# Monotonicity Properties of Certain Measures over the Two-Level Quantum Systems

## Abstract

We demonstrate — using the case of the two-dimensional quantum systems — that the “natural measure on the space of density matrices $`\rho `$ describing $`N`$-dimensional quantum systems” proposed by Życzkowski et al \[Phys. Rev. A 58, 883 (1998)\] does not belong to the class of normalized volume elements of monotone metrics on the quantum systems. Such metrics possess the statistically important property of being decreasing under stochastic mappings (coarse-grainings). We do note that the proposed natural measure (and certain evident variations upon it) exhibit quite specific monotonicity characteristics, but not of the form required for membership in that distinguished class.

Keywords: density matrix, monotone metric, operator monotone function, Bures metric,

measures over quantum systems

Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 81Qxx, 26A48

In a recent paper , Życzkowski, Horodecki, Sanpera and Lewenstein (ZHSL) proposed a “natural measure in the space of density matrices $`\rho `$ describing $`N`$-dimensional quantum systems”. We demonstrate here — using the two-dimensional quantum systems — that this measure (and certain obvious variations upon it) do not belong to another class of, arguably, “natural measures” (ones consistent with desired properties under “coarse-graining” ). This collection of measures, recently studied by Slater in various contexts  (cf. ), consists of the normalized volume elements of monotone metrics  (including, notably, the minimal monotone or Bures metric ). Nevertheless, the ZHSL measure and the variations we associate with it below ((9) and (10)), exhibit quite definite monotonicity properties, but not those needed for these measures to fall within the indicated class.

Using the “Bloch sphere” representation  of the two-dimensional density matrices,

$$\rho =\frac{1}{2}\left(\begin{array}{cc}1+z& xiy\\ x+iy& 1z\end{array}\right),$$
(1)   
where $`x^2+y^2+z^21`$, and converting to spherical coordinates $`(x=r\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\varphi ,y=r\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\varphi ,z=r\mathrm{cos}\theta )`$, an (unnormalized) volume element of a monotone metric is expressible in the form (cf. \[8, eq. (3.17)\]),

$$\frac{r^2\mathrm{sin}\theta }{f\left((1r)/(1+r)\right)(1r^2)^{1/2}(1+r)}.$$
(2)   
Here $`f(t)`$ is an operator monotone function satisfying a (self-adjointness) condition, $`f(t)=tf(1/t)`$. All such functions considered in  also fulfill a normalization condition (at least, in a limiting sense), $`f(t)=1`$. A function $`f:^+`$ is called operator monotone if the relation $`0KH`$ implies $`0f(K)f(H)`$ for any matrices $`K`$ and $`H`$ of any order. The relation $`KH`$ signifies that the eigenvalues of $`HK`$ are non-negative. (Plenio, Virmani, and Papadopoulos  have recently employed operator monotone functions to derive a new inequality relating the quantum relative entropy and the quantum conditional entropy. For another quantum-theoretic study involving such functions, cf. .)

Now, using the polar decomposition theorem, ZHSL represented density matrices in the form,

$$\rho =UDU^{},$$
(3)   
where $`U`$ is a unitary matrix, $`U^{}`$ is its conjugate transpose, and $`D`$ is a diagonal matrix with non-negative elements $`d_i`$ (the eigenvalues of $`\rho `$), which, of course, sum to 1. The action of the operator monotone function $`f(t)`$ upon $`\rho `$ can be expressed in the form

$$f(\rho )=Uf(D)U^{},$$
(4)   
where $`f`$ acts individually on the diagonal entries of $`D`$ \[14, p. 112\]. The ZHSL measure — which ZHSL used for estimating the volume of separable states  (cf. ) — is the product of the uniform distribution (Haar measure) on the unitary transformations $`U(N)`$ and the uniform distribution on the $`(N1)`$-dimensional simplex spanned by the $`N`$ eigenvalues ($`d_i`$) of $`\rho `$.

