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We present upper bounds on the quantum and private capacity of single-mode, phase-insentitive Bosonic Gaussian Channels based on degradable extensions. Our findings are state-of-the-art in the following parameter regions: low temperature and high transmissivity for the thermal attenuator, low temperature for additive Gaussian noise, high temperature and intermediate amplification for the thermal amplifier., Comment: 5+4 pages, 3 figures. Typos corrected, improved presentation

In this paper we introduce a measure of genuine quantum incompatibility in the estimation task of multiple parameters, that has a geometric character and is backed by a clear operational interpretation. This measure is then applied to some simple systems in order to track the effect of a local depolarizing noise on the incompatibility of the estimation task. A semidefinite program is described and used to numerically compute the figure of merit when the analytical tools are not sufficient, among these we include an upper bound computable from the symmetric logarithmic derivatives only. Finally we discuss how to obtain compatible models for a general unitary encoding on a finite dimensional probe., Comment: We clarified the relation between LU and LAC measurements. 35 pages, 3 figures

Given a closed quantum system, the states that can be reached with a cyclic process are those with the same spectrum as the initial state. Here we prove that, under a very general assumption on the Hamiltonian, the distribution of the mean extractable work is very close to a gaussian with respect to the Haar measure. We derive bounds for both the moments of the distribution of the mean energy of the state and for its characteristic function, showing that the discrepancy with the normal distribution is increasingly suppressed for large dimensions of the system Hilbert space., Comment: 34 pages, 1 figure Expanded the introduction; minor editing

We study the optimization of the performance of arbitrary periodically driven thermal machines. Within the assumption of fast modulation of the driving parameters, we derive the optimal cycle that universally maximizes the extracted power of heat engines, the cooling power of refrigerators, and in general any linear combination of the heat currents. We denote this optimal solution as ``generalized Otto cycle'' since it shares the basic structure with the standard Otto cycle, but it is characterized by a greater number of fast strokes. We bound this number in terms of the dimension of the Hilbert space of the system used as working fluid. The generality of these results allows for a widespread range of applications, such as reducing the computational complexity for numerical approaches, or obtaining the explicit form of the optimal protocols when the system-baths interactions are characterized by a single thermalization scale. In this case, we compare the thermodynamic performance of a collection of optimally driven non-interacting and interacting qubits. Remarkably, for refrigerators the non-interacting qubits perform almost as well as the interacting ones, while in the heat engine case there is a many-body advantage both in the maximum power, and in the efficiency at maximum power. Additionally, we illustrate our general results studying the paradigmatic model of a qutrit-based heat engine. Our results strictly hold in the semiclassical case in which no coherence is generated by the driving, and finally we discuss the non-commuting case., Comment: 15+13 pages, 8 figures

In this article we consider flagged extensions of convex combination of quantum channels, and find general sufficient conditions for the degradability of the flagged extension. An immediate application is a bound on the quantum $Q$ and private $P$ capacities of any channel being a mixture of a unitary map and another channel, with the probability associated to the unitary component being larger than $1/2$. We then specialize our sufficient conditions to flagged Pauli channels, obtaining a family of upper bounds on quantum and private capacities of Pauli channels. In particular, we establish new state-of-the-art upper bounds on the quantum and private capacities of the depolarizing channel, BB84 channel and generalized amplitude damping channel. Moreover, the flagged construction can be naturally applied to tensor powers of channels with less restricting degradability conditions, suggesting that better upper bounds could be found by considering a larger number of channel uses., Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, published version. Presentation improved, typos corrected, references added

The set of Multi-level Amplitude Damping (MAD) quantum channels is introduced as a generalization of the standard qubit Amplitude Damping Channel to quantum systems of finite dimension $d$. In the special case of $d=3$, by exploiting degradability, data-processing inequalities, and channel isomorphism, we compute the associated quantum and private classical capacities for a rather wide class of maps, extending the set of solvable models known so far. We proceed then to the evaluation of the entanglement assisted, quantum and classical, capacities.

