Quantum Information Theory

Quantum information theory has provided the formal framework for describing how information is stored, transmitted, and transformed in physical quantum systems [Renes, 2022; Tomamichel, 2015; Wilde, 2013]. Its entropic formulations underpin our understanding of quantum computation, communication, and cryptography. Yet this theory traditionally treats all quantum operations as freely available, ignoring computational restrictions. In practice, however, any manipulation of quantum information must be performed by devices of bounded complexity and runtime. Capturing such realistic constraints requires extending quantum information theory to include computational efficiency as a fundamental component. This work takes a first step toward building a computational version of quantum information theory, one that treats efficiency as part of the theory itself. The goal is to understand how the behavior of quantum information changes when the parties involved can only perform computationally efficient operations. This approach bridges the abstract, ideal setting of quantum information theory with the practical limitations of real quantum devices, offering a means to study information processing under realistic resource constraints. At the center of this work are two new quantities: the quantum computational min-entropy and the quantum computational max-entropy. These entropies extend standard quantum entropies by explicitly limiting the computational power of the observer or adversary. The quantum computational min-entropy captures how unpredictable a quantum system A remains to an observer holding system B, when that observer is restricted to quantum circuits of bounded size. Formally, for a bipartite state ρ_{AB}, we define {H^c}^s_{min}(A|B)_{ρ} ≔ -log d_A max_{ℰ^s_{B→A'}} F((𝕀_A ⊗ ℰ^s)(ρ_{AB}),|Φ_{AA'}⟩⟨Φ_{AA'}|) , where the maximization is over quantum channels that can be implemented by circuits of size at most s, and F denotes fidelity with a maximally entangled state. In the classical setting, the min-entropy can be expressed through the maximal probability of correctly guessing a random variable given some side-information. In the fully quantum setting, this idea extends to uncertainty about quantum information [König et al., 2009], quantifying how well one system can be inferred from another using local quantum operations. Our definition generalizes this operational viewpoint by restricting the computational power of the observer to efficient quantum circuits. This definition extends the operational meaning of the information-theoretic quantum min-entropy [König et al., 2009] by incorporating computational constraints, and it provides the fully quantum counterpart of the classical unpredictability entropy [Hsiao et al., 2007]. We establish fundamental properties for the computational min-entropy, including monotonicity in the circuit size and smoothing parameters, efficient data-processing inequalities, and fully quantum leakage and purification chain rules, which were left as open questions in earlier definitions of quantum computational entropies [Yi-Hsiu Chen et al., 2017; Munson et al., 2025]. For classical–quantum states, it coincides with the previously defined quantum computational unpredictability entropy [Noam Avidan and Rotem Arnon, 2025], showing that the new definition correctly generalizes known results. We also introduce the quantum computational max-entropy through a duality relation [Tomamichel et al., 2010] with the min-entropy using a fixed purification. Finally, we prove unconditional separations between the computational and information-theoretic entropies, demonstrating that computational restrictions can fundamentally alter entropic behavior even for simple states. These results establish the fundamental mathematical framework for studying quantum information within realistic computational constraints. By integrating efficiency directly into entropic quantities, they open the door to a fully developed computational quantum information theory that parallels its information-theoretic counterpart. Such a framework provides the foundation for analyzing cryptographic security against computationally bounded quantum adversaries [Noam Avidan and Rotem Arnon, 2025] and the limits of efficient quantum state manipulation. More broadly, it suggests that many core notions in quantum information theory may have refined computational analogues yet to be explored.

Quantum error correction (QEC) is one of the central concepts in quantum information science and also has wide applications in fundamental physics. The capacity theorems provide solid foundations of QEC. We here provide a general and highly applicable form of capacity theorem for both classical and quantum information, i.e., hybrid information, with the assistance of a limited resource of entanglement in a one-shot scenario, which covers broader situations than the existing ones. Harnessing the wide applicability of the theorem, we show that a demonstration of QEC by short random quantum circuits is feasible and that QEC is intrinsic in quantum chaotic systems. Our results bridge the progress in quantum information theory, near-future quantum technology, and fundamental physics.

