arXiv subjects

Ugo Marzolino

Publications and source records attributed to Ugo Marzolino.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Error convergence of quantum linear system solvers

We analyze the performance of the Harrow-Hassidim-Lloyd algorithm (HHL algorithm) for solving linear problems and of a variant of this algorithm (HHL variant) commonly encountered in literature. This variant relieves the algorithm of preparing an entangled initial state of an auxiliary register. We prove that the computational error of the variant algorithm does not always converge to zero when the number of qubits is increased, unlike the original HHL algorithm. Both algorithms rely upon two fundamental quantum algorithms, the quantum phase estimation and the amplitude amplification. In particular, the error of the HHL variant oscillates due to the presence of undesired phases in the amplitude to be amplified, while these oscillations are suppressed in the original HHL algorithm. Then, we propose a modification of the HHL variant, by amplifying an amplitude of the state vector that does not exhibit the above destructive interference. We also study the complexity of these algorithms in the light of recent results on simulation of unitaries used in the quantum phase estimation step, and show that the modified algorithm has smaller error and lower complexity than the HHL variant. We supported our findings with numerical simulations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Precision magnetometry exploiting excited state quantum phase transitions

Critical behaviour in phase transitions is a resource for enhanced precision metrology. The reason is that the function, known as Fisher information, is superextensive at critical points, and, at the same time, quantifies performances of metrological protocols. Therefore, preparing metrological probes at phase transitions provides enhanced precision in measuring the transition control parameter. We focus on the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model that exhibits excited state quantum phase transitions at different magnetic fields. Resting on the model spectral properties, we show broad peaks of the Fisher information, and propose efficient schemes for precision magnetometry. The Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model was first introduced for superconductivity and for nuclear systems, and recently realised in several condensed matter platforms. The above metrological schemes can be also exploited to measure microscopic properties of systems able to simulate the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Quantum thermochemical engines

Conversion of chemical energy into mechanical work is the fundamental mechanism of several natural phenomena at the nanoscale, like molecular machines and Brownian motors. Quantum mechanical effects are relevant for optimising these processes and to implement them at the atomic scale. This paper focuses on engines that transform chemical work into mechanical work through energy and particle exchanges with thermal sources at different chemical potentials. Irreversibility is introduced by modelling the engine transformations with finite-time dynamics generated by a time-depending quantum master equation. Quantum degenerate gases provide maximum efficiency for reversible engines, whereas the classical limit implies small efficiency. For irreversible engines, both the output power and the efficiency at maximum power are much larger in the quantum regime than in the classical limit. The analysis of ideal homogeneous gases grasps the impact of quantum statistics on the above performances, which persists in the presence of interactions and more general trapping. The performance dependence on different types of Bose-Einstein Condensates (BECs) is also studied. BECs under considerations are standard BECs with a finite fraction of particles in the ground state, and generalised BECs where eigenstates with parallel momenta, or those with coplanar momenta are macroscopically occupied according to the confinement anisotropy. Quantum statistics is therefore a resource for enhanced performances of converting chemical into mechanical work.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Locality and entanglement of indistinguishable particles

Entanglement is one of the strongest quantum correlation, and is a key ingredient in fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics and a resource for quantum technologies. While entanglement theory is well settled for distinguishable particles, there are five inequivalent approaches to entanglement of indistinguishable particles. We analyse the different definitions of indistinguishable particle entanglement in the light of the locality notion. This notion is specified by two steps: i) the identification of subsystems by means of their local operators; ii) the requirement that entanglement represent correlations between the above subsets of operators. We prove that three of the aforementioned five entanglement definitions are incompatible with any locality notion defined as above.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Entanglement and non-locality in quantum protocols with identical particles

We study the role of entanglement and non-locality in quantum protocols that make use of systems of identical particles. Unlike in the case of distinguishable particles, the notions of entanglement and non-locality for systems whose constituents cannot be distinguished and singly addressed are still debated. We clarify why the only approach that avoids incongruities and paradoxes is the one based on the second quantization formalism whereby it is the entanglement of the modes that can be populated by the particles what really matters and not the particles themselves. Indeed, by means of a metrological and of a teleportation protocol, we show that inconsistencies arise in formulations that force entanglement and non-locality to be properties of the identical particles rather than of the modes they can occupy. The reason resides in the fact that orthogonal modes can always be addressed while identical particles can not.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

