Entropy and geometry of quantum states

Abstract

We compare the roles of the Bures–Helstrom (BH) and Bogoliubov–Kubo–Mori (BKM) metrics in the subject of quantum information geometry. We note that there are two limits involved in state discrimination, which we call the “thermodynamic” limit (of NN, the number of realizations going to infinity) and the infinitesimal limit (of the separation of states tending to zero). We show that these two limits do not commute in the quantum case. Taking the infinitesimal limit first leads to the BH metric and the corresponding Cramér–Rao bound, which is widely accepted in this subject. Taking limits in the opposite order leads to the BKM metric, which results in a weaker Cramér–Rao bound. This lack of commutation of limits is a purely quantum phenomenon arising from quantum entanglement. We can exploit this phenomenon to gain a quantum advantage in state discrimination and get around the limitation imposed by the Bures–Helstrom Cramér–Rao (BHCR) bound. We propose a technologically feasible experiment with cold atoms to demonstrate the quantum advantage in the simple case of two qubits.