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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

How quantum can a single quantum state be? Does this question make sense? One gets the impression that it does with even a small perusal of the quantum-optics literature, where the coherent states of a single mode of the electromagnetic field are often called “classical” states of light . Despite the nomenclature, however, we suggest that there is no robust notion of the quantumness or classicality of a single quantum state. Simply consider any two distinct coherent states $`|\alpha `$ and $`|\beta `$ with finite $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$. The inner product of these two states is nonzero. Thus, if a single mode is prepared secretly in one of these states, there is no automatic device that can amplify the signal reliably into a two-mode state $`|\gamma |\gamma `$, where $`\gamma =\alpha ,\beta `$ depending upon the input . Nonorthogonal states cannot be cloned , and this holds whether the quantum optics community calls such states “classical” or not.

Thus we feel that a robust notion of the quantumness of states can only be attached to a set of states. The members of a set of states can be more or less quantum with respect to each other, but there is no good sense in which each one alone is intrinsically quantum or not. A set of just two nonorthogonal states $`|\psi _0`$ and $`|\psi _1`$ provides a good example . The only relevant number for our purposes is the magnitude of their inner product $`x=|\psi _0|\psi _1|`$. To set the stage for our later discussion, let us once more work within the metaphor of the no-cloning theorem. As a warm-up, we might take the precise degree of “clonability”  as measure of the quantumness of the two states.

There are at least two ways to pursue this , but let us focus on one for concreteness. A cloning attempt can be defined as any unitary operation $`U`$ that gives

$$|\psi _i|0|\mathrm{\Psi }_i,$$
(1)
where each $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_i`$ may be any (entangled) state, so long as its partial trace over either subsystem leads to the same density operator. An optimal cloning attempt is one that maximizes the fidelity between such an output and the wished-for target state $`|\psi _i,\psi _i|\psi _i|\psi _i`$. In other words, an optimal cloning attempt is one that maximizes

$$F_{\text{try}}=\frac{1}{2}|\mathrm{\Psi }_0|\psi _0,\psi _0|^2+\frac{1}{2}|\mathrm{\Psi }_1|\psi _1,\psi _1|^2.$$
(2)
In Ref. , it was shown that

$`F_{\text{clone}}`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{U}{\mathrm{max}}F_{\text{try}}`$ (3)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(1+x^3+(1x^2)\sqrt{1+x^2}\right).`$
Viewing Eq. (3) as a quantitative measure of the quantumness of two states—i.e., the smaller $`F_{\text{clone}}`$, the more quantum the set of states—one finds that two states are the most quantum with respect to each other when $`x=1/\sqrt{3}`$.

Equation (3)—though we will not adopt it as ultimately satisfactory for our needs—exhibits some of the main features a measure of quantumness ought to have. In particular, by this measure, the quantumness of two states is minimal when either $`x=0`$ or $`x=1`$. That is, two states are the most classical with respect to each other when they are either orthogonal or identical. Moreover, the set is most quantum when the states are somewhere in between, in this case when they are roughly $`54.7^{}`$ apart. This point draws perhaps the most important contrast between notions of quantumness (as being sought here) and notions of quantum distinguishability  used in communication theory. As an example, in the setting of classical communication it is often important to understand the best probability with which a signal can be guessed correctly after a quantum measurement has been performed on the signal carrier. For the case at hand, the measure of optimal distinguishability would then be given by

$$P_s=\frac{1}{2}\left(1+\sqrt{1x^2}\right).$$
(4)
This quantity is monotone in the parameter $`x`$: Two states are the most distinguishable when $`x=0`$ and the least when $`x=1`$. No measure of quantumness should have this character. Instead, quantumness should capture more of the character of how difficult it is to make a copy of the quantum state after some of the information about its identity has been deposited in another system. In the case of two very parallel quantum states, it is quite difficult to distinguish them, but then again there is no great need to: A random reproduction of either of the states will lead to almost precisely the same state as the initial one because of their high degree of parallelism.

Nevertheless, as already alluded to, the optimal cloning fidelity in Eq. (3) is not completely suited to our purposes. One reason is that the idea of cloning does not give strong guidance for the particular construction of fidelity in Eq. (2). Under minor modifications of this criterion, the particular $`x`$ for which two states are the most quantum with respect to each other changes drastically. For instance, by one of the other measures considered in Ref. , two states are the most quantum with respect to each other when $`x=1/2`$—that is, when they are $`60^{}`$ apart. Furthermore, with neither of these measures do we see a potentially desirable connection between quantumness and angle in Hilbert space. If there is a connection to be explored, then one might expect that two states should be the most quantum with respect to each other when they are $`45^{}`$ apart. This would give the pleasing slogan: “Two states are the most classical when they are $`0^{}`$ and $`90^{}`$ apart. They are most quantum when they are halfway in between.”

For these reasons, we will stick to a metaphor more akin to extreme eavesdropping in quantum cryptography  than to quantum cloning for defining our problem. In particular, we consider the following scenario. For any given set of pure states

$$𝒮=\left\{\mathrm{\Pi }_i=|\psi _i\psi _i|\right\},$$
(5)
let us act as if there is a source emitting quantum systems with states drawn from the set according to a probability distribution $`\pi _i`$. (For the present, this probability distribution should be considered nothing more than an artifice; ultimately it will be discarded after an optimization.) The systems are then passed on to an eavesdropper who is required to measure them one by one and thereafter fully discard the originals. To make sure the latter process is enforced, we might imagine—and thus the reason for our paper’s title—that the eavesdropper really takes the form of two people, perhaps Eve and Yves, separated by a classical channel. Eve may perform any quantum measurement imaginable, but then Yves will have access to nothing beyond the classical information obtained from that measurement for any purpose he has in mind. Indeed, the main purpose at hand is simply to prepare a new system in a state as “close as possible” to the original.

Thus the reader should be left with the imagery of a quantum state initially living in a large river of Hilbert space, later to be squeezed through a very small outlet, the classical channel. The question is, how intact can the states remain in spite of this squeezing? To gauge the notion of intactness with respect to the original, we will take the average fidelity  between the initial and final states. Operationally this corresponds to Yves handing her newly prepared quantum system back to the initial source. The preparer there—with a record $`k`$ of which state he actually prepared—simply checks the yes-no test $`\{\mathrm{\Pi }_k,I\mathrm{\Pi }_k\}`$ to see whether the system has kept its initial identity or not. The probability that it will pass the test is the fidelity measure we are speaking of.

Considering the best measurement and resynthesis strategies Eve and Yves can conspire to perform gets us most of the way toward a notion of quantumness. The final ingredient is to imagine that the source makes this task as hard as possible for the surreptitious team. Conceptually, we do this by adjusting the probabilities $`\pi _i`$ so that the maximum average fidelity is as small as it can be. The resulting fidelity is what we take to be the quantumness of the set $`𝒮`$. The intuition behind this definition is simple. It captures in a clear-cut way how difficult the eavesdropper’s task can be made for reconstructing the set of states $`𝒮`$. Moreover, it does this even disregarding the more subtle task of quantifying how much mutual information Eve learns about the state’s identity in the process. In a way, it captures the raw sensitivity to eavesdropping that can be imparted to the states in $`𝒮`$.

The problem promoted here certainly has roots in the “state estimation” scenario studied in great detail in the recent literature . The task there is to find optimal measurements so as to maximize the fidelity between an original input state and a reconstructed state according to the estimation result. The main differences are that we have relaxed the condition that the states in $`𝒮`$ be associated with a uniform distribution on Hilbert space. Also we have added an extra optimization over the probability distribution $`\pi _i`$. As the reader will see in the following pages, these simple generalizations and changes have the advantage of drawing out some conceptual aspects of the fidelity-optimization problem that seem to have been missed previously. Moreover, the traditional use of “state estimation” has been for purposes of defining a notion of distinguishability for quantum states . As explained above, this is certainly not what we are trying to get at with a notion of quantumness.For a different take on a notion of quantumness—this one via the issue of reversibly extracting classical information from an ensemble in an asymptotic setting—see Refs. .

The plan of the remainder of the paper is the following. In Section 2, we go through a more rigorous set of definitions leading up to the quantumness of a set of states. Furthermore, we introduce the notion of the quantumness of a Hilbert space. In Section 3, we pause on one of the intermediate definitions—the accessible fidelity—and develop several results on that quantity. These include a more convenient expression that automatically takes into account Yves’ part of the problem, and also some bounds, both on the value of the accessible fidelity and on the measurements required for its definition. In Section 4, we study a few examples in detail. Among them, we show how difficult it is to derive rigorously the quantumness of just two nonorthogonal quantum states, we study various group covariant cases, and we demonstrate an ensemble for which the optimal measurement for mutual information is not also optimal for accessible fidelity. In Section 5, we give a small discussion of two potential applications of the notion of quantumness: first for designing optimally “sensitive” alphabets for a new class of quantum key distribution protocols, and then for the purpose of verifying the usage of entanglement in laboratory demonstrations  of quantum teleportation . We close the paper with a list of open questions.

## 2 Building an Expression for Quantumness

This section is devoted to defining our notion of quantumness. We will approach it through a series of definitions. Some of these will turn out to be interesting in their own right.

To set the stage, we again imagine a source producing a sequence of states, each drawn repeatedly from the set $`𝒮`$ in Eq. (5) according to a probability distribution $`\pi _i`$.In this paper, we restrict the notions of accessible fidelity and quantumness to sets $`𝒮`$ of pure states. One could, of course, imagine using Uhlmann’s fidelity function  to make the appropriate definitions for sets of mixed states. The problem with this approach, however, is that then these fidelities would lose their clean operational meaning in terms of probabilities for an eavesdropper’s going unnoticed. Thus, we leave the interesting question of how to define mixed-state analogues of the present quantities unaddressed here. Such a set of states along with a set of assigned probabilities, we will call an ensemble $`𝒫`$. To be as general as possible, we place no a priori restrictions on the number of elements in $`𝒮`$. Nor do we place a restriction on $`d`$, the dimension of the Hilbert space $`_d`$ where the states live. Eve, in her capacity, is imagined to perform a single quantum measurement on each of the signals. Most generally, this will be some positive operator-valued measure (POVM) $`=\{E_b\}`$ . The outcomes of the measurement—indexed by the subscript $`b`$—will be allowed to be of any cardinality as long as it is finite. The only (necessary) restriction on the operators $`E_b`$ is that they be positive semi-definite and combine to form a resolution of the identity, $`I=_bE_b`$.

Yves makes use of the information Eve obtains—some explicit index $`b`$—by preparing his system in a quantum state $`\sigma _b`$. Since the synthesis is based solely on classical information, there need be no restrictions on the mapping $`:b\sigma _b`$. (For instance, it need have no connection to a completely positive linear map, etc.) Moreover, we even contemplate the possibility that the $`\sigma _b`$ are mixed states rather than pure. This assumption corresponds to the possibility of a randomized output strategy on the part of Yves. The conjunction of a measurement $``$ and a mapping $``$ constitutes a complete protocol for the eavesdropping pair.

