Geometric properties of qudit systems

Abstract

We discuss in general how to geometrically visualize a qudit system, with a particular interest in thermal states. The principle of maximum entropy is used to study the geometric properties of an ensemble of finite dimensional Hamiltonian systems with known average energy. These geometric characterizations are given in terms of the generalized diagonal Bloch vectors and the invariants of the special unitary group in $n$ dimensions. As examples, Hamiltonians written in terms of linear and quadratic generators of the angular momentum algebra are considered with $J= 1$ and $J=3/2$. For these cases, paths as functions of the temperature are established in the corresponding simplex representations, which show first- and second-order quantum phase transitions, as well as the adiabatic evolution of the interaction strengths (control parameters) of the Hamiltonian models. For the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick Hamiltonian the quantum phase diagram is explicitly shown for different temperature values in parameter space.