1. Introduction
The framework and previous work: An extensive literature exist of mainly numerical studies of the quantum entanglement found in the density matrices of bipartite quantum systems, via certain matrix distance measures. The starting kick of this research project is a seminal paper of 1998 by Życzkowski et al. [
1], where the “separability probability” is introduced as a measure of how often a randomly chosen quantum bipartite system splits into two classically correlated parts. Promoting the manifold of parameters determining the density matrices of the total and the reduced quantum systems into a statistical event space endowed with a distance measure, the “separability probability” can be cast into a geometric probability given e.g., by the ratio of the corresponding volume of separable marginal systems to the total volume of bipartite system in the manifold of parameters.
In this work employing the Hilbert–Schmidt (HS) measure, bipartite systems of
dimensionality are investigated analytically. The manifold of parameters characterizing a special class of bipartite systems, the so-called two-qubits X mixed states, is a real 7D manifold. Specifically, the density matrices of the marginal systems
A and
B, described by their corresponding Bloch vector lengths (ball radii)
and the respective volumes have been investigated analytically and numerically. The a priori marginal
separability probability function has been determined to be
for cases of general coupled qubits (
) and of the special type of
X density matrix (
). Remarkably constant values for the a priori probabilities have been conjectured and have been corroborated or proved by numerical work or analytic derivations. Analytic calculations in e.g., [
2], show that in terms of the radial
volume function the scaled volume functions
and
in the case of
X states are explicitly
so the probability distribution
reads
This remarkable constant probability within the interval
has verified previous numerical and analytic conjectures—see, e.g., [
3]. Similarly for the general bipartite systems of
systems, it is known that
Despite numerous numerical and, to a lesser extent, analytic works in this field over the last years, hardly anything has been done with respect to its operational and quantum simulation aspects of those probability distributions.
Outline of paper’s contribution: This work starts providing a motivation for applying operational methodology to simulation quantum statistics of separable states. It proceeds to puts forward three operational algorithms for evaluating separability probability distributions for X states of qubits. Specifically, it is shown that the volume function which determines the separability distribution can be obtained via quantum measurements of certain respective multi-qubit observables.
There are three measuring states, one for each operational algorithm. These states are generated from the original X states under investigation respectively via (i) a multi-qubit channel map, (ii) a unitary operator generated by a Hamiltonian describing a non-uniform hypergraph [
4,
5,
6,
7], configuration of interactions among 12 qubits, and (iii) a quantum walk completely positive (CP) map in an extended state space. All three proposed algorithms are based on an 12-qubit lattice system with an underlying interaction scheme described by a hypergraph.
Two important connections of the paper with some related research fields as emphasized. First: The building blocks of the algorithms are higher order controlled-not CZ diagonal gates [
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13]. This fact suggests that the formalism and the computational tasks carried out by the algorithms associate them with the field of the so-called Instantaneous Quantum Polynomial-time Circuits (IQP) [
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21]; Second: wrt possible implementation, the work relates itself to the LHZ quantum computation architecture of higher order coupling [
22,
23].
Structure of the paper: The present introductory chapter concludes offering a motivation of the attempted operational approach to the separability statistics.
Section 2 provides all the needed elements for
X states and their quantum mechanical aspects that will allow for building up in the sequel the operational framework. The next three
Section 3,
Section 4 and
Section 5 provide respectively the necessary background and formulation of the three simulation algorithms for the distribution of separability.
Section 6 is a brief one that presents some important aspects regarding the computation methodology and implementation possibilities of the algorithms.
Section 7 is a closing discussion on the overall operational methodology and on the prospects of applying paper’s ideas to general Bloch vector components functions. Finally, in three appendices, material is included concerning, (
Appendix A), the matrix analysis aspects and the proof of the main proposition; (
Appendix B) aspects of uncertainties of the quantum measurements presented in previous chapters, while
Appendix C shows the underlying hypergraph structure of volume operator and the associated Hamiltonian. In the opening of each chapter, a brief outline of its content is provided.