Now let us start to put these ingredients together. Supposing the source actually emits the state $`\mathrm{\Pi }_i`$, and Eve obtains the outcome $`b`$ for her measurement, then the fidelity Yves will achieve in this instance is

$$F_{b,i}=\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_i\sigma _b)=\psi _i|\sigma _b|\psi _i.$$
(6)
However there is no predictability of Eve’s measurement outcome above and beyond what quantum mechanics allows. Similarly, the most we can say about the actual state the source produces is through the probability distribution $`\pi _i`$. Therefore, the average fidelity for this protocol will be

$`F_𝒫(,)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{b,i}{}}p(b,i)F_{b,i}`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{b,i}{}}\pi _i\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_b)\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_i\sigma _b),`$
where

$$p(b,i)=\pi _i\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_b)$$
(8)
is the joint probability for an input $`i`$ and an output $`b`$.

One convenient resting place along the road to quantumness is to consider an optimization over Yves’ strategy alone. Thus, for a given measurement $``$ and a given ensemble $`𝒫`$, we define the achievable fidelity with respect to the measurement to be

$$F_𝒫()=\underset{}{sup}F_𝒫(,).$$
(9)
It turns out that $`F_𝒫()`$ can be given a particularly pleasing analytic form.

In analogy to the quantity known as accessible information  which has turned out to be so important in the theory of quantum channel capacities, let us define the accessible fidelity of the ensemble $`𝒫`$ to be

$$F_𝒫=\underset{}{sup}F_𝒫().$$
(10)
As a matter of practice, for all the quantities in Eqs. (7), (9) and (10) we will generally eliminate the subscript $`𝒫`$ whenever no confusion can arise over the ensemble.

Finally the quantumness of the set $`𝒮`$ is defined by

$$Q(𝒮)=\underset{\{\pi _i\}}{inf}F_𝒫.$$
(11)
This definition has the slightly awkward property that the smaller $`Q(𝒮)`$ is, the more quantum the set $`𝒮`$ is. This, of course, could be remedied easily by subtracting the present quantity from any constant. However, if we wanted to further normalize the quantumness so that, say, its value achieves a maximum when no set of states has a higher quantumness, we would have to make use of a (presently) unknown constant in our definition. Thus, it seems easiest for the moment to simply remain with Eq. (11).

This does, however, raise an important point—indeed one of paramount concern for the ultimate use of quantumness. Just how quantum can a set of states be in the most extreme case? This prompts the definition of the quantumness of a Hilbert space:

$$Q_d=\underset{𝒮}{inf}Q(𝒮),$$
(12)
where the infimum is taken over all sets of states living on the Hilbert space $`_d`$.

Let us now turn to deriving some properties for these quantities. Our first stop is the accessible fidelity.

## 3 The Accessible Fidelity

It turns out to be a rather easy matter to derive an analytic expression for the achievable fidelity $`F_𝒫()`$ for any given measurement $``$. First note that Eq. (7) is linear in the variables $`\sigma _b`$. Thus, in any decomposition of $`\sigma _b`$ into a mixture of pure states, we might as well delete $`\sigma _b`$ and replace it with the most advantageous element in the decomposition. Therefore, in the maximization in Eq. (9), it can never hurt to assume at the outset that the $`\sigma _b`$ are pure states, $`\sigma _b=|\varphi _b\varphi _b|`$.

Rewriting Eq. (7) under this assumption, we obtain

$`F(,)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\pi _i\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_b)\varphi _b|\mathrm{\Pi }_i|\varphi _b`$ (13)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\pi _i\psi _i|E_b|\psi _i\varphi _b|\psi _i\psi _i|\varphi _b`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}\varphi _b|({\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\pi _i|\psi _i\psi _i|E_b|\psi _i\psi _i|)|\varphi _b`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}\varphi _b|M_b|\varphi _b,`$
where the Hermitian (in fact, positive semi-definite) “mapping operators” $`M_b`$ are defined by

$`M_b`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\pi _i\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_b\mathrm{\Pi }_i`$ (14)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\pi _i\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_b)\mathrm{\Pi }_i.`$
(As promised, since $`𝒫`$ is fixed for the present considerations, we have dropped explicit reference to it in our notation.) Now the pure states $`|\varphi _b`$ are absolutely arbitrary. Thus we can optimize each term in Eq. (13) separately. This is done easily enough by remembering that the largest eigenvalue $`\lambda _1(A)`$ of any positive semi-definite (Hermitian) operator $`A`$ can be characterized by

$$\lambda _1(A)=sup\alpha |A|\alpha ,$$
(15)
where the supremum is taken over all normalized vectors $`|\alpha `$. Therefore, the achievable fidelity reduces to the following explicit expression:

$$F()=\underset{b}{}\lambda _1\left(\underset{i}{}\pi _i\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_b)\mathrm{\Pi }_i\right).$$
(16)
Unfortunately, this is where the easy part of the development ends. Just as with the accessible information for an ensemble, no explicit expression for the accessible fidelity is likely to exist in the general case. The best one can hope for is the understanding of some of its general properties, a few explicit examples, and perhaps some useful bounds.

In this regard, perhaps the first question one should ask is how much can said about the measurements achieving equality in Eq. (10). Are we even sure that a satisfying measurement exists? The answer is yes, and the reason is essentially the same as for the existence of an optimal measurement for the accessible information . From Eq. (15), it follows that

$$\lambda _1(A+B)\lambda _1(A)+\lambda _1(B).$$
(17)
This means that $`F()`$ is a convex function over the the set of POVMs. More formally, one can think of the set of POVMs as equipped with a convex structure by thinking of a POVM $``$ as an infinite sequence of operators $`(E_b)_{b=1}^{\mathrm{}}`$, with only a finite number of nonvanishing $`E_b`$. Then a natural convex addition operation arises by taking

$$p+(1p)\left(pE_b+(1p)F_b\right)_{b=1}^{\mathrm{}}.$$
(18)
The set of POVMs constructed in this way is a compact set . Hence, owing the continuity of the function $`\lambda _1(A)`$, it follows that $`F()`$ will achieve its supremum on an extreme point of the set of POVMs.

Furthermore, by the reasoning of Ref. \[31, p. 1078\] (which is used to rederive the main result of Ref. ), we know that for any extreme point $``$, all the nonvanishing operators $`E_b`$ within it must be linearly independent. Thus, if the states $`\mathrm{\Pi }_i`$ live on a complex Hilbert space $`_d`$, then we can restrict the maximization in Eq. (10) to POVMs with no more than $`d^2`$ outcomes. (If the Hilbert space is real, there need be no more than $`\frac{1}{2}d(d+1)`$ outcomes .) Finally, because of the subadditivity in Eq. (17), it even holds that these $`d^2`$ operators can be chosen to be rank-one—that is, simply proportional to projectors . This is a generalization of Davies’ theorem for accessible information to the present context .

One might wish for still a further refinement in what can be said of optimal measurements for accessible information. For instance, that the number of measurement outcomes need not exceed the number of inputs—i.e., the number of values the index $`i`$ can take—in analogy to the case of quantum hypothesis testing . This intuition is captured in a rhetorical way by asking, what can Eve possibly do better than make her best guess and pass that information on to Yves? But, if such is the case, a proof remains to be seen. Indeed, because of the high degree of nonlinearity in Eq. (10), there may be counterevidence from the case of accessible information itself: For there, there are known examples where the number of outcomes in an optimal measurement strictly exceed the number of inputs .

This brings up the question of how to draw a direct comparison between the success probability in hypothesis testing and the achievable fidelity for any given measurement. The usual way of posing the hypothesis testing problem is to assume a one-to-one correspondence between inputs $`\mathrm{\Pi }_i`$ and POVM elements $`E_i`$, each element signifying the guess one should make about the input’s identity. In that way of writing the problem, the average success probability $`P_s`$ takes the form

$$P_s=\underset{i}{}\pi _i\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_i).$$
(19)
Here, however, we would be reluctant to make such a restriction on the number of outcomes. So, we must pose the hypothesis testing problem in a more general way.

Suppose Eve performs a measurement $``$ and observes outcome $`b`$ to occur. This new information will cause her to update here probabilities for the various inputs according to Bayes’ rule:

$$p(i|b)=\frac{p(b,i)}{p(b)}=\frac{\pi _i\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_b)}{\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_b)},$$
(20)
where

$$p(b)=\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_b)$$
(21)
is the prior probability for the outcome $`b`$ and

$$\rho =\underset{i}{}\pi _i\mathrm{\Pi }_i$$
(22)
is the density operator for the ensemble $`𝒫`$. The method of maximum likelihood dictates  that Eve’s success probability in a decision will be maximized if she simply chooses the value $`i`$ for which $`p(i|b)`$ is maximized. Thus her average success probability will be

$`P_s()`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}p(b)\underset{i}{\mathrm{max}}\{p(i|b)\}`$ (23)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}\underset{i}{\mathrm{max}}\{\pi _i\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_b)\}.`$
Equation (23) can be seen to compare with the achievable fidelity $`F()`$ through a simple inequality. In preparation for this, note that we can also write $`F()`$ in the form

$$F()=\underset{b}{}p(b)\lambda _1(\rho _b),$$
(24)
where

$$\rho _b=\underset{i}{}p(i|b)\mathrm{\Pi }_i.$$
(25)
Now, suppose that $`j`$ is the index that maximizes $`p(i|b)`$. Then

$`\lambda _1(\rho _b)`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{|\varphi }{\mathrm{max}}\varphi |\rho _b\varphi `$ (26)
$``$ $`\psi _j|\rho _b|\psi _j`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}p(i|b)|\psi _j|\psi _i|^2`$
$`=`$ $`p(j|b)+{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}p(i|b)|\psi _j|\psi _i|^2`$
$``$ $`\underset{i}{\mathrm{max}}\{p(i|b)\}.`$
Therefore, we find the simple inequality we were seeking:

$$P_s()F().$$
(27)
Of course, this inequality is not tight at all: For instance, for $`𝒫`$ describing a uniform distribution of states on a qubit, $`P_s0`$, while $`F`$ can be as large as $`2/3`$ . However, it does show the extent to which Yves stands a chance of recovering from Eve’s measurement errors by the generation of a new quantum state.

Tighter bounds, both upper and lower, on Eq. (10) would be very useful. For the present, though, we have little to report in that regard. An obvious lower bound comes directly from the convexity of the $`\lambda _1(A)`$ function. Note in particular that

$$\rho =\underset{b}{}p(b)\rho _b.$$
(28)
Therefore

$$F()\lambda _1(\rho ).$$
(29)
This inequality is generally tighter than our previous in that it never falls below $`1/d`$, and moreover there is a measurement $``$ that achieves it—namely choosing $``$ to be the one element set consisting of the identity operator $`I`$.