It is quite natural to consider this latter uniform distribution as the specific case ($`\nu =1`$) of the $`(N1)`$-dimensional (symmetric) Dirichlet probability distributions  \[5, eq. (1)\] \[15, eq. (3)\],

$$p_\nu (d_1,d_2,\mathrm{},d_N)=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(N\nu )d_1^{\nu 1}d_2^{\nu 1}\mathrm{}d_N^{\nu 1}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\nu )^N},\nu >0$$
(5)   
on the $`(N1)`$-dimensional simplex. (For $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$, one obtains the “Jeffreys’ prior” of Bayesian theory , corresponding to the classically unique monotone/Fisher information metric . Życzkowski \[15, App. A\] has shown that a vector of an $`N`$-dimensional random orthogonal \[unitary\] matrix generates the Dirichlet measure (5) with $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ $`[\nu =1]`$.)

For $`N=2`$, the unitary matrices $`U`$ are parameterizable as the product of a phase factor (irrelevant for the purposes here) and a member of $`SU(2)`$ \[20, eqs. (2.40), (2.41)\],

$$U(\alpha \beta \gamma )=e^{i\alpha \sigma _3/2}e^{i\beta \sigma _2/2}e^{i\gamma \sigma _3/2},$$
(6)   
where $`\sigma _i`$ denotes the $`i`$-th Pauli matrix and the three Euler angles have the ranges, $`0\alpha <2\pi `$, $`0\beta \pi `$, and $`0\gamma <2\pi `$. More explicitly, we have

$$U(\alpha \beta \gamma )=\left(\begin{array}{cc}e^{i\alpha /2}\mathrm{cos}(\beta /2)e^{i\gamma /2}& e^{i\alpha /2}\mathrm{sin}(\beta /2)e^{i\gamma /2}\\ e^{i\alpha /2}\mathrm{sin}(\beta /2)e^{i\gamma /2}& e^{i\alpha /2}\mathrm{cos}(\beta /2)e^{i\gamma /2}\end{array}\right).$$
(7)   
Since the angle $`\gamma `$ also can be shown to be absent (drop out) in the ZHSL representation (3) of the density matrix (cf. ), the corresponding (conditional) Haar measure is simply $`\mathrm{sin}\beta d\beta d\alpha /2\pi `$. We converted the (generalized) ZHSL measures — that is, the product of this measure and members of the (symmetric) Dirichlet family (5) — to Cartesian coordinates, making use of the transformations (several others, leading to equivalent results (9) and (10), are also possible),

$$\alpha =\frac{1}{2}i(2\mathrm{log}(x+iy)\mathrm{log}(x^2+y^2)),\beta =\mathrm{cos}^1(\frac{z}{\sqrt{x^2+y^2+z^2}}),d_1=\frac{1}{2}(1\sqrt{x^2+y^2+z^2}).$$
(8)   
By so doing, we obtained the one-parameter ($`\nu `$) family of probability distributions,

$$q_\nu (x,y,z)=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{1}{2}+\nu )(1x^2y^2z^2)^{\nu 1}}{2\pi ^{\frac{3}{2}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\nu )(x^2+y^2+z^2)},$$
(9)   
over the Bloch sphere. (One can easily see, then, that the generalized ZHSL measures are unitarily-invariant, since the two eigenvalues of $`\rho `$ — that is $`(1\pm \sqrt{x^2+y^2+z^2})/2`$ — are preserved under unitary transformations. “Our choice \[of the ZHSL measure\] was motivated by the fact that both component measures are rotationally invariant” .) In spherical coordinates ($`r,\theta ,\varphi `$), this probability distribution (9) takes the form,

$$\stackrel{~}{q}_\nu (r,\theta ,\varphi )=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{1}{2}+\nu )(1r^2)^{\nu 1}\mathrm{sin}\theta }{2\pi ^{3/2}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\nu )}.$$
(10)   
Now, to cast (10) in the form (2) of the volume element of a monotone metric (making the substitution $`r=(1t)/(1+t)`$), one finds that

