Frontiers of quantum physics

Abstract:

It has recently been shown that the work extractable from correlated bipartite quantum systems under an appropriate protocol can be used to distinguish entanglement from classical correlation. A natural question is now whether it can be generalized to multipartite systems. In this paper, we devise a protocol to distinguish the GHZ, the W, and separable states in terms of the thermodynamically extractable work under local operations and classical communication, and compare the results with those obtained from Mermin's inequalities. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.

Abstract:

Thermodynamics is a macroscopic physical theory whose two very general laws are independent of any underlying dynamical laws and structures. Nevertheless, its generality enables us to understand a broad spectrum of phenomena in physics, information science and biology. Does thermodynamics then imply any results in quantum information theory? Taking accessible information in a system as an example, we show that thermodynamics implies a weaker bound on it than the quantum mechanical one (the Holevo bound). In other words, if any post-quantum physics should allow more information storage it could still be under the umbrella of thermodynamics. © 2005 IOP Publishing Ltd.