A more interesting lower bound to the accessible fidelity comes about by considering the behavior of $`F()`$ with respect to the so-called “square-root measurement” or “pretty good measurement” . This POVM is constructed directly from the ensemble decomposition of $`\rho `$ in Eq. (22) by multiplying it from the left and right by $`\rho ^{1/2}`$. With this we obtain a natural decomposition of the identity:

$$I=\underset{i}{}\pi _i\rho ^{1/2}\mathrm{\Pi }_i\rho ^{1/2}.$$
(30)
(To ensure that $`\rho ^{1/2}`$ is well defined, we restrict all operators to the support of $`\rho `$; clearly there is no loss in generality for our problem in doing this.) Inserting this expression into Eq. (16), we obtain the lower bound

$$F_𝒫F_{\mathrm{SRM}}=\underset{i}{}\lambda _1\left(\underset{j}{}\pi _i\pi _j\mathrm{\Pi }_j\rho ^{1/2}\mathrm{\Pi }_i\rho ^{1/2}\mathrm{\Pi }_j\right).$$
(31)
It seems that if one is going to find good bounds on the quantumness of a set of states and the quantumness of a Hilbert space, the study of this expression may be a good place to start. However, for most particular ensembles this bound is unlikely to be tight as a bound on the accessible fidelity itself.

## 4 Some Examples

### 4.1 The Quantumness of Two Nonorthogonal States

Demonstrating the quantumness of even simple sets of quantum states can be surprisingly difficult. A case in point is the minimal set $`𝒮`$, consisting of just two nonorthogonal quantum states $`|\psi _0`$ and $`|\psi _1`$. Supposing equal probabilities for the states, one would think intuitively that the best Eve could do in the imaginary scenario motivating $`Q`$ is to measure the observable that optimizes her error about which state is in front of her—i.e., the Helstrom measurement leading to Eq. (4)—and then use the procedure between Eqs. (13) and (16) to generate the new states $`|\varphi _b`$ for her ultimate output. And that indeed is the case. But the trail from this intuition to a formal proof is not completely straightforward.

We start by finding the accessible fidelity $`F`$ for a general binary pure-state ensemble

$$𝒫=\{|\psi _0,|\psi _1;\pi _0,\pi _1\}.$$
(32)
For ease, let us define an orthonormal basis $`\{|+,|\}`$ so that

$`|\psi _0`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|+\mathrm{sin}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|,`$ (33)
$`|\psi _1`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|++\mathrm{sin}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|,`$ (34)
where $`0\theta \pi `$. Clearly the only thing that should matter about these states is the parameters $`x`$ and $`\theta `$ defined by $`\psi _0|\psi _1=\mathrm{cos}\theta =x`$. According to Eqs. (10) and (16), the achievable fidelity for $`𝒫`$ with respect to a POVM $``$ is given by

$$F()=\underset{b}{}\lambda _1(M_b),$$
(35)
where

$$M_b=\pi _0\mathrm{tr}(E_b\mathrm{\Pi }_0)\mathrm{\Pi }_0+\pi _1\mathrm{tr}(E_b\mathrm{\Pi }_1)\mathrm{\Pi }_1$$
(36)
where $`\mathrm{\Pi }_i=|\psi _i\psi _i|`$. After a small calculation, one can show that the two eigenvalues for each $`M_b`$ are given by

$$\lambda _\pm (M_b)=\frac{1}{2}\left[\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )\pm \sqrt{\left[\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )\right]^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\left[\mathrm{tr}(E_b\mathrm{\Delta })\right]^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }\right],$$
(37)
where

$$\rho =\pi _0\mathrm{\Pi }_0+\pi _1\mathrm{\Pi }_1\text{and}\mathrm{\Delta }=\pi _0\mathrm{\Pi }_0\pi _1\mathrm{\Pi }_1.$$
(38)
Therefore the accessible fidelity, Eq. (10), reads

$$F=\frac{1}{2}+\frac{1}{2}G,$$
(39)
where

$$G=\underset{}{\mathrm{max}}\underset{b}{}\sqrt{\left[\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )\right]^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\left[\mathrm{tr}(E_b\mathrm{\Delta })\right]^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }.$$
(40)
The greatest obstacle for finding a general expression for $`G`$ is in the nonlinearity of the function on the right-hand side of Eq. (40). In principle, by the generalization of Davies’ theorem presented in Section 3, we must search over all 3-outcomed POVMs (with rank-1 elements) to find its maximal value. However, this is an almost impossible technique to carry out directly. We therefore resort to deriving the maximization by first demonstrating an upper bound on $`G`$ and then returning to show that equality can be achieved in each step of its derivation with a rather simple 2-outcomed POVM—indeed, a POVM that is none other than Helstrom’s measurement.

The first step in the process is to rewrite Eq. (40) as

$$G=\underset{}{\mathrm{max}}\underset{b}{}\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )\sqrt{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\left[\frac{\mathrm{tr}(E_b\mathrm{\Delta })}{\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )}\right]^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }.$$
(41)
Notice that $`\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_b)`$ is a probability distribution over the index $`b`$ and that the square root is a monotonically increasing concave function. Therefore, we can use Jensen’s inequality to upper bound $`G`$ by

$`G`$ $``$ $`\underset{}{\mathrm{max}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}\left[\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +{\displaystyle \frac{\left[\mathrm{tr}(E_b\mathrm{\Delta })\right]^2}{\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )}}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta \right]}`$ (42)
$`=`$ $`\sqrt{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +A\mathrm{sin}^2\theta },`$ (43)
where

$$A=\underset{}{\mathrm{max}}\underset{b}{}\frac{\left[\mathrm{tr}(E_b\mathrm{\Delta })\right]^2}{\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )}.$$
(44)
Equality in Eq. (42) is achieved if and only if

$$\left[\frac{\mathrm{tr}(E_b\mathrm{\Delta })}{\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )}\right]^2=\mathrm{constant}b.$$
(45)
To find $`A`$, we apply a technique used in . This is based on putting an upper bound on $`A`$ in such a way that the $`\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )`$ term in the denominator is cancelled and only an expression linear in $`E_b`$ is left behind. For this purpose, we introduce an operator $`X`$ defined implicitly as a solution to the linear equation

$$\rho X+X\rho =2\mathrm{\Delta }.$$
(46)
In terms of an orthonormal basis $`\{|\omega _+,|\omega _{}\}`$ that diagonalizes $`\rho `$, $`X`$ can be represented by

$$X=2\underset{i,j=+,}{}\frac{\omega _i|\mathrm{\Delta }|\omega _j}{\omega _i+\omega _j}|\omega _i\omega _j|$$
(47)
so long as $`\rho `$ is invertible. The property we need is

$`|\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_bX)|`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{Re}[\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_bX)]`$ (48)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_bX)+\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_bX)^{}\right]`$
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{tr}(E_b\mathrm{\Delta }).`$
By using this, the quantity $`A`$ is bounded as

$`A`$ $``$ $`\underset{}{\mathrm{max}}{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{|\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_bX)|^2}{\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )}}`$
$`=`$ $`\underset{}{\mathrm{max}}{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\left|\mathrm{tr}\left(\rho ^{1/2}E_b^{1/2}E_b^{1/2}X\rho ^{1/2}\right)\right|^2}{\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )}}`$
$``$ $`\underset{}{\mathrm{max}}{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}\mathrm{tr}\left(\rho ^{1/2}XE_b^{1/2}E_b^{1/2}X\rho ^{1/2}\right)`$ (50)
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{tr}(X\rho X)`$ (51)
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Delta }X).`$ (52)
Step (50) relies on the Schwarz inequality

$$|\mathrm{tr}(A^{}B)|^2\mathrm{tr}(A^{}A)\mathrm{tr}(B^{}B),$$
(53)
and the final step (51) follows from the fact that the operators in $``$ form a resolution of the identity.

Equality between Eqs. (4.1) and (52) is achieved when the following two conditions are satisfied. From step (4.1),

$$\mathrm{Im}[\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_bX)]=0b,$$
(54)
and from step (50),

$$E_b^{1/2}X\rho ^{1/2}=\mu _bE_b^{1/2}\rho ^{1/2}b,$$
(55)
with some constants $`\mu _b`$. The second condition Eq. (55) can be met easily by choosing the POVM $``$ to consist of rank-one projectors onto a set of eigenvectors for the Hermitian operator $`X`$ and choosing the constants $`\mu _b`$ to be the associated eigenvalues. The first condition Eq. (54) then follows since

$`\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_bX)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{tr}\left(\rho E_b^{1/2}E_b^{1/2}X\right)`$ (56)
$`=`$ $`\mu _b\mathrm{tr}(\rho E_b),`$
which is clearly a real number.

Now, all that remains is to show that the POVM $`=\{E_b\}`$ constructed in this way also satisfies Eq. (45) and hence is an optimal solution for the accessible fidelity.

Let us define (without loss of generality) a parameter

$$P\pi _2\pi _10,(0\pi _11/2).$$
(57)
Then, the spectral decomposition of $`\rho `$ is given by

$$\rho =\underset{i=+,}{}\omega _i|\omega _i\omega _i|,|\omega _i=U|i,$$
(58)
where

$$\omega _\pm =\frac{1}{2}\left(1\pm \sqrt{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +P^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }\right),$$
(59)
and

$$U=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}\gamma & \mathrm{sin}\gamma \\ \mathrm{sin}\gamma & \mathrm{cos}\gamma \end{array}\right)$$
(60)
with

$$\mathrm{cos}^2\gamma =\frac{\sqrt{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +P^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }+\mathrm{cos}\theta }{2\sqrt{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +P^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }}\text{and}\mathrm{sin}^2\gamma =\frac{\sqrt{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +P^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }\mathrm{cos}\theta }{2\sqrt{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +P^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }}.$$

In this, the 2$`\times `$2 matrix representation here is based on the choice

$$|+=\left(\begin{array}{c}1\\ 0\end{array}\right)\text{and}|=\left(\begin{array}{c}0\\ 1\end{array}\right).$$
(61)
For $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, we have

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=\frac{1}{2}\left(\begin{array}{cc}P(1+\mathrm{cos}\theta )& \mathrm{sin}\theta \\ \mathrm{sin}\theta & P(1\mathrm{cos}\theta )\end{array}\right).$$
(62)
Then by calculating $`U^{}\mathrm{\Delta }U`$ and substituting

$$\omega _i|\mathrm{\Delta }|\omega _j=i|U^{}\mathrm{\Delta }U|j$$
(63)
into Eq. (47), we get

$$X=\left(\begin{array}{cc}X_{++}& X_+\\ X_+& X_{}\end{array}\right),$$
(64)
where

$$X_{\pm \pm }=\frac{P\mathrm{cos}\theta \left(1(1P^2)\mathrm{sin}^2\theta \right)}{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +P^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }$$
(65)
and

$$X_+=X_+=\frac{\mathrm{sin}\theta (\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +P^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta )}{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +P^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }$$
(66)
This can be diagonalized by

$$U_0=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}\gamma _0& \mathrm{sin}\gamma _0\\ \mathrm{sin}\gamma _0& \mathrm{cos}\gamma _0\end{array}\right)$$
(67)
with

$$\mathrm{cos}^2\gamma _0=\frac{\sqrt{P^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }P\mathrm{cos}\theta }{2\sqrt{P^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }}\text{and}\mathrm{sin}^2\gamma _0=\frac{\sqrt{P^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }+P\mathrm{cos}\theta }{2\sqrt{P^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }}$$

such that

$$X=\underset{i=+,}{}\nu _i|\nu _i\nu _i|,|\nu _\pm =U_0|\pm ,$$
(68)
where $`\nu _\pm =\sqrt{P^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }`$. Therefore the optimal POVM constitutes a set of the two rank-one elements $`E_1=|\nu _+\nu _+|`$ and $`E_2=|\nu _{}\nu _{}|`$.