$$f(t)\frac{(1t)^2\left(\frac{t}{(1+t)^2}\right)^{1/2\nu }}{(1+t)}.$$
(11)   
(Since the limit of these functions at $`t=1`$ for all $`\nu `$ are 0, we are unable to normalize them so that $`f(1)=1`$, in the manner of , which condition would appear to be necessary for them to be associated with “operator means”. However, interestingly, the functions (11) do fulfill the self-adjointness requirement of Petz and Sudár , $`f(t)=tf(1/t)`$.) In particular, for $`\nu =1`$ (the uniform distribution on the 1-simplex or line), we obtain $`f(t)\frac{(1t)^2}{\sqrt{t}}`$, and for $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ (that is, the Jeffreys’ prior on the 1-simplex), we have $`f(t)\frac{(1t)^2}{(1+t)}`$. Now, the class of functions (11) possesses some interesting properties in regard to monotonicity (as simple plots will reveal). They are all monotone-decreasing for $`t[0,1]`$ (so they are certainly not operator monotone in the sense of Petz and Sudár ), but they are also monotone-increasing for $`t>1`$. We do not know whether or not they are, then, also operator monotone for $`t>1`$ (but some of the numerous results presented in \[14, Chap. V\] might be relevant in this regard). Nevertheless, it would appear that the behavior of the functions given by (11) in the interval  is possibly more relevant than the behavior for $`t>1`$, since in (2), the argument of $`f`$ — that is, $`(1r)/(1+r)`$ — can vary only between 0 and 1. (For the operator monotone functions $`f(t)`$, in the form considered by Petz and Sudár , if one takes $`yf(x/y)`$, that is, the reciprocal of the associated “Morozova-Chentsov function”, one obtains various means of $`x`$ and $`y`$, such as the arithmetic and logarithmic ones \[23, eq. (3)\]. Using (11) in this formula, one obtains for the case $`\nu =1`$, $`(xy)^2/4\sqrt{xy}`$, and for $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$, $`(xy)^2/2(x+y)`$.))

We have, thus, shown that the “natural measure” recently proposed by ZHSL  (and a class of extensions of it) can not be considered (at least for the case of two-dimensional quantum systems, but conjecturally also for the $`N`$-dimensional systems, $`N>2`$, as well) to be proportional to the volume elements of monotone metrics. Any metrics associable with these ZHSL measures would, therefore, lack the statistically important property of being decreasing under stochastic mappings (that is, coarse-grainings).

Let us point out that we have previously, as well, argued that the ZHSL measure and its variants do not correspond to normalized volume elements of monotone metrics \[24, secs. II.C, D\]. But there the evidence (concerning the eigenvalues of certain averaged density matrices) was of a more indirect nature. In particular, we were unaware in  of the fact that it is possible to express (cf. ) the ZHSL measure using the theoretically minimal number ($`N^21`$) of variables needed to parameterize the convex set of $`N\times N`$ density matrices (rather than the naive number, $`N^2+N1`$, that a reading of  would immediately suggest). Consequently, in  we did not utilize the transformations (8) between the (economized number of) ZHSL parameters and more conventionally employed ones.

It would be of interest, as well, to investigate to what extent it is possible to replace the Dirichlet distributions (5) in the ZHSL (product) measure (leaving, however, intact the Haar measure) by other probability distributions lying outside the Dirichlet family, so that the so-modified ZHSL (product) measures would, then in fact, take the form of normalized volume elements of monotone metrics. In fact, in \[25, eqs. (10), (11)\] we have been able — following the lead of Hall \[26, eqs. (24), (25)\] — to do precisely this for the specific instance of the minimal monotone (Bures) metric in the cases $`N=2`$ and 3. Also in , we have further determined the necessary Hall normalization constants (for the marginal Bures probability distributions over the $`N`$ eigenvalues of the $`N\times N`$ density matrices) for $`N=4`$ and 5 which constants, in conjunction with Euler angle parameterizations (not yet fully specified) of $`SU(4)`$ and $`SU(5)`$, parallel to that reported for $`SU(3)`$ in , would allow one to obtain the corresponding normalized Bures volume elements for those $`N`$-dimensional quantum systems, as well. The normalization constants ($`N>2`$) reported in  appear to be strongly related to partial sums of the denominators of even-indexed Bernoulli numbers.

###### Acknowledgements.

I would like to express appreciation to the Institute for Theoretical Physics for computational support in this research, to Mark Byrd for his insightful observation that it is possible to express the ZHSL measure in a non-“over-parameterized” form, as well as to K. Życzkowski for his many informative communications.