arXiv subjects

Toby S. Cubitt

Publications and source records attributed to Toby S. Cubitt.

30 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

An Information-Theoretic Proof of the Constructive Commutative Quantum Lovász Local Lemma

The Quantum Lovász Local Lemma (QLLL) [AKS12] establishes non-constructively that any quantum system constrained by a local Hamiltonian has a zero-energy ground state, if the local Hamiltonian terms overlap only in a certain restricted way. In this paper, we present an efficient quantum algorithm to prepare this ground state for the special case of commuting projector terms. The related classical problem has been open for more than 34 years. Our algorithm follows the breakthrough ideas of Moser's [Moser09] classical algorithm and lifts his information theoretic argument to the quantum setting. A similar result has been independently published by Arad and Sattath [AS13] recently.

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arXiv2012

Preparing topological PEPS on a quantum computer

Simulating of exotic phases of matter that are not amenable to classical techniques is one of the most important potential applications of quantum information processing. We present an efficient algorithm for preparing a large class of topological quantum states -- the G-injective Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS) -- on a quantum computer. Important examples include the resonant valence bond (RVB) states, conjectured to be topological spin liquids. The runtime of the algorithm scales polynomially with the condition number of the PEPS projectors, and inverse-polynomially in the spectral gap of the PEPS parent Hamiltonian.

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arXiv2012

Extracting dynamical equations from experimental data is NP-hard

The behavior of any physical system is governed by its underlying dynamical equations. Much of physics is concerned with discovering these dynamical equations and understanding their consequences. In this work, we show that, remarkably, identifying the underlying dynamical equation from any amount of experimental data, however precise, is a provably computationally hard problem (it is NP-hard), both for classical and quantum mechanical systems. As a by-product of this work, we give complexity-theoretic answers to both the quantum and classical embedding problems, two long-standing open problems in mathematics (the classical problem, in particular, dating back over 70 years).

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arXiv2011

Are problems in Quantum Information Theory (un)decidable?

This note is intended to foster a discussion about the extent to which typical problems arising in quantum information theory are algorithmically decidable (in principle rather than in practice). Various problems in the context of entanglement theory and quantum channels turn out to be decidable via quantifier elimination as long as they admit a compact formulation without quantification over integers. For many asymptotically defined properties which have to hold for all or for one integer N, however, effective procedures seem to be difficult if not impossible to find. We review some of the main tools for (dis)proving decidability and apply them to problems in quantum information theory. We find that questions like "can we overcome fidelity 1/2 w.r.t. a two-qubit singlet state?" easily become undecidable. A closer look at such questions might rule out some of the "single-letter" formulas sought in quantum information theory.

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arXiv2011

The Complexity of Relating Quantum Channels to Master Equations

Completely positive, trace preserving (CPT) maps and Lindblad master equations are both widely used to describe the dynamics of open quantum systems. The connection between these two descriptions is a classic topic in mathematical physics. One direction was solved by the now famous result due to Lindblad, Kossakowski Gorini and Sudarshan, who gave a complete characterisation of the master equations that generate completely positive semi-groups. However, the other direction has remained open: given a CPT map, is there a Lindblad master equation that generates it (and if so, can we find it's form)? This is sometimes known as the Markovianity problem. Physically, it is asking how one can deduce underlying physical processes from experimental observations. We give a complexity theoretic answer to this problem: it is NP-hard. We also give an explicit algorithm that reduces the problem to integer semi-definite programming, a well-known NP problem. Together, these results imply that resolving the question of which CPT maps can be generated by master equations is tantamount to solving P=NP: any efficiently computable criterion for Markovianity would imply P=NP; whereas a proof that P=NP would imply that our algorithm already gives an efficiently computable criterion. Thus, unless P does equal NP, there cannot exist any simple criterion for determining when a CPT map has a master equation description. However, we also show that if the system dimension is fixed (relevant for current quantum process tomography experiments), then our algorithm scales efficiently in the required precision, allowing an underlying Lindblad master equation to be determined efficiently from even a single snapshot in this case. Our work also leads to similar complexity-theoretic answers to a related long-standing open problem in probability theory.

math-ph↗

arXiv2011

An Extreme form of Superactivation for Quantum Zero-Error Capacities

The zero-error capacity of a channel is the rate at which it can send information perfectly, with zero probability of error, and has long been studied in classical information theory. We show that the zero-error capacity of quantum channels exhibits an extreme form of non-additivity, one which is not possible for classical channels, or even for the usual capacities of quantum channels. By combining probabilistic arguments with algebraic geometry, we prove that there exist channels E1 and E2 with no zero-error classical capacity whatsoever, C_0(E1) = C_0(E2) = 0, but whose joint zero-error quantum capacity is positive, Q_0(E1 x E2) >= 1. This striking effect is an extreme from of the superactivation phenomenon, as it implies that both the classical and quantum zero-error capacities of these channels can be superactivated simultaneously, whilst being a strictly stronger property of capacities. Superactivation of the quantum zero-error capacity was not previously known.

