Chapter 7. Quantum entropy and information quantities

Alexander S. Holevo

Reinhold A. Bertlmann, Nicolai Friis

Abstract Chapter 20 provides a discussion of entropies and entropic quantities in quantum information theory, briefly considering the generalizations of the Rényi entropy to the quantum regime, but mainly focusing on the von Neumann entropy and its properties such as concavity, the Araki-Lieb inequality, and subadditivity. We introduce the quantum relative entropy, quantum joint entropy, quantum conditional entropy, and quantum mutual information, and prove key properties and results for these quantities, including Klein’s inequality, joint convexity, additivity, and monotonicity under completely positive and trace-preserving maps of the relative entropy, as well as weak monotonicity and strong subadditivity of the von Neumann entropy. We then analyse the relation of (negative) conditional entropy and entanglement. In this context we discuss the conditional amplitude operator and the mutual amplitude operator, as well as conditional Rényi entropies and their role for entanglement detection.

Thomas Ihn

Quantum information processing is a modern research topic in which many different disciplines within and beyond physics interact. This chapter first makes contact with basic concepts of classical information theory, which is often not familiar to physicists. It then introduces Shannon's entropy and related entropic quantities, revisits the sampling theorem, discusses the relation between thermodynamics, measurement, and information theory, and looks into Landauer's principle. The chapter looks into the very basics of quantum information, the description of qubits, and operations of qubits. Finally, qubit implementations are discussed based on charge and spin qubits in quantum dots. Experimental results on single and two-qubit operations, and issues of decoherence are discussed.

Nilanjana Datta

Jarkko Järvelä

Entanglement entropy is a proposal to quantify quantum entanglement of two disjoint regions in a pure system. It is a relatively new topic and is developing rapidly. The current main motives to study it are its applications to studying quantum gravity, thermalization and phase transitions in condensed matter systems. Mutual information is a related quantity and it can be used to measure the amount of information two disjoint regions share. The purpose of this thesis is to give an introduction to the general results of the field without considering specific systems. The two prominent approaches used are two-dimensional conformal field theory and the holographic entanglement entropy conjecture. The first approach is to calculate entanglement entropy using conformal field theory, the results of which are known to be exact although technically more difficult to derive and only available for 1+1 dimensional systems. Both static and dynamic systems will be discussed. The results are reproduced and generalized to higher dimensions using holography. As a more recent topic, the holographic approach is used to rederive the entanglement entropy of systems with a Fermi surface using AdS/Vaidya metric with Lifshitz scaling and hyperscaling violation. The final chapter of the thesis discusses mutual information in various static and dynamic cases considered in the previous chapters. For the first time, the evolution of mutual information is calculated in AdS/Vaidya metric with Lifshitz scaling and hyperscaling violation in the critical theta=d-1 case.

Nilanjana Datta