Revisited Quantification of the Resource Theory of Imaginarity

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the decay behaviors of three imaginarity-related metrics, specifically the $l_1$-norm-based imaginarity measure, imaginarity robustness, and imaginarity relative entropy, for arbitrary single-qubit pure initial states under three typical quantum channels: dephasing, generalized amplitude damping, and phase-amplitude damping. Furthermore, we extend our analysis to higher-dimensional systems by examining the decay trends of the aforementioned imaginarity metrics for several key two-qubit states under two-qubit channels. We also generalize the concept of the maximal imaginary state (originally defined for single qubits in the resource theory of imaginarity) to separable two-qubit states. In addition, we extend the definitions of imaginary power and de-imaginary power for single-qubit channels to two-qubit channels acting on separable two-qubit states. Finally, we compute the imaginary and de-imaginary powers for several common two-qubit channels.