Superspace geometry: the exact uncertainty relationship between complementary aspects

What is Nonclassical about Uncertainty Relations?

Uncertainty relations express limits on the extent to which the outcomes of distinct measurements on a single state can be made jointly predictable. The existence of nontrivial uncertainty relations in quantum theory is generally considered to be a way in which it entails a departure from the classical worldview. However, this perspective is undermined by the fact that there exist operational theories which exhibit nontrivial uncertainty relations but which are consistent with the classical worldview insofar as they admit of a generalized-noncontextual ontological model. This prompts the question of what aspects of uncertainty relations, if any, cannot be realized in this way and so constitute evidence of genuine nonclassicality. We here consider uncertainty relations describing the tradeoff between the predictability of a pair of binary-outcome measurements (e.g., measurements of Pauli X and Pauli Z observables in quantum theory). We show that, for a class of theories satisfying a particular symmetry property, the functional form of this predictability tradeoff is constrained by noncontextuality to be below a linear curve. Because qubit quantum theory has the relevant symmetry property, the fact that its predictability tradeoff describes a section of a circle is a violation of this noncontextual bound, and therefore constitutes an example of how the functional form of an uncertainty relation can witness contextuality. We also deduce the implications for a selected group of operational foils to quantum theory and consider the generalization to three measurements.

On the Brukner–Zeilinger approach to information in quantum measurements

We address the problem of properly quantifying information in quantum theory. Brukner and Zeilinger proposed the concept of an operationally invariant measure based on measurement statistics. Their measure of information is calculated with probabilities generated in a complete set of mutually complementary observations. This approach was later criticized for several reasons. We show that some critical points can be overcome by means of natural extension or reformulation of the Brukner–Zeilinger approach. In particular, this approach is connected with symmetric informationally complete measurements. The ‘total information’ of Brukner and Zeilinger can further be treated in the context of mutually unbiased measurements as well as general symmetric informationally complete measurements. The Brukner–Zeilinger measure of information is also examined in the case of detection inefficiencies. It is shown to be decreasing under the action of bistochastic maps. The Brukner–Zeilinger total information can be used for estimating the map norm of quantum operations.

Discrete Fourier-based correlations for entanglement detection

We introduce two forms of correlations on two d-level (qudit) systems for entanglement detection. The correlations can be measured via experimentally tractable two local measurement settings and their separable bounds are determined by discrete Fourier-based uncertainty relations. They are useful to estimate lower bounds of the Schmidt number in order to clarify generation of a genuine qudit entanglement. We also present inseparable conditions for multiqudit systems associated with the qudit stabilizer formalism as another role of the correlations on the inseparability problem.

Gaussian beams and minimum diffraction

I show that different legitimate measures of the amount of diffraction lead to contradictory conclusions concerning the beam profile that experiences minimum diffraction for a given beam width. In particular, when the Rényi entropy is used, the Gaussian beams no longer provide minimum diffraction, i.e., they do not have maximum quality.