We introduce a class of communication tests where the task is to communicate partial ignorance by means of a physical system. We present a full characterization of the implementations of these tests in the qubit case and partial results for qudits. A peculiar observation is that two physical systems with the same operational dimensions may differ with respect to implementations of these tasks, as is shown to be the case for the qubit and rebit. Finally, we consider the natural question whether some of the communication tests are more difficult than others. A new preordering that we call the ultraweak matrix majorization is presented to answer this question in a theory-independent way. arXiv:1903.04899v2 [quant-ph]

The Pusey–Barrett–Rudolph theorem has recently provoked a lot of discussion regarding the reality of the quantum state. In this article we focus on a property called antidistinguishability, which is a main component in constructing the proof for the PBR theorem. In particular we study algebraic conditions for a set of pure quantum states to be antidistinguishable, and a novel sufficient condition is presented. We also discuss a more general criterion which can be used to show that the sufficient condition is not necessary. Lastly, we consider how many quantum states needs to be added into a set of pure quantum states in order to make the set antidistinguishable. It is shown that in the case of qubit states the answer is one, while in the general but finite dimensional case the answer is at most n, where n is the size of the original set.

We provide a detailed study of reheating in the kination regime where particle content is created by gravitational production of massive scalars mutually interacting with a massless scalar field. The produced particles subsequently decay into massless particles eventually reheating the Universe. We aim for a more precise picture using Boltzmann equations and decay rates obtained by methods of quantum field theory in curved spacetime. By numerical calculations it is found that after inflation the Universe ends up being dominated by ordinary matter for a while before the radiation dominated era. The reheating temperature itself is found to be in the 10 6 − 10 12 GeV regime.

We investigate the question which communication tasks can be accomplished within a given operational theory. The concrete task is to find out which communication matrices have a prepare-and-measure implementation with multiple states and a single measurement from a given theory, without using shared randomness. To set a general framework for this question we develop the ultraweak matrix majorization in the set of communication matrices. This preorder gives us means to determine when one communication task is more difficult than another. Furthermore, we introduce several monotones which can be used to compare and characterize the communication matrices. We observe that not only do the monotones allow us to compare communication matrices, but also their maximal values in a given theory are seen to relate to some physical properties of the theory. The maximal values can then be thought as ‘dimensions’, allowing us to compare different theories to each other. We analyse the introduced monotones one by one and demonstrate how the set of implementable communication matrices is different in several theories with the focus being mainly on the difference between classical and quantum theories of a given dimension.

The temporal evolution of entanglement between a noisy system and an ancillary system is analyzed in the context of continuous-time open quantum system dynamics. Focusing on a couple of analytically solvable models for qubit systems, we study how Markovian and non-Markovian characteristics influence the problem, discussing in particular their associated entanglement-breaking regimes. These performances are compared with those one could achieve when the environment of the system is forced to return to its input configuration via periodic instantaneous resetting procedures.