Motivation of this work: Let a physical phenomenon conjectured to be described statistically by e.g., a Poisson distribution over natural numbers with a fixed mean value. If a realistic statistical experiment is difficult to be set up, sampled and investigated, one could come up with the idea of building an hitherto unknown simulator e.g., a laser coherent light beam generator. This concept-device could in some way serve the purpose of a quantum simulator i.e., it could be considered as an experimental and theoretical device for simulating the above phenomenon and corroborate or falsify its initial statistical conjecture. This is so, since it is a standard knowledge that a laser beam is generated from an initial state of thermal light photons with Maxwell–Boltzmann energy distribution and that, beyond the lasing threshold, theory and experiment prove the occurrence of a phase transition form thermal photons to photons with energy following Poissonian statistics [
24]. The theoretical requirements of such laser light simulator would include developing a set of landmark operations in open quantum systems such as coupling and de-coupling between quantum system and quantum environment, quantum master equation solutions, in terms of CP maps, of the light density matrix, statistical correlations of the laser light beam, distinct thermodynamic features developed during the lasing transition, etc. The laser quantum simulation could additionally provide checks and simulations of statistical questions of interest, questions concerning required resources for the feasibility of the initial statistical conjecture i.e., questions pertaining to the energy, entropy and work resources of the phenomenon, as well as their transformations. Note that here we should distinguish between resources of the initial physical system and those of the simulating quantum system. It is in fact the latter ones i.e., the resources of quantum simulation that would constitute a novel important aspect to be addressed in the field of quantum simulations.
Based on the analogous situation of the laser quantum simulation, similar general ideas can be specified in the present case of simulating the statistics of separable X states. To this end, this work puts forward some hitherto unknown simulator that employs a lattice of 12 qubits and provides versions of some operational algorithms that derive the conjectured probability distribution of pairs of separable qubits in an X form density matrix.
As detailed below, the algorithms describe both closed Hamiltonian systems and also open system operations. More generally, the operational algorithmic methodology put forward here is in fact grounded in a well developed operational methodology of constructing quantum observables and quantum measurements with desired properties—see, e.g., [
25] for a general theory, [
26] for related quantum optical problems, and [
27,
28] for problems formulated in quantum mechanical phase space.
2. X States Operational Framework
Chapter’s outline: The X state density matrix is introduced and its Bloch vector components and relevant polynomials thereof are expressed by expectation values of generalized multi-qubit observables. The volume operator and its components are introduced.
The two-qubit density matrix of the so-called “X state” is a special case of bipartite state and reads [
29,
30,
31],
More specifically, on the basis of 16 elements formed by all possible tensor products of Pauli and unit matrix between themselves,
The X-density reads
The expansion coefficients are linearly related to the original matrix elements and, in order to determine them forming the density matrix, we introduce the inner product for matrices as Verify that and compute the coefficient as and similarly for the rest of the coefficients.
With the polynomial volume function
of a previous chapter in mind and in order to be able to express powers of variable
r as inner products of density matrix with various products of Pauli matrices, we proceed to embed those matrices into an
n-fold tensor product of Pauli algebra as follows. Using the generic notation
for all Pauli matrices, respectively
we introduce their embedding as a map from
into the
n-fold matrix product space
by means of the correspondence
where
for
Next, recall the identity
which further implies that
and more generally
Then, referring to Equations (
1) and (2), and applying the previous identities, we compute that, for the density matrix
, the following identities are valid (for notational simplicity, the
X index is omitted hereafter),
and
Next, define the unitary
volume operator acting on the Hilbert space of six bipartite
X states
and reads explicitly,
Recall the volume functions issued in Equations (
1) and (2) to compute that
Furthermore, by simplifying
to
the volume operator reads
Proceeding next by defining variables
and
and applying the identity
and various rules of tensor products, we verify that the radial function is obtained as
or explicitly as
The following decomposing of volume operator will be useful:
with
and the obvious identifications
where each operator satisfies the properties of being an involution, unitary and Hermitian i.e.,
Then, finally function
is expressed as
Further properties concerning the graph structure of the volume operator have been placed at the end of paper in
Appendix C entitled:
Hypergraphs and volume operator.
