Perturbation Theory for Quantum Information

Abstract

We report lowest-order series expansions for primary matrix functions of quantum states based on a perturbation theory for functions of linear operators. Our theory enables efficient computation of functions of perturbed quantum states that assume only knowledge of the eigenspectrum of the zeroth order state and the density matrix elements of a zero-trace, Hermitian perturbation operator, not requiring analysis of the full state or the perturbation term. We develop theories for two classes of quantum state perturbations, perturbations that preserve the vector support of the original state and perturbations that extend the support beyond the support of the original state. We highlight relevant features of the two situations, in particular the fact that functions and measures of perturbed quantum states with preserved support can be elegantly and efficiently represented using Fréchet derivatives. We apply our perturbation theories to find simple expressions for four of the most important quantities in quantum information theory that are commonly computed from density matrices: the Von Neumann entropy, the quantum relative entropy, the quantum Chernoff bound, and the quantum fidelity.