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arXiv2011

Superactivation of the Asymptotic Zero-Error Classical Capacity of a Quantum Channel

The zero-error classical capacity of a quantum channel is the asymptotic rate at which it can be used to send classical bits perfectly, so that they can be decoded with zero probability of error. We show that there exist pairs of quantum channels, neither of which individually have any zero-error capacity whatsoever (even if arbitrarily many uses of the channels are available), but such that access to even a single copy of both channels allows classical information to be sent perfectly reliably. In other words, we prove that the zero-error classical capacity can be superactivated. This result is the first example of superactivation of a classical capacity of a quantum channel.

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arXiv2011

Entanglement can completely defeat quantum noise

We describe two quantum channels that individually cannot send any information, even classical, without some chance of decoding error. But together a single use of each channel can send quantum information perfectly reliably. This proves that the zero-error classical capacity exhibits superactivation, the extreme form of the superadditivity phenomenon in which entangled inputs allow communication over zero capacity channels. But our result is stronger still, as it even allows zero-error quantum communication when the two channels are combined. Thus our result shows a new remarkable way in which entanglement across two systems can be used to resist noise, in this case perfectly. We also show a new form of superactivation by entanglement shared between sender and receiver.

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arXiv2010

Improving zero-error classical communication with entanglement

Given one or more uses of a classical channel, only a certain number of messages can be transmitted with zero probability of error. The study of this number and its asymptotic behaviour constitutes the field of classical zero-error information theory, the quantum generalisation of which has started to develop recently. We show that, given a single use of certain classical channels, entangled states of a system shared by the sender and receiver can be used to increase the number of (classical) messages which can be sent with no chance of error. In particular, we show how to construct such a channel based on any proof of the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem. This is a new example of the use of quantum effects to improve the performance of a classical task. We investigate the connection between this phenomenon and that of ``pseudo-telepathy'' games. The use of generalised non-signalling correlations to assist in this task is also considered. In this case, a particularly elegant theory results and, remarkably, it is sometimes possible to transmit information with zero-error using a channel with no unassisted zero-error capacity.

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arXiv2010

Zero-error channel capacity and simulation assisted by non-local correlations

Shannon's theory of zero-error communication is re-examined in the broader setting of using one classical channel to simulate another exactly, and in the presence of various resources that are all classes of non-signalling correlations: Shared randomness, shared entanglement and arbitrary non-signalling correlations. Specifically, when the channel being simulated is noiseless, this reduces to the zero-error capacity of the channel, assisted by the various classes of non-signalling correlations. When the resource channel is noiseless, it results in the "reverse" problem of simulating a noisy channel exactly by a noiseless one, assisted by correlations. In both cases, 'one-shot' separations between the power of the different assisting correlations are exhibited. The most striking result of this kind is that entanglement can assist in zero-error communication, in stark contrast to the standard setting of communicaton with asymptotically vanishing error in which entanglement does not help at all. In the asymptotic case, shared randomness is shown to be just as powerful as arbitrary non-signalling correlations for noisy channel simulation, which is not true for the asymptotic zero-error capacities. For assistance by arbitrary non-signalling correlations, linear programming formulas for capacity and simulation are derived, the former being equal (for channels with non-zero unassisted capacity) to the feedback-assisted zero-error capacity originally derived by Shannon to upper bound the unassisted zero-error capacity. Finally, a kind of reversibility between non-signalling-assisted capacity and simulation is observed, mirroring the famous "reverse Shannon theorem".

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arXiv2008

The structure of degradable quantum channels

Degradable quantum channels are among the only channels whose quantum and private classical capacities are known. As such, determining the structure of these channels is a pressing open question in quantum information theory. We give a comprehensive review of what is currently known about the structure of degradable quantum channels, including a number of new results as well as alternate proofs of some known results. In the case of qubits, we provide a complete characterization of all degradable channels with two dimensional output, give a new proof that a qubit channel with two Kraus operators is either degradable or anti-degradable and present a complete description of anti-degradable unital qubit channels with a new proof. For higher output dimensions we explore the relationship between the output and environment dimensions ($d_B$ and $d_E$ respectively) of degradable channels. For several broad classes of channels we show that they can be modeled with a environment that is "small" in the sense $d_E \leq d_B$. Perhaps surprisingly, we also present examples of degradable channels with ``large'' environments, in the sense that the minimal dimension $d_E > d_B$. Indeed, one can have $d_E > \tfrac{1}{4} d_B^2$. In the case of channels with diagonal Kraus operators, we describe the subclass which are complements of entanglement breaking channels. We also obtain a number of results for channels in the convex hull of conjugations with generalized Pauli matrices. However, a number of open questions remain about these channels and the more general case of random unitary channels.

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arXiv2004

Entanglement in the stabilizer formalism

We define a multi-partite entanglement measure for stabilizer states, which can be computed efficiently from a set of generators of the stabilizer group. Our measure applies to qubits, qudits and continuous variables.

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