Entangled and sequential quantum protocols with dephasing

Abstract: Sequences of commuting quantum operators can be parallelized using entanglement. This transformation is behind some optimal quantum metrology protocols and recent results on quantum circuit complexity. We show that dephasing quantum maps in arbitrary dimension can also be parallelized. This implies that for general dephasing noise the protocol with entanglement is not more fragile than the corresponding sequential protocol and, conversely, the sequential protocol is not less effective than the entangled one. We derive this result using tensor networks. Furthermore, we only use transformations strictly valid within string diagrams in dagger compact closed categories. Therefore, they apply verbatim to other theories, such as geometric quantization and topological quantum field theory. This clarifies and characterizes to some extent the role of entanglement in general quantum theories.