Fidelity of quantum states

In quantum information theory, fidelity is a measure of the "closeness" of two quantum states. It is not a metric on the space of density matrices, but it can be used to define the Bures metric on this space.

Motivation

In probability theory, given two random variables p = (p₁...p_n) and q = (q₁...q_n) on the probability space X = {1,2...n}. The fidelity of p and q is defined to be the quantity

$F(p,q) = \sum _i \sqrt{p_i q_i}$.

In other words, the fidelity F(p,q) is the inner product of $(\sqrt{p_1}, \cdots ,\sqrt{p_n})$ and $(\sqrt{q_1}, \cdots ,\sqrt{q_n})$ viewed as vectors in Euclidean space. Notice that if and only if p = q, F(p,q) = 1. In general, $0 \leq F(p,q) \leq 1$. This measure is known classically as the Bhattacharyya distance.

Making the appropriate modification for the matricial notion of square root and mimicking the above definition give the fidelity of two quantum state.

Definition

Given two density matrices ρ and σ, the fidelity is defined by

$F(\rho, \sigma) = \operatorname{Tr} \left[\sqrt{\sqrt{\rho} \sigma \sqrt{\rho}}\right].$

By M^½ of a positive semidefinite matrix M, we mean its unique positive square root given by the spectral theorem. The Euclidean inner product from the classical definition is replaced by the Hilbert-Schmidt inner product. When the states are classical, i.e. when ρ and σ commute, the definition coincides with that for probability distributions.

An equivalent definition is given by

$F(\rho, \sigma) = \lVert \sqrt{\rho} \sqrt{\sigma} \rVert_\operatorname{tr},$

where the norm is the trace norm (sum of the singular values). This definition has the advantage that it clearly shows that the fidelity is symmetric in its two arguments.

Notice by definition F is non-negative, and F(ρ,ρ) = 1. In the following section it will be shown that it can be no larger than 1.

In the original 1994 paper of Jozsa the name 'fidelity' was used for the quantity $F\;'=F^2$ and this convention is often used in the literature. According to this convention 'fidelity' has a meaning of probability.

Simple examples

Pure states

Suppose that one of the states is pure: $\rho = | \phi \rangle \langle \phi |$. Then $\sqrt{\rho} = \rho = | \phi \rangle \langle \phi |$ and the fidelity is

$F(\rho, \sigma) = \operatorname{Tr} \left[\sqrt{ | \phi \rangle \langle \phi | \sigma | \phi \rangle \langle \phi |} \right] = \sqrt{\langle \phi | \sigma | \phi \rangle} \operatorname{Tr} \left[\sqrt{ | \phi \rangle \langle \phi |} \right] = \sqrt{\langle \phi | \sigma | \phi \rangle}.$

If the other state is also pure, $\sigma = | \psi \rangle \langle \psi |$, then the fidelity is

$F(\rho, \sigma) = \sqrt{\langle \phi | \psi \rangle \langle \psi | \phi \rangle} = | \langle \phi | \psi \rangle |.$

This is sometimes called the overlap between two states. If, say, $|\phi\rangle$ is an eigenstate of an observable, and the system is prepared in $| \psi \rangle$, then F(ρ, σ)² is the probability of the system being in state $|\phi\rangle$ after the measurement.

Commuting states

Let ρ and σ be two density matrices that commute. Therefore they can be simultaneously diagonalized by unitary matrices, and we can write

$\rho = \sum_i p_i | i \rangle \langle i |$ and $\sigma = \sum_i q_i | i \rangle \langle i |$

for some orthonormal basis $\{ | i \rangle \}$. Direct calculation shows the fidelity is

$F(\rho, \sigma) = \sum_i \sqrt{p_i q_i}.$

This shows that, heuristically, fidelity of quantum states is a genuine extension of the notion from probability theory.

Some properties

Unitary invariance

Direct calculation shows that the fidelity is preserved by unitary evolution, i.e.

$\; F(\rho, \sigma) = F(U \rho \; U^*, U \sigma U^*)$

for any unitary operator U.

Uhlmann's theorem

We saw that for two pure states, their fidelity coincides with the overlap. Uhlmann's theorem generalizes this statement to mixed states, in terms of their purifications:

Theorem Let ρ and σ be density matrices acting on Cⁿ. Let ρ^½ be the unique positive square root of ρ and

$| \psi _{\rho} \rangle = \sum_{i=1}^n (\rho^{\frac{1}{2}} | e_i \rangle) \otimes | e_i \rangle \in \mathbb{C}^n \otimes \mathbb{C}^n$

be a purification of ρ (therefore $\textstyle \{|e_i\rangle\}$ is an orthonormal basis), then the following equality holds:

$F(\rho, \sigma) = \max_{|\psi_{\sigma} \rangle} | \langle \psi _{\rho}| \psi _{\sigma} \rangle |$

where $| \psi _{\sigma} \rangle$ is a purification of σ. Therefore, in general, the fidelity is the maximum overlap between purifications.