3. CZ Gates, Volume Observables and Function
Chapter’s outline: The aim of this central chapter is to provide the first operational algorithm of the separability probability distribution. To this end, all background material (cf. shifted CZ gates Hankel, Toeplitz, Fourier, Hadamard matrices and their interrelations), as well as relevant concepts and definitions, are introduced in order to establish the relation This relation describes the fact that the volume function is obtained as an expectation value of the volume observable, which in turn is shown to be derived from a unitary map or its dual map
Preliminaries: Let the projectors where in space. Denote by and the decimal and binary decomposition of indices where and by and their element-wise inner product and sum, respectively.
Let
and consider the projectors
The reference controlled-phase gate
gate
uses the projector
acts on the space of
n qubits and is labelled by
n-plet of binary indices
For general index
, the
gate operator
can be considered to act in multi-qubit states as follows:
States may be regarded as control qubit states and as the target qubit state, so the gate’s action is determined by the choice of values
To allow for free choice of the values of the
n-plet index on which the conditional
phase will be acted in a CZ gate, we need to introduce first the set of so-called
X-shifted
CZgates. This is done in the proposition below where the family
of
N commuting
X-shifted
CZgates
are defined. Shifted CZ are related linearly to words
and vice versa, so volume operators
and
via their linear relation to
words, Equation (
5), are in turn related to shifted CZ gates.
The proposition proceeds by showing that all shifted CZ gates are generated via a unitary channel map from the reference gate This allows for expressing volume operators , via map acting on which is then trace contracted with a state density matrix i.e., to provide the targeted volume function. By duality (defined precisely below), the volume function is obtained by operating with dual map on instead with of acting on i.e., where now the CZ gate has been identified with an operator observable i.e., Hence, the volume function is obtained as the mean value of the quantum measurement of the generalized observable in state This alternative way of evaluating volume functions strengthens the operational character of the process of dealing with volumes of separable states as a form of generalized quantum measurement.
We next proceed with the
Proposition 1. The projection operators and the words of letter Z are related by the Hadamard transform in the direct and the inverse way as and for respectively. From the gates expressed as the family of X-shifted gatesis generated by its members, which, in terms of projectors, read explicitly The effect of index shifting ( on gates is to allow a conditional placing of a minus sign at position as a consequence, shifted gates have the spectral decomposition For zero shift and , the gate is identified with the usual gate in the computational basis. Shifted gates are linearly related to words asvia the orthogonal matrix where the product is between Hankel A and Hadamard H matrices and the C matrix elements explicitly read Conversely the words relate to the shifted gates as This in turn, by virtue of Equation (5), allows the volume operators to be expressed in terms of gates A further reduction results by first generating each and all of the components , of volume operator from the single reference gate via the action of unitary maps which are defined asExplicitly, the volume operators are described by using the labelling map which leads to the following four index correspondences for each one of them (only the non zero ’s are provided): For for , the non zero components are for , the non zero indices are and finally, for , the non zero indices are The total volume operator is eventually obtained via the action of map on the reference gate, i.e., where map is a weighted sum of maps, which explicitly reads with weights
By means of the later result and the previous identification the evaluation of volume function is cast in the suggestive formwhere and map the dual of has been utilized. Finally, via the expression of CZ gate, the volume function evaluates to 4. Hypergraph Hamiltonian Coupling
Chapter’s outline: The aim of this chapter is to provide the second operational algorithm of the separability probability distribution. This volumetric radial distribution is shown to be expressed by means of the expectation value of a quantum observable on an appropriate state. This state is a U evolved density matrix describing a multiple of copies of X states. The Hamiltonian generating unitary U and its hypergraph coupling structure are determined.
