arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Matthias Kleinmann.
We show that, regardless of the dimension of the Hilbert space, there exists no set of rays revealing state-independent contextuality with less than 13 rays. This implies that the set proposed by Yu and Oh in dimension three [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 030402 (2012)] is actually the minimal set in quantum theory. This contrasts with the case of Kochen-Specker sets, where the smallest set occurs in dimension four.
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.
We define a simple rule that allows to describe sequences of projective measurements for a broad class of generalized probabilistic models. This class embraces quantum mechanics and classical probability theory, but, for example, also the hypothetical Popescu-Rohrlich box. For quantum mechanics, the definition yields the established Lüders's rule, which is the standard rule how to update the quantum state after a measurement. In the general case it can be seen as the least disturbing or most coherent way to perform sequential measurements. As example we show that Spekkens's toy model is an instance of our definition. We also demonstrate the possibility of strong post-quantum correlations as well as the existence of triple-slit correlations for certain non-quantum toy models.
Common tools for obtaining physical density matrices in experimental quantum state tomography are shown here to cause systematic errors. For example, using maximum likelihood or least squares optimization for state reconstruction, we observe a systematic underestimation of the fidelity and an overestimation of entanglement. A solution for this problem can be achieved by a linear evaluation of the data yielding reliable and computational simple bounds including error bars.
We show that the phenomenon of quantum contextuality can be used to certify lower bounds on the dimension accessed by the measurement devices. To prove this, we derive bounds for different dimensions and scenarios of the simplest noncontextuality inequalities. The resulting dimension witnesses work independently of the prepared quantum state. Our constructions are robust against noise and imperfections, and we show that a recent experiment can be viewed as an implementation of a state-independent quantum dimension witness.
Sequential measurements on a single particle play an important role in fundamental tests of quantum mechanics. We provide a general method to analyze temporal quantum correlations, which allows us to compute the maximal correlations for sequential measurements in quantum mechanics. As an application, we present the full characterization of temporal correlations in the simplest Leggett-Garg scenario and in the sequential measurement scenario associated with the most fundamental proof of the Kochen-Specker theorem.
The testability of the Kochen-Specker theorem is a subject of ongoing controversy. A central issue is that experimental implementations relying on sequential measurements cannot achieve perfect compatibility between the measurements and that therefore the notion of noncontextuality is not well defined. We demonstrate by an explicit model that such compatibility violations may yield a violation of noncontextuality inequalities, even if we assume that the incompatibilities merely originate from context-independent noise. We show, however, that this problem can be circumvented by combining the ideas behind Leggett-Garg inequalities with those of the Kochen-Specker theorem.
When experimental errors are ignored in an experiment, the subsequent analysis of its results becomes questionable. We develop tests to detect systematic errors in quantum experiments where only a finite amount of data is recorded and apply these tests to tomographic data taken in an ion trap experiment. We put particular emphasis on quantum state tomography and present three detection methods: the first two employ linear inequalities while the third is based on the generalized likelihood ratio.
What singles out quantum mechanics as the fundamental theory of Nature? Here we study local measurements in generalised probabilistic theories (GPTs) and investigate how observational limitations affect the production of correlations. We find that if only a subset of typical local measurements can be made then all the bipartite correlations produced in a GPT can be simulated to a high degree of accuracy by quantum mechanics. Our result makes use of a generalisation of Dvoretzky's theorem for GPTs. The tripartite correlations can go beyond those exhibited by quantum mechanics, however.
Given a multiparticle quantum state, one may ask whether it can be represented as a thermal state of some Hamiltonian with k-particle interactions only. The distance from the exponential family defined by these thermal states can be considered as a measure of complexity of a given state. We investigate the resulting optimization problem and show how symmetries can be exploited to simplify the task of finding the nearest thermal state in a given exponential family. We also present an algorithm for the computation of the complexity measure and consider specific examples to demonstrate its applicability.
