Quantum mechanics redefines information and its fundamental properties. Researchers at Perimeter Institute work to understand the properties of quantum information and study which information processing tasks are feasible, and which are infeasible or impossible. This includes research in quantum cryptography, which studies the trade-off between information extraction and disturbance, and its applications. It also includes research in quantum error correction, which involves the study of methods for protecting information against decoherence. Another important side of the field is studying the application of quantum information techniques and insights to other areas of physics, including quantum foundations and condensed matter.
If a large quantum computer (QC) existed today, what type of physical problems could we efficiently simulate on it that we could not simulate on a conventional computer? In this talk, I argue that a QC could solve some relevant physical "questions" more efficiently. First, I will focus on the quantum simulation of quantum systems satisfying different particle statistics (e.g., anyons), using a QC made of two-level physical systems or qubits. The existence of one-to-one mappings between different algebras of observables or between different Hilbert spaces allow us to represent and imitate any physical system by any other one (e.g., a bosonic system by a spin-1/2 system). We explain how these mappings can be performed showing quantum networks useful for the efficient evaluation of some physical properties, such as correlation functions and energy spectra. Second, I will focus on the quantum simulation of classical systems. Interestingly, the thermodynamic properties of any d-dimensional classical system can be obtained by studying the zero-temperature properties of an associated d-dimensional quantum system. This classical-quantum correspondence allows us to understand classical annealing procedures as slow (adiabatic) evolutions of the lowest-energy state of the corresponding quantum system. Since many of these problems are NP-hard and therefore difficult to solve, is worth investigating if a QC would be a better device to find the corresponding solutions.
A multi-partite entanglement measure is constructed via the distance or angle of the pure state to its nearest unentangled state.
The extention to mixed states is made via the convex-hull construction, as is done in the case of entanglement of formation. This geometric measure is shown to be a monotone. It can be calculated for various states, including arbitrary two-qubit states, generalized Werner and isotropic states in bi-partite systems. It is also calculated for various multi-partite pure and mixed states, including ground states of some physical models and states generated from quantum alogrithms, such as Grover's. A specific application to a spin model with quantum phase transistions will be presented in detail.The connection of the geometric measure to other entanglement properties will also be discussed.
Kolmogorov complexity is a measure of the information contained in a binary string. We investigate the notion of quantum Kolmogorov complexity, a measure of the information required to describe a quantum state. We show that for any definition of quantum Kolmogorov complexity measuring the number of classical bits required to describe a pure quantum state, there exists a pure n-qubit state which requires exponentially many bits of description. This is shown by relating the classical communication complexity to the quantum Kolmogorov complexity. Furthermore we give some examples of how quantum Kolmogorov complexity can be applied to prove results in different fields, such as quantum computation and communication.
Inferring a quantum system\'s state, from repeated measurements, is critical for verifying theories and designing quantum hardware. It\'s also surprisingly easy to do wrong, as illustrated by maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), the current state of the art. I\'ll explain why MLE yields unreliable and rank-deficient estimates, why you shouldn\'t be a quantum frequentist, and why we need a different approach. I\'ll show how operational divergences -- well-motivated metrics designed to evaluate estimates -- follow from quantum strictly proper scoring rules. This motivates Bayesian Mean Estimation (BME), and I\'ll show how it fixes most of the problems with MLE. I\'ll conclude with a couple of speculations about the future of quantum state and process estimatio
Quantum information theory has two equivalent mathematical conjectures concerning quantum channels, which are also equivalent to other important conjectures concerning the entanglement. In this talk I explain these conjectures and introduce recent results.
It is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics that non-orthogonal pure states cannot be distinguished with certainty, which leads to the following problem: Given a state picked at random from some ensemble, what is the maximum probability of success of determining which state we actually have? I will discuss two recently obtained analytic lower bounds on this optimal probability. An interesting case to which these bounds can be applied is that of ensembles consisting of states that are themselves picked at random. In this case, I will show that powerful results from random matrix theory may be used to give a strong lower bound on the probability of success, in the regime where the ratio of the number of states in the ensemble to the dimension of the states is constant. I will also briefly discuss applications to quantum computation (the oracle identification problem) and to the study of generic entanglement.
Ancillary state construction is a necessary component of quantum computing.
Ancillae are required both for error correction and for performing universal computation in a fault-tolerant way. Computation to an arbitrary accuracy, however, is effectively achieved by increasing the number of qubits in order to suppress the variance in the expected number of errors. Thus, it is important to be able to construct very large ancillary states. Concatenated quantum coding provides a means of constructing ancillae of any size, but, this fact aside, concatenation is not a particularly efficient form of coding. More efficient codes exist, but these codes lack the substructure of concatenated codes that enables fault-tolerant preparation of large ancillae.
In this talk I will discuss the advantages of coding in large blocks, both from the perspective of efficiency and analysis, and I will describe my progress in developing construction procedures for moderately large ancillae.
We explore the role of rotational symmetry of quantum key distribution
(QKD) protocols in their security. Specifically, in the first part of the
talk, we consider a generalized QKD protocol with discrete rotational
symmetry. Note that, before our work, each QKD protocol seems to have a
different security proof. Given that the techniques of those proofs are
similar, it will be interesting to have a unified proof for QKD protocols
with symmetry (e.g., the BB84 protocol and the SARG04 protocol). This is
exactly what we achieve in our work. We show that rotational symmetry
plays an important role in the unified security proof of QKD protocols
with symmetry, leading to simple and structural security relations. In the
second part, we consider a QKD protocol that does not possess rotational
symmetry and analyze its security. Interestingly, even without any
rotational symmetry, this protocol can still be proven secure. However,
the security relation is not as simple as those in the first part, due to
the lack of symmetry. Therefore, although rotational symmetry is not
required in a QKD protocol to ensure its security, rotational symmetry
does provide significant simplification in the security analysis, leading
to simple security relations.
In this talk, I will show how to efficiently generate graph states
based on realistic linear optics (with imperfect photon detectors and source), how to do scalable quantum computation with probabilistic atom photon
interactions, and how to simulate strongly correlated many-body physics with ultracold atomic gas.