The preceding analysis will be utilized to provide an operational implementation of the volume function
via a unitary operator
and its generating Hamiltonian
both acting in an extended Hilbert space to that of the density matrix of the 12 qubits, as follows: Let us first introduce the conditional unitary operator
and an auxiliary density matrix
acting on an auxiliary 2-qubit Hilbert space
The initial composite system density matrix
evolves as
Next, introduce the correlating observable
where the real coefficient
should be determined.
Performing the
volumetric quantum measurement via on the evolved state
we demand that the mean value of the measurement equals the volume function i.e.,
This is achieved by choosing values for the diagonal elements of the auxiliary density matrix to be the probabilities which together with the terms of the sequence should satisfy the constraint A possible choice for p is the uniform distribution i.e., and for the coefficients
Furthermore, modifying numerically observable
into
and
yields the exact results of the volumetric quantum measurements of these operators respectively as
from which the probability distribution of the radial parameter is finally obtained i.e.,
Next, we determine the Hamiltonian
that generates the unitary
U as
by invoking the identity,
valid for
(where
[
32], from which equivalent expressions for
’s are obtained i.e.,
from which we choose
Then, the multi-spin Hamiltonian generator
of
i.e.,
reads explicitly
Referring to
Appendix C:
Hypergraphs and volume operator, we see that, similarly to the hypergraph structure of the volume operator, the resulting effective Hamiltonian operator of this chapter shares a similar hypergraph structure.
5. Quantum Walk Simulation of Separability
Chapter’s outline: The aim of this chapter is to provide the third and final operational algorithm of the separability probability distribution. To this end, a QW set up with quantum coin and walker systems is employed. Volume function is again obtained via a quantum measurement of a multi-qubit observable on a state that results after evolving an initial X density matrix with a conditional completely positive trace preserving (CPTP) map of the QW type. Decomposition of QW map into a CP map with volume operators as Kraus generators’ time local unitaries is provided. An overall comment comparing the three schemes generating separability statistics is provided.
Measurement theory: The quantum measurement content of the QW-based operational algorithm of separability statistics to be presented follows the generalized theory of quantum measurement. A brief outline of this theory follows: on a quantum system
S in state
, a measurement is described by a (POVM) positive operator valued measure
Each outcome indexed by
k occurs with probability
The completely positive trace preserving map associated with the measurement reads
where
C is a classical register (measuring device) that contains the outcomes of the measurement and
is the post-measurement state of the initial
corresponding to outcome
This post-measurement state is induced by a CPTP (completely positive trace preserving) map
, generated by its Kraus generators
which in turn generate the POVM elements as
The trace preservation of map
leads to the completeness of the POVM set i.e.
Note that this scheme does not assume projectivity of each or orthogonality of different
Q’s, so it is a generalization of the von Neumann projection measurement theory, in which special case the additional relations
for all
k’s are valid; see, e.g., [
25].
The algorithm: An alternative QW based simulation of the volume function can be given by constructing a new state in place of of the preceding analysis, and also by replacing the unitary U acting in by the extended unitary operator W acting in The three state spaces correspond respectively to the states for the auxiliary system, the coin system and the ’walker’ target system to which an intentional action is aimed.
