This PhD thesis represents work done between Aug. 2003 and Dec. 2006 in Reinhard F. Werner's quantum information theory group at Technische Universität Braunschweig, and Artur Ekert's Centre for Quantum Computation at the University of Cambridge. Quantum information science combines ideas from physics, computer science and information theory to investigate how quintessentially quantum mechanical effects such as superposition and entanglement can be employed for the handling and transfer of information. My thesis falls into the field of abstract quantum information theory, which is concerned with the fundamental resources for quantum information processing and their interconversion and tradeoffs. Every such processing of quantum information can be represented as a quantum channel: a completely positive and trace-preserving map between observable algebras associated to physical systems. This work investigates both fundamental properties of quantum channels (mostly in Chs. 3 and 4) and their asymptotic capacities for classical as well as quantum information transfer (in Chs. 5 through 8).
This PhD thesis represents work done between Aug. 2003 and Dec. 2006 in Reinhard F. Werner's quantum information theory group at Technische Universität Braunschweig, and Artur Ekert's Centre for Quantum Computation at the University of Cambridge. Quantum information science combines ideas from physics, computer science and information theory to investigate how quintessentially quantum mechanical effects such as superposition and entanglement can be employed for the handling and transfer of information. My thesis falls into the field of abstract quantum information theory, which is concerned with the fundamental resources for quantum information processing and their interconversion and tradeoffs. Every such processing of quantum information can be represented as a quantum channel: a completely positive and trace-preserving map between observable algebras associated to physical systems. This work investigates both fundamental properties of quantum channels (mostly in Chs. 3 and 4) and their asymptotic capacities for classical as well as quantum information transfer (in Chs. 5 through 8).
What are the information processing capabilities of physical systems?As recently as the first half of the 20 th century this question did not even have a definite meaning.What is information, and how would one process it?It took the development of theories of computing (in the 1930s) and information (late in the 1940s) for us to formulate mathematically what it means to compute or communicate.Yet these theories were abstract, based on axiomatic mathematics: what did physical systems have to do with these axioms?Rolf Landauer had the essential insight -"Information is physical" -that information is always encoded in the state of a physical system, whose dynamics on a microscopic level are well-described by quantum physics.This means that we cannot discuss information without discussing how it is represented, and how nature dictates it should behave.Wigner considered the situation from another perspective when he wrote about "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences".Why are the computational techniques of mathematics so astonishingly useful in describing the physical world [1]?One might begin to suspect foul play in the universe's operating principles.Interesting insights into the physics of information accumulated through the 1970s and 1980s -most sensationally in the proposal for a "quantum computer".If we were to mark a particular year in which an explosion of interest took place in information physics, that year would have to be 1994, when Shor showed that a problem of practical interest (factorisation of integers) could be solved easily on a quantum computer.But the applications of information in physics -and vice versa -have been far more widespread than this popular discovery.These applications range from improved experimental technology, more sophisticated measurement techniques, methods for characterising the quantum/classical boundary, tools for quantum chaos, and deeper insight into quantum theory and nature.In this thesis I present a short review of ideas in quantum information theory.The first chapter contains introductory material, sketching the central ideas of probability and information theory.Quantum mechanics is presented at the level of advanced undergraduate knowledge, together with some useful tools for quantum mechanics of open systems.In the second chapter I outline how classical information is represented in quantum systems and what this means for agents trying to extract information from these systems.The final chapter presents a new resource: quantum information.This resource has some bewildering applications which have been discovered in the last ten years, and continually presents us with unexpected insights into quantum theory and the universe.ii This thesis is dedicated to my mother.iii This thesis was begun as an intrepid adventure.It caught
This thesis is a study of how information theory can be used to analyse and interpret quantum mechanical systems, specifically, systems that are being used for information processing and communication tasks. Quantum information science is a relatively new field, and it has only been recently that we have started to look at using quantum mechanical systems to accomplish information processing tasks that are not possible using classical systems. As this method of information processing is a relatively new paradigm, there are many possibilities for new algorithms and discoveries in this area of computing. The application of information theory towards the analysis and description of quantum mechanical systems yields new interesting results - it can even be argued that information theory provides a natural and intuitive way to intepret quantum mechanics, as correlations and measurement outcomes in quantum processes can be described using information theory. Chapter 1 is an introduction to the strange new world of quantum mechanics and takes a brief look at one of the applications of quantum information science in quantum cryptography. A mathematical overview of the postulates and framework that quantum mechanics is built on is presented in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 is a brief study of classical information theory and some of the fundamental concepts and ideas that form the crux of the subject. In Chapter 4, we present the main results of the thesis by taking a look at an optimal measurement scheme that improves on previous schemes by allowing us to extract the maximal amount of information from states in a quantum channel of specific geometry. The findings have an impact on various other areas of the field, including security analysis of quantum cryptographic protocols and building better quantum cloning machines.
