APS » PROLA » Phys. Rev. A » Volume 60 » Issue 2

Phys. Rev. A 60, 881 - 885 (1999)

Simulating quantum operations with mixed environments
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Barbara M. Terhal1, Isaac L. Chuang2, David P. DiVincenzo3, Markus Grassl4, and John A. Smolin3
1Instituut voor Theoretische Fysica, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Valckenierstraat 65, 1018 XE AmsterdamCWI, Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2IBM Almaden Research Center, 650 Harry Road, San José, California 95120
3IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598
4Institut für Algorithmen and Kognitive Systeme, Universität Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany

Received 5 January 1999

We study the physical quantum resources required to implement general quantum operations, and provide bounds on the minimum possible size which an environment must be in order to perform certain quantum operations. We prove that contrary to a previous conjecture, not all quantum operations on a single qubit can be implemented with a single-qubit environment, even if that environment is initially prepared in a mixed state. We show that a mixed single-qutrit environment is sufficient to implement a special class of operations, the generalized depolarizing channels.


©1999 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v60/p881
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.60.881
PACS: 03.67.-a, 02.70.-c, 89.70.+c, 89.80.+h

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