We introduce Partially Coherent Direct Sum (PCDS) quantum channels, as a generalization of the already known Direct Sum quantum channels. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions to identify the subset of those maps which are degradable, and provide a simplified expression for their quantum capacities. Interestingly, the special structure of PCDS allows us to extend the computation of the quantum capacity formula also for quantum channels which are explicitly not degradable (nor antidegradable). We show instances of applications of the results to dephasing channels, amplitude damping channels and combinations of the two.

In this paper we explore the possibility of performing Heisenberg limited quantum metrology of a phase, without any prior, by employing only maximally entangled states. Starting from the estimator introduced by Higgins et al. in New J. Phys. 11, 073023 (2009), the main result of this paper is to produce an analytical upper bound on the associated Mean Squared Error which is monotonically decreasing as a function of the square of the number of quantum probes used in the process. The analysed protocol is non-adaptive and requires in principle (for distinguishable probes) only separable measurements. We explore also metrology in presence of a limitation on the entanglement size and in presence of loss., Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures. Corrected typos

We study the problem of transmitting classical information using quantum Gaussian states on a family of phase-noise channels with a finite decoherence time, such that the phase-reference is lost after $m$ consecutive uses of the transmission line. This problem is relevant for long-distance communication in free space and optical fiber, where phase noise is typically considered as a limiting factor. The Holevo capacity of these channels is always attained with photon-number encodings, challenging with current technology. Hence for coherent-state encodings the optimal rate depends only on the total-energy distribution and we provide upper and lower bounds for all $m$, the latter attainable at low energies with on/off modulation and photodetection. We generalize this lower bound to squeezed-coherent encodings, exhibiting for the first time to our knowledge an unconditional advantage with respect to any coherent encoding for $m=1$ and a considerable advantage with respect to its direct coherent counterpart for $m>1$. This advantage is robust with respect to moderate attenuation, and persists in a regime where Fock encodings with up to two-photon states are also suboptimal. Finally, we show that the use of part of the energy to establish a reference frame is sub-optimal even at large energies. Our results represent a key departure from the case of phase-covariant Gaussian channels and constitute a proof-of-principle of the advantages of using non-classical, squeezed light in a motivated communication setting., Comment: v4: final version accepted for publication in Quantum. A very preliminary version was presented at 10.1109/ISIT44484.2020.9174467

Non-equilibrium states of quantum systems in contact with thermal baths help telling environments with different temperatures or different statistics apart. We extend these studies to a more generic problem that consists in discriminating between two baths with disparate constituents at unequal temperatures. Notably there exist temperature regimes in which the presence of coherence in the initial state preparation is beneficial for the discrimination capability. We also find that non-equilibrium states are not universally optimal, and detail the conditions in which it becomes convenient to wait for complete thermalisation of the probe. These concepts are illustrated in a linear optical simulation., Comment: Few typos corrected, bibliography expanded

We introduce a measure of non-Markovianity based on the minimal amount of extra Markovian noise we have to add to the process via incoherent mixing, in order to make the resulting transformation Markovian too at all times. We show how to evaluate this measure by considering the set of depolarizing evolutions in arbitrary dimension and the set of dephasing evolutions for qubits., Comment: 20+5 pages

Identifying which master equation is preferable for the description of a multipartite open quantum system is not trivial and has led in the recent years to the local vs. global debate in the context of Markovian dissipation. We treat here a paradigmatic scenario in which the system is composed of two interacting harmonic oscillators A and B, with only A interacting with a thermal bath - collection of other harmonic oscillators - and we study the equilibration process of the system initially in the ground state with the bath finite temperature. We show that the completely positive version of the Redfield equation obtained using coarse-grain and an appropriate time-dependent convex mixture of the local and global solutions give rise to the most accurate semigroup approximations of the whole exact system dynamics, i.e. both at short and at long time scales, outperforming the local and global approaches.

