arXiv subjects

Christoph Hirche

Publications and source records attributed to Christoph Hirche.

47 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Decoupling with random diagonal unitaries

We investigate decoupling, one of the most important primitives in quantum Shannon theory, by replacing the uniformly distributed random unitaries commonly used to achieve the protocol, with repeated applications of random unitaries diagonal in the Pauli-$Z$ and -$X$ bases. This strategy was recently shown to achieve an approximate unitary $2$-design after a number of repetitions of the process, which implies that the strategy gradually achieves decoupling. Here, we prove that even fewer repetitions of the process achieve decoupling at the same rate as that with the uniform ones, showing that rather imprecise approximations of unitary $2$-designs are sufficient for decoupling. We also briefly discuss efficient implementations of them and implications of our decoupling theorem to coherent state merging and relative thermalisation.

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arXiv2017

Unitary $2$-designs from random $X$- and $Z$-diagonal unitaries

Unitary $2$-designs are random unitaries simulating up to the second order statistical moments of the uniformly distributed random unitaries, often referred to as Haar random unitaries. They are used in a wide variety of theoretical and practical quantum information protocols, and also have been used to model the dynamics in complex quantum many-body systems. Here, we show that unitary $2$-designs can be approximately implemented by alternately repeating random unitaries diagonal in the Pauli-$Z$ basis and that in the Pauli-$X$ basis. We also provide a converse about the number of repetitions needed to achieve unitary $2$-designs. These results imply that the process after $\ell$ repetitions achieves a $Θ(d^{-\ell})$-approximate unitary $2$-design. Based on the construction, we further provide quantum circuits that efficiently implement approximate unitary $2$-designs. Although a more efficient implementation of unitary $2$-designs is known, our quantum circuit has its own merit that it is divided into a constant number of commuting parts, which enables us to apply all commuting gates simultaneously and leads to a possible reduction of an actual execution time. We finally interpret the result in terms of the dynamics generated by time-dependent Hamiltonians and provide for the first time a random disordered time-dependent Hamiltonian that generates a unitary $2$-design after switching interactions only a few times.

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arXiv2017

Efficient unitary designs with nearly time-independent Hamiltonian dynamics

We provide new constructions of unitary $t$-designs for general $t$ on one qudit and $N$ qubits, and propose a design Hamiltonian, a random Hamiltonian of which dynamics always forms a unitary design after a threshold time, as a basic framework to investigate randomising time evolution in quantum many-body systems. The new constructions are based on recently proposed schemes of repeating random unitaires diagonal in mutually unbiased bases. We first show that, if a pair of the bases satisfies a certain condition, the process on one qudit approximately forms a unitary $t$-design after $O(t)$ repetitions. We then construct quantum circuits on $N$ qubits that achieve unitary $t$-designs for $t = o(N^{1/2})$ using $O(t N^2)$ gates, improving the previous result using $O(t^{10}N^2)$ gates in terms of $t$. Based on these results, we present a design Hamiltonian with periodically changing two-local spin-glass-type interactions, leading to fast and relatively natural realisations of unitary designs in complex many-body systems.

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arXiv2017

Convolutional Polar Codes

Arikan's Polar codes attracted much attention as the first efficiently decodable and capacity achieving codes. Furthermore, Polar codes exhibit an exponentially decreasing block error probability with an asymptotic error exponent upper bounded by 1/2. Since their discovery, many attempts have been made to improve the error exponent and the finite block-length performance, while keeping the bloc-structured kernel. Recently, two of us introduced a new family of efficiently decodable error-correction codes based on a recently discovered efficiently-contractible tensor network family in quantum many-body physics, called branching MERA. These codes, called branching MERA codes, include Polar codes and also extend them in a non-trivial way by substituting the bloc-structured kernel by a convolutional structure. Here, we perform an in-depth study of a particular example that can be thought of as a direct extension to Arikan's Polar code, which we therefore name Convolutional Polar codes. We prove that these codes polarize and exponentially suppress the channel's error probability, with an asymptotic error exponent log_2(3)/2 which is provably better than for Polar codes under successive cancellation decoding. We also perform finite block-size numerical simulations which display improved error-correcting capability with only a minor impact on decoding complexity.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2016

Schur complement inequalities for covariance matrices and monogamy of quantum correlations

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 quantities based on the conventional von Neumann entropy.

