Mar 2026· arXiv.org· Vol abs/2603.04061· 6 citations· 82 references
PhysicsComputer Science
Abstract
Quantum measurements are the means by which we recover messages encoded into quantum states. They are at the forefront of quantum hypothesis testing, wherein the goal is to perform an optimal measurement for arriving at a correct conclusion. Mathematically, a measurement operator is Hermitian with eigenvalues in [0,1]. By noticing that this constraint on each eigenvalue is the same as that imposed on fermions by the Pauli exclusion principle, we interpret every eigenmode of a measurement operator as an independent effective fermionic mode. Under this perspective, various objective functions in quantum hypothesis testing can be viewed as the total expected energy associated with these fermionic occupation numbers. By instead fixing a temperature and minimizing the total expected fermionic free energy, we find that optimal measurements for these modified objective functions are Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements, wherein their eigenvalues are specified by Fermi-Dirac distributions. In the low-temperature limit, their performance closely approximates that of optimal measurements for quantum hypothesis testing, and we show that their parameters can be learned by classical or hybrid quantum-classical optimization algorithms. This leads to a new quantum machine-learning model, termed Fermi-Dirac machines, consisting of parameterized Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements-an alternative to quantum Boltzmann machines based on thermal states. Beyond hypothesis testing, we show how general semidefinite optimization problems can be solved using this approach, leading to a novel paradigm for semidefinite optimization on quantum computers, in which the goal is to implement thermal measurements rather than prepare thermal states. Finally, we propose quantum algorithms for implementing Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements, and we also propose second-order hybrid quantum-classical optimization algorithms.
The minimum change principle provides an information-theoretic characterization of the Bayes reversal channel in classical probability theory and has recently been proposed as a framework for extending Bayes'rule to quantum information theory. Using quantum relative entropy, we investigate a minimum change principle for the setting of quantum statistical inference. Specifically, we consider a forward process based on a classical-to-quantum preparation channel and a reverse process based on a quantum-to-classical measurement channel. We establish a closed-form characterization of measurements that are optimal for this principle, and this optimal measurement can be found via a dual formulation involving a single unconstrained Hermitian variable. This perspective allows us to recover some notable measurements within the same framework, including pretty good measurements and Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements, and we use it to discover a novel family that we call softmin thermal measurements. We further show that softmin thermal measurements arise as optimal solutions to entropy-regularized semidefinite optimization problems, demonstrating that they play a role for measurements analogous to that of thermal states in statistical mechanics. Finally, we prove an additivity property for the relative-entropy minimum change principle and investigate the performance of Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements for quantum hypothesis testing.
Quantum theory challenges the view that individual measurement outcomes are predefined and independent of the measurement context. Yet the quantum state itself -- the catalogue of probabilities for all possible measurements -- is usually assumed to be well defined. We argue that this assumption tacitly relies on measurements being performed relative to ideal, infinitely-resourceful reference frames. We show that, when measurements are made relative to non-ideal quantum reference frames, the probabilities themselves become indefinite: even in the limit of arbitrarily large number of runs, the relative frequencies may remain uncertain. The uncertainty is irreducible in a quantum-mechanical sense, as we show by proving a Bell-type theorem for relative frequencies. We further propose a quantum-optical implementation of these relational measurements based on pulsed homodyne detection. Our findings motivate an extension of the notion of the quantum state to regimes constrained by finite resources. We expect them to be especially relevant at the interface between quantum theory and general relativity, where the resources and information available in a bounded region of spacetime are fundamentally limited.
Esteban Castro-Ruiz, Nathan Cohen, L. Barbado et al.· 0 citations
Characterizing a quantum state through the lens of quantum resources provides an information-theoretic perspective on many-body systems. While quantum entanglement serves as the paradigmatic example of a quantum resource, recent studies have shown that quantum magic, a resource for universal quantum computation, captures aspects of many-body states complementary to those described by entanglement. For instance, in spin systems, conformal field theory (CFT) analysis of the stabilizer R\'enyi entropy has revealed universal features of nonstabilizerness qualitatively distinct from entanglement. In bosonic and fermionic systems, however, a comparable formulation for their computational resource, non-Gaussianity, has yet to be established. In this work, we introduce a unified measure, the magic R\'enyi entropy (MRE), to quantify computational resources in spins, bosons, and fermions on an equal footing. We show that the MRE is a resource monotone under stabilizer and Gaussian protocols involving measurements and feedforward operations. The MRE reveals common universal aspects of nonstabilizerness and non-Gaussianity in critical many-body states. In particular, our CFT analysis shows that the universal contribution to the MRE appears as the size-independent term determined by the Affleck-Ludwig boundary entropy. We find that non-Gaussianity can continuously renormalize this universal contribution or drive a boundary transition through bulk-induced boundary renormalization-group flows. As a concrete example, we present a CFT analysis of non-Gaussianity in interacting spinless fermions described by the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid, showing boundary transitions at the Luttinger parameters $K=1/3$ and $K=3$. Our field-theoretical predictions are confirmed by numerical calculations. These results provide a unified field-theoretical understanding of many-body magic across spins, bosons, and fermions.
