Quantum Information with Meaning Inside and Outside the Quantum

Alastair Abbott,Cristian Calude,Karl Svozil

doi:10.3390/isis-summit-vienna-2015-t9.3002

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Quantum Information with Meaning Inside and Outside the Quantum

Highlights

The active field of quantum information theory has proposed approaches to provide supposedly ‘unbreakable’ security by exploiting various quantum phenomena. This security relies on assumptions about the nature of quantum measurements and their ability to generate random bits
Anton Zeilinger summarises this by postulating that the simplest quantum systems, qubit, can hold only one bit of classical information [6]
In order to understand better how quantum mechanics can help generate meaningful information, we instead look to relate the outcomes of quantum measurements to formal properties of the system based on more fundamental assumptions

Summary

Introduction

The active field of quantum information theory has proposed approaches to provide supposedly ‘unbreakable’ security by exploiting various quantum phenomena. In order to understand better how quantum mechanics can help generate meaningful information, we instead look to relate the outcomes of quantum measurements to formal properties of the system based on more fundamental assumptions. We have shown that a) some of the postulated properties of quantum information follow from the formal structure of the theory and b) a purely formal notion of information within a quantum world can generate, via measurement, meaningful and useful information in the macroscopic world (for example, in cryptography).

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