A general attenuator $\Phi_{\lambda, \sigma}$ is a bosonic quantum channel that acts by combining the input with a fixed environment state $\sigma$ in a beam splitter of transmissivity $\lambda$. If $\sigma$ is a thermal state the resulting channel is a thermal attenuator, whose quantum capacity vanishes for $\lambda\leq 1/2$. We study the quantum capacity of these objects for generic $\sigma$, proving a number of unexpected results. Most notably, we show that for any arbitrary value of $\lambda>0$ there exists a suitable single-mode state $\sigma(\lambda)$ such that the quantum capacity of $\Phi_{\lambda,\sigma(\lambda)}$ is larger than a universal constant $c>0$. Our result holds even when we fix an energy constraint at the input of the channel, and implies that quantum communication at a constant rate is possible even in the limit of arbitrarily low transmissivity, provided that the environment state is appropriately controlled. We also find examples of states $\sigma$ such that the quantum capacity of $\Phi_{\lambda,\sigma}$ is not monotonic in $\lambda$. These findings may have implications for the study of communication lines running across integrated optical circuits, of which general attenuators provide natural models., Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures; v2 is very close to the published version. In the SM we added Section I.D, on the comparison between quantum communication and non-locality distribution, and Section V, where we discuss a possible extension of our main result (Thm. 2)

The main purpose of this study is to introduce a semi-classical model describing betting scenarios in which, at variance with conventional approaches, the payoff of the gambler is encoded into the internal degrees of freedom of a quantum memory element. In our scheme, we assume that the invested capital is explicitly associated with the quantum analog of the free-energy (i.e. ergotropy functional by Allahverdyan, Balian, and Nieuwenhuizen) of a single mode of the electromagnetic radiation which, depending on the outcome of the betting, experiences attenuation or amplification processes which model losses and winning events. The resulting stochastic evolution of the quantum memory resembles the dynamics of random lasing which we characterize within the theoretical setting of Bosonic Gaussian channels. As in the classical Kelly Criterion for optimal betting, we define the asymptotic doubling rate of the model and identify the optimal gambling strategy for fixed odds and probabilities of winning. The performance of the model are hence studied as a function of the input capital state under the assumption that the latter belongs to the set of Gaussian density matrices (i.e. displaced, squeezed thermal Gibbs states) revealing that the best option for the gambler is to devote all her/his initial resources into coherent state amplitude., Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures

Passive states are special configurations of a quantum system which exhibit no energy decrement at the end of an arbitrary cyclic driving of the model Hamiltonian. When applied to an increasing number of copies of the initial density matrix, the requirement of passivity induces a hierarchical ordering which, in the asymptotic limit of infinitely many elements, pinpoints ground states and thermal Gibbs states. In particular, for large values of N the energy content of a N-passive state which is also structurally stable (i.e. capable to maintain its passivity status under small perturbations of the model Hamiltonian), is expected to be close to the corresponding value of the thermal Gibbs state which has the same entropy. In the present paper we provide a quantitative assessment of this fact, by producing an upper bound for the energy of an arbitrary N-passive, structurally stable state which only depends on the spectral properties of the Hamiltonian of the system. We also show the condition under which our inequality can be saturated. A generalization of the bound is finally presented that, for sufficiently large N, applies to states which are N-passive, but not necessarily structurally stable., Comment: 36 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in Quantum

We propose a spatial analog of the Berry's phase mechanism for the coherent manipulation of states of non-relativistic massive particles moving in a two-dimensional landscape. In our construction the temporal modulation of the system Hamiltonian is replaced by a modulation of the confining potential along the transverse direction of the particle propagation. By properly tuning the model parameters the resulting scattering input-output relations exhibit a Wilczek-Zee non-abelian phase shift contribution that is intrinsically geometrical, hence insensitive to the specific details of the potential landscape. A theoretical derivation of the effect is provided together with practical examples., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures

A new bound for the quantum capacity of the $d$-dimensional depolarizing channels is presented. Our derivation makes use of a flagged extension of the map where the receiver obtains a copy of a state $\sigma_0$ whenever the messages are transmitted without errors, and a copy of a state $\sigma_1$ when instead the original state gets fully depolarized. By varying the overlap between the flags states, the resulting transformation nicely interpolates between the depolarizing map (when $\sigma_0=\sigma_1$), and the $d$-dimensional erasure channel (when $\sigma_0$ and $\sigma_1$ have orthogonal support). In our analysis we compute the product-state classical capacity, the entanglement assisted capacity and, under degradability conditions, the quantum capacity of the flagged channel. From this last result we get the upper bound for the depolarizing channel, which by a direct comparison appears to be tighter than previous available results for $d>2$, and for $d=2$ it is tighter in an intermediate regime of noise. In particular, in the limit of large $d$ values, our findings presents a previously unnoticed $\mathcal O(1)$ correction., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, changing the template with respect to the previous version

A generalized multi-parameter Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer is presented which extends the conventional "Mandel dip" configuration to the case where a symmetric biphoton source is used to monitor the contemporary presence of k independent time-delays. Our construction results in a two-input/two-output setup, obtained by concatenating 50:50 beam splitters with a collection of adjustable achromatic wave-plates. For k=1,2 and k=4 explicit examples can be exhibited that prove the possibility of uniquely linking the zero value of the coincidence counts registered at the output of the interferometer, with the contemporary absence of all the time-delays. Interestingly enough the same result cannot be extended to k=3. Besides, the sensitivity of the interferometer is analyzed when the time-delays are affected by the fluctuations over time-scales that are larger than the inverse of the frequency of the pump used to generate the biphoton state., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures

As the possibility to decouple temporal and spatial variations of the electromagnetic field, leading to a wavelength stretching, has been recognized to be of paramount importance for practical applications, we generalize the idea of stretchability from the framework of electromagnetic waves to massive particles. A necessary and sufficient condition which allows one to identify energetically stable configuration of a 1D quantum particle characterized by arbitrary large spatial regions where the associated wave-function exhibit a flat, non-zero profile is presented, together with examples on well-known and widely used potential profiles and an application to 2D models., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures

The possibility of discriminating the statistics of a thermal bath using indirect measurements performed on quantum probes is presented. The scheme relies on the fact that, when weakly coupled with the environment of interest, the transient evolution of the probe toward its final thermal configuration, is strongly affected by the fermionic or bosonic nature of the bath excitations. Using figures of merit taken from quantum metrology such as the Holevo-Helstrom probability of error and the Quantum Chernoff bound, we discuss how to achieve the greatest precision in this statistics tagging procedure, analyzing different models of probes and different initial preparations and by optimizing over the time of exposure of the probe.

We study the estimation of the overlap between two unknown pure quantum states of a finite dimensional system, given $M$ and $N$ copies of each type. This is a fundamental primitive in quantum information processing that is commonly accomplished from the outcomes of $N$ swap-tests, a joint measurement on one copy of each type whose outcome probability is a linear function of the squared overlap. We show that a more precise estimate can be obtained by allowing for general collective measurements on all copies. We derive the statistics of the optimal measurement and compute the optimal mean square error in the asymptotic pointwise and finite Bayesian estimation settings. Besides, we consider two strategies relying on the estimation of one or both the states, and show that, although they are suboptimal, they outperform the swap test. In particular, the swap test is extremely inefficient for small values of the overlap, which become exponentially more likely as the dimension increases. Finally, we show that the optimal measurement is less invasive than the swap test and study the robustness to depolarizing noise for qubit states., Comment: 5+19 pages, 5 figures, references added

Using the Lieb-Robinson inequality and the continuity property of the quantum capacities in terms of the diamond norm, we derive an upper bound on the values that these capacities can attain in spin-network communication i.i.d. models of arbitrary topology. Differently from previous results we make no assumptions on the encoding mechanisms that the sender of the messages adopts in loading information on the network., Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure

The Lieb-Robinson bound sets a theoretical upper limit on the speed at which information can propagate in non-relativistic quantum spin networks. In its original version, it results in an exponentially exploding function of the evolution time, which is partially mitigated by an exponentially decreasing term that instead depends upon the distance covered by the signal (the ratio between the two exponents effectively defining an upper bound on the propagation speed). In the present paper, by properly accounting for the free parameters of the model, we show how to turn this construction into a stronger inequality where the upper limit only scales polynomially with respect to the evolution time. Our analysis applies to any chosen topology of the network, as long as the range of the associated interaction is explicitly finite. For the special case of linear spin networks we present also an alternative derivation based on a perturbative expansion approach which improves the previous inequality. In the same context we also establish a lower bound to the speed of the information spread which yields a non trivial result at least in the limit of small propagation times., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures

We show how to recover complete positivity (and hence positivity) of the Redfield equation via a coarse grain average technique. We derive general bounds for the coarse graining time scale above which the positivity of the Redfield equation is guaranteed. It turns out that a coarse grain time scale has strong impact on the characteristics of the Lamb shift term and implies in general non-commutation between the dissipating and the Hamiltonian components of the generator of the dynamical semi-group. Finally we specify the analysis to a two-level system or a quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to a fermionic or bosonic thermal environment via dipole-like interaction.

In this work we study how the non-Markovian character of the dynamics can affect the thermodynamic performance of a quantum thermal engine, by analysing the maximum power output of Carnot and Otto cycles departing from the quasi-static and infinite-time-thermalization regime respectively, introducing techniques for their control optimization in general dynamical models. In our model, non-Markovianity is introduced by allowing some degrees of freedom of the reservoirs to be taken into account explicitly and share correlations with the engine by Hamiltonian coupling. It is found that the non-Markovian effects can fasten the control and improve the power output., Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures; To appear in Phys. Rev. A (accepted version)

We study how to achieve the ultimate power in the simplest, yet non trivial, model of a thermal machine, namely a two-level quantum system coupled to two thermal baths. Without making any prior assumption on the protocol, via optimal control we show that, regardless of the microscopic details and of the operating mode of the thermal machine, the maximum power is universally achieved by a fast Otto-cycle like structure in which the controls are rapidly switched between two extremal values. A closed formula for the maximum power is derived, and finite-speed effects are discussed. We also analyse the associated efficiency at maximum power (EMP) showing that, contrary to universal results derived in the slow-driving regime, it can approach Carnot's efficiency, no other universal bounds being allowed., Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures

Quantum batteries are quantum mechanical systems with many degrees of freedom which can be used to store energy and that display fast charging. The physics behind fast charging is still unclear. Is this just due to the collective behavior of the underlying interacting many-body system or does it have its roots in the quantum mechanical nature of the system itself? In this work we address these questions by studying three examples of quantum-mechanical many-body batteries with rigorous classical analogs. We find that the answer is model dependent and, even within the same model, depends on the value of the coupling constant that controls the interaction between the charger and the battery itself., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

The impossibility of undoing a mixing process is analysed in the context of quantum information theory. The optimal machine to undo the mixing process is studied in the case of pure states, focusing on qubit systems. Exploiting the symmetry of the problem we parametrise the optimal machine in such a way that the number of parameters grows polynomially in the size of the problem. This simplification makes the numerical methods feasible. For simple but non-trivial cases we computed the analytical solution, comparing the performance of the optimal machine with other protocols., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures

A modification of the standard Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer is proposed which allows one to replicate the celebrated coincidence dip in the case of two-independent delay parameters. In the ideal case where such delays are sufficiently stable with respect to the mean wavelength of the pump source, properly symmetrized input bi-photon states allow one to pinpoint their values through the identification of a zero in the coincidence counts, a feature that cannot be simulated by semiclassical inputs having the same spectral properties. Besides, in the presence of fluctuating parameters the zero in the coincidences is washed away: still the bi-photon state permits to recover the values of parameters with a visibility which is higher than the one allowed by semiclassical sources. The detrimental role of loss and dispersion is also analyzed and an application in the context of quantum positioning is presented., Comment: 16 pages,9 figures

The energy charging of a quantum battery is analyzed in an open quantum setting, where the interaction between the battery element and the external power source is mediated by an ancilla system (the quantum charger) that acts as a controllable switch. Different implementations are analyzed putting emphasis on the interplay between coherent energy pumping mechanisms and thermalization.

