A quantum version of the Monge-Kantorovich optimal transport problem is analyzed. The transport cost is minimized over the set of all bipartite coupling states ${\rho }^{AB}$ such that both of its reduced density matrices ${\rho }^A$ and ${\rho }^B$ of dimension $N$ are fixed. We show that, selecting the quantum cost matrix to be proportional to the projector on the antisymmetric subspace, the minimal transport cost leads to a semidistance between ${\rho }^A$ and ${\rho }^B$, which is bounded from below by the rescaled Bures distance and from above by the root infidelity. In the single-qubit case, we provide a semianalytic expression for the optimal transport cost between any two states and prove that its square root satisfies the triangle inequality and yields an analog of the Wasserstein distance of the order of 2 on the set of density matrices. We introduce an associated measure of proximity of quantum states, called swap fidelity, and discuss its properties and applications in quantum machine learning.

• Received 23 February 2021
• Revised 1 August 2022
• Accepted 2 August 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.110402