Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Quantum maps are fundamental to quantum information theory and open quantum systems. Covariant or weakly symmetric quantum maps, in particular, play a key role in defining quantum evolutions that respect thermodynamics, establish free operations in resource theories, and are consistent with transformations of quantum reference frames. To implement quantum maps in the laboratory, one typically engineers a physical dilation, which corresponds to a unitary evolution entangling the system with an environment. This work systematically explores how weak symmetries of quantum maps manifest in their dilations. We demonstrate that for various classes of physical dilations, including Hamiltonian-driven dilations and short-time collision models that simulate Markovian open quantum dynamics, weak symmetries always lead to strong symmetries in the dilated evolution, resulting in conserved quantities in the system-environment space. We also characterize the subspace where these symmetries arise using Krylov subspaces. Moreover, we show that some different types of physical dilations have no constraints on the dilated evolution, requiring no strong symmetry. Finally, we complement our findings with a variety of illustrative and pedagogical examples. Our results provide essential guidelines for constructing physical dilations of quantum maps, offering a comprehensive understanding of how symmetries shape their implementations in a laboratory or on a quantum computer.
Source: Physical Review A
Author: Marco Cattaneo
Institution: University of Helsinki
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4407232262