We experimentally realize protocols that allow to extract work beyond the free energy difference from a single electron transistor at the single thermodynamic trajectory level. With two carefully designed out-of-equilibrium driving cycles featuring kicks of the control parameter, we demonstrate work extraction up to large fractions of $k_BT$ or with probabilities substantially greater than 1/2, despite zero free energy difference over the cycle. Our results are explained in the framework of nonequilibrium fluctuation relations. We thus show that irreversibility can be used as a resource for optimal work extraction even in the absence of feedback from an external operator., Comment: Submitted, SI included

We present a new optical scheme enabling the implementation of highly stable and configurable non-Markovian dynamics. Here one photon qubit can circulate in a multipass bulk geometry consisting of two concatenated Sagnac interferometers to simulate the so called collisional model, where the system interacts at discrete times with a vacuum environment. We show the optical features of our apparatus and three different implementations of it, replicating a pure Markovian scenario and two non-Markovian ones, where we quantify the information backflow by tracking the evolution of the initial entanglement between the system photon and an ancillary one., Comment: This document is organized in 5 sections, containing 10 pages and 7 figures

In this work we investigate the supercurrent in a hybrid topological Josephson junction consisting of two planes of topological insulator (TI) in a specific configuration, which allows both local (LAR) and crossed (CAR) Andreev processes at the interfaces with two conventional s-wave superconductors. We describe the effects of gate voltage and magnetic flux controls applied to the edge states of each TI. In particular, we demonstrate that the voltage gating allows the manipulation of the entaglement symmetry of non-local Cooper pairs associated to the CAR process. We establish a connection between the Josephson current-phase relationship of the system and the action of the two external fields, finding that they selectively modify the LAR or the CAR contributions. Remarkably, we find that the critical current of the junction takes a very simple form which reflects the change in the symmetry occurred to the entangled state and allows to determine the microscopic parameters of the junction.

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., Comment: Published version, with corrected equations and improved figures

A scheme for improving the sensitivity of quantum thermometry is proposed where the sensing quantum system used to recover the temperature of an external bath is dynamically coupled with an external ancilla (a meter) via a Hamiltonian term $\hat{H}_I$. At variance with previous approaches, our scheme relies neither on the presence of initial entanglement between the sensor and the meter, nor on the possibility of performing joint measurements on the two systems. The advantages we report arise from the fact that the presence of $\hat{H}_I$ interferes with the bath-sensor interaction, transforming the sensor into an effective transducer which extracts the intrinsically incoherent information on the bath temperature, and maps it into coherences in the meter where it can finally be recovered by local measurements., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures

We investigate a quantum battery made of N two-level systems, which is charged by an optical mode via an energy-conserving interaction. We quantify the fraction E(N) of energy stored in the B battery that can be extracted in order to perform thermodynamic work. We first demonstrate that E(N) is highly reduced by the presence of correlations between the charger and the battery or B between the two-level systems composing the battery. We then show that the correlation-induced suppression of extractable energy, however, can be mitigated by preparing the charger in a coherent optical state. We conclude by proving that the charger-battery system is asymptotically free of such locking correlations in the N \to \infty limit., Comment: 5+4 pages

Quantum coherence inherently affects the dynamics and the performances of a quantum machine. Coherent control can, at least in principle, enhance the work extraction and boost the velocity of evolution in an open quantum system. Using advanced tools from the calculus of variations and reformulating the control problem in the instantaneous Hamiltonian eigenframe, we develop a general technique for minimizing a wide class of cost functionals when the external control has access to full rotations of the system Hamiltonian. The method is then applied both to time and heat loss minimization problems and explicitly solved in the case of a two level system in contact with either bosonic or fermionic thermal environments., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, added references, corrected typos