For such $`\{E_b\}`$,

$$\nu _\pm |\rho |\nu _\pm =\frac{\sqrt{P^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }P}{2\sqrt{P^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }},$$
(69)
and hence we have

$$\left[\frac{\mathrm{tr}(E_b\mathrm{\Delta })}{\mathrm{tr}(E_b\rho )}\right]^2=P^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^2\theta \text{for }b=1,2.$$
(70)
Thus the equality condition Eq. (45) is also satisfied.

Putting all this together, we obtain that the accessible fidelity for $`𝒫`$ is given by

$$F_𝒫=\frac{1}{2}\left(1+\sqrt{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +(P^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^2\theta )\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }\right).$$
(71)
The quantumness of the set $`𝒮=\{|\psi _1,|\psi _2\}`$ is now the minimum of $`F_𝒫`$ with respect to the parameter $`P`$. In this case, the minimum is clearly attained for $`\pi _1=\pi _1=1/2`$, and so

$`Q(𝒮)`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{\{\pi _i\}}{\mathrm{min}}F_𝒫`$ (72)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(1+\sqrt{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^4\theta }\right).`$
In terms of $`x=|\psi _0|\psi _1|`$, we get the expression assumed without proof in Ref. . Namely,

$$Q(𝒮)=\frac{1}{2}\left(1+\sqrt{1x^2+x^4}\right).$$
(73)
Notice that if we consider varying the parameter $`x`$ in Eq. (73), two states will be the most quantum with respect to each other when $`x=1/\sqrt{2}`$. In that case, $`Q0.933`$. Therefore, in opposition to clonability, this measure does have the pleasing feature that two states are the most quantum with respect to each other when $`\theta =45^{}`$. Thus $`Q(𝒮)`$ fulfills the slogan set forth in Section 1.

It is worth noting that the optimal measurement for the accessible fidelity is also the one that maximizes the average success probability in hypothesis testing, Eq. (19),

$$P_s=\pi _1+\mathrm{tr}(E_0\mathrm{\Delta }).$$
(74)
In fact, we can see that

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=\omega _{0+}|\nu _+\nu _+\left|+\omega _0\right|\nu _{}\nu _{}|,$$
(75)
where

$$\omega _{0\pm }=\frac{1}{2}\left(P\pm \sqrt{P^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }\right).$$
(76)
The projectors $`\{|\nu _+\nu _+|,|\nu _{}\nu _{}|\}`$ define the Helstrom measurement .

### 4.2 Accessible Fidelity for Group Symmetric Cases of a Qubit

Deriving the quantumness for sets $`𝒮`$ consisting of more then three elements remains an open problem in general. However, the accessible fidelity can be found for certain sets with symmetry properties. In this section, we consider group symmetric sources on a qubit and derive optimal strategies for achieving the accessible fidelity in these cases. What are particularly interesting are the subcases where an arbitrary, simple von Neumann measurement will do. This suggests a connection between these cases and the Scrooge ensembles considered in Ref. .

#### 4.2.1 Real symmetric states

Let us first consider the $`M`$-ary real symmetric source on a qubit. Introducing the rotation operator

$$V\mathrm{exp}(i\frac{\pi }{M}\sigma _y)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}\frac{\pi }{M}& \mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi }{M}\\ \mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi }{M}& \mathrm{cos}\frac{\pi }{M}\end{array}\right),$$
(77)
we make the ensemble consisting of the $`M`$ states

$$|\psi _k=V^k|\psi _0=\left(\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{cos}\frac{k\pi }{M}\\ \mathrm{sin}\frac{k\pi }{M}\end{array}\right),k=0,\mathrm{},M1,$$
(78)
taken with equal prior probabilities $`\pi _i=\frac{1}{M}`$. On the Bloch sphere, these states $`\mathrm{\Pi }_k=|\psi _k\psi _k|`$ are equally spaced around a great circle in the $`x`$-$`z`$ plane consisting of all real states.

The accessible fidelity for this set was already obtained by using a simple differentiation technique based on Lagrange multipliers in Ref. . Here, we derive the optimal solution by a different method. Namely, we use the symmetry of the source, along with the generalization of Davies’ theorem proved in Section 3.

By that theorem, the optimal POVM for accessible fidelity can be specified by a 3-output rank-1 POVM. We parameterize such POVMs $`=\{E_b=|E_bE_b|\}`$ by

$`|E_0`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{2\alpha ^2\beta ^2}\left(\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{cos}\theta \\ \mathrm{sin}\theta \end{array}\right),`$ (79)
$`|E_1`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha \left(\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{cos}(\theta +\phi _\alpha )\\ \mathrm{sin}(\theta +\phi _\alpha )\end{array}\right),`$ (80)
$`|E_2`$ $`=`$ $`\beta \left(\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{cos}(\theta +\phi _\beta )\\ \mathrm{sin}(\theta +\phi _\beta )\end{array}\right),`$ (81)
where the coefficients are given by

$$\alpha ^2=\frac{\mathrm{cos}\phi _\beta }{\mathrm{sin}\phi _\alpha \mathrm{sin}(\phi _\alpha \phi _\beta )}\text{and}\beta ^2=\frac{\mathrm{cos}\phi _\alpha }{\mathrm{sin}\phi _\beta \mathrm{sin}(\phi _\beta \phi _\alpha )},$$
(82)
and

$$0\alpha ^2+\beta ^22.$$
(83)
It follows then that

$$E_b=\frac{\lambda _b}{2}\left(I+\sigma _x\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Theta }_b+\sigma _z\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Theta }_b\right),$$
(84)
where

$$\lambda _b=\left\{\begin{array}{cc}2\alpha ^2\beta ^2\hfill & (b=0)\hfill \\ \alpha ^2\hfill & (b=1)\hfill \\ \beta ^2\hfill & (b=2)\hfill \end{array}\right]\text{and}\mathrm{\Theta }_b=\left\{\begin{array}{cc}2\theta \hfill & (b=0)\hfill \\ 2\theta +2\phi _\alpha \hfill & (b=1)\hfill \\ 2\theta +2\phi _\beta \hfill & (b=2)\hfill \end{array}\right].$$
(85)
Evaluating the mapping operators

$$M_b=\underset{i}{}\pi _i\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_b)\mathrm{\Pi }_i$$
(86)
for obtaining the achievable fidelity

$$F()=\underset{b}{}\lambda _1\left(M_b\right),$$
(87)
we see that they can be written as

$$M_b=\frac{\lambda _b}{4}\left(I+\sigma _x\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Theta }_b+\sigma _z\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Theta }_b\right).$$
(88)
Note in particular that these operators have no dependence at all on $`M`$.

Thus, for $`M3`$, the $`M_b`$ can all be diagonalized by the same operators,

$$P_b=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }_b}{2}& \mathrm{sin}\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }_b}{2}\\ \mathrm{sin}\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }_b}{2}& \mathrm{cos}\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }_b}{2}\end{array}\right),$$
(89)
as

$$P_b^{}M_bP_b=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{3\lambda _b}{8}& 0\\ 0& \frac{\lambda _b}{8}\end{array}\right).$$
(90)
Hence it follows that the accessible fidelity is

$$F=\underset{\{E_b\}}{\mathrm{max}}\underset{b}{}\frac{3}{8}\lambda _b=\frac{3}{4}.$$
(91)
This value can be achieved by any 3-outcome POVM with rank-1 elements! In particular, the degenerate case where two of the three outcomes are identical—i.e., the measurement is a standard von Neumann measurement—will also do.

If the prior probabilities of the signals $`\pi _i`$ were not equal, things would not have proceeded in such a straightforward way.

#### 4.2.2 Platonic Solids

The second example for which we can derive an exact expression for the accessible fidelity has to do with sets of group symmetric states characterized by groups with an irreducible unitary representation. For such ensembles, Davies considered the maximization problem of the Shannon mutual information and derived the existence of a class of POVMs with the same symmetry. The mutual information, like the achievable fidelity, is also a convex function of POVMs. Therefore the spirit of Davies’ work can be applied to accessible fidelity as well. In fact we can derive a similar result about the possible forms of the optimal POVM by slight modifications of the proof given in Ref. .

Let $`\{U_g|gG\}`$ be a projective unitary representation of the group $`G`$ characterizing the ensemble $`𝒫`$ of signal states $`\{\mathrm{\Pi }_i=|\psi _i\psi _i|\}`$ with equal prior probabilities $`\pi _i=1/M`$. Suppose a POVM $`\{A_a=\kappa _a|v_av_a|\}`$ $`(|v_a|v_a|=1)`$ and the assignment $`\{a|\phi _a\}`$ are optimal, that is

$$F_𝒫=\frac{1}{M}\underset{a}{}\underset{i}{}\mathrm{tr}\left(A_a\mathrm{\Pi }_i\right)|\phi _a|\psi _i|^2.$$
(92)
Consider another POVM and assignment

$`B_{ag}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|G|}}U_gA_aU_g^{},`$ (93)
$`ag`$ $``$ $`U_g|\phi _a,`$ (94)
where $`|G|`$ is the number of group elements. Look at the quantity

$$F(\{B_{ag}\})=\underset{g}{}\frac{1}{M}\underset{a}{}\underset{i}{}\mathrm{tr}\left(B_{ag}\mathrm{\Pi }_i\right)|\phi _a|U_g^{}|\psi _i|^2.$$
(95)
This reduces to

$`F(\{B_{ag}\})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|G|}}{\displaystyle \underset{g}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M}}{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}\phi _a|{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}U_g^{}\mathrm{\Pi }_iU_gA_aU_g^{}\mathrm{\Pi }_iU_g|\phi _a`$ (96)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|G|}}{\displaystyle \underset{g}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M}}{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}\phi _a|{\displaystyle \underset{i^{}}{}}\mathrm{\Pi }_i^{}A_a\mathrm{\Pi }_i^{}|\phi _a`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|G|}}{\displaystyle \underset{g}{}}F_𝒫`$
$`=`$ $`F_𝒫.`$
Thus the strategy of Eqs. (93) and (94) is optimal too. Let us next define

$$C_g^{(a)}\frac{d}{|G|}U_g|v_av_a|U_g^{},$$
(97)
where $`d`$ is the dimension of the Hilbert space spanned by the $`|\psi _i`$. Due to the irreducibility of $`\{U_g|gG\}`$,

$$\underset{g}{}C_g^{(a)}=I,$$
(98)
holds for each $`a`$, that is, $`\{C_g^{(a)}\}`$ is a POVM for each $`a`$. $`\{B_{ag}\}`$ can be written as

$$\underset{ag}{}B_{ag}=\underset{ag}{}\frac{\kappa _a}{d}C_g^{(a)}=I,$$
(99)
that is $`\{B_{ag}\}`$ is a convex combination of $`\{C_g^{(a)}\}`$. Then by convexity

$$F(\{B_{ag}\})\underset{ag}{}\frac{\kappa _a}{d}F(\{C_g^{(a)}\}).$$
(100)
Since $`\{B_{ag}\}`$ is optimal, there must exist an optimal POVM of the form Eq. (97). This means that there exists a rank-1 nucleus from which the optimal POVM can be generated by applying the group elements $`U_g`$.