$μPT$ statistical ensemble: systems with fluctuating energy, particle number, and volume

Within the theory of statistical ensemble, the so-called $μPT$ ensemble describes equilibrium systems that exchange energy, particles, and volume with the surrounding. General, model-independent features of volume and particle number statistics are derived. Non-analytic points of the partition function are discussed in connection with divergent fluctuations and ensemble equivalence. Quantum and classical ideal gases, and a model of Bose gas with mean-field interactions are discussed as examples of the above considerations.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2018

Quantum enhanced measurements without entanglement

Quantum-enhanced measurements exploit quantum mechanical effects for increasing the sensitivity of measurements of certain physical parameters and have great potential for both fundamental science and concrete applications. Most of the research has so far focused on using highly entangled states, which are, however, difficult to produce and to stabilize for a large number of constituents. In the following we review alternative mechanisms, notably the use of more general quantum correlations such as quantum discord, identical particles, or non-trivial hamiltonians; the estimation of thermodynamical parameters or parameters characterizing non-equilibrium states; and the use of quantum phase transitions. We describe both theoretically achievable enhancements and enhanced sensitivities, not primarily based on entanglement, that have already been demonstrated experimentally, and indicate some possible future research directions.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Fisher information approach to non-equilibrium phase transitions in quantum XXZ spin chain with boundary noise

We investigated quantum critical behaviours in the non-equilibrium steady state of a $XXZ$ spin chain with boundary Markovian noise using the Fisher information. The latter represents the distance between two infinitesimally close states, and its superextensive size scaling witnesses a critical behaviour due to a phase transition, since all the interaction terms are extensive. Perturbatively in the noise strength, we found superextensive Fisher information at anisotropy $|Δ|\leqslant1$ and irrational $\frac{\arccosΔ}π$ irrespective of the order of two non-commuting limits, i.e. the thermodynamic limit and the limit of sending $\frac{\arccosΔ}π$ to an irrational number via a sequence of rational approximants. From this result we argue the existence of a non-equilibrium quantum phase transition with a critical phase $|Δ|\leqslant1$. From the non-superextensivity of the Fisher information of reduced states, we infer that this non-equilibrium quantum phase transition does not have local order parameters but has non-local ones, at least at $|Δ|=1$. In the non-perturbative regime for the noise strength, we numerically computed the reduced Fisher information which lower bounds the full state Fisher information, and is superextensive only at $|Δ|=1$. Form the latter result, we derived local order parameters at $|Δ|=1$ in the non-perturbative case. The existence of critical behaviour witnessed by the Fisher information in the phase $|Δ|<1$ is still an open problem. The Fisher information also represents the best sensitivity for any estimation of the control parameter, in our case the anisotropy $Δ$, and its superextensivity implies enhanced estimation precision which is also highly robust in the presence of a critical phase.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2016

Computational complexity of non-equilibrium steady states of quantum spin chains

We study non-equilibrium steady states (NESS) of spin chains with boundary Markovian dissipation from the computational complexity point of view. We focus on XX chains whose NESS are matrix product operators (MPO), i.e. with coefficients of a tensor operator basis described by transition amplitudes in an auxiliary space. Encoding quantum algorithms in the auxiliary space, we show that estimating expectations of operators, being local in the sense that each acts on disjoint sets of few spins covering all the system, provides the answers of problems at least as hard as, and believed by many computer scientists to be much harder than, those solved by quantum computers. We draw conclusions on the hardness of the above estimations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Performances and robustness of quantum teleportation with identical particles

When quantum teleportation is performed with truly identical massive particles, indistinguishability allows us to teleport addressable degrees of freedom which do not identify particles, but e.g. orthogonal modes. The key resource of the protocol is a state of entangled modes, but the conservation of the total number of particles does not allow for perfect deterministic teleportation unless the number of particles in the resource state goes to infinity. Here, we study the convergence of teleportation performances in the above limit, and provide sufficient conditions for asymptotic perfect teleporation. We also apply these conditions to the case of resource states affected by noise.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Quantum teleportation with identical particles