The Markovian evolution of an open quantum system is characterized by a positive entropy production, while the global entropy gets redistributed between the system and the environment degrees of freedom. Starting from these premises, we analyze the entropy variation of an open quantum system in terms of two distinct relations: the Clausius inequality, that provides an intrinsic bound for the entropy variation in terms of the heat absorbed by the system, and an extrinsic inequality, which instead relates the former to the corresponding entropy increment of the environment. By modeling the thermalization process with a Markovian collisional model, we compare and discuss the two bounds, showing that the latter is asymptotically saturated in the limit of large interaction time. In this regime not only the reduced density matrix of the system reaches an equilibrium configuration, but it also factorizes from the environment degrees of freedom. This last result is proven analytically when the system-bath coupling is sufficiently strong and through numerical analysis in the weak-coupling regime., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures

We present a systematic analysis and classification of several models of quantum batteries involving different combinations of two level systems and quantum harmonic oscillators. In particular, we study energy transfer processes from a given quantum system, termed charger, to another one, i.e. the proper battery. In this setting, we analyze different figures of merit, including the charging time, the maximum energy transfer, and the average charging power. The role of coupling Hamiltonians which do not preserve the number of local excitations in the charger-battery system is clarified by properly accounting them in the global energy balance of the model., Comment: 11 pages

The entanglement survival time is defined as the maximum time a system which is evolving under the action of local Markovian, homogenous in time noise, is capable to preserve the entanglement it had at the beginning of the temporal evolution. In this paper we study how this quantity is affected by the interplay between the coherent preserving and dissipative contributions of the corresponding dynamical generator. We report the presence of a counterintuitive, non-monotonic behaviour in such functional, capable of inducing sudden death of entanglement in models which, in the absence of unitary driving are capable to sustain entanglement for arbitrarily long times., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures

Single-qubit thermometry presents the simplest tool to measure the temperature of thermal baths with reduced invasivity. At thermal equilibrium, the temperature uncertainty is linked to the heat capacity of the qubit, however the best precision is achieved outside equilibrium condition. Here, we discuss a way to generalize this relation in a non-equilibrium regime, taking into account purely quantum effects such as coherence. We support our findings with an experimental photonic simulation., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

We consider the problem of correctly classifying a given quantum two-level system (qubit) which is known to be in one of two equally probable quantum states. We assume that this task should be performed by a quantum machine which does not have at its disposal a complete classical description of the two template states, but can only have partial prior information about their level of purity and mutual overlap. Moreover, similarly to the classical supervised learning paradigm, we assume that the machine can be trained by $n$ qubits prepared in the first template state and by $n$ more qubits prepared in the second template state. In this situation we are interested in the optimal process which correctly classifies the input qubit with the largest probability allowed by quantum mechanics. The problem is studied in its full generality for a number of different prior information scenarios and for an arbitrary size $n$ of the training data. Finite size corrections around the asymptotic limit $n\rightarrow \infty$ are also derived. When the states are assumed to be pure, with known overlap, the problem is also solved in the case of d-level systems., Comment: 15 pages without appendix (total 19), 5 figures, typos corrected, added plots, new results on the d-level system case, new noise simulations with QISKit Aer

We survey the state of the art for the proof of the quantum Gaussian optimizer conjectures of quantum information theory. These fundamental conjectures state that quantum Gaussian input states are the solution to several optimization problems involving quantum Gaussian channels. These problems are the quantum counterpart of three fundamental results of functional analysis and probability: the Entropy Power Inequality, the sharp Young's inequality for convolutions, and the theorem "Gaussian kernels have only Gaussian maximizers." Quantum Gaussian channels play a key role in quantum communication theory: they are the quantum counterpart of Gaussian integral kernels and provide the mathematical model for the propagation of electromagnetic waves in the quantum regime. The quantum Gaussian optimizer conjectures are needed to determine the maximum communication rates over optical fibers and free space. The restriction of the quantum-limited Gaussian attenuator to input states diagonal in the Fock basis coincides with the thinning, which is the analog of the rescaling for positive integer random variables. Quantum Gaussian channels provide then a bridge between functional analysis and discrete probability.

