Arun Kumar Pati

Quantum discord and classical correlation can tighten the uncertainty principle in the presence of quantum memory

Uncertainty relations capture the essence of the inevitable randomness associated with the outcomes of two incompatible quantum measurements. Recently, Berta et al. [Nature Phys. 6, 659 (2010)] have shown that the lower bound on the uncertainties of the measurement outcomes depends on the correlations between the observed system and an observer who possesses a quantum memory. If the system is maximally entangled with its memory, the outcomes of two incompatible measurements made on the system can be predicted precisely. Here, we obtain an uncertainty relation that tightens the lower bound of Berta et al. by incorporating an additional term that depends on the quantum discord and the classical correlations of the joint state of the observed system and the quantum memory. We discuss several examples of states for which our lower bound is tighter than the bound of Berta et al. On the application side, we discuss the relevance of our inequality for the security of quantum key distribution and show that it can be used to provide bounds on the distillable common randomness and the entanglement of formation of bipartite quantum states.

Quantum discord with weak measurements

Abstract Weak measurements cause small change to quantum states, thereby opening up the possibility of new ways of manipulating and controlling quantum systems. We ask, can weak measurements reveal more quantum correlation in a composite quantum state? We prove that the weak measurement induced quantum discord, called as the “super quantum discord”, is always larger than the quantum discord captured by the strong measurement. Moreover, we prove the monotonicity of the super quantum discord as a function of the measurement strength and in the limit of strong projective measurement the super quantum discord becomes the normal quantum discord. We find that unlike the normal discord, for pure entangled states, the super quantum discord can exceed the quantum entanglement. Our results provide new insights on the nature of quantum correlation and suggest that the notion of quantum correlation is not only observer dependent but also depends on how weakly one perturbs the composite system. We illustrate the key results for pure as well as mixed entangled states.

Quantum dissension: Generalizing quantum discord for three-qubit states

Abstract We introduce the notion of quantum dissension for a three-qubit system as a measure of quantum correlations. We use three classically equivalent expressions of three-variable mutual information. Their differences are zero classically but not so in quantum domain. It generalizes the notion of quantum discord to a multipartite system. There can be multiple definitions of the dissension depending on the nature of projective measurements done on the subsystems. As an illustration, we explore the consequences of these multiple definitions and compare them for three-qubit pure and mixed GHZ and W states. We find that unlike discord, dissension can be negative. This is because measurement on a subsystem may enhance the correlations in the rest of the system. Furthermore, when we consider a bipartite split of the system, the dissension reduces to discord. This approach can pave a way to generalize the notion of quantum correlations in the multiparticle setting.

Average coherence and its typicality for random pure states

We investigate the generic aspects of quantum coherence guided by the concentration of measure phenomenon. We find the average relative entropy of coherence of pure quantum states sampled randomly from the uniform Haar measure and show that it is typical, i.e., the probability that the relative entropy of coherence of a randomly chosen pure state is not equal to the average relative entropy of coherence (within an arbitrarily small error) is exponentially small in the dimension of the Hilbert space. We find the dimension of a random subspace of the total Hilbert space such that all pure states that reside on it almost always have at least a fixed nonzero amount of the relative entropy of coherence that is arbitrarily close to the typical value of coherence. Further, we show, with high probability, every state (pure or mixed) in this subspace also has the coherence of formation at least equal to the same fixed nonzero amount of the typical value of coherence. Thus, the states from these random subspaces can be useful in the relevant coherence consuming tasks like catalysis in the coherence resource theory. Moreover, we calculate the expected trace distance between the diagonal part of a random pure quantum state and the maximally mixed state and find that it does not approach to zero in the asymptotic limit. This establishes that randomly chosen pure states are not typically maximally coherent (within an arbitrarily small error). Additionally, we find the lower bound on the relative entropy of coherence for the set of pure states whose diagonal parts are at a fixed most probable distance from the maximally mixed state.