Let us apply this result to qubit sources corresponding to the regular polyhedra, i.e., the five Platonic solids. These sources include the tetrahedron ($`|G|=4`$), octahedron ($`|G|=6`$), cube ($`|G|=8`$), icosahedron ($`|G|=12`$), and dodecahedron ($`|G|=20`$). These are characterized by the regular polyhedral groups in three dimensional Euclidean space corresponding to their Bloch sphere representation.

Let the signal states be

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_g=\frac{1}{2}\left(I+\stackrel{}{\psi }_g\stackrel{}{\sigma }\right),\stackrel{}{\psi }_g=(\alpha _g,\beta _g,\gamma _g)^T,$$
(101)
From the above result, there must exist the optimal POVM for the accessible fidelity of the form

$$E_g=\frac{2}{|G|}U_g|ee|U_g^{}.$$
(102)
Obviously the mapping operator is also group covariant, and the accessible fidelity can simply be given by

$$F=|G|\lambda _1(M_0),$$
(103)
where $`g=0`$ is an element of the group. Denoting

$$|ee|=\frac{1}{2}\left(I+\stackrel{}{e}\stackrel{}{\sigma }\right),\stackrel{}{e}=(x,y,z)^T,$$
(104)
the mapping operator can be obtained as

$$M_0=\frac{1}{2|G|^2}\left[|G|I+\underset{g}{}(\stackrel{}{\psi }_g\stackrel{}{e})(\stackrel{}{\psi }_g\stackrel{}{\sigma })\right],$$
(105)
where $`_g\stackrel{}{\psi }_g=0`$ has been used. Defining the 3-by-3 matrix

$$\mathrm{\Psi }\underset{g}{}\stackrel{}{\psi }_g\stackrel{}{\psi }_g^T,$$
(106)
this can be further modified as

$$M_0=\frac{1}{2|G|^2}\left[|G|I+(\mathrm{\Psi }\stackrel{}{e})\stackrel{}{\sigma }\right].$$
(107)
From the irreducibility of group representation in the three dimensional Euclidean space, we can see (Shur’s lemma)

$$\mathrm{\Psi }=\frac{|G|}{3}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}1& 0& 0\\ 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right).$$
(108)
Then

$$M_0=\frac{1}{2|G|}\left[I+\frac{1}{3}\stackrel{}{e}\stackrel{}{\sigma }\right].$$
(109)
The maximum eigenvalue and its eigenstate are $`2/3|G|`$ and $`|e`$, respectively. Therefore the optimal strategy consists of the measurement $`\{E_g\}`$ described by Eq. (102) for Eves and the state assignment $`gU_g|e`$ for Yves. The choice of $`|e`$ can be arbitrary. The accessible fidelity is $`F=2/3`$ for all the Platonic solids. We can also see by simple calculation that the strategy consisting of any von Neumann measurement for Eve and the output of the corresponding eigenstate by Yves, realizes the same limit as well.

Again, the calculations in this section do not solve the problem of the quantumness for the Platonic solids. For that we would have to first find the accessible fidelity for these states with arbitrary probabilities $`\pi _i`$.

### 4.3 Accessible Fidelity for Unitarily Invariant Ensembles

The most interesting result of the last subsection—i.e., that the accessible fidelity for the Platonic solids is insensitive to which measurement is used by Eve—is reminiscent of an observation due to Barnum in Ref.  connecting information-disturbance problems for the uniform ensemble with those for “spherical 2-designs in $`CP_{d1}`$ where $`d`$ is a power of an odd prime.” Thus, let us focus on the case where $`𝒫`$ consists of a continuous infinity of states distributed according to the unitarily invariant, or “uniform,” distribution on $`_d`$. To promote further work on Barnum’s idea and to motivate a conjecture in the next section, let us here tabulate the accessible fidelity for the ensemble $`𝒫`$ in the alternative cases of real Hilbert-space, complex Hilbert-space, and quaternionic Hilbert-space quantum mechanics . The complex case, of course, has been studied before in great detail by various methods (see Ref.  and references therein). Here, we extend, the method of Barnum in Ref.  to the real and quaternionic cases as well.

All of these cases can be subsumed into a single formalism by denoting states in the following way:

$$|\psi =\underset{j=1}{\overset{d}{}}(\underset{k=1}{\overset{\nu }{}}x_{jk}\stackrel{}{e}_k)|\varphi _j$$
(110)
where $`\stackrel{}{e}_1=\stackrel{}{1}`$, $`\stackrel{}{e}_2=\stackrel{}{i}`$, $`\stackrel{}{e}_3=\stackrel{}{j}`$, and $`\stackrel{}{e}_4=\stackrel{}{k}`$ are the four quaternionic basis states, and $`|\varphi _j`$ is a fixed orthonormal basis on $`_d`$. In real Hilbert-space quantum mechanics $`\nu =1`$, in complex $`\nu =2`$, and in quaternionic $`\nu =4`$. The unitarily invariant measure $`d\mathrm{\Omega }_\psi `$ on the pure states in $`_d`$ is then given by ,

$$d\mathrm{\Omega }_\psi =\pi ^{\nu d/2}\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{\nu d}{2}\right)\delta (1\underset{j=1}{\overset{d}{}}\underset{k=1}{\overset{\nu }{}}x_{jk}^2)\underset{j=1}{\overset{d}{}}\underset{k=1}{\overset{\nu }{}}dx_{jk},$$
(111)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(x)`$ is the usual gamma function.

To set up the problem, it turns out to be less convenient in this case to work with the prepackaged formula Eq. (16) than to go back to the basic expression in Eq. (7). Thus consider Eve performing a general rank-one POVM $`E_b=g_b|bb|`$ and Yves generating the states $`\sigma _b=|\varphi _b\varphi _b|`$ in response. Since $`_bE_b=I`$, it follows that $`_bg_b=d`$. The fidelity under this strategy is then given by

$$F_𝒫(,)=\underset{b}{}g_b|b|\psi |^2|\varphi _b|\psi |^2𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_\psi .$$
(112)
This integral can be evaluated by the methods of Jones  since, as he has shown for any sufficiently smooth function $`f`$, the integral $`J`$ becomes

$`J`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle |\varphi |\omega |^2f\left(|\psi |\omega |^2\right)𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_\omega }`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{d1}}\left[\left(1|\psi |\varphi |^2\right){\displaystyle f\left(|\psi |\omega |^2\right)𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_\omega }+\left(d|\psi |\varphi |^21\right){\displaystyle |\psi |\omega |^2f\left(|\psi |\omega |^2\right)𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_\omega }\right]`$
Now using the formula

$$|\varphi |\psi |^{2n}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_\psi =\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{\nu d}{2}\right)\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{\nu }{2}+n\right)}{\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{\nu }{2}\right)\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{\nu d}{2}+n\right)},$$
(114)
we can see after a little algebraic rearrangement that this quantity is maximized by taking $`|\varphi _b=|b`$. Therefore

$$F_𝒫=\frac{d\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{\nu d}{2}\right)\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{\nu }{2}+2\right)}{\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{\nu }{2}\right)\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{\nu d}{2}+2\right)},$$
(115)
whose values reduce to

$$\frac{3}{d+2},\frac{2}{d+1},\text{and}\frac{3}{2d+1}$$
(116)
in the real, complex and quaternionic cases respectively.

Note how the accessible fidelities for the real symmetric states and for the Platonic solids in the last two subsections did indeed match the values $`3/(d+2)`$ and $`2/(d+1)`$.

### 4.4 Lower Bound to Accessible Fidelity for the Lifted Trine States

As a final example, let us consider the ensemble of lifted trine states in $`_3`$, each given with probability $`1/3`$. This ensemble is of particular interest because of the discovery by Shor  that its accessible information requires a measurement consisting of six outcomes, even though the number of inputs is only three. That is, in this case, the number of outputs must be greater than the number of inputs to get the most information!

The lifted trine states are defined by

$`|\psi _0`$ $`=`$ $`(\sqrt{1\alpha },0,\sqrt{\alpha })`$
$`|\psi _1`$ $`=`$ $`(\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{1\alpha },\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}\sqrt{1\alpha },\sqrt{\alpha })`$ (117)
$`|\psi _2`$ $`=`$ $`(\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{1\alpha },\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}\sqrt{1\alpha },\sqrt{\alpha })`$
where the “lifting parameter” $`\alpha `$ can range between 0 and 1. Shor has shown that when $`\alpha <0.061`$, there is a unique POVM optimal for achieving the accessible information of this ensemble. The POVM $`_{\mathrm{SHOR}}=\{E_b=|e_be_b|\}`$ consists of six elements of the form

$`|e_1`$ $`=`$ $`c(0,1,0)`$
$`|e_2`$ $`=`$ $`c(\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2},\frac{1}{2},0)`$
$`|e_3`$ $`=`$ $`c(\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2},\frac{1}{2},0)`$
$`|e_4`$ $`=`$ $`d(1,0,x)`$
$`|e_5`$ $`=`$ $`d(\frac{1}{2},\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2},x)`$
$`|e_6`$ $`=`$ $`d(\frac{1}{2},\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2},x)`$
where the normalization constants

$$c^2=\frac{2}{3}\left(1\frac{1}{2x^2}\right)\text{and}d^2=\frac{1}{3x^2}$$
(119)
are dependent upon a parameter $`x`$, yet to be fixed. A numerical optimization gives that

$$x=\mathrm{tan}\varphi _\alpha $$
(120)
and

$$\mathrm{sin}^2\varphi _\alpha \frac{1\alpha }{1+29.591\alpha }.$$
(121)
The discrepancy between the mutual information given by this POVM and the mutual information obtained from the optimal von Neumann measurement occurs very near $`\alpha =1/40`$. Therefore let us consider the achievable fidelity that comes about due to this measurement at $`\alpha =1/40`$. With a little numerical work, one can extract that $`F(_{\mathrm{SHOR}})0.79999`$.

On the other hand, it turns out to be possible to find an analytic expression for the achievable fidelity derived from the square-root measurement for all values of $`\alpha `$. Using Eq. (31), one finds

$`F_{\mathrm{SRM}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}\{\text{}3+\alpha ^2+2\sqrt{2}\alpha ^{1/2}(1\alpha )^{3/2}+`$
$`[924\alpha +126\alpha ^2200\alpha ^3+105\alpha ^4+4\sqrt{2}\alpha ^{1/2}(1\alpha )^{3/2}(3+8\alpha 15\alpha ^2)]^{1/2}\}.`$
At $`\alpha =1/40`$ this evaluates to $`F_{\mathrm{SRM}}0.84766`$. Thus the square-root measurement is a better measurement for achievable fidelity than the measurement optimal for mutual information. This contrasts with all the previous examples, where the measurement optimal for mutual information was also optimal for accessible fidelity.

