All states are universal catalysts in quantum thermodynamics

Patryk J Lipka-Bartosik, Paul Skrzypczyk

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)
116 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Quantum catalysis is a fascinating concept which demonstrates that certain transformations can only become possible when given access to a specific resource that has to be returned unaffected. It was first discovered in the context of entanglement theory and since then applied in a number of resource-theoretic frameworks, including quantum thermodynamics. Although in that case the necessary (and sometimes also sufficient) conditions on the existence of a catalyst are known, almost nothing is known about the precise form of the catalyst state required by the transformation. In particular, it is not clear whether it has to have some special properties or be finely tuned to the desired transformation. In this work we describe a surprising property of multi-copy states: we show that in resource theories governed by majorization all resourceful states are catalysts for all allowed transformations. In quantum thermodynamics this means that the so-called “second laws of thermodynamics” do not require a fine-tuned catalyst but rather any state, given sufficiently many copies, can serve as a useful catalyst. These analytic results are accompanied by several numerical investigations that indicate that neither a multi-copy form nor a very large dimension catalyst are required to activate most allowed transformations catalytically.
Original languageEnglish
Article number011061
Number of pages30
JournalPhysical Review X
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Mar 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We would like to thank Michał Horodecki for helpful discussions, especially for suggesting using the “flattest state” in the numerical part of this work. P. L. B. acknowledges support from the UK EPSRC (Grant No. EP/R00644X/1) and the PL NCN (Grant No. PRELUDIUM 14 2017/27/N/ST2/01227). P. S. acknowledges support from a Royal Society URF (UHQT).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.

Research Groups and Themes

  • Bristol Quantum Information Institute
  • QITG

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'All states are universal catalysts in quantum thermodynamics'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this