We study teleportation with identical massive particles. Indistinguishability imposes that the relevant degrees of freedom to be teleported are not particles, but rather addressable orthogonal modes. We discuss the performances of teleportation under the constraint of conservation of the total number of particles. The latter inevitably decreases the teleportation fidelity. Moreover, even though a phase reference, given by the coupling to a reservoir, circumverts the constraint, it does not restore perfect deterministic teleportation. The latter is only achievable with some special resource entangled states and when the number of particles tends to infinity. Interestingly, some of such states are the many-particle atomic coherent states and the ground state of cold atoms loaded into a double well potential, which are routinely prepared in experiments.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

Quantum metrology with non-equilibrium steady states of quantum spin chains

We consider parameter estimations with probes being the boundary driven/dissipated non- equilibrium steady states of XXZ spin 1/2 chains. The parameters to be estimated are the dissipation coupling and the anisotropy of the spin-spin interaction. In the weak coupling regime we compute the scaling of the Fisher information, i.e. the inverse best sensitivity among all estimators, with the number of spins. We find superlinear scalings and transitions between the distinct, isotropic and anisotropic, phases. We also look at the best relative error which decreases with the number of particles faster than the shot-noise only for the estimation of anisotropy.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2013

Entanglement in dissipative dynamics of identical particles

Entanglement of identical massive particles recently gained attention, because of its relevance in highly controllable systems, e.g. ultracold gases. It accounts for correlations among modes instead of particles, providing a different paradigm for quantum information. We prove that the entanglement of almost all states rarely vanishes in the presence of noise, and analyse the most relevant noise in ultracold gases: dephasing and particle losses. Furthermore, when the particle number increases, the entanglement decay can turn from exponential into algebraic.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2013

Precision Measurements of Temperature and Chemical Potential of Quantum Gases

We investigate the sensitivity with which the temperature and the chemical potential characterizing quantum gases can be measured. We calculate the corresponding quantum Fisher information matrices for both fermionic and bosonic gases. For the latter, particular attention is devoted to the situation close to the Bose-Einstein condensation transition, which we examine not only for the standard scenario in three dimensions, but also for generalized condensation in lower dimensions, where the bosons condense in a subspace of Hilbert space instead of a unique ground state, as well as condensation at fixed volume or fixed pressure. We show that Bose Einstein condensation can lead to sub-shot noise sensitivity for the measurement of the chemical potential. We also examine the influence of interactions on the sensitivity in three different models, and show that mean-field and contact interactions deteriorate the sensitivity but only slightly for experimentally accessible weak interactions.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Entangled identical particles and noise

For systems of identical Bosons, it is necessary to reformulate the notions of separability and entanglement in algebraic terms shifting the emphasis from the particle aspect of first quantization to the mode description typical of second quantization. Within this new framework, we show that, unlike for systems consisting of distinguishable qubits, negativity is an exhaustive bipartite entanglement witness for systems with fixed number of Bosons; further, we investigate the impact of dephasing noise in relation to the use of such many-body Bosonic systems in metrological applications.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

Reconstruction of time-dependent coefficients: a check of approximation schemes for non-Markovian convolutionless dissipative generators

We propose a procedure to fully reconstruct the time-dependent coefficients of convolutionless non-Markovian dissipative generators via a finite number of experimental measurements. By combining a tomography based approach with a proper data sampling, our proposal allows to relate the time-dependent coefficients governing the dissipative evolution of a quantum system to experimentally accessible quantities. The proposed scheme not only provides a way to retrieve full information about potentially unknown dissipative coefficients but also, most valuably, can be employed as a reliable consistency test for the approximations involved in the theoretical derivation of a given non-Markovian convolutionless master equation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

A tomographic approach to non-Markovian master equations

We propose a procedure based on symplectic tomography for reconstructing the unknown parameters of a convolutionless non-Markovian Gaussian noisy evolution. Whenever the time-dependent master equation coefficients are given as a function of some unknown time-independent parameters, we show that these parameters can be reconstructed by means of a finite number of tomograms. Two different approaches towards reconstruction, integral and differential, are presented and applied to a benchmark model made of a harmonic oscillator coupled to a bosonic bath. For this model the number of tomograms needed to retrieve the unknown parameters is explicitly computed.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

Statistical mechanics of multipartite entanglement

We characterize the multipartite entanglement of a system of n qubits in terms of the distribution function of the bipartite purity over all balanced bipartitions. We search for those (maximally multipartite entangled) states whose purity is minimum for all bipartitions and recast this optimization problem into a problem of statistical mechanics.

quant-ph↗