Of course, this does not answer what the accessible fidelity actually is for the lifted trines. It is interesting to explore however—under the supposition that the square-root measurement might be optimal and that quantumness might be achieved with equal prior probabilities $`\pi _i`$—for what value of $`\alpha `$ the trine states are the most quantum with respect to each other. Minimizing Eq. (4.4) over all $`\alpha `$, we get:

$$\underset{\alpha }{\mathrm{min}}F_{\mathrm{SRM}}=\frac{3}{4}\text{when}\alpha =0,$$
(123)
which simply signifies that the states are most quantum with respect to each other when they are no longer linearly independent. There is another interesting regime, however, between $`\alpha =1/3`$ and $`\alpha =1`$—that is, when the lifted trines are restricted to having angles between $`0^{}`$ and $`90^{}`$ from each other. Then,

$$\underset{\frac{1}{3}\alpha 1}{\mathrm{min}}F_{\mathrm{SRM}}0.89682\text{when}\alpha 0.78868.$$
(124)
For this value of $`\alpha `$ the trine states are all $`46.92^{}`$ from each other. Thus we note a possibly interesting trend: By using larger dimensional Hilbert spaces, we may be able to achieve greater levels of quantumness even while using closer-to-orthogonal states.

## 5 Conclusions and Open Questions

A quick summary of the results shown in this paper can be found in the following table:

| formula for achieveable fidelity | Eq. (16) |
| --- | --- |
| optimal measurements exist / Davies-like theorem | Section 3 |
| lower bounds on accessible fidelity | Eqs. (27), (29) and (31) |
| formula for accessible fidelity and quantumness |  |
| of two nonorthogonal states | Eqs. (71) and (73) |
| accessible fidelity for M-ary real symmetric source |  |
| on a qubit | Eq. (91) |
| accessible fidelity for Platonic solids on a qubit | below Eq. (109) |
| accessible fidelity for unitarily invariant ensembles |  |
| (real, complex, and quaternionic) | Eq. (116) |
| lower bound to accessible fidelity of lifted-trine states | Eq. (122) |

What are the practical uses for a measure of quantumness? At least two stand out. As mentioned in the Introduction, it has become common in experimental verifications of quantum teleportation to tabulate an input-output fidelity for defining a threshold over which teleportation can be said to have been achieved. (See Ref.  for an extended discussion.) The reasoning behind this is the following.

Perfection in the laboratory is in principle unattainable. So, in a proposed experimental demonstration of quantum teleportation, when can on say that something nonclassical has been achieved? There are many markers of ever more exacting requirement, but perhaps one of the most basic is that quantum entanglement has actually been used by the procedure. How could one tell if it had or had not been? For this, the fidelity between input and output is an appropriate tool. If Alice and Bob were to use nothing more than a classical communication channel between them, the best teleportation fidelity they could achieve would be given by the Eve-Yves scenario described in the Introduction. Here is where our work has some impact.

For any ensemble $``$ to be teleported, the minimum fidelity-threshold required to certify that entanglement has actually been used is $`F()`$. The payoff of using a maximally quantum set of states in an actual laboratory procedure is that it will define the minimum threshold—a threshold that is presumably the easiest to achieve. The difference is stark: If the set of states an experimentalist tests his teleportation device upon consists solely of two nonorthogonal states, then he will need to achieve a fidelity of at least 0.933 to be able to declare success. On the other hand, if he were to use a unitarily invariant ensemble, then he would only need to achieve a fidelity of $`2/(d+1)0.666`$. The payoff becomes bigger and bigger with higher dimension. If one could find a finite set of states that achieves the same fidelity threshold, that would be even better. (See Question 2 below.)

In some cases though—for instance in continuous variable quantum teleportation —it may be difficult for the experimenter to prepare arbitrary ensembles. In that case it is nice to have a tool for evaluating the quality of one ensemble over another. For example, it is known that a “uniform” ensemble of coherent states gives a threshold of $`1/2`$ . But what might the ability to introduce a small amount of squeezing do for the threshold? These are the sort of questions that can be explored.

Beyond teleportation, the most important use of quantumness may be in the line of theoretical investigations of quantum key distribution. Of course, quantum cryptography is an already very developed field, and it would be a bit brash to assume that this somewhat ad hoc quantity may have any direct connection to the subject. There are already several established security quantities actively explored in the field. (See, for instance, Ref. .) Nevertheless, studying quantumness may give insight and quick information about the desirability of pursuing more exotic protocols based on more exotic quantum-state alphabets than have been pursued so far.<sup>§</sup><sup>§</sup>§Though work in that direction is starting to accumulate. See, Refs. .

In particular, one might consider the tradeoff between the security achievable by an alphabet and the rate at which legitimate users can accumulate key with it. For instance, consider a B92 protocol using an alphabet of two quantum states with overlap $`x`$. The quantumness of this alphabet, as we have already shown, is

$$Q(x)=\frac{1}{2}\left(1+\sqrt{1x^2+x^4}\right).$$
(125)
On the other hand, the probability that Bob will be able to unambiguously identify the signal Alice sent him (i.e., by using an optimal unambiguous state discrimination scheme ) will be

$$P(x)=1x$$
(126)
Thus, though two states may be the “most secure” against eavesdropping when $`x=1/\sqrt{2}`$, they will certainly not be optimal for sending a raw bit of key in the absence of eavesdropping.

A “quick and dirty” figure of merit for the tradeoff between the two desirable features is the product of the security and the rate:

$$T(x)=P(x)[1Q(x)].$$
(127)
In other words, this is the product of Bob’s probability of reproducing Alice’s bit and Eve’s probability of being caught—we would like to simultaneously maximize the two if we could, but we cannot. One can check numerically that the figure of merit is maximized when

$$x0.54807\text{i.e.,}\varphi 56.77^{}.$$
(128)
The value $`T(x)`$ gives at that point is $`0.02514`$.

Now compare this to what we would find if Eq. (4.4) happened to denote the actual quantumness $`Q(\alpha )`$ of the lifted trine states. The optimal unambiguous state discrimination probability $`P(\alpha )`$ for that ensemble is

$$P(\alpha )=\left\{\begin{array}{cc}3\alpha \hfill & \text{if}0\alpha \frac{1}{3}\hfill \\ \frac{3}{2}(1\alpha )\hfill & \text{if}\frac{1}{3}\alpha 1\text{}\hfill \end{array}\right].$$
(129)
To put the problem on the same footing as the B92 protocol, we can take the figure of merit $`T(\alpha )=P(\alpha )[1Q(\alpha )]`$. This quantity is optimized at the value $`T(\alpha )0.04105`$—over 1.6 times the two-state value—when $`\alpha 0.68535`$. In terms of the angle between the three vectors, the best figure of merit is reached when $`\varphi =58.13^{}`$. Thus we see an improvement in the figure of merit, at the same time as the signal states are more orthogonal to each other.

This seems significant, and one has to wonder whether the trend might continue with higher dimensions. That is, whether one might be able to use ever more orthogonal signals and still be able to achieve better and better figures of merit in the security/bit-rate tradeoff. Also one might wonder whether a similar effect could carry over to an ensemble of $`N`$ symmetric coherent states, as in Ref. . That would be very nice because one could contemplate B92-like protocols for coherent states with very high photon number. But this is sheer speculation at this point.

In any case, as it ought to be clear from our exposition, the properties of accessible fidelity and quantumness are far from being exhaustively explored. Here is a list of open questions that strike us as the most important presently.

1. Though we defined the notion of the quantumness $`Q_d`$ of a Hilbert space $`_d`$ in Eq. (12), we did not in the end make any use of it. A natural guess for the value is that it is simply equal to the accessible fidelity for the unitarily invariant ensemble:

$$Q_d\stackrel{\mathrm{?}}{=}\frac{2}{d+1}.$$
(130)
Is this so? Similarly, one can ask the same question for real-Hilbert space quantum mechanics and quaternionic quantum mechanics, based on the expressions in Eq. (116). Sections (4.2.1) and (4.2.2) provide some warrant for this speculation.
2. If it is so, can this value always be achieved by a finite ensemble of signalling states? What is the minimum number of such states? Is it $`d^2`$? There is some evidence that this might be the case from the following.

Suppose there exists a symmetric informationally complete POVM.We stress, however, that this assumption is not trivial. Several colleagues, including R. Blume-Kohout, C. M. Caves, G. G. Plunk, M. Fickus, J. Renes, A. J. Scott, and W. K. Wootters, have spent some time toward trying to give an existence proof for these objects—only so far to meet defeat. On the other hand, explicit constructions have been found in $`d=2,3,4`$ and numerical examples have been found for dimensions up to $`d=14`$ . To our knowledge, the concept was first introduced by C. M. Caves, Ref. . That is, there exists $`d^2`$ vectors $`|\psi _i`$ on $`_d`$ such that the operators

$$E_i=\frac{1}{d}|\psi _i\psi _i|$$
(131)
form a POVM and

$$\mathrm{tr}(E_iE_j)=\frac{1}{d^2(d+1)}ij.$$
(132)
If we consider a scenario in which Alice’s signal ensemble consists of the states $`|\psi _i`$, $`\pi _i=1/d^2`$, and the corresponding operators $`E_i`$ specify Eve’s measurement, the achievable fidelity given by Eq. (16) evaluates to

$`F()`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}\lambda _1\left({\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{d^2}}\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Pi }_iE_j)\mathrm{\Pi }_i\right)`$ (133)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}\lambda _1\left({\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\mathrm{tr}(E_iE_j)E_i\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}\lambda _1\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{d^2}}E_j+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{d^2(d+1)}}{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}E_i\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}\lambda _1\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{d^2}}E_j+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{d^2(d+1)}}(IE_j)\right)`$
$`=`$ $`\lambda _1\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{d+1}}I+{\displaystyle \frac{d}{d+1}}E_k\right)\text{for any }E_k`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{d+1}}.`$
Of course, this proves nothing—no optimizations have been carried out, either over the measurements or over the probability distributions $`\{\pi _i\}`$. Furthermore, it is not known if $`Q_d`$ is bounded below by $`2/(d+1)`$. The ensemble above is offered solely as a candidate for further thought.
3. Are there any useful upper and lower bounds to accessible fidelity $`F_𝒫`$?
4. Are there any ensembles $`𝒫`$ for which an optimal hypothesis-testing measurement is not also optimal for achieving the accessible fidelity?
5. In analogy to Shor’s demonstration of the peculiar properties of accessible information for the lifted trine states, are there any ensembles $`𝒫`$ on $`_d`$ consisting of $`d`$ elements but for which a POVM of $`d^2`$ elements is required to achieve its accessible fidelity?
6. Is accessible fidelity multiplicative? That is, for two ensembles $`𝒫=\{\pi _i,\mathrm{\Pi }_i\}`$ and $`𝒮=\{\varphi _j,\mathrm{\Phi }_j\}`$ on $`_1`$ and $`_2`$, respectively, let us define an ensemble $`𝒫𝒮`$ on $`_1_2`$ by

$$𝒫𝒮\{\pi _i\varphi _j,\mathrm{\Pi }_i\mathrm{\Phi }_j\}.$$
(134)
The question is,

$$F_{𝒫𝒮}=F_𝒫F_𝒮\mathrm{?}$$
(135)
It is not particularly difficult to show that accessible information is additive for independent ensembles . But it seems that a wholly new technique may be needed for the present question. If it does turn out that accessible fidelity is not multiplicative, then this might be pause to reconsider whether the present definition of quantumness is the most appropriate one.
7. For the purposes of quantum cryptography, ensembles $`𝒫_{\mathrm{LI}}`$ consisting of linearly independent states $`|\psi _i`$ take on a special role. This is because the states in those ensembles can be unambiguously identified with some finite probability. In particular, such ensembles can serve as the basis for various generalized B92-like protocols. Therefore it seems of interest to define the LI-quantumness for a Hilbert space in analogy to the overall quantumness

$$Q_{\mathrm{LI}}(d)=\underset{𝒫_{\mathrm{LI}}}{inf}F_{𝒫_{\mathrm{LI}}}.$$
(136)
How does $`Q_{\mathrm{LI}}(d)`$ compare to $`Q_d`$? Is $`Q_{\mathrm{LI}}(d)`$ just the $`Q_d^{}`$ of a smaller dimensional space?

