All states are universal catalysts in quantum thermodynamics

Catalytic transformations with finite-size environments: applications to cooling and thermometry

“…We have seen that the dimension of the catalyst is crucial to bypass thermodynamic restrictions imposed by the finiteness of the other systems. This observation is related to a question recently posed in [15], where the authors ask if certain transformations achieved with multipartite catalysts can be performed with a single, and sufficiently large catalyst. The findings presented here may contribute to elucidate this puzzle, since they are based on single-copy catalysts.…”

“…The findings presented here may contribute to elucidate this puzzle, since they are based on single-copy catalysts. To that end, the first step is to examine how our results can be extended to include the possibility of energy-preserving interactions, which is the framework considered in [15]. We also remark that the characterization of catalytic transformations provided here is valid for systems that do not necessarily start in thermal states.…”

“…In the field of Chemistry, catalysts are chemical compounds that can be used to assist a chemical reaction without being consumed in the process. This simple but powerful principle has also found applications in areas of quantum information [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] and quantum thermodynamics [10][11][12][13][14][15], where catalysts correspond to quantum systems that enable the implementation of otherwise impossible transformations. For example, transformations that are forbidden if only local operations and classical communication (LOCC) on a bipartite state are available, become possible once a suitable entangled state is employed as catalyst [1].…”

Catalytic quantum teleportation and beyond

“…Interestingly, this is a consequence of an essential property of catalysis: that certain catalysts (Duan states) "amplify" typical properties of states, even at the level of a single copy. This remarkable property of catalysis was first used in the resource-theoretic formulation of thermodynamics [39,44] and more recently in several other contexts [45,46,59]. Interestingly, all of these works reveal some interesting properties of catalysis and suggest that catalysts of the form (10) allow to access the power of multicopy transformations, while effectively consuming only a single copy of the state.…”

“…What is less known, however, is that in certain cases the very presence of entanglement can provide advantage, without it being consumed or degraded. This surprising and yet not clearly understood phenomenon is called quantum catalysis and was introduced in [31], further analysed in [32][33][34][35][36][37][38] and subsequently adapted to other physical settings like quantum thermodynamics [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49], resource theory of coherence [50,51], purity [52], asymmetry [53] or to the study of quantum reference frames [54]. In the particular case of entanglement theory, quantum catalysis demonstrates that access to a special entangled state (the catalyst) can sometimes allow two distant parties to manipulate their entanglement in a way that would otherwise be impossible.…”