The “noncommutative graphs” which arise in quantum error correction are a special case of the quantum relations introduced in Weaver (Quantum relations. Mem Am Math Soc 215(v–vi):81–140, 2012). We use this perspective to interpret the Knill–Laflamme error-correction conditions (Knill and Laflamme in Theory of quantum error-correcting codes. Phys Rev A 55:900-911, 1997) in terms of graph-theoretic independence, to give intrinsic characterizations of Stahlke’s noncommutative graph homomorphisms (Stahlke in Quantum zero-error source-channel coding and non-commutative graph theory. IEEE Trans Inf Theory 62:554–577, 2016) and Duan, Severini, and Winter’s noncommutative bipartite graphs (Duan et al., op. cit. in Zero-error communication via quantum channels, noncommutative graphs, and a quantum Lovász number. IEEE Trans Inf Theory 59:1164–1174, 2013), and to realize the noncommutative confusability graph associated to a quantum channel (Duan et al., op. cit. in Zero-error communication via quantum channels, noncommutative graphs, and a quantum Lovász number. IEEE Trans Inf Theory 59:1164–1174, 2013) as the pullback of a diagonal relation. Our framework includes as special cases not only purely classical and purely quantum information theory, but also the “mixed” setting which arises in quantum systems obeying superselection rules. Thus we are able to define noncommutative confusability graphs, give error correction conditions, and so on, for such systems. This could have practical value, as superselection constraints on information encoding can be physically realistic.

This paper presents photonic communications and data storage capacitates for classical and quantum communications over a quantum channel. These capacities represent a generalization of Shannon’s classical channel capacity and coding theorem in two ways. First, it extends classical results for bit communication transport to all frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. Second, it extends the results to quantum bit (qubit) transport as well as a hybrid of classical and quantum communications. Nature’s limits on the rate at which classical and/or quantum information can be sent error-free over a quantum channel using classical and/or quantum error-correcting codes are presented as a function of the thermal background light level and Einstein zero-point energy. Graphical results are given as well as numerical results regarding communication rate limits using Planck’s natural frequency and time-interval units!

Quantum mechanics, information theory, and relativity theory are the basic foundations of theoretical physics. The acquisition of information from a quantum system is the interface of classical and quantum physics. Essential tools for its description are Kraus matrices and positive operator valued measures (POVMs). Special relativity imposes severe restrictions on the transfer of information between distant systems. Quantum entropy is not a Lorentz covariant concept. Lorentz transformations of reduced density matrices for entangled systems may not be completely positive maps. Quantum field theory, which is necessary for a consistent description of interactions, implies a fundamental trade-off between detector reliability and localizability. General relativity produces new, counterintuitive effects, in particular when black holes (or more generally, event horizons) are involved. Most of the current concepts in quantum information theory may then require a reassessment.

Quantum information science is one of the frontier areas of science and technology. It is also an interdisciplinary area of research where scientists from physics, mathematics, and computer science can contribute alike. One of the main goals is how well one can process information using laws of quantum theory. Quantum information theory aims to process information that is not amenable with classical devices. At the same time this also provides new insights into the nature of the quantum world. Quantum information processing includes quantum computation, quantum communication, quantum cryptography and various information processing tasks. Not only does this provide a fundamental arena to investigate quantum phenomena but also gives new technological benefits like quantum teleportation, remote state preparation and secure communications. In India there is a growing interest in this emerging field. In view of this we had organized an International Program on Quantum Information (IPQI-2010) at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar during January 4–January 30, 2010. In this programme, there were experts from all over the world and topics of focus were on various issues related to quantum information science and general quantum theory, characterization and quantification of entanglement, quantum channels and quantum operations, role of entanglement in quantum algorithms and quantum computation, developing new quantum algorithms, understanding of capacities of quantum channels, and new communication tasks in the multiparty case.

