The authors generalize the von Neumann entropy from quantum states to quantum channels, which model evolutions of quantum physical systems, and they provide a physical interpretation of a quantum channel's entropy in terms of an information-processing task called quantum channel merging.
The von Neumann entropy of a quantum state is a central concept in physics and information theory, having a number of compelling physical interpretations. There is a certain perspective that the most fundamental notion in quantum mechanics is that of a quantum channel, as quantum states, unitary evolutions, measurements, and discarding of quantum systems can each be regarded as certain kinds of quantum channels. Thus, an important goal is to define a consistent and meaningful notion of the entropy of a quantum channel. Motivated by the fact that the entropy of a state ρ can be formulated as the difference of the number of physical qubits and the "relative entropy distance"between ρ and the maximally mixed state, here we define the entropy of a channel N as the difference of the number of physical qubits of the channel output with the "relative entropy distance"between N and the completely depolarizing channel. We prove that this definition satisfies all of the axioms, recently put forward by Gour [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 65, 5880 (2019)IETTAW0018-944810.1109/TIT.2019.2907989], required for a channel entropy function. The task of quantum channel merging, in which the goal is for the receiver to merge his share of the channel with the environment's share, gives a compelling operational interpretation of the entropy of a channel. The entropy of a channel can be negative for certain channels, but this negativity has an operational interpretation in terms of the channel merging protocol. We define Rényi and min-entropies of a channel and prove that they satisfy the axioms required for a channel entropy function. Among other results, we also prove that a smoothed version of the min-entropy of a channel satisfies the asymptotic equipartition property.
The von Neumann entropy is a central concept in physics and information theory, having a number of compelling physical interpretations. There is a certain perspective that the most fundamental notion in quantum mechanics is that of a quantum channel, as quantum states, unitary evolutions, measurements, and discarding of quantum systems can each be regarded as certain kinds of quantum channels. Thus, an important goal is to define a consistent and meaningful notion of the entropy of a quantum channel. Motivated by the fact that the entropy of a state ρ can be formulated as the difference of the number of physical qubits and the “relative entropy distance” between ρ and the maximally mixed state, here we define the entropy of a channel N as the difference of the number of physical qubits of the channel output with the “relative entropy distance” between N and the completely depolarizing channel. We establish that this definition satisfies all of the axioms, recently put forward in [Dour, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 65, 5880 (2019)], required for a channel entropy function. The task of quantum channel merging, in which the goal is for the receiver to merge his share of the channel with the environment's share, gives a compelling operational interpretation of the entropy of a channel. We define Rényi and min-entropies of a channel and establish that they satisfy the axioms required for a channel entropy function. Among other results, we also establish that a smoothed version of the min-entropy of a channel satisfies the asymptotic equipartition property.
What would be a reasonable definition of the conditional entropy of bipartite quantum processes, and what novel insight would it provide? We develop this notion using four information-theoretic axioms and define the corresponding quantitative formulas. Our definitions of the conditional entropies of channels are based on the generalized state and channel divergences, for instance, quantum relative entropy. We find that the conditional entropy of quantum channels has potential to reveal insights for quantum processes that aren't already captured by the existing entropic functions, entropy or conditional entropy, of the states and channels. The von Neumann conditional entropy S[A∣B]N of the channel NA′B′→AB is based on the quantum relative entropy, with system pairs A′,A and B′,B being nonconditioning and conditioning systems, respectively. We identify a connection between the underlying causal structure of a bipartite channel and its conditional entropy. In particular, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for a bipartite quantum channel NA′B′→AB in terms of its von Neumann conditional entropy S[A∣B]N, to have no causal influence from A′ to B. As a consequence, if S[A∣B]N<−log∣A∣ then the channel necessarily has causal influence (signaling) from A′ to B. Our definition of the conditional entropy establishes the strong subadditivity of the entropy for quantum channels. We also study the total amount of correlations possible due to quantum processes by defining the multipartite mutual information of quantum channels.
In this work, we use the theory of quantum states over time to define joint entropy for timelike-separated quantum systems. For timelike-separated systems that admit a dual description as being spacelike-separated, our notion of entropy recovers the usual von Neumann entropy for bipartite quantum states and thus may be viewed as a spacetime generalization of von Neumann entropy. Such an entropy is then used to define dynamical extensions of quantum joint entropy, quantum conditional entropy, and quantum mutual information for systems separated by the action of a quantum channel. We provide an in-depth mathematical analysis of such information measures and the properties they satisfy. We also use such a dynamical formulation of entropy to quantify the information loss/gain associated with the dynamical evolution of quantum systems, which enables us to formulate a precise notion of information conservation for quantum processes. Finally, we show how our dynamical entropy admits an operational interpretation in terms of quantifying the amount of state disturbance associated with a positive operator- valued measurement.
In classical information theory, the most important theorems are the coding theorems, which were discussed by calculating the mean entropy and the mean mutual entropy defined by the classical dynamical entropy (Kolmogorov–Sinai). The quantum dynamical entropy was first studied by Emch [13] and Connes–Stormer [11]. After that, several approaches for introducing the quantum dynamical entropy were proposed [10,[Formula: see text]3,[Formula: see text]8,[Formula: see text]39,[Formula: see text]15,[Formula: see text]44,[Formula: see text]9,[Formula: see text]27,[Formula: see text]28,[Formula: see text]2,[Formula: see text]19,[Formula: see text]45]. The efficiency of information transmission for the quantum processes is investigated by using the von Neumann entropy [22] and the Ohya mutual entropy [24]. These entropies were extended to S-mixing entropy by Ohya [26,[Formula: see text]27] in general quantum systems. The mean entropy and the mean mutual entropy for the quantum dynamical systems were introduced based on the S-mixing entropy. In this paper, based on research into the dynamical entropy and mean mutual entropy of quantum systems, this study investigates the characteristics of quantum channels that exhibit entanglement, a property unique to quantum systems, and investigates the behaviour of quantum entropy for compound quantum channels by changing the perspective from information transmission between input and output to a new perspective of information transmission from the initial state to the final state.
Entropy plays a pivotal role in quantum computing and information theory, serving as a measure of uncertainty and information in quantum systems. This paper explores how entropy, particularly von Neumann entropy, quantifies quantum states and their evolution in quantum computing systems. We discuss the relationship between entropy and quantum entanglement, quantum error correction, and the thermodynamic properties of quantum computers. Furthermore, we examine the implications of entropy in information processing tasks, including quantum algorithms, and its role in the quantum-to-classical transition.