The second law of thermodynamics places a limitation into which states a system can evolve into. For systems in contact with a heat bath, it can be combined with the law of energy conservation, and it says that a system can only evolve into another if the free energy goes down. Recently, it's been shown that there are actually many second laws, and that it is only for large macroscopic systems that they all become equivalent to the ordinary one. These additional second laws also hold for quantum systems, and are, in fact, often more relevant in this regime. They place a restriction on how the probabilities of energy levels can evolve. Here, we consider additional restrictions on how the coherences between energy levels can evolve. Coherences can only go down, and we provide a set of restrictions which limit the extent to which they can be maintained. We find that coherences over energy levels must decay at rates that are suitably adapted to the transition rates between energy levels. We show that the limitations are matched in the case of a single qubit, in which case we obtain the full characterization of state-to-state transformations. For higher dimensions, we conjecture that more severe constraints exist. We also introduce a new class of thermodynamical operations which allow for greater manipulation of coherences and study its power with respect to a class of operations known as thermal operations.

We analyze equilibration times of subsystems of a larger system under a random total Hamiltonian, in which the basis of the Hamiltonian is drawn from the Haar measure. We obtain that the time of equilibration is of the order of the inverse of the arithmetic average of the Bohr frequencies. To compute the average over a random basis, we compute the inverse of a matrix of overlaps of operators which permute four systems. We first obtain results on such a matrix for a representation of an arbitrary finite group and then apply it to the particular representation of the permutation group under consideration.

We consider the realization of universal quantum computation through braiding of Majorana fermions supplemented by unprotected preparation of noisy ancillae. It has been shown by Bravyi (2006 Phys. Rev. A 73 042313) that under the assumption of perfect braiding operations, universal quantum computation is possible if the noise rate on a particular four-fermion ancilla is below 40%. We show that beyond a noise rate of 89% on this ancilla the quantum computation can be efficiently simulated classically: we explicitly show that the noisy ancilla is a convex mixture of Gaussian fermionic states in this region, while for noise rates below 53% we prove that the state is not a mixture of Gaussian states. These results are obtained by generalizing concepts in entanglement theory to the setting of Gaussian states and their convex mixtures. In particular, we develop a complete set of criteria, namely the existence of a Gaussian-symmetric extension, which determine whether a state is a convex mixture of Gaussian states.

Recent work using tools from quantum information theory has shown that at the nanoscale where quantum effects become prevalent, there is not one thermodynamical second law but many. Derivations of these laws assume that an experimenter has very precise control of the system and heat bath. Here we show that these multitude of laws can be saturated using two very simple operations: changing the energy levels of the system and thermalizing over any two system energy levels. Using these two operations, one can distill the optimal amount of work from a system, as well as perform the reverse formation process. Even more surprisingly, using only these two operations and one ancilla qubit in a thermal state, one can transform any state into any other state allowable by the second laws. We thus have the remarkable result that the second laws hold for fine-grained manipulation of system and bath, but can be achieved using very coarse control. This brings the full array of thermal operations into a regime accessible by experiment, and establishes the physical relevance of these second laws.

Measurement is of central interest in quantum mechanics as it provides the link between the quantum world and the world of everyday experience. One of the features of the latter is its robust, objective character, contrasting the delicate nature of quantum systems. Here we analyze in a completely model-independent way the celebrated von Neumann measurement process, using recent techniques of information flow, studied in open quantum systems. We show the generic appearance of objective results in quantum measurements, provided we macroscopically coarse-grain the measuring apparatus and wait long enough. To study genericity, we employ the widely-used Gaussian Unitary Ensemble of random matrices and the Hoeffding inequality. We derive generic objectivization timescales, given solely by the interaction strength and the systems' dimensions. Our results are manifestly universal and are a generic property of von Neumann measurements.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, v2: typos corrected, v3: improved proof of the main result; added comments on non-Markovianity , v4: title change; published versio

We analyze a region of fidelities for qubit which is obtained after an application of a 1 → N universal quantum cloner. We express the allowed region for fidelities in terms of overlaps of pure states with irreps of S n (n = N + 1) showing that the pure states can be taken with real coefficients only. Subsequently, the case n = 4, corresponding to a 1 → 3 cloner is studied in more details as an illustrative example. To obtain the main result, we make a convex hull of possible ranges of fidelities related to a given irrep. The formalism allows to construct the state giving rise to a given N-tuple of fidelities.

We numerically investigate the statement that local random quantum circuits acting on n qubits composed of polynomially many nearest neighbour two-qubit gates form an approximate unitary poly(n)-design [F.G.S.L. Brandão et al., arXiv:1208.0692]. Using a group theory formalism, spectral gaps that give a ratio of convergence to a given t-design are evaluated for a different number of qubits n (up to 20) and degrees t (t = 2, 3, 4 and 5), improving previously known results for n = 2 in the case of t = 2 and 3. Their values lead to a conclusion that the previously used lower bound that bounds spectral gaps values may give very little information about the real situation and in most cases, only tells that a gap is closed. We compare our results to the another lower bounding technique, again showing that its results may not be tight.

In this work, we revisit the problem of finding an admissible region of fidelities obtained after an application of an arbitrary 1 → N universal quantum cloner which has been recently solved in [A. Kay et al., Quant. Inf. Comput 13, 880 (2013)] from the side of cloning machines. Using grouptheory formalism, we show that the allowed region for fidelities can be alternatively expressed in terms of overlaps of pure states with recently found irreducible representations of the commutant U ⊗ U ⊗ . . . ⊗ U ⊗ U * , which gives the characterization of the allowed region where states being cloned are figure of merit. Additionally, it is sufficient to take pure states with real coefficients only, which makes calculations simpler. To obtain the allowed region, we make a convex hull of possible ranges of fidelities related to a given irrep. Subsequently, two cases: 1 → 2 and 1 → 3 cloners, are studied for different dimensions of states as illustrative examples.