We aim to counter the tendency for specialization in science by advancing a language that can facilitate the translation of ideas and methods between disparate contexts. The focus is on questions of "resource-theoretic nature". In a resource theory, one identifies resources and allowed manipulations that can be used to transform them. Some of the main questions are: How to optimize resources? What are the trade-offs between them? Can a given resource be converted to another one via the allowed manipulations? Because of their ubiquity, methods used to answer them in one context can be used to tackle corresponding questions in new contexts. The translation occurs in two stages. Firstly, methods are generalized to the abstract language. Then, one can determine whether potentially novel contexts can accommodate them. We focus on the first stage, by introducing two variants of an abstract framework in which existing and yet unidentified resource theories can be represented. Using these, the task of generalizing concrete methods is tackled in chapter 4 by studying the ways in which meaningful measures of resources may be constructed. One construction expresses a notion of cost (or yield) of a resource. Among other applications, it may be used to extend measures from a subset of resources to a larger domain. Another construction allows the translation of resource measures from one resource theory to another. Special cases include resource robustness and weight measures, as well as relative entropy based measures quantifying minimal distinguishability from freely available resources. We instantiate some of these ideas in a resource theory of distinguishability in chapter 5. It describes the utility of systems with probabilistic behavior for the task of distinguishing between hypotheses, which said behavior may depend on.
We aim to counter the tendency for specialization in science by advancing a language that can facilitate the translation of ideas and methods between disparate contexts. The focus is on questions of "resource-theoretic nature". In a resource theory, one identifies resources and allowed manipulations that can be used to transform them. Some of the main questions are: How to optimize resources? What are the trade-offs between them? Can a given resource be converted to another one via the allowed manipulations? Because of their ubiquity, methods used to answer them in one context can be used to tackle corresponding questions in new contexts. The translation occurs in two stages. Firstly, methods are generalized to the abstract language. Then, one can determine whether potentially novel contexts can accommodate them. We focus on the first stage, by introducing two variants of an abstract framework in which existing and yet unidentified resource theories can be represented. Using these, the task of generalizing concrete methods is tackled in chapter 4 by studying the ways in which meaningful measures of resources may be constructed. One construction expresses a notion of cost (or yield) of a resource. Among other applications, it may be used to extend measures from a subset of resources to a larger domain. Another construction allows the translation of resource measures from one resource theory to another. Special cases include resource robustness and weight measures, as well as relative entropy based measures quantifying minimal distinguishability from freely available resources. We instantiate some of these ideas in a resource theory of distinguishability in chapter 5. It describes the utility of systems with probabilistic behavior for the task of distinguishing between hypotheses, which said behavior may depend on.
Resource theories constitute a powerful theoretical framework and a tool that captures, in an abstract structure, pragmatic aspects of the most varied theories and processes.For physical theories, while this framework deals directly with questions about the concrete possibilities of carrying out tasks and processes, resource theories also make it possible to recast these already established theories on a new language, providing not only new perspectives on the potential of physical phenomena as valuable resources for technological development, for example, but they also provide insights into the very foundations of these theories.In this work, we will investigate some properties of a resource theory for quantum contextuality, an essential characteristic of quantum phenomena that ensures the impossibility of interpreting the results of quantum measurements as revealing properties that are independent of the set of measurements being made.We will present the resource theory to be studied and investigate certain global properties of this theory using tools and methods that, although already developed and studied by the community in other resource theories, had not yet been used to characterize resource theories of contextuality.In particular, we will use the so called cost and yield monotones, making use of their power in the study of resource theories for nonlocality, in an attempt to extend these results to this more general class of phenomena, contextuality.
A central problem in the study of resource theories is to find functions that are nonincreasing under resource conversions — termed monotones — in order to quantify resourcefulness. Various constructions of monotones appear in many different concrete resource theories. How general are these constructions? What are the necessary conditions on a resource theory for a given construction to be applicable? To answer these questions, we introduce a broad scheme for constructing monotones. It involves finding an order-preserving map from the preorder of resources of interest to a distinct preorder for which nontrivial monotones are previously known or can be more easily constructed; these monotones are then pulled back through the map. In one of the two main classes we study, the preorder of resources is mapped to a preorder of sets of resources, where the order relation is set inclusion, such that monotones can be defined via maximizing or minimizing the value of a function within these sets. In the other class, the preorder of resources is mapped to a preorder of tuples of resources, and one pulls back monotones that measure the amount of distinguishability of the different elements of the tuple (hence its information content). Monotones based on contractions arise naturally in the latter class, and, more surprisingly, so do weight and robustness measures. In addition to capturing many standard monotone constructions, our scheme also suggests significant generalizations of these. In order to properly capture the breadth of applicability of our results, we present them within a novel abstract framework for resource theories in which the notion of composition is independent of the types of the resources involved (i.e., whether they are states, channels, combs, etc.).