Contextuality is a natural generalization of nonlocality which does not need composite systems or spacelike separation and offers a wider spectrum of interesting phenomena. Most notably, in quantum mechanics there exist scenarios where the contextual behavior is independent of the quantum state. We show that the quest for an optimal inequality separating quantum from classical noncontextual correlations in an state-independent manner admits an exact solution, as it can be formulated as a linear program. We introduce the noncontextuality polytope as a generalization of the locality polytope, and apply our method to identify two different tight optimal inequalities for the most fundamental quantum scenario with state-independent contextuality.
Entropic uncertainty relations express the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle by quantifying uncertainty in terms of entropy. Central questions include the derivation of lower bounds on the total uncertainty for given observables, the characterization of observables that allow strong uncertainty relations, and the construction of such relations for the case of several observables. We demonstrate how the stabilizer formalism can be applied to these questions. We show that the Maassen-Uffink entropic uncertainty relation is tight for the measurement in any pair of stabilizer bases. We compare the relative strengths of variance-based and various entropic uncertainty relations for dichotomic anticommuting observables.
The simulation of quantum effects requires certain classical resources, and quantifying them is an important step in order to characterize the difference between quantum and classical physics. For a simulation of the phenomenon of state-independent quantum contextuality, we show that the minimal amount of memory used by the simulation is the critical resource. We derive optimal simulation strategies for important cases and prove that reproducing the results of sequential measurements on a two-qubit system requires more memory than the information carrying capacity of the system.
How can one discriminate different inequivalent classes of multiparticle entanglement experimentally? We present an approach for the discrimination of an experimentally prepared state from the equivalence class of another state. We consider two possible measures for the discrimination strength of an observable. The first measure is based on the difference of expectation values, the second on the relative entropy of the probability distributions of the measurement outcomes. The interpretation of these measures and their usefulness for experiments with limited resources are discussed. In the case of graph states, the stabilizer formalism is employed to compute these quantities and to find sets of observables that result in the most decisive discrimination.
Entanglement is often verified by a violation of an inequality like a Bell inequality or an entanglement witness. Considerable effort has been devoted to the optimization of such inequalities in order to obtain a high violation. We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that such an optimization does not necessarily lead to a better entanglement test, if the statistical error is taken into account. Theoretically, we show for different error models that reducing the violation of an inequality can improve the significance. Experimentally, we observe this phenomenon in a four-photon experiment, testing the Mermin and Ardehali inequality for different levels of noise. Furthermore, we provide a way to develop entanglement tests with high statistical significance.
We consider a possible detector-efficiency loophole in experiments that detect entanglement via the local measurement of witness operators. Here, only local properties of the detectors are known. We derive a general threshold for the detector efficiencies which guarantees that a negative expectation value of a witness is due to entanglement, rather than to erroneous detectors. This threshold depends on the local decomposition of the witness and its measured expectation value. For two-qubit witnesses we find the local operator decomposition that is optimal with respect to closing the loophole.
Starting from the observation that reversible processes cannot increase the purity of any input state, we study deterministic physical processes, which map a set of states to a set of pure states. Such a process must map any state to the same pure output, if purity is demanded for the input set of all states. But otherwise, when the input set is restricted, it is possible to find non-trivial purifying processes. For the most restricted case of only two input states, we completely characterize the output of any such map. We furthermore consider maps, which combine the property of purity and reversibility on a set of states, and we derive necessary and sufficient conditions on sets, which permit such processes.
We introduce a constructive method to calculate the achievable secret key rate for a generic class of quantum key distribution protocols, when only a finite number n of signals is given. Our approach is applicable to all scenarios in which the quantum state shared by Alice and Bob is known. In particular, we consider the six state protocol with symmetric eavesdropping attacks, and show that for a small number of signals, i.e. below the order of 10^4, the finite key rate differs significantly from the asymptotic value for n approaching infinity. However, for larger n, a good approximation of the asymptotic value is found. We also study secret key rates for protocols using higher-dimensional quantum systems.