arXiv subjects

Felix C. Binder

Publications and source records attributed to Felix C. Binder.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Stochastic metrology and the empirical distribution

We study the problem of parameter estimation in time series stemming from general stochastic processes, where the outcomes may exhibit arbitrary temporal correlations. In particular, we address the question of how much Fisher information is lost if the stochastic process is compressed into a single histogram, known as the empirical distribution. As we show, the answer is non-trivial due to the correlations between outcomes. We derive practical formulas for the resulting Fisher information for various scenarios, from generic stationary processes to discrete-time Markov chains to continuous-time classical master equations. The results are illustrated with several examples.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2023

Landauer vs. Nernst: What is the True Cost of Cooling a Quantum System?

Thermodynamics connects our knowledge of the world to our capability to manipulate and thus to control it. This crucial role of control is exemplified by the third law of thermodynamics, Nernst's unattainability principle, which states that infinite resources are required to cool a system to absolute zero temperature. But what are these resources and how should they be utilized? And how does this relate to Landauer's principle that famously connects information and thermodynamics? We answer these questions by providing a framework for identifying the resources that enable the creation of pure quantum states. We show that perfect cooling is possible with Landauer energy cost given infinite time or control complexity. However, such optimal protocols require complex unitaries generated by an external work source. Restricting to unitaries that can be run solely via a heat engine, we derive a novel Carnot-Landauer limit, along with protocols for its saturation. This generalizes Landauer's principle to a fully thermodynamic setting, leading to a unification with the third law and emphasizes the importance of control in quantum thermodynamics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Thermodynamic resources in continuous-variable quantum systems

Thermodynamic resources, beyond their well-known usefulness in work extraction and other thermodynamic tasks, are often important also in tasks that are not evidently thermodynamic. Here we develop a framework for identifying such resources in diverse applications of bosonic continuous-variable systems. Introducing the class of bosonic linear thermal operations to model operationally-feasible processes, we apply this model to identify uniquely quantum properties of bosonic states that refine classical notions of thermodynamic resourcefulness. Among these are (1) a suite of temperature-like quantities generalizing the equilibrium temperature to quantum, non-equilibrium scenarios; (2) signal-to-noise ratios quantifying a system's capacity to carry information in phase-space displacement; and (3) well-established non-classicality measures quantifying the resolution in sensing and parameter estimation tasks.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Extreme dimensionality reduction with quantum modelling

Effective and efficient forecasting relies on identification of the relevant information contained in past observations -- the predictive features -- and isolating it from the rest. When the future of a process bears a strong dependence on its behaviour far into the past, there are many such features to store, necessitating complex models with extensive memories. Here, we highlight a family of stochastic processes whose minimal classical models must devote unboundedly many bits to tracking the past. For this family, we identify quantum models of equal accuracy that can store all relevant information within a single two-dimensional quantum system (qubit). This represents the ultimate limit of quantum compression and highlights an immense practical advantage of quantum technologies for the forecasting and simulation of complex systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Quantum Coherence and Ergotropy

Constraints on work extraction are fundamental to our operational understanding of the thermodynamics of both classical and quantum systems. In the quantum setting, finite-time control operations typically generate coherence in the instantaneous energy eigenbasis of the dynamical system. Thermodynamic cycles can, in principle, be designed to extract work from this non-equilibrium resource. Here, we isolate and study the quantum coherent component to the work yield in such protocols. Specifically, we identify a coherent contribution to the ergotropy (the maximum amount of unitarily extractable work via cyclical variation of Hamiltonian parameters). We show this by dividing the optimal transformation into an incoherent operation and a coherence extraction cycle. We obtain bounds for both the coherent and incoherent parts of the extractable work and discuss their saturation in specific settings. Our results are illustrated with several examples, including finite-dimensional systems and bosonic Gaussian states that describe recent experiments on quantum heat engines with a quantized load.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Stabilizing Open Quantum Batteries by Sequential Measurements

A quantum battery is a work reservoir that stores energy in quantum degrees of freedom. When immersed in an environment an open quantum battery needs to be stabilized against free energy leakage into the environment. For this purpose we here propose a simple protocol that relies on projective measurement and obeys a second-law like inequality for the battery entropy production rate.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Measures of distinguishability between stochastic processes

Quantifying how distinguishable two stochastic processes are lies at the heart of many fields, such as machine learning and quantitative finance. While several measures have been proposed for this task, none have universal applicability and ease of use. In this Letter, we suggest a set of requirements for a well-behaved measure of process distinguishability. Moreover, we propose a family of measures, called divergence rates, that satisfy all of these requirements. Focussing on a particular member of this family -- the co-emission divergence rate -- we show that it can be computed efficiently, behaves qualitatively similar to other commonly-used measures in their regimes of applicability, and remains well-behaved in scenarios where other measures break down.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2019