Average subentropy, coherence and entanglement of random mixed quantum states

Compact expressions for the average subentropy and coherence are obtained for random mixed states that are generated via various probability measures. Surprisingly, our results show that the average subentropy of random mixed states approaches to the maximum value of the subentropy which is attained for the maximally mixed state as we increase the dimension. In the special case of the random mixed states sampled from the induced measure via partial tracing of random bipartite pure states, we establish the typicality of the relative entropy of coherence for random mixed states invoking the concentration of measure phenomenon. Our results also indicate that mixed quantum states are less useful compared to pure quantum states in higher dimension when we extract quantum coherence as a resource. This is because of the fact that average coherence of random mixed states is bounded uniformly, however, the average coherence of random pure states increases with the increasing dimension. As an important application, we establish the typicality of relative entropy of entanglement and distillable entanglement for a specific class of random bipartite mixed states. In particular, most of the random states in this specific class have relative entropy of entanglement and distillable entanglement equal to some fixed number (to within an arbitrary small error), thereby hugely reducing the complexity of computation of these entanglement measures for this specific class of mixed states.

Energy cost of creating quantum coherence

We consider the physical situations where the resource theories of coherence and thermodynamics play competing roles. In particular, we study the creation of quantum coherence using unitary operations with limited thermodynamic resources. We first find the maximal coherence that can be created under unitary operations starting from a thermal state and find explicitly the unitary transformation that creates the maximal coherence. Since coherence is created by unitary operations starting from a thermal state, it requires some amount of energy. This motivates us to explore the trade-off between the amount of coherence that can be created and the energy cost of the unitary process. We find the maximal achievable coherence under the constraint on the available energy. Additionally, we compare the maximal coherence and the maximal total correlation that can be created under unitary transformations with the same available energy at our disposal. We find that when maximal coherence is created with limited energy, the total correlation created in the process is upper bounded by the maximal coherence and vice versa. For two qubit systems we show that there does not exist any unitary transformation that creates maximal coherence and maximal total correlation simultaneously with a limited energy cost.

Quantum speed limit for mixed states using an experimentally realizable metric

Abstract Here, we introduce a new metric for non-degenerate density operator evolving along unitary orbit and show that this is experimentally realizable operation dependent metric on the quantum state space. Using this metric, we obtain the geometric uncertainty relation that leads to a new quantum speed limit (QSL). We also obtain a Margolus–Levitin bound and an improved Chau bound for mixed states. We propose how to measure this new distance and speed limit in quantum interferometry. Finally, we also generalize the QSL for completely positive trace preserving evolutions.

Experimental test of uncertainty relations for general unitary operators

Uncertainty relations are the hallmarks of quantum physics and have been widely investigated since its original formulation. To understand and quantitatively capture the essence of preparation uncertainty in quantum interference, the uncertainty relations for unitary operators need to be investigated. Here, we report the first experimental investigation of the uncertainty relations for general unitary operators. In particular, we experimentally demonstrate the uncertainty relation for general unitary operators proved by Bagchi and Pati [ Phys. Rev. A94, 042104 (2016)], which places a non-trivial lower bound on the sum of uncertainties and removes the triviality problem faced by the product of the uncertainties. The experimental findings agree with the predictions of quantum theory and respect the new uncertainty relation.

Uncertainty relations for general unitary operators

We derive several uncertainty relations for two arbitrary unitary operators acting on physical states of a Hilbert space. We show that our bounds are tighter in various cases than the ones existing in the current literature. Using the uncertainty relation for the unitary operators, we obtain the tight state-independent lower bound for the uncertainty of two Pauli observables and anticommuting observables in higher dimensions. With regard to the minimum-uncertainty states, we derive the minimum-uncertainty state equation by the analytic method and relate this to the ground-state problem of the Harper Hamiltonian. Furthermore, the higher-dimensional limit of the uncertainty relations and minimum-uncertainty states are explored. From an operational point of view, we show that the uncertainty in the unitary operator is directly related to the visibility of quantum interference in an interferometer where one arm of the interferometer is affected by a unitary operator. This shows a principle of preparation uncertainty, i.e., for any quantum system, the amount of visibility for two general noncommuting unitary operators is nontrivially upper bounded.

Stronger error disturbance relations for incompatible quantum measurements

We formulate a new error-disturbance relation, which is free from explicit dependence upon variances in observables. This error-disturbance relation shows improvement over the one provided by the Branciard inequality and the Ozawa inequality for some initial states and for particular class of joint measurements under consideration. We also prove a modified form of Ozawas error-disturbance relation. The later relation provides a tighter bound compared to the Ozawa and the Branciard inequalities for a small number of states.