Proof: A simple proof can be sketched as follows. Let $\textstyle |\Omega\rangle$ denote the vector

$| \Omega \rangle= \sum_{i=1}^n | e_i \rangle \otimes | e_i \rangle$

and σ^½ be the unique positive square root of σ. We see that, due to the unitary freedom in square root factorizations and choosing orthonormal bases, an arbitrary purification of σ is of the form

$| \psi_{\sigma} \rangle = ( \sigma^{\frac{1}{2}} V_1 \otimes V_2 ) | \Omega \rangle$

where V_i's are unitary operators. Now we directly calculate

$| \langle \psi _{\rho}| \psi _{\sigma} \rangle | = | \langle \Omega | ( \rho^{\frac{1}{2}} \otimes I) ( \sigma^{\frac{1}{2}} V_1 \otimes V_2 ) | \Omega \rangle | = | \operatorname{Tr} ( \rho^{\frac{1}{2}} \sigma^{\frac{1}{2}} V_1 V_2^T )|.$

But in general, for any square matrix A and unitary U, it is true that |Tr(AU)| ≤ Tr (A^*A)^½. Furthermore, equality is achieved if U^* is the unitary operator in the polar decomposition of A. From this follows directly Uhlmann's theorem.

Consequences

Some immediate consequences of Uhlmann's theorem are

• Fidelity is symmetric in its arguments, i.e. F (ρ,σ) = F (σ,ρ). Notice this is not obvious from the definition.
• F (ρ,σ) lies in [0,1], by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality.
• F (ρ,σ) = 1 if and only if ρ = σ, since Ψ_ρ = Ψ_σ implies ρ = σ.

So we can see that fidelity behaves almost like a metric. This can be formalised and made useful by defining

$\cos \theta_{\rho\sigma} = F(\rho,\sigma) \,$

As the angle between the states $\rho$ and $\sigma$. It follows from the above properties that $\theta_{\rho\sigma}$ is non-negative, symmetric in its inputs, and is equal to zero if and only if $\rho = \sigma$. Furthermore, it can be proved that it obeys the triangle inequality, so this angle is a metric on the state space: the Fubini-Study metric.

Relationship to Trace Distance

We can define the trace distance between two matrices A and B in terms of the trace norm by

$D(A,B) = \frac{1}{2}\| A-B\|_{\rm tr} \, .$

When A and B are both density operators, this is a quantum generalization of the statistical distance. This is relevant because the trace distance provides upper and lower bounds on the fidelity.

$1-F(\rho,\sigma) \le D(\rho,\sigma) \le\sqrt{1-F(\rho,\sigma)^2} \, .$

Often the trace distance is easier to calculate or bound than the fidelity, so these relationships are quite useful. In the case that at least one of the states is a pure state Ψ, the lower bound can be tightened.

$1-F(\psi,\rho)^2 \le D(\psi,\rho) \, .$

Fidelity of quantum measurements

The fidelity of a measurement with a projective measurement is defined as the overlap between their pre-measurement states:

$\mathcal{F}_{n}\left(\psi_{tar}\right)=\langle\psi_{tar}\vert\hat{\rho}_{retr}^{[n]}\vert\psi_{tar}\rangle,$

where $\hat{\rho}_{retr}^{[n]}$ and $\vert\psi_{tar}\rangle$ are respectively the pre-measurement state corresponding to the result "n" and the target state in which we would like measuring the system before its interaction with the measurement apparatus.

The pre-measurement state is the main tool of the retrodictive approach of quantum physics in which we make predictions about state preparations leading to a certain measurement result. In such an approach, this fidelity has an interesting meaning: this is nothing else than the retrodictive probability of preparing the system in the target state $\vert\psi_{tar}\rangle$ when we read the result "n". Thus, when a measurement is sufficiently faithful $\mathcal{F}_{n}\left(\psi_{tar}\right)\simeq 1$, the most probable state in which the system was prepared before the measurement giving the result "n" is this target state $\vert\psi_{tar}\rangle$.

References

• A. Uhlmann The "Transition Probability" in the State Space of a *-Algebra. Rep. Math. Phys. 9 (1976) 273 - 279. PDF
• R. Jozsa, Fidelity for mixed quantum states, Journal of Modern Optics, 1994, vol. 41, 2315-2323.
• Fidelity of quantum states on arxiv.org
• J. A. Miszczak, Z. Puchała, P. Horodecki, A. Uhlmann, K. Życzkowski, Sub-- and super--fidelity as bounds for quantum fidelity, Quantum Information & Computation, Vol.9 No.1&2 (2009). arXiv:0805.2037.