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arXiv2016

Discrimination power of a quantum detector

We investigate the ability of a quantum measurement device to discriminate two states or, generically, two hypothesis. In full generality, the measurement can be performed a number $n$ of times, and arbitrary pre-processing of the states and post-processing of the obtained data is allowed. Even if the two hypothesis correspond to orthogonal states, perfect discrimination is not always possible. There is thus an intrinsic error associated to the measurement device, which we aim to quantify, that limits its discrimination power. We minimize various error probabilities (averaged or constrained) over all pairs of $n$-partite input states. These probabilities, or their exponential rates of decrease in the case of large $n$, give measures of the discrimination power of the device. For the asymptotic rate of the averaged error probability, we obtain a Chernoff-type bound, dual to the standard Chernoff bound for which the state pair is fixed and the optimization is over all measurements. The key point in the derivation is that i.i.d. states become optimal in asymptotic settings. Minimum asymptotic rates are also obtained for constrained error probabilities, dual to Stein's Lemma and Hoeffding's bound. We further show that adaptive protocols where the state preparer gets feedback from the measurer do not improve the asymptotic rates. These rates thus quantify the ultimate discrimination power of a measurement device.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2016

Operational meaning of quantum measures of recovery

Several information measures have recently been defined which capture the notion of "recoverability." In particular, the fidelity of recovery quantifies how well one can recover a system $A$ of a tripartite quantum state, defined on systems $ABC$, by acting on system $C$ alone. The relative entropy of recovery is an associated measure in which the fidelity is replaced by relative entropy. In this paper, we provide concrete operational interpretations of the aforementioned recovery measures in terms of a computational decision problem and a hypothesis testing scenario. Specifically, we show that the fidelity of recovery is equal to the maximum probability with which a computationally unbounded quantum prover can convince a computationally bounded quantum verifier that a given quantum state is recoverable. The quantum interactive proof system giving this operational meaning requires four messages exchanged between the prover and verifier, but by forcing the prover to perform his actions in superposition, we construct a different proof system that requires only two messages. The result is that the associated decision problem is in QIP(2) and another argument establishes it as hard for QSZK (both classes contain problems believed to be difficult to solve for a quantum computer). We finally prove that the regularized relative entropy of recovery is equal to the optimal Type II error exponent when trying to distinguish many copies of a tripartite state from a recovered version of this state, such that the Type I error is constrained to be no larger than a constant.

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arXiv2016

Polar codes in network quantum information theory

Polar coding is a method for communication over noisy classical channels which is provably capacity-achieving and has an efficient encoding and decoding. Recently, this method has been generalized to the realm of quantum information processing, for tasks such as classical communication, private classical communication, and quantum communication. In the present work, we apply the polar coding method to network quantum information theory, by making use of recent advances for related classical tasks. In particular, we consider problems such as the compound multiple access channel and the quantum interference channel. The main result of our work is that it is possible to achieve the best known inner bounds on the achievable rate regions for these tasks, without requiring a so-called quantum simultaneous decoder. Thus, our work paves the way for developing network quantum information theory further without requiring a quantum simultaneous decoder.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

An improved rate region for the classical-quantum broadcast channel

We present a new achievable rate region for the two-user binary-input classical-quantum broadcast channel. The result is a generalization of the classical Marton-Gelfand-Pinsker region and is provably larger than the best previously known rate region for classical-quantum broadcast channels. The proof of achievability is based on the recently introduced polar coding scheme and its generalization to quantum network information theory.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Polar codes in quantum information theory

Polar codes are the first capacity achieving and efficiently implementable codes for classical communication. Recently they have also been generalized to communication over classical-quantum and quantum channels. In this work we present our recent results for polar coding in quantum information theory, including applications to classical-quantum multiple access channels, interference channels and compound communication settings, including the first proof of channel coding achieving the Han-Kobayashi rate region of the interference channel without the need of a simultaneous decoder. Moreover we add to the existing framework by extending polar codes to achieve the asymmetric capacity and improving the block error probability for classical-quantum channels. In addition we use polar codes to prove a new achievable rate region for the classical-quantum broadcast channel. We also discuss polar codes for quantum communication over quantum channels and state results towards codes for compound quantum channels in this setting. We conclude by stating a list of interesting open questions to invite further research on the topic.

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arXiv2014

Efficient achievability for quantum protocols using decoupling theorems

Proving achievability of protocols in quantum Shannon theory usually does not consider the efficiency at which the goal of the protocol can be achieved. Nevertheless it is known that protocols such as coherent state merging are efficiently achievable at optimal rate. We aim to investigate this fact further in a general one-shot setting, by considering certain classes of decoupling theorems and give exact rates for these classes. Moreover we compare results of general decoupling theorems using Haar distributed unitaries with those using smaller sets of operators, in particular $ε$-approximate 2-designs. We also observe the behavior of our rates in special cases such as $ε$ approaching zero and the asymptotic limit.

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