Matrix Product States for Quantum Stochastic Modelling

In stochastic modeling, there has been a significant effort towards finding predictive models that predict a stochastic process' future using minimal information from its past. Meanwhile, in condensed matter physics, matrix product states (MPS) are known as a particularly efficient representation of 1D spin chains. In this Letter, we associate each stochastic process with a suitable quantum state of a spin chain. We then show that the optimal predictive model for the process leads directly to an MPS representation of the associated quantum state. Conversely, MPS methods offer a systematic construction of the best known quantum predictive models. This connection allows an improved method for computing the quantum memory needed for generating optimal predictions. We prove that this memory coincides with the entanglement of the associated spin chain across the past-future bipartition.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Operational resource theory of continuous-variable nonclassicality

Genuinely quantum states of a harmonic oscillator may be distinguished from their classical counterparts by the Glauber-Sudarshan P-representation -- a state lacking a positive P-function is said to be nonclassical. In this paper, we propose a general operational framework for studying nonclassicality as a resource in networks of passive linear elements and measurements with feed-forward. Within this setting, we define new measures of nonclassicality based on the quantum fluctuations of quadratures, as well as the quantum Fisher information of quadrature displacements. These lead to fundamental constraints on the manipulation of nonclassicality, especially its concentration into subsystems, that apply to generic multi-mode non-Gaussian states. Special cases of our framework include no-go results in the concentration of squeezing and a complete hierarchy of nonclassicality for single mode Gaussian states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

A practical, unitary simulator for non-Markovian complex processes

Stochastic processes are as ubiquitous throughout the quantitative sciences as they are notorious for being difficult to simulate and predict. In this letter we propose a unitary quantum simulator for discrete-time stochastic processes which requires less internal memory than any classical analogue throughout the simulation. The simulator's internal memory requirements equal those of the best previous quantum models. However, in contrast to previous models it only requires a (small) finite-dimensional Hilbert space. Moreover, since the simulator operates unitarily throughout, it avoids any unnecessary information loss. We provide a stepwise construction for simulators for a large class of stochastic processes hence directly opening the possibility for experimental implementations with current platforms for quantum computation. The results are illustrated for an example process.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Speeding up Thermalisation via Open Quantum System Variational Optimisation

Optimizing open quantum system evolution is an important step on the way to achieving quantum computing and quantum thermodynamic tasks. In this article, we approach optimisation via variational principles and derive an open quantum system variational algorithm explicitly for Lindblad evolution in Liouville space. As an example of such control over open system evolution, we control the thermalisation of a qubit attached to a thermal Lindbladian bath with a damping rate $γ$. Since thermalisation is an asymptotic process and the variational algorithm we consider is for fixed time, we present a way to discuss the potential speedup of thermalisation that can be expected from such variational algorithms.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Tightening Quantum Speed Limits for Almost All States

Conventional quantum speed limits perform poorly for mixed quantum states: They are generally not tight and often significantly underestimate the fastest possible evolution speed. To remedy this, for unitary driving, we derive two quantum speed limits that outperform the traditional bounds for almost all quantum states. Moreover, our bounds are significantly simpler to compute as well as experimentally more accessible. Our bounds have a clear geometric interpretation; they arise from the evaluation of the angle between generalized Bloch vectors.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Enhancing the charging power of quantum batteries

Can collective quantum effects make a difference in a meaningful thermodynamic operation? Focusing on energy storage and batteries, we demonstrate that quantum mechanics can lead to an enhancement in the amount of work deposited per unit time, i.e., the charging power, when $N$ batteries are charged collectively. We first derive analytic upper bounds for the collective \emph{quantum advantage} in charging power for two choices of constraints on the charging Hamiltonian. We then highlight the importance of entanglement by proving that the quantum advantage vanishes when the collective state of the batteries is restricted to be in the separable ball. Finally, we provide an upper bound to the achievable quantum advantage when the interaction order is restricted, i.e., at most $k$ batteries are interacting. Our result is a fundamental limit on the advantage offered by quantum technologies over their classical counterparts as far as energy deposition is concerned.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Quantacell: Powerful charging of quantum batteries

We study the problem of charging a quantum battery in finite time. We demonstrate an analytical optimal protocol for the case of a single qubit. Extending this analysis to an array of N qubits, we demonstrate that an N-fold advantage in power per qubit can be achieved when global operations are permitted. The exemplary analytic argument for this quantum advantage in the charging power is backed up by numerical analysis using optimal control techniques. It is demonstrated that the quantum advantage for power holds when, with cyclic operation in mind, initial and final states are required to be separable.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Quantum thermodynamics of general quantum processes

Accurately describing work extraction from a quantum system is a central objective for the extension of thermodynamics to individual quantum systems. The concepts of work and heat are surprisingly subtle when generalizations are made to arbitrary quantum states. We formulate an operational thermodynamics suitable for application to an open quantum system undergoing quantum evolution under a general quantum process by which we mean a completely-positive and trace-preserving map. We derive an operational first law of thermodynamics for such processes and show consistency with the second law. We show that heat, from the first law, is positive when the input state of the map majorises the output state. Moreover, the change in entropy is also positive for the same majorisation condition. This makes a strong connection between the two operational laws of thermodynamics.

quant-ph↗