Finally, one can ponder the deeper significance of the underlying fact in quantum mechanics that quantumness attempts to quantify: the quantum world is a world “sensitive to the touch” . What this might mean for all of us, the field of quantum information is only starting to tell.

## 6 Acknowledgments

Much of this work was carried out at the California Institute of Technology in Spring 1999 and at Tamagawa University in Spring 2000 and Spring 2001. To this end, CAF acknowledges the support of a Lee DuBridge Fellowship at Caltech, and the warm hospitality of the Research Center for Quantum Communication at Tamagawa University during those periods. He also thanks R. Obajtek for many discussions during her Bell Labs summer internship, 2001. MS thanks S. M. Barnett and C. Gilson for valuable discussions. We both thank an anonymous referee for many helpful suggestions concerning the presentation.


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# Genetic Algorithms and Critical Phenomena

## 1 Introduction

We have developed genetic algorithms to study the evolution of several finite physical systems starting from an initial state, until an absorbing state is reached. Phase transition is identified with fragment build up and the critical multiplicity is the one providing the best $`\chi ^2`$ test.

Since Fisher Liquid Droplet Model as well as Random percolation show a power law near the critical point, we may speculate whether both belong to the same universality class. In both cases finite size and geometry effects are also anticipated. Even when these systems have a different physical nature, the fact that correlations are increased close to the critical point leads us to question whether these belong to the same universality class. This is extended to the VIH to AIDS transition, which can be modeled as a nucleation process whose critical exponents were hereby extracted.

The behavior close to the critical point is characterized by a loose of time and space scales, which promotes the similarity among all the critical phenomena, independently of their specifics. In the case of the transient and finite systems, the most important scales are system size and reaction duration, though critical phenomena will not always occur. Hence, it is important to prove the feasibility of critical behavior in these finite dynamical systems.

First neighbor particle correlations are not present in gases though liquids exhibit strong first neighbor two body correlations. Hence, correlations grow close to the critical point, including all particles of the system. Therefore, the influence of geometry should be considered as well as class universality of different physical system should be questioned .

Even when power laws have been observed in distinct physical systems, such as seismic distributions, fractal coastlines, weather records and DNA statistics , it is well known that log-log plots are able to depict spurious linear relations. This would result from a self-organized criticality ($`SOC`$), where non equilibrium systems should move slowly through an instability with a global and local relaxing mechanism. Also, these anomalous power laws can be related to codimension one critical points, where a critical behavior is reached after a temperature fluctuation even when this could not arise from a natural evolution of the system . Therefore, it is important to perform simulations of theoretical models in order to prove the feasibility of the critical behavior associated with these power laws.

Cohen et. al. extracted of critical exponents scale-free networks, where a power law holds: $`P(k)=ck^\lambda ,km`$, with $`P(k)`$ equal to the probability of a node being connected to exactly $`k`$ nodes . Grassberger obtained percolation thresholds for simple hypercubic lattices whose dimension goes from 4 to 13, finding anomalous scaling when $`d7`$: $`M(t)=M_{\mathrm{}}const./t^\omega `$, where $`M(t)`$ is the number of wetted sites at step $`t`$ and the scale correction is in agreement with the following power law: $`M_{\mathrm{}}1(d6)^\alpha `$ .

Fortunato and Satz studied the explicit symmetry breakup for spin models, finding that in the case of a second order phase transition with a small field, the percolation thresholds line lies parallel to the susceptibility peak line (pseudo critical line). And the first order phase transition line is a percolation transition line, though the critical exponents are not equal to those belonging either to the random percolation model or the Ising model . This leads to consider a new cluster definition that takes on account the magnetic field intensity, which could be used to study QCD deconfinement with dynamical quarks .

Coniglio postulated that above the critical dimension, the number of percolation clusters is infinite and hyperscaling relation no longer holds : $`2\alpha =\nu d`$ . This was proven by Andronico et. al. for the case of random percolation, though this does not hold for the Ising model due to distinct behaviors below and above the critical temperature .

The manuscript is organized in the following way. In the second section Fisher nucleation theory is described, showing how to extract the critical exponents close to the critical multiplicity. In the third section some reasons are given to expect this power law for a percolation system and the expected values for some percolation systems are shown. In section IV a genetic algorithm for HIV to AIDS transition is described, and its critical exponent is extracted. In section V a genetic algorithm is used to compute the critical exponent of the Colossal Magnetic Resistance. Section VI describes the Molecular Dynamics simulation employed to compute the critical exponent for the liquid-gas phase transition in Heavy Ions as well as the simulated annealing algorithm used to detect clusters. In section VII some conclusions are established from these results.

## 2 Fisher Liquid Droplet Model

According to fluctuation theory , the probability to obtain a liquid droplet of radius $`r`$ and $`A`$ nucleons in a vapor at temperature $`T`$ is given by :

$`P_r(A)=Y_0A^\tau e^{\left[\left(\mu _l\mu _g\right)A+4\pi r_0^2\sigma (T)A^{2/3}\right]/T},`$
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }G`$ is the change due to the phase transition in Gibss Free energy. This includes surface, curvature and bulk energy terms. In the coexistence region, nevertheless, $`\left(\mu _l\mu _g\right)=0`$, and:

$`P_r(A)=Y_0A^\tau \mathrm{exp}[4\pi r_0^2\sigma (T)A^{2/3}/T]`$
Finally, in the critical point: $`\left(\mu _l\mu _g\right)=0`$, but as the liquid and vapor are indistinguishable at this point, surface energy is null: $`\sigma (T_c)=0`$, hence the distribution is

$`P_r(A)=Y_0A^\tau ,`$ (1)
namely a pure power law, and as such, scale free. The exponent $`\tau `$ appearing in the droplet size distribution (1), is known as the critical exponent since it is a dimensionless constant with a common value for different systems.

Fisher Liquid Droplet Model ($`FDM`$) for nucleation  refines the probability (1) to obtain a critical mass distribution normalized to the size of the system:

$$n_A=q_oA^\tau $$
(2)
with a proportionality constant $`q_o`$ that can be obtained using the first moment, $`M_1=_An_AA`$, of the normalized mass distribution, (i.e. $`M_1=1`$). Therefore $`q_o`$ can be obtained with the following equation: $`q_o=1/_AA^{(1\tau )}`$. In order to select critical events, critical multiplicity is identified as the one providing the optimal $`\chi ^2`$ fit .

Supposing scaling for the fragment size distributions, close to the critical point:

$$M_k\left|TT_c\right|^{(1k+\tau )/\sigma },$$
(3)
where: $`2<\tau <3`$. Critical exponents are given by the following expressions :

$$M_2\left|ϵ\right|^\gamma $$
(4)
$$A_{max}\left|ϵ\right|^\beta $$
(5)
when $`m=m_c`$.

## 3 Percolation critical exponent

A great variety of percolation methods have been used ever since Flory introduced percolation in the context of polymer gellation . For many spin models, there exists a mapping of the equivalent graphic representation of a percolation transition corresponding to a spin model phase transition .

Harreis and Bauer introduced a method to deal with N component percolation, finding new first order phase transitions and new empirical formulas for the percolation threshold as a function of component concentration . Bauer introduced percolation in the study of fragmentation , vid. Stauffer  for more details.

A percolation cluster has activated bonds going from one side of the lattice to the opposite side. For infinite systems, there is a well defined “critical probability” $`p_c`$, above which the probability to find a percolation cluster is equal to $`1`$, meanwhile bellow $`p_c`$ this probability is equal to $`0`$. For finite lattices, this transition is soft, i.e. the probability to find a percolation cluster is not equal to $`0`$ for any probability. Mader $`\mathrm{𝑒𝑡}.\mathrm{𝑎𝑙}.`$ have shown reducibility and thermal scaling properties in the Ising model, obtaining a value of $`\tau =2.39`$ . Chayes et.al. have shown a finite cluster scaling critical exponent $`\tau 2=1/2`$ and an infinite cluster scaling critical exponent $`\tau 2=1/2`$ . In the percolation model the weight of a given configuration $`C`$ of n links is given by:

$$W(C)=p^n(1p)^{Nn}$$
(6)
where N is the number of vertices in the lattice. Close to the percolation threshold, the critical behavior is characterized by the following critical exponents:

$$P_{\mathrm{}}=1sn(s,p)\left|pp_C\right|^\beta $$
(7)
and:

$$S(P)=s^2n(s,p)\left|pp_C\right|^\gamma $$
(8)
Cluster distribution satisfies the following scaling relation:

$$n(s,p)=s^\tau f((pp_C)s^\sigma )$$
(9)
hence a power law is expected close to the critical point:

$$n(s,p)=s^\tau f(0)$$
(10)
Starting from these relations, the following equations can be obtained :

$$\tau =2+\frac{\beta }{\beta +\gamma }$$
(11)
and:

$$\sigma =\frac{1}{\beta +\gamma }$$
(12)
In 3D, the best estimation is $`\tau =2.18`$ and $`\sigma =0.45`$

Bauer y Golinelli have obtained a second order phase transition when $`\alpha =e=2.718\mathrm{}`$ in the percolation of random graphs whose connectivity is $`\alpha `$ and where the leaves and their neighbors are iteratively removed. In that study, a new power law was found for $`N_C`$, the number of vertices in the core tree: $`N_CN^\omega `$, where $`N`$ is the number of vertices of the original graph . Power laws have been found in statistical distributions of Hamming distances for random threshold networks and random binary lattices with scale-free distributions whose interior degree $`k_{in}^\alpha `$ .

Kamp and Bornholdt have studied percolation transition in a directed graph, with activating and deactivating bonds, and extracted power law critical exponents for the number of avalanches as a function of active sites, as well as a plot of the fraction of activating bonds versus system size .

