Connectivity for quantum graphs (Q2226415)

As an extension of connectedness of a (classical) confusable graph, this paper addresses a noble concept of the connectedness on a quantum graph. The notion of quantum graph is equivalent to a quantum channel, which is a completely positive and trace-preserving (CPT) map, in the regime of quantum Shannon theory as well as it corresponds to an operator system in the orthodox field of functional analysis (i.e., graphical \(C^\ast\)-algebra). The authors first provide two concrete examples of quantum graphs which are connected -- the quantum Hamming cube (Example 3.2) and the \(\varepsilon\)-quantum expander (Proposition 3.7), and then they generalize the classical tree-packing theorem in graph theory to a quantum version in Section 3. Here, we could observe the exact meaning of the connectedness on a quantum graph as follow (i.e., Theorem 3.8): A quantum graph \(\mathcal{S}\subseteq M_n\) is connected iff \[ \sum_{i\neq j}\dim\left[P_j\mathcal{S}P_i\right]\ge2(m-1), \] where \(P_1,\ldots,P_m\) are non-trivial disjoint projections up to the identity. Through the paper, they complete the connectedness step-by-step under a well-constructed comparison for the classical versus quantum notions. It is useful to note that vertices in classical graph theory are substituted with low-rank projectors in the quantum states. Thus, it is possible to understand which ones are remaining and challenging problems in the topic; for examples, a connectedness including quantum superposition and quantum entanglement for a quantum graph. In Section 4, the authors define a \(k\)-connectedness as a generalization of the simple connectedness in the previous sections, and provide a new measure known as `connectivity' on the quantum graph. To do this, they employ a notion of `restriction' and `subset of vertices' in the quantum regime. Finally, in Section 5, they propose the related concepts on the \(k\)-connectedness and orthogonal representation for quantum graphs (Proposition 5.4 and Proposition 5.5) via Definition 5.3, where the Lovász theorem (Theorem 5.1 in this paper) or the Lovász \(\theta\)-number are the key elements of quantum construction. Actually, the traditional information theory, first developed in [\textit{C. E. Shannon}, Bell Syst. Tech. J. 27, 379--423, 623--656 (1948; Zbl 1154.94303)], takes care of an information transmission of bits over a noise classical channel (i.e., noisy-channel-coding theorem), which has always an additive property in the notion of a channel capacity. However, the channel capacity of a quantum channel (namely, quantum channel capacity) is very subtle and even it behaves generally non-additive from the notorious quantum entanglement. This phenomenon is usually called as `super-additivity' or `activation' of a quantum channel. In my personal opinion, the notion of connectedness of a quantum graph proposed in the paper could be a powerful tool for any future research on the quantum-channel-capacity problems and also highlights a noble construction for the emerging `quantum internet' or `quantum network' in the theoretical level or even in the realization.