Quantum error correction is a set of methods to protect quantum information—that is, quantum states—from unwanted environmental interactions (decoherence) and other forms of noise. The information is stored in a quantum error-correcting code, which is a subspace in a larger Hilbert space. This code is designed so that the most common errors move the state into an error space orthogonal to the original code space while preserving the information in the state. It is possible to determine whether an error has occurred by a suitable measurement and to apply a unitary correction that returns the state to the code space without measuring (and hence disturbing) the protected state itself. In general, codewords of a quantum code are entangled states. No code that stores information can protect against all possible errors; instead, codes are designed to correct a specific error set, which should be chosen to match the most likely types of noise. An error set is represented by a set of operators that can multiply the codeword state. Most work on quantum error correction has focused on systems of quantum bits, or qubits, which are two-level quantum systems. These can be physically realized by the states of a spin-1/2 particle, the polarization of a single photon, two distinguished levels of a trapped atom or ion, the current states of a microscopic superconducting loop, or many other physical systems. The most widely used codes are the stabilizer codes, which are closely related to classical linear codes. The code space is the joint +1 eigenspace of a set of commuting Pauli operators on n qubits, called stabilizer generators; the error syndrome is determined by measuring these operators, which allows errors to be diagnosed and corrected. A stabilizer code is characterized by three parameters [[n,k,d]], where n is the number of physical qubits, k is the number of encoded logical qubits, and d is the minimum distance of the code (the smallest number of simultaneous qubit errors that can transform one valid codeword into another). Every useful code has n>k; this physical redundancy is necessary to detect and correct errors without disturbing the logical state. Quantum error correction is used to protect information in quantum communication (where quantum states pass through noisy channels) and quantum computation (where quantum states are transformed through a sequence of imperfect computational steps in the presence of environmental decoherence to solve a computational problem). In quantum computation, error correction is just one component of fault-tolerant design. Other approaches to error mitigation in quantum systems include decoherence-free subspaces, noiseless subsystems, and dynamical decoupling.

The high-dimensional quantum system greatly improve the quantum channel capacity and information storage space, and achieve high-dimensional quantum information transmission, which enhance the speed of quantum computing and quantum information processing. In this paper, a high-dimensional quantum teleportation protocol without information loss is proposed. We consider pre-sharing a high-dimensional non-maximum entangled state as a quantum channel between sender and receiver. By adding auxiliary particle and performing high-dimensional local operations, it is possible to achieve high-dimensional quantum teleportation without information loss. Simultaneously, we apply the protocol to butterfly network, and propose a novel high-dimensional quantum network coding based on prediction mechanism. In our scheme, we use Z-{|0⟩, |1⟩} basis to predict the transmission of high dimensional states over the butterfly network. When the prediction is successful, the deterministic transmission of high-dimensional quantum states can be realized over the butterfly network. Our scheme greatly saves the usage of quantum and classical channels, which improves the utilization efficiency of both channels.

Quantum information is prone to suffer from errors caused by the so-called decoherence, which describes the loss in coherence of quantum states associated to their interactions with the surrounding environment. This decoherence phenomenon is present in every quantum information task, be it transmission, processing or even storage of quantum information. Consequently, the protection of quantum information via quantum error correction codes (QECC) is of paramount importance to construct fully operational quantum computers. Understanding environmental decoherence processes and the way they are modeled is fundamental in order to construct effective error correction methods capable of protecting quantum information. Moreover, quantum channel models that are efficiently implementable and manageable on classical computers are required in order to design and simulate such error correction schemes. In this article, we present a survey of decoherence models, reviewing the manner in which these models can be approximated into quantum Pauli channel models, which can be efficiently implemented on classical computers. We also explain how certain families of quantum error correction codes can be entirely simulated in the classical domain, without the explicit need of a quantum computer. A quantum error correction code for the approximated channel is also a correctable code for