Mixed Depression: A Mini-Review to Guide Clinical Practice and Future Research Developments

The debate on mixed states (MS) has been intense for decades. However, several points remain controversial from a nosographic, diagnostic, and therapeutic point of view. The different perspectives that have emerged over the years have turned into a large, but heterogeneous, literature body. The present review aims to summarize the evidence on MS, with a particular focus on mixed depression (MxD), in order to provide a guide for clinicians and encourage the development of future research on the topic. First, we review the history of MS, focusing on their different interpretations and categorizations over the centuries. In this section, we also report alternative models to traditional nosography. Second, we describe the main clinical features of MxD and list the most reliable assessment tools. Finally, we summarize the recommendations provided by the main international guidelines for the treatment of MxD. Our review highlights that the different conceptualizations of MS and MxD, the variability of clinical pictures, and the heterogeneous response to pharmacological treatment make MxD a real challenge for clinicians. Further studies are needed to better characterize the phenotypes of patients with MxD to help clinicians in the management of this delicate condition.

Informationally restricted correlations: a general framework for classical and quantum systems

We introduce new methods and tools to study and characterise classical and quantum correlations emerging from prepare-and-measure experiments with informationally restricted communication. We consider the most general kind of informationally restricted correlations, namely the ones formed when the sender is allowed to prepare statistical mixtures of mixed states, showing that contrary to what happens in Bell nonlocality, mixed states can outperform pure ones. We then leverage these tools to derive device-independent witnesses of the information content of quantum communication, witnesses for different quantum information resources, and demonstrate that these methods can be used to develop a new avenue for semi-device independent random number generators.

Unambiguous State Discrimination with Intrinsic Coherence

We investigate the discrimination of pure-mixed (quantum filtering) and mixed-mixed states and compare their optimal success probability with the one for discriminating other pairs of pure states superposed by the vectors included in the mixed states. We prove that under the equal-fidelity condition, the pure-pure state discrimination scheme is superior to the pure-mixed (mixed-mixed) one. With respect to quantum filtering, the coherence exists only in one pure state and is detrimental to the state discrimination for lower dimensional systems; while it is the opposite for the mixed-mixed case with symmetrically distributed coherence. Making an extension to infinite-dimensional systems, we find that the coherence which is detrimental to state discrimination may become helpful and vice versa.

Increasing Quantum Correlations Based on Measurement-Induced Disturbance via a Swapping Procedure with Two-Qubit Mixed States

In this paper, quantum correlation (QC) swapping for certain separable two-qubit mixed states is treated. A QC quantifier, measurement-induced disturbance (MID) (Luo in Phys Rev A 77:022301, 2008), is employed to characterize and quantify QCs in the relevant states. Properties of all QCs in the swapping process are revealed. Particularly, it is found that MID can be increased through QC swapping for certain separable two-qubit mixed states.

Quantum Contextual Advantage Depending on Nonzero Prior Probabilities in State Discrimination of Mixed Qubit States

Recently, Schmid and Spekkens studied the quantum contextuality in terms of state discrimination. By dealing with the minimum error discrimination of two quantum states with identical prior probabilities, they reported that quantum contextual advantage exists. Meanwhile, if one notes a striking observation that the selection of prior probability can affect the quantum properties of the system, it is necessary to verify whether the quantum contextual advantage depends on the prior probabilities of the given states. In this paper, we consider the minimum error discrimination of two states with arbitrary prior probabilities, in which both states are pure or mixed. We show that the quantum contextual advantage in state discrimination may depend on the prior probabilities of the given states. In particular, even though the quantum contextual advantage always exists in the state discrimination of two nonorthogonal pure states with nonzero prior probabilities, the quantum contextual advantage depends on prior probabilities in the state discrimination of two mixed states.

Experimental Investigation of the Robustness of a New Bell-Type Inequality of Triphoton GHZ States in Open Systems

Knowing the level of entanglement robustness against quantum bit loss or decoherence mechanisms is an important issue for any application of quantum information. Fidelity of states can be used to judge whether there is entanglement in multi-particle systems. It is well known that quantum channel security in QKD can be estimated by measuring the robustness of Bell-type inequality against noise. We experimentally investigate a new Bell-type inequality (NBTI) in the three-photon Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states with different levels of spin-flip noise. The results show that the fidelity and the degree of violation of the NBTI decrease monotonically with the increase of noise intensity. They also provide a method to judge whether there is entanglement in three-particle mixed states.

Experimental Demonstration of Fine-Grained Steering Inequality of Two-Qubit Mixed States

Quantum steering, as a cornerstone of quantum information, is usually used to witness the quantum correlation of bipartite and multi-partite states. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the quantum steering inequality of two-qubit mixed states based on the fine-grained uncertainty relation. Our experimental results show that the steering inequality has potent sensitivity to Werner states and Bell diagonal states. The steering strategy exhibits a strong ability to identify that Werner states are steerable when the decoherence coefficient a>12. Compared to the steering inequality obtained by another stratagem, the steering witness criteria of mixed states based on the fine-grained uncertainty relation demonstrated in our experiment has better precision and accuracy. Moreover, the detection efficiency in our measurement setup is only required to be 50% to close the detection loophole, which means our approach needs less detector efficiency to certificate the steerability of mixed states.

Variational quantum algorithms for trace distance and fidelity estimation

Estimating the difference between quantum data is crucial in quantum computing. However, as typical characterizations of quantum data similarity, the trace distance and quantum fidelity are believed to be exponentiallyhard to evaluate in general. In this work, we introduce hybrid quantum-classical algorithms for these two distance measures on near-term quantum devices where no assumption of input state is required. First, we introduce the Variational Trace Distance Estimation (VTDE) algorithm. We in particular provide the technique to extract the desired spectrum information of any Hermitian matrix by local measurement. A novel variational algorithm for trace distance estimation is then derived from this technique, with the assistance of a single ancillary qubit. Notably, VTDE could avoid the barren plateau issue with logarithmic depth circuits due to a local cost function. Second, we introduce the Variational Fidelity Estimation (VFE) algorithm. We combine Uhlmann’s theorem and the freedom in purification to translate the estimation task into an optimization problem over a unitary on an ancillary system with fixed purified inputs. We then provide a purification subroutine to complete the translation. Both algorithms are verified by numerical simulations and experimental implementations, exhibiting high accuracy for randomly generated mixed states.

Construction of genuinely entangled subspacesand the associated bounds on entanglement measures for mixed states

Genuine entanglement is the strongest form of multipartite entanglement. Genuinely entangled pure states contain entanglement in every bipartition and as such can be regarded as a valuable resource in the protocols of quantum information processing. A recent direction of research is the construction of genuinely entangled subspaces — the class of subspaces consisting entirely of genuinely entangled pure states. In this paper we present methods of construction of such subspaces including those of maximal possible dimension. The approach is based on the composition of bipartite entangled subspaces and quantum channels of certain types. The examples include maximal subspaces for systems of three qubits, four qubits, three qutrits. We also provide lower bounds on two entanglement measures for mixed states, the concurrence and the convex-roof extended negativity, which are directly connected with the projection on genuinely entangled subspaces.