Currencies in resource theories

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of currencies within resource theories to better quantify physical resources in realistic, imperfect conditions, providing necessary and sufficient conditions for resource conversion.

Contribution

It generalizes the framework of resource theories by defining currencies applicable in experimental settings with limited control or knowledge, extending previous axiomatic approaches.

Findings

Currencies provide a unified way to quantify diverse resources.

Weak assumptions suffice to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for resource conversion.

The approach generalizes thermodynamic and quantum resource theories.

Abstract

How may we quantify the value of physical resources, such as entangled quantum states, heat baths or lasers? Existing resource theories give us partial answers; however, these rely on idealizations, like perfectly independent copies of states or exact knowledge of a quantum state. Here we introduce the general tool of currencies to quantify realistic descriptions of resources, applicable in experimental settings when we do not have perfect control over a physical system, when only the neighbourhood of a state or some of its properties are known, or when there is no obvious way to decompose a global space into subsystems. Currencies are a special set of resources chosen to quantify all others - like Bell pairs in LOCC or a lifted weight in thermodynamics. We show that from very weak assumptions on the theory we can already find useful currencies that give us necessary and sufficient conditions for resource conversion, and we build up more results as we impose further structure. This work is an application of Resource theories of knowledge [arXiv:1511.08818], generalizing axiomatic approaches to thermodynamic entropy, work and currencies made of local copies.