Quantum information processing exploits the quantum nature of information. It offers fundamentally new solutions in the field of computer science and extends the possibilities to a level that cannot be imagined in classical communication systems. For quantum communication channels, many new capacity definitions were developed in comparison to classical counterparts. A quantum channel can be used to realize classical information transmission or to deliver quantum information, such as quantum entanglement. Here we review the properties of the quantum communication channel, the various capacity measures and the fundamental differences between the classical and quantum channels.
Quantum information processing exploits the quantum nature of information. It offers fundamentally new solutions in the field of computer science and extends the possibilities to a level that cannot be imagined in classical communication systems. For quantum communication channels, many new capacity definitions were developed in comparison to classical counterparts. A quantum channel can be used to realize classical information transmission or to deliver quantum information, such as quantum entanglement. Here we review the properties of the quantum communication channel, the various capacity measures and the fundamental differences between the classical and quantum channels.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: What are the information processing capabilities of physical systems? As recently as the first half of the 20th century this question did not even have a definite meaning. What is information, and how would one process it? It took the development of theories of computing (in the 1930s) and information (late in the 1940s) for us to formulate mathematically what it means to compute or communicate. Yet these theories were abstract, based on axiomatic mathematics: what did physical systems have to do with these axioms? Rolf Landauer had the essential insight - "Information is physical" - that information is always encoded in the state of a physical system, whose dynamics on a microscopic level are well-described by quantum physics. This means that we cannot discuss information without discussing how it is represented, and how nature dictates it should behave. Wigner considered the situation from another perspective when he wrote about "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences". Why are the computational techniques of mathematics so astonishingly useful in describing the physical world [1]? One might begin to suspect foul play in the universe's operating principles. Interesting insights into the physics of information accumulated through the 1970s and 1980s - most sensationally in the proposal for a "quantum computer". If we were to mark a particular year in which an explosion of interest took place in information physics, that year would have to be 1994, when Shor showed that a problem of practical interest (factorisation of integers) could be solved easily on a quantum computer. But the applications of information in physics - and vice versa - have been far more widespread than this popular discovery. These applications range from improved experimental technology, more sophisticated measurement techniques, methods for characterising the quantum/classical boundary, tools for quantum chaos, and deeper insight into quantum theory and nature. In this thesis I present a short review of ideas in quantum information theory. The first chapter contains introductory material, sketching the central ideas of probability and information theory. Quantum mechanics is presented at the level of advanced undergraduate knowledge, together with some useful tools for quantum mechanics of open systems. In the second chapter I outline how classical information is represented in quantum systems and what this means for agents trying to extract information from these systems. The final chapter presents a new resource: quantum information. This resource has some bewildering applications which have been discovered in the last ten years, and continually presents us with unexpected insights into quantum theory and the universe.
This thesis studies the capacities of quantum channels under repeated noisy evolution, with a focus on the long-time behavior of classical and quantum information transmission. The main goal is to understand how much information can still be preserved or recovered when a quantum channel is applied many times, and to develop structural, analytic, and algorithmic tools for characterizing these capacities.The core results are presented in Chapter 2. First, the thesis investigates the infinite-time regime and shows that the asymptotic capacities of quantum channels are determined by the structure of their peripheral subspace. This leads to explicit characterizations of the infinite-time classical capacity and bounds on the infinite-time quantum capacity, together with results on additivity and extensions to more general settings. The thesis then studies the finite-time behavior for GNS-symmetric channels and proves explicit exponential convergence bounds, showing that the capacities approach their infinite-time values rapidly. In addition, algorithmic methods are developed for computing the peripheral structure and the associated capacity quantities efficiently.Chapter 3 explores a related optimization-based direction motivated by Sum-of-Squares methods and semidefinite programming. Using ideas inspired by separability and SDP hierarchies, this part investigates whether machine-learning-assisted ansatz discovery can help construct more efficient SOS certificates. Although this direction is not yet complete in the specific capacity setting, it provides promising intermediate results and suggests new computational approaches for related problems in quantum information theory. Overall, this thesis provides a structural and quantitative understanding of the long-time information-carrying capabilities of noisy quantum dynamical systems, while also opening new perspectives through optimization and machine-learning-based methods.