Purification-based metric to measure the distance between quantum states and processes

Abstract

In this work we study the properties of a purification-based entropic metric for measuring the distance between both quantum states and quantum processes. This metric is defined as the square root of the entropy of the average of two purifications of mixed quantum states which maximize the overlap between the purified states. We analyze this metric and show that it satisfies many appealing properties, which suggest this metric is an interesting proposal for theoretical and experimental applications of quantum information. © 2013 American Physical Society.