement bound, we find that the set of pure states for which our relation is tight is strongly restricted. We show that for measurements in mutually unbiased bases the only pure states that saturate the bound are maximally entangled states on a subspace of the bipartite Hilbert space (this includes product states). We further show that our relation can also be employed for entanglement detection using generalized measurements, i.e., when not all measurement outcomes can be resolved individually by the detector. In addition, the impact of local conserved quantities on the detectable entanglement is discussed.

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arXiv2021

Experimentally accessible bounds on distillable entanglement from entropic uncertainty relations

Entanglement is not only the resource that fuels many quantum technologies but also plays a key role for some of the most profound open questions of fundamental physics. Experiments controlling quantum systems at the single quantum level may shed light on these puzzles. However, measuring, or even bounding, entanglement experimentally has proven to be an outstanding challenge, especially when the prepared quantum states are mixed. We use entropic uncertainty relations for bipartite systems to derive measurable lower bounds on distillable entanglement. We showcase these bounds by applying them to physical models realizable in cold-atom experiments. The derived entanglement bounds rely on measurements in only two different bases and are generically applicable to any quantum simulation platform.

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arXiv2021

The $α\to 1$ Limit of the Sharp Quantum Rényi Divergence

Fawzi and Fawzi recently defined the sharp Rényi divergence, $D_α^\#$, for $α\in (1, \infty)$, as an additional quantum Rényi divergence with nice mathematical properties and applications in quantum channel discrimination and quantum communication. One of their open questions was the limit $α \to 1$ of this divergence. By finding a new expression of the sharp divergence in terms of a minimization of the geometric Rényi divergence, we show that this limit is equal to the Belavkin-Staszewski relative entropy. Analogous minimizations of arbitrary generalized divergences lead to a new family of generalized divergences that we call kringel divergences, and for which we prove various properties including the data-processing inequality.

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