How far can we take the resource theoretic approach to explore physics? Resource theories like LOCC, reference frames and quantum thermodynamics have proven a powerful tool to study how agents who are subject to certain constraints can act on physical systems. This approach has advanced our understanding of fundamental physical principles, such as the second law of thermodynamics, and provided operational measures to quantify resources such as entanglement or information content. In this work, we significantly extend the approach and range of applicability of resource theories. Firstly we generalize the notion of resource theories to include any description or knowledge that agents may have of a physical state, beyond the density operator formalism. We show how to relate theories that differ in the language used to describe resources, like micro and macroscopic thermodynamics. Finally, we take a top-down approach to locality, in which a subsystem structure is derived from a global theory rather than assumed. The extended framework introduced here enables us to formalize new tasks in the language of resource theories, ranging from tomography, cryptography, thermodynamics and foundational questions, both within and beyond quantum theory.
Resource theories constitute a powerful theoretical framework and a tool that captures, in an abstract structure, pragmatic aspects of the most varied theories and processes. For physical theories, while this framework deals directly with questions about the concrete possibilities of carrying out tasks and processes, resource theories also make it possible to recast these already established theories on a new language, providing not only new perspectives on the potential of physical phenomena as valuable resources for technological development, for example, but they also provide insights into the very foundations of these theories. In this work, we will investigate some properties of a resource theory for quantum contextuality, an essential characteristic of quantum phenomena that ensures the impossibility of interpreting the results of quantum measurements as revealing properties that are independent of the set of measurements being made. We will present the resource theory to be studied and investigate certain global properties of this theory using tools and methods that, although already developed and studied by the community in other resource theories, had not yet been used to characterize resource theories of contextuality. In particular, we will use the so called cost and yield monotones, extending the results of reference Quantum 4, 280 (2020) to general contextuality scenarios.
Resource theories constitute a powerful theoretical framework and a tool that captures, in an abstract structure, pragmatic aspects of the most varied theories and processes. For physical theories, while this framework deals directly with questions about the concrete possibilities of carrying out tasks and processes, resource theories also make it possible to recast these already established theories on a new language, providing not only new perspectives on the potential of physical phenomena as valuable resources for technological development, for example, but they also provide insights into the very foundations of these theories. In this work, we will investigate some properties of a resource theory for quantum contextuality, an essential characteristic of quantum phenomena that ensures the impossibility of interpreting the results of quantum measurements as revealing properties that are independent of the set of measurements being made. We will present the resource theory to be studied and investigate certain global properties of this theory using tools and methods that, although already developed and studied by the community in other resource theories, had not yet been used to characterize resource theories of contextuality. In particular, we will use the so called cost and yield monotones, making use of their power in the study of resource theories for nonlocality, in an attempt to extend these results to this more general class of phenomena, contextuality.
Considering resource usage is a powerful insight in the analysis of many phenomena in the sciences. Much of the current research on these resource theories focuses on the analysis of specific resources such quantum entanglement, purity, randomness or asymmetry. However, the mathematical foundations of resource theories are at a much earlier stage, and there has been no satisfactory account of quantitative aspects such as costs, rates or probabilities. We present a categorical foundation for quantitative resource theories, derived from enriched category theory. Our approach is compositional, with rich algebraic structure facilitating calculations. The resulting theory is parameterized, both in the quantities under consideration, for example costs or probabilities, and in the structural features of the resources such as whether they can be freely copied or deleted. We also achieve a clear separation of concerns between the resource conversions that are freely available, and the costly resources that are typically the object of study. By using an abstract categorical approach, our framework is naturally open to extension. We provide many examples throughout, emphasising the resource theoretic intuitions for each of the mathematical objects under consideration.