Quantifying decoherence of Gaussian noise channels (Q2034661)

The authors review the basic properties of Gaussian Noise channels. These play an important role in continuous variable quantum information. They introduce an information- theoretic measure for the decoherence of optical states caused by these channels in terms of averaged Wigner-Yanase skew information, and derive a complementarity relation between the decoherence and the quantum affinity. The basic idea used is utilizing the family of Gaussian noisy channels as averaged random Weyl displacement in phase space. From this follows the decomposition into the anti-commutator (symmetric Jordan product) and the commutator (anti-symmetric Lie product). Using the connection of the anti-symmetric Lie product with the averaged Wigner-Yanase skew information, they arrive at the symmetry-asymmetry complementarity trade-off relation. This is used to evaluate the decoherence in some typical optical states caused by Gaussian noise channels by benchmarking with the coherent state.