Bornholdt and Rohlf have studied a symmetrically connected threshold lattice whose topology is changed with a local rule, obtaining a power law in the plot of mean connectivity versus system size .

## 4 HIV Cellular Automaton

Ebel et. al. found power laws for the avalanche size distribution given by the number of mutations required to establish an equilibrium in evolutionary games with Nash equilibriums perturbed by mutant events .

When mutation rates are close to a substitution for each genome of each generation, a virus population forms a highly diversified cloud of mutants . Since sequence space is quite large, even for a population size of the order of $`10^{12}`$ there is a constant flux of brand new mutants. With some probability these mutants will fixate, where fixation is understood as the moment in which a mutant comes out to be the ancestor of a new quasi-species that fully replaces the old one.

In the quasi-species configuration, on the other side, most of the progenies of a mutant suffers subsequent mutations and also its progenies. Therefore, a new species adaptation is not given by the adaptation of the first mutant, but by the the mean adaptation of the eventually formed mutant cloud.

Wilke has shown, using a multibranching processes model, that fixation depends on the global rate of growth of the quasi-species obtained due to an infection . Asexual organisms genomic mutation rates, such as bacteria and ADN, have been observed in the range of $`2`$x$`10^3`$$`4`$x$`10^3`$, hence a few in a thousand mutate . Smaller genomic mutation rates have not been observed since adaptability to a changing environment is required for a species . Wilke has proved, based on quasi-species model, that in the case of low mutation rates, population could benefit on environment fluctuations .

### 4.1 HIV Cellular Automaton

Population evolution has been modeled using Kamp cellular automaton, reproducing HIV to AIDS transition, though in this study we focus on the nucleation of infected cells as well as the seldom observed incapability of HIV to evolve into AIDS . According to Kamp, in an infection, viral genomes are diversified due to mutation and selective pressure of the immune system. This coevolutionary dynamics can be modeled in sequence space. Viral genomes can be represented by chains of length $`n`$, built up from an alphabet of length $`\lambda `$ and their diversification can be described as a dispersion in sequence space. Analogously, we assign a sequence to the immune receptor corresponding to the viral strain. Any chain in sequence space is supposed to represent a viral epitome, as well as its complementary immune receptor.

Therefore, each sequence is characterized by a viral and immune state variable. A site in sequence space is susceptible if it can host a virus. It is called infected if the system has a virus with an epitome motif represented by the chain of the site. If a viral sequence finds an immune response it is removed and the system is immunized against it. In this case, and in the case where a site is unreachable for virus, it is called recovered (or removed).

Since viral and immune entities replication is affected by copy fidelity: $`q_{vs}<1`$ and $`q_{is}<1`$, system shows viral and immune dispersion in sequence space. Introducing some viral strains in a system originally free of them, a dynamic evolution follows from the cellular automaton approximation after the following iteration steps :

Kamp automaton proceeds in the following way. A random site is chosen and a) if the site represents an immune receptor, a randomly chosen bit is mutated with probability (1-$`q_{is}`$), or, b) if a new immune strain is generated and the mutant coincides with a site, the site is considered as a recovered site. If the site is infected, a bit is randomly changed with probability (1-$`q_{vs}`$), or, if a new immune strain is generated and the mutant coincides with a susceptible site, the site is considered as infected.

### 4.2 Results

A critical exponent was extracted with a value of $`\tau =2.32`$ for the power law of infected cells of HIV to AIDS transition, simulated with a genetic algorithm that evolves populations with a cellular automaton (Fig. 1).

Besides, infected site ratios were obtained as a function of genetic variability of both infected sites $`q_{vs}`$ and healthy sites $`q_{is}`$. As can be appreciated in (Fig. 2), two regions of low infected sites ratios are formed, which ensures an immune response, for low and high values of genetic variability. This explains the observed capability of some immune systems to resist viral infections, notwithstanding high genetic mutation rates would lead to the opposite scenario.

## 5 Colossal Magnetoresistance

Lübeck has computed the critical exponents and the fluctuations of the order parameter, for the case of a conservative lattice, finding a maximum critical dimension for this gas equal to 4 . Mari $`\mathrm{𝑒𝑡}.\mathrm{𝑎𝑙}.`$ have performed corrections for the finite size of the system, in the case of the Binder parameter of the 3D binomial Ising spin glass . Janssen $`\mathrm{𝑒𝑡}.\mathrm{𝑎𝑙}.`$ have shown that for a vector magnetic system of order N, when the temperature is much greater than the critical temperature, and the system is suddenly compressed until the critical state, a dynamical scaling is installed in the early evolution of the system .

Ying $`\mathrm{𝑒𝑡}.\mathrm{𝑎𝑙}.`$ found a relation between the binding randomness and the critical universality for the Potts random binding ferromagnet with a trinary distribution of compressed disorders in triangular lattices .

Simões $`\mathrm{𝑒𝑡}.\mathrm{𝑎𝑙}.`$ studied the early evolution dynamics for the two dimensional Ising model with three spin interactions in a direction, taking on account the symmetry of the Hamiltonian and the boundary conditions when computing magnetization. They obtained the same critical exponents of the four states Potts model .

Ying $`\mathrm{𝑒𝑡}.\mathrm{𝑎𝑙}.`$ studied the early dynamics and critical universality for the Potts model with q=2 and q=3 in triangular two dimensional lattices, obtaining critical exponents equal to those of the corresponding two dimensional square lattice, concluding that they belong to the same universality class .

Acharyya et. al. computed the critical temperature of the metamagnet $`FeBr_2`$, using the anisotropic classical Heisenberg model, in a tetragonal lattice, finding that for high temperatures there is a first order phase transition between a paramagnetic phase and a flipped spin tilted phase. And for low temperatures, the phase transition is discontinuous and from a flipped spin tilted phase up to a longitudinal ferromagnetic phase .

In this study three dimensional configurations were generated, randomly assigning three spin values $`S=1,0,1`$, with the following Hamiltonian:

$$H=J\underset{i,j}{}S_iS_jH\underset{i}{}S_i.$$
(13)
A site is randomly chosen and its value is changed with the following probability:

$$p=\frac{e^{\mathrm{\Delta }H/T}}{1+e^{\mathrm{\Delta }H/T}}$$
(14)
### 5.1 Results

The extracted critical exponent for the colossal magnetoresistance is $`2.39`$ (Fig. 3). Besides, we have computed a critical exponent $`\beta =0.38`$, suggesting that it belongs to the universality class of Heavy Ion Collisions, as shown in Table 1. The obtained value of $`\beta `$ is close to the one reported by Kudzia $`\mathrm{𝑒𝑡}.\mathrm{𝑎𝑙}.`$ in fragmentation experiments on Au emulsions . The spontaneous susceptibility plot indicates a critical temperature close to 4.5 K (Fig. 4).

## 6 Simulations of Heavy Ion Collisions

Among the signals used to search for nucleation in nuclear systems, the presence of a peak in the specific heat has been used as a phase transition signature for periodical systems .

Another signature explored is the controversial power law of the fragment distribution, close to the critical point of a liquid-gas phase transition . In the energy range of relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions, a phase transition has been associated with the onset of shock wave front instabilities  .

In Heavy Ion Collisions, a phase transition is expected to turn into a second order phase transition in the critical point of the phase diagram (Fig. 5). Experimental measurements of Au+Au collisions performed at GSI, were used to build a plot of temperature versus excitation, providing evidence of phase coexistence, in agreement with predictions of statistical multifragmentation models excluding volume . Other experiments performed in Bevalac extracted critical exponents and studied the dependency of both the second moment of charge distribution and the biggest fragment size on charged particles multiplicity. These data were consistent with a second order phase transition predicted by the percolation model .

### 6.1 Molecular Dynamics

A Molecular Dynamics realistic model, nicknamed “LATINO Model”  has been used. This three dimensional model uses a Pandhripande binary potential that reproduces the energy and empirical density of nuclear matter, as well as realistic effective scattering cross sections. Nuclei used hereby were spherical droplets with the desired number of protons and neutrons, produced as ground states using Molecular Dynamics. Once a spherical nuclear system is randomly created at a high temperature, it is cooled until it reaches a self-contained state. At this moment, the confining potential is removed and the system is cooled until it reaches a reasonable binding energy. Collision is simulated boosting one of the nuclei against the other and integrating the coupled equations of motion using a Verlet algorithm, ensuring an energy conservation better than a $`0.01\%`$ (Fig. 6).

### 6.2 Fragment Recognition

In order to transform particle information provided by Molecular Dynamics in terms of fragment information, an Early Cluster Recognition Algorithm is needed, such as the algorithm that finds the most bound partition of the system , i.e. the set of clusters $`\{C_i\}`$ for which the sum of internal energies of the fragments attains a minimum value:

$`\{C_i\}`$ $`{\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{=}{}}`$ $`{\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\text{argmin}}{\left\{C_i\right\}}}{\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{[E_{\{C_i\}}=_iE_{int}^{C_i}]}{}}`$
$`E_{int}^{C_i}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}[{\displaystyle \underset{jC_i}{}}K_j^{cm}+{\displaystyle \underset{j,kC_ijk}{}}V_{j,k}]`$ (15)
where the first sum is on partition clusters, $`K_j^{cm}`$ is the kinetic energy of particle $`j`$ measured in the center of mass of the cluster containing particle $`j`$, and $`V_{ij}`$ is the internucleonic potential. The algorithm that uses “simulated annealing” to find the most bound partition is known as “Early Cluster Recognition Algorithm” ($`ECRA`$) and has been extensively used in several fragmentation studies , helping to discover that excited droplets beakup at an early stage.

### 6.3 Results

A snapshot sequence of a typical Ni+Ni central collision at 1500 MeV (Fig. 7) is shown. Increasing the projectile energy, fragmentation region is reached where phase coexistence is found and a fragment distribution power law appears (Fig. 8). Critical exponent has been extracted for Ni+Ni central collision with a value $`\tau =2.18`$.

## 7 Conclusions

Table 1 shows the critical exponent values extracted in this study and compared with others previously reported and obtained from percolation and 2D Molecular Dynamics simulations with a Lennard-Jones potential . Heavy Ion Collisions Molecular Dynamics simulations as well as genetic algorithm results for colossal magnetoresistance and HIV to AIDS transition indicate that critical nucleation occurs for small and complex systems, static as well as transient, and suggest that they belong to the same universality class.

TABLE 1
Nucleation Model $`\tau `$ Value
HIV Cellular Automaton $`2.32`$
Colossal Magnetoresistance $`2.38`$
3-D MD Collision Simulations $`2.18`$
Cubic Lattice Percolation $`2.32\pm 0.02`$
Spherical Lattice Percolation $`2.20\pm 0.1`$
2-D Collision Simulations $`2.32\pm 0.02`$
## 8 Acknowledgements

Work supported by National Science Foundation (PHY-96-00038), Universidad de Buenos Aires (EX-070, Grant No. TW98, CONICET Grant No. PIP 4436/96), Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco (Supercomputing Lab) and Asociación Latinoamericana de Biomatemáticas.