Fermionic Gaussian states form a central class of classically tractable quantum states, while fermionic non-Gaussianity provides the resource required to go beyond free-fermion dynamics. A key challenge is to quantify this resource through monotones that are both mathematically rigorous and experimentally accessible. Here, we show that the fermionic entropy, defined through the squared Frobenius norm of the correlation matrix, is a strong pure-state Gaussian monotone. Its simple closed-form expression also makes it directly measurable: we show that the associated fermionic purity can be unbiasedly estimated up to additive error $\varepsilon$ using $O(\varepsilon^{-2})$ two-copy measurements, independently of the system size. Moreover, we prove that the fermionic entropy obeys asymptotic continuity and, as a direct consequence, establish its operational meaning as the upper bound to the asymptotic rate of non-Gaussianity distillation. We further derive a linear sample complexity bound for tolerant testing of fermionic Gaussian states, providing a quadratic improvement over the state of the art. As a further application of our results, we study unitary designs generated by Matchgate circuits supplemented with Majorana-local non-Gaussian gates. We prove that a linear number of such gates is necessary even to achieve an approximate state $2$-design with error below $0.4\%$. Combined with known nearly linear upper bounds for relative-error designs, this determines the optimal doping level, up to logarithmic factors, across all relevant design notions and reveals the extensive non-Gaussianity cost required to generate Haar-like quantum dynamics in this architecture.
We present a quantum-information-theoretic study of three-flavor neutrino oscillations in long-baseline experiments by mapping flavor states to qubit-like representations and quantifying quantum correlations through total concurrence. The local minima of this entanglement measure identify energy regions where the flavor state is closest to separability, enabling cleaner extraction of oscillation parameters. We explain how these local minima offer opportunities for precision measurements and provide insight into the accurate determination of neutrino oscillation parameters. We then propose a strategy to improve parameter extraction by aligning the benchmark oscillation regions of NO$\nu$A and T2K with the minimum entanglement achievable in each experiment. This shifts the concurrence minima toward higher-event-count energy regions, leading to tighter constraints and reducing the tension arising from their different energy regimes. For normal ordering, we obtain $(0.581^{+0.0136}_{-0.0150},,195^{+38}_{-32},^\circ)$ in the $(\sin^2\theta_{23},\delta_{\rm CP})$ plane and $(0.580^{+0.0140}_{-0.0153},,2.515^{+0.0344}_{-0.0344}\times10^{-3},\mathrm{eV}^2)$ in the $(\sin^2\theta_{23},\Delta m^2_{31})$ plane, yielding improved joint constraints. Using GLoBES simulations together with real data, we assess how local minima of quantum correlations influence leptonic CP-violation sensitivity, $\theta_{23}$ octant-degeneracy resolution, and mass-ordering determination. Our results show that minimizing entanglement can significantly affect these key sensitivities, highlighting quantum information measures as complementary probes of neutrino flavor oscillations and offering new insight into the role of quantum correlations in precision neutrino physics.
Khushboo Dixit, Ritam Kundu, Papia Panda et al.· 0 citations
The quantum capacity of the bosonic thermal attenuator, which is given by the regularization of its coherent information, is unknown. The seminal work of Holevo and Werner established in 1999 the standard one-use lower bound obtained from input thermal states. We first prove that this long-standing lower bound is the exact supremum over all single-mode Gaussian states and then show that, crucially, a non-Gaussian state can do better. As a consequence, we prove positivity of the quantum capacity in a parameter region where the channel is not antidegradable, yet its coherent information optimized over single-mode Gaussian states vanishes. For example, with one thermal photon in the environment and at transmissivity $\eta=0.8$, the coherent information is non-positive for every single-mode Gaussian input. We give an explicit rank-two non-Gaussian state, supported on only six Fock levels, whose coherent information is certified to be at least $4.7\times10^{-4}$ qubits per channel use. This short witness is far from numerically optimal: a numerical optimization over fixed non-Gaussian families reaches at least $8.4\times 10^{-3}$ qubits per channel use at the same point. More generally, at $\nu=1$, using non-Gaussian inputs we certify positivity of the coherent information, and therefore of the quantum capacity, down to $\eta=0.7841$; by contrast, the channel is antidegradable, and hence has zero quantum capacity, for $\eta\leq0.75$. Overall, our work identifies new high-noise regimes in which bosonic quantum communication is possible.
Francesco Anna Mele, Giuseppe Catalano, Marco Fanizza et al.· 0 citations
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