Gram Matrices of Mixed-State Ensembles

International Journal of Theoretical Physics - Gram matrices arise naturally in the consideration of pair-wise overlap of a family of vectors or quantum pure states, and play an important role in...     

Detecting nonclassicality of light via Lieb's concavity

Nonclassical light states are important for both conceptual and practical reasons: they are basic ingredients in testing and exploring quantum foundations, and are crucial resources in quantum technologies. Various useful criteria have been developed to detect nonclassicality in the literature, and several meaningful measures of nonclassicality have been introduced and measured experimentally. In this work, by use of a non-Hermitian generalization of the Wigner-Yanase-Dyson skew information and playing with operator ordering in evaluating average photon number, we develop a novel family of criteria for detecting nonclassicality of light based on Lieb's concavity, which is a deep and powerful result concerning interaction between quantum states and observables. We elucidate the information-theoretic as well as the physical meaning of the criteria, and illustrate their effectiveness in capturing and quantifying nonclassicality of various important light states.     

Quantifying non-Gaussianity via the Hellinger distance

Theoretical and Mathematical Physics - Non-Gaussianity is an important resource for quantum information processing with continuous variables. We introduce a measure of the non-Gaussianity of...     

EFFECT OF POLYETHYLENEIMINE ON THE PROPERTIES OF CONCENTRATED SUSPENSIONS OF TITANIUM DIOXIDE MICROBEADS

The effect of polyethyleneimine (PEI) concentration on the properties of titanium dioxide (TiO2) suspensions is studied with or without the addition of an electrolyte (barium acetate). Measurements of the apparent viscosity and the stability of TiO2 suspensions showed that PEI is an effective dispersant for TiO2 particles in suspension in the absence of an electrolyte, not only reducing the viscosity of the suspension but also increasing its stability. In the presence of an electrolyte, however, small quantities of polyethyleneimine could neither disperse the TiO2 particles nor de-crease the viscosity of the TiO2 suspensions; only PEI concentrations beyond saturation adsorption could perceptively improve the stabilitv of TiO2 suspensions.     

Quantifying nonclassicality of multimode bosonic fields via skew information

We quantify the nonclassicality of multimode bosonic field states by adopting an information-theoretic approach involving the Wigner-Yanase skew information. The fundamental properties of the quantifier such as convexity, superadditivity, monotonicity, and conservation relations are revealed. The quantifier is illustrated by a variety of typical examples, and applications to the quantification of nonclassical correlations are discussed. Various extensions are indicated.     

Separability and entanglement in tripartite states

While classical correlations can be freely distributed among many systems, this is not true for entanglement and quantum correlations. If a quantum system S^a is entangled with another quantum system S^b, then its entanglement with any third quantum system S^c cannot be arbitrary. This is the celebrated monogamy of entanglement. Implicit in this general statement is the plausible belief that only entanglement between the systems S^a and S^b constrains the entanglement between S^a and the third system S^c. We demonstrate that even classical correlations between S^a and S^b may impose surprisingly stringent restrictions on the possible entanglement between S^a and S^c. In particular, perfect bipartite classical correlations and full entanglement cannot coexist in any tripartite state. An intuitive explanation of this monogamy of hybrid classical and quantum correlations might be that the system S^a has a correlating capability, which cannot be used to establish any entanglement with a third system (but can still be used to establish classical correlations) if it is exhausted when correlated with S^b (in either a classical or quantum fashion). This may be interpreted as an alternate version of monogamy.     

Maximum Shannon Entropy, Minimum Fisher Information, and an Elementary Game

We formulate an elementary statistical game which captures the essence of some fundamental quantum experiments such as photon polarization and spin measurement. We explore and compare the significance of the principle of maximum Shannon entropy and the principle of minimum Fisher information in solving such a game. The solution based on the principle of minimum Fisher information coincides with the solution based on an invariance principle, and provides an informational explanation of Malus' law for photon polarization. There is no solution based on the principle of maximum Shannon entropy. The result demonstrates the merits of Fisher information, and the demerits of Shannon entropy, in treating some fundamental quantum problems. It also provides a quantitative example in support of a general philosophy: Nature intends to hide Fisher information, while obeying some simple rules.     

Direct approach to quantum extensions of Fisher information

By manipulating classical Fisher information and employing various derivatives of density operators, and using entirely intuitive and direct methods, we introduce two families of quantum extensions of Fisher information that include those defined via the symmetric logarithmic derivative, via the right logarithmic derivative, via the Bogoliubov-Kubo-Mori derivative, as well as via the derivative in terms of commutators, as special cases. Some fundamental properties of these quantum extensions of Fisher information are investigated, a multi-parameter quantum Cramér-Rao inequality is established, and applications to characterizing quantum uncertainty are illustrated.      

Notes on Superadditivity of Wigner–Yanase–Dyson Information

The classical Fisher information is superadditive in the sense that the Fisher information of a bivariate probability density is always not less than the sum of those of the marginals. The longstanding conjecture concerning the superadditivity of the Wigner–Yanase–Dyson information is a quantum analogue of this property. It is remarkable that Hansen constructed a numerical counterexample to the quantum case (J. Stat. Phys. 126: 643–648, 2007). However, the requirement of superadditivity of an information-theoretic quantity such as the Wigner–Yanase–Dyson information seems so intuitive, it is desirable to identify conditions as general as possible such that the superadditivity holds. In this paper, we establish the superadditivity in several physically significant cases.     

Wigner-Yanase skew information and uncertainty relations

The Wigner-Araki-Yanase theorem puts a limitation on the measurement of observables in the presence of a conserved quantity, and the notion of Wigner-Yanase skew information quantifies the amount of information on the values of observables not commuting with the conserved quantity. We demonstrate that the statistical idea underlying the skew information is the Fisher information in the theory of statistical estimation. A quantum Cramér-Rao inequality and a new uncertainty relation in terms of the skew information are established, which shed considerable new light on the relationships between quantum measurement and statistical inference. The result is applied to estimating the evolution speed of quantum states.