Consider first the unitary operator
where
are unitary step operators for a quantum walk, as will be detailed below, written as
Then, we compute
the evolution unitary CP map for the
a-th QW, where we choose the initial coin state to be
as follows:
Explicit computation of the total action of the unitary
W generates, after partial tracing of the coin system, the QW CP map
that eventually yields the target density matrix
, as follows (
In the next and final step, we reach the volume function via quantum measurement with the observable
in the state
as
Indeed,
Elaborating further on this QW-based alternative, we note that the observable
is a form of controlled-phase operator and can be expressed equivalently as
Referring to density matrix
we re-express the QW CP maps
in terms of only one of them i.e., of
which we recall here
Note that
is an intermediate form of the initial multi
X-state density matrix that will be transformed further until its final target form. However, first let us establish the property of expressing maps
from
To this end, observe that
i.e., the unitary
can generate the two other unitary operators by appropriate multiplications. Since the generators of the maps
are given in terms of the
’s, it follows from the last equation above that only the CP map
with its Kraus generators
,
needs be considered. This is so since the rest maps can be generated via local unitary transformation using local
Z’s as the following scheme indicates
This result eventually allows for re-expressing the target density matrix
in the following suggestive way:
Factorizing the construction of density matrix
into a single two body CP map, cf. Equation (
15), times local actions of
Z matrices, reduces considerably the required resources for this operational approach to separability statistics.
Final comment: Summarizing the results of this and the previous two chapters, we see that the volume function has been obtained via quantum measurements respectively of the multi-qubit observables
and
in the respected states given by the density matrices
and
according to the following scheme
cf. Equations (
7), (
11) and (
14). These states have been generated from the given separable
X-states via either a multi-qubit
X map, or by a Hamiltonian generated unitary action or alternatively by a unitary CP map of the QW type combined with additional local unitary actions. The three algorithms are based on the underlying hypergraph coupling structure of the 12-qubit lattice system that generates the measuring states
Though explicit mention of hypergraph state generation has not been made in this work, a more detailed analysis (not to be presented here) would reveal the role of hypergraph state quantum entanglement for the operational algorithms. Finally, the operational scheme put forward here is general enough to enable simulation of other distributions of radial functions beyond those employed in the question of separability statistics. Such other applications would be referred to
Appendix B dealing with generalizations of the present approach.
6. Aspects of Computation and Implementation
Chapter’s outline: Relations regarding the presented operational approach to separability and the computation via IQP circuits are discussed in addition to possible connections to LHZ implementation architecture are provided.
Computation: Instantaneous Quantum Polynomial-time Computing (IQP) is a type of universal computation that utilizes quantum circuits made of gates that are diagonal in the Z-basis while the input–output states are usually X-basis states and results are obtained by measurements in this basis [
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21]. CZ gates embedded in multi-qubit spaces are the main building blocks of these circuits, the commutativity of which allows their implementation to be performed simultaneously or in any other time order, hence the name of IQP. The Hamiltonian dynamics generating such states would require little control over the time ordering of multiple-qubit interactions needed, hence rendering the physical implementation to more robust to errors. Further IQP circuits being diagonal are more robust to quantum noise than the off diagonal circuits are to decoherence, hence they hold an additional merit. Finally, diagonal gates are fault-tolerantly realizable by current technology e.g., in superconducting and semiconducting systems. Despite these advantages, IQP circuits have been applied to a limited number of applications e.g., to the random states generation and to hypergraph state entanglement. The present work is a novel application of diagonal circuits that combine hypergraph structures and operational methods for crafting states that their appropriate sampling would generate the elusive statistics of separable bipartite qubit systems in the X state. Some important questions regarding the potential advantage of quantum sampling over classical sampling would be addressed in the present operational framework concerning separable states, however, they fall outside the scope of this paper.
Implementation: Recent developments in physical implementation of higher order interactions of systems that encode quantum qubits have resulted into a well-developed quantum simulation toolbox involving Rydberg atoms, known as the Lechner–Hauke–Zoller (LHZ) architecture [
22,
23]. The set up allows one to build a prototype for a coherent adiabatic model with all-to-all Ising type interactions and therefore to provide a platform for realization of two, three, four-body and higher order interactions. The architecture can be physically realized on various physical platforms with local controllability, including cases such as superconducting qubits, NV-centers, quantum dots, and atomic systems. The 12-qubit lattice model of this work, implementing states and measurements that would simulate separable states would be an interesting problem to address within the LHZ architecture.