Bounds on the ultimate precision attainable in the estimation of a parameter in Gaussian quantum metrology are obtained when the average number of bosonic probes is fixed. We identify the optimal input probe state among generic (mixed in general) Gaussian states with a fixed average number of probe photons for the estimation of a parameter contained in a generic multimode interferometric optical circuit, namely, a passive linear circuit preserving the total number of photons. The optimal Gaussian input state is essentially a single-mode squeezed vacuum, and the ultimate precision is achieved by a homodyne measurement on the single mode. We also reveal the best strategy for the estimation when we are given $L$ identical target circuits and are allowed to apply passive linear controls in between with an arbitrary number of ancilla modes introduced., Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures

Clausius inequality has deep implications for reversibility and the arrow of time. Quantum theory is able to extend this result for closed systems by inspecting the trajectory of the density matrix on its manifold. Here we show that this approach can provide an upper and lower bound to the irreversible entropy production for open quantum systems as well. These provide insights on the thermodynamics of the information erasure. Limits of the applicability of our bounds are discussed, and demonstrated in a quantum photonic simulator.

Thermal attenuator channels model the decoherence of quantum systems interacting with a thermal bath, e.g., a two-level system subject to thermal noise and an electromagnetic signal travelling through a fiber or in free-space. Hence determining the quantum capacity of these channels is an outstanding open problem for quantum computation and communication. Here we derive several upper bounds on the quantum capacity of qubit and bosonic thermal attenuators. We introduce an extended version of such channels which is degradable and hence has a single-letter quantum capacity, bounding that of the original thermal attenuators. Another bound for bosonic attenuators is given by the bottleneck inequality applied to a particular channel decomposition. With respect to previously known bounds we report better results in a broad range of attenuation and noise: we can now approximate the quantum capacity up to a negligible uncertainty for most practical applications, e.g., for low thermal noise., Comment: v4: corrected typo in Eq. 40; final version, minor corrections; 8+3 pages, 4 figures

Reciprocal pairs of quantum channels are defined as completely positive transformations which admit a rigid, distance-preserving, yet not completely-positive transformation that allows to reproduce the outcome of one from the corresponding outcome of the other. From a classical perspective these transmission lines should exhibit the same communication efficiency. This is no longer the case in the quantum setting: explicit asymmetric behaviours are reported studying the classical communication capacities of reciprocal pairs of depolarizing and Weyl-covariant channels., Comment: 7+3 pages; 5 figures

We apply advanced methods of control theory to open quantum systems and we determine finite-time processes which are optimal with respect to thermodynamic performances. General properties and necessary conditions characterizing optimal drivings are derived, obtaining bang-bang type solutions corresponding to control strategies switching between adiabatic and isothermal transformations. A direct application of these results is the maximization of the work produced by a generic quantum heat engine, where we show that the maximum power is directly linked to a particular conserved quantity naturally emerging from the control problem. Finally we apply our general approach to the specific case of a two level system, which can be put in contact with two different baths at fixed temperatures, identifying the processes which minimize heat dissipation. Moreover, we explicitly solve the optimization problem for a cyclic two-level heat engine driven beyond the linear-response regime, determining the corresponding optimal cycle, the maximum power, and the efficiency at maximum power., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures; corrected typos, added references, all results unchanged

We consider many-body quantum systems dissipatively coupled by a cascade network, i.e. a setup in which interactions are mediated by unidirectional environmental modes propagating through a linear optical interferometer. In particular we are interested in the possibility of inducing different effective interactions by properly engineering an external dissipative network of beam-splitters and phase-shifters. In this work we first derive the general structure of the master equation for a symmetric class of translation-invariant cascade networks. Then we show how, by tuning the parameters of the interferometer, one can exploit interference effects to tailor a large variety of many-body interactions., Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures