Quantum Foundations

For isolated quantum systems fluctuation theorems are commonly derived within the two-time energy measurement approach. In this talk we will discuss recent developments and studies on generalizations of this approach. We will show that concept of fluctuation theorems is not only of thermodynamic relevance, but that it is also of interest in quantum information theory. In a second part we will show that the quantum fluctuation theorem generalizes to PT-symmetric quantum mechanics with unbroken PT-symmetry. In the regime of broken PT-symmetry the Jarzynski equality does not hold as also the CPT-norm is not preserved during the dynamics. These findings will be illustrated for an experimentally relevant system ? two coupled optical waveguides. It turns out that for these systems the phase transition between the regimes of unbroken and broken PT-symmetry is thermodynamically inhibited as the irreversible work diverges at the critical point. The discussion will be concluded with an alternative approach to fluctuation theorems and quantum entropy production in quantum phase space.

This talk touches on three questions regarding the ontological status of quantum states using the ontological models

framework: it is assumed that a physical system has some underlying ontic state and that quantum states correspond to probability distributions over these ontic states.

The first question is whether or not quantum states are necessarily real---that is, whether or not the distributions for different quantum states must be disjoint. The PBR theorem proves the reality of quantum states by making assumptions about the ontic structure of bipartite systems, assumptions that have been challenged. Recent work has therefore concentrated on single systems, producing theorems proving the existence of pairs of quantum states whose overlap region on the ontic state space is very small.

The second question is whether the ontology of a quantum system can be macro-realist---that is, can there be "macroscopic" quantities which always have determinate values? The Leggett-Garg inequalities claim to rule out this possibility, but this conclusion has been disputed.

The third question is less familiar: Must quantum superpositions be ontic? That is, for some superposition with respect to some orthonormal basis, must ontic states exist which can be obtained by preparing the superposition, but not by preparing any of the basis states? In other words, can Schrödinger's cat always be either alive xor dead?

The last decade has seen a wave of characterizations of quantum theory using the formalism of generalized probability theory.

In this talk, I will introduce a novel operational approach to characterizing and reconstructing quantum theory which puts an observer’s information acquisition -- rather than the probability structure – centre stage. In particular, we consider an observer interrogating a system with binary questions and explain how an elementary set of rules governing the observer’s acquisition of information about the system leads to qubit quantum theory. The derivation is constructive, elucidating, among other things, the origin of entanglement, monogamy and more generally the correlation structure. This approach also yields a new characterization of pure states in terms of ‘conserved informational charges’ which, in turn, define the unitary group.

We study the separability of quantum states in bosonic system. Our main tool here is the "separability witnesses", and a connection between "separability witnesses" and a new kind of positivity of matrices--- "Power Positive Matrices" is drawn. Such connection is employed to demonstrate that multi-qubit quantum states with Dicke states being its eigenvectors is separable if and only if two related Hankel matrices are positive semidefinite. By employing this criterion, we are able to show that such state is separable if and only if it's partial transpose is non-negative, which confirms the conjecture in [Wolfe, Yelin, Phys. Rev. Lett. (2014)]. Then, we present a class of bosonic states in d⊗d system such that for general d, determine its separabilityNP-hard although verifiable conditions for separability is easily derived in case d=3,4.

From the general difficulty of simulating quantum systems using classical systems, and in particular the existence of an efficient quantum algorithm for factoring, it is likely that quantum computation is intrinsically more powerful than classical computation. At present, the best upper bound known for the power of quantum computation is that BQP is in AWPP, where AWPP is a classical complexity class (known to be included in PP, hence PSPACE). This work investigates limits on computational power that are imposed by simple physical, or information theoretic, principles. To this end, we define a circuit-based model of computation in a class of operationally-defined theories more general than quantum theory, and ask: what is the minimal set of physical assumptions under which the above inclusions still hold? We show that given only an assumption of tomographic locality (roughly, that multipartite states and transformations can be characterised by local measurements), efficient computations are contained in AWPP. This inclusion still holds even without assuming a basic notion of causality (where the notion is, roughly, that probabilities for outcomes cannot depend on future measurement choices). Then, following Aaronson, we extend the computational model by allowing post-selection on measurement outcomes. Aaronson showed that the corresponding quantum complexity class, PostBQP, is equal to PP. Given only the assumption of tomographic locality, the inclusion in PP still holds for post-selected computation in general theories. Hence in a world with post-selection, quantum theory is optimal for computation in the space of all operational theories. We then consider whether one can obtain relativised complexity results for general theories. It is not obvious how to define a sensible notion of a computational oracle in the general framework that reduces to the standard notion in the quantum case. Nevertheless, it is possible to define computation relative to a `classical oracle'. Then, we show there exists a classical oracle relative to which efficient computation in any theory satisfying the causality assumption does not include NP. This provides some degree of evidence that NP-complete problems cannot be solved efficiently in any theory satisfying tomographic locality and causality. Based on arXiv:1412.8671. Joint work with Jon Barrett.

We introduce a technique for applying quantum expanders in a distributed fashion, and use it to solve two basic questions: testing whether a bipartite quantum state shared by two parties is the maximally entangled state and disproving a generalized area law. In the process these two questions which appear completely unrelated turn out to be two sides of the same coin. Strikingly in both cases a constant amount of resources are used to verify a global property.

The Elitzur-Vaidman bomb tester allows the detection of a photon-triggered bomb with a photon, without setting the bomb off. This seemingly impossible task can be tackled using the quantum Zeno effect. Inspired by the EV bomb tester, we define the notion of "bomb query complexity". This model modifies the standard quantum query model by measuring each query immediately after its application, and ends the algorithm if a 1 is measured.

We show that the bomb query complexity is asymptotically the square of the quantum query complexity. Moreover, we will show how this characterization inspires a general theorem relating classical and quantum query complexity, and derive new algorithms from this theorem.

After a brief motivation of this question, the presentation is divided in two parts. We first introduce the principle of quantum information causality, which states the maximum amount of quantum information that a transmitted quantum system can communicate as a function of its Hilbert space dimension, independently of any quantum physical resources previously shared by the communicating parties. The second part of the talk considers superdense coding within the framework of general probabilistic theories and addresses the question of why in quantum theory, no more than two bits can be communicated by transmission of a single, entangled, qubit. We introduce hyperdense coding in general probabilistic theories: superdense coding in which N

> 2 bits are communicated by transmission of a system  that locally

encodes at most one bit, and present protocols with N arbitrarily large. Our hyperdense coding protocols imply superadditive classical

capacities: two entangled systems can encode N > 2 bits, even though each system locally encodes at most one bit. Our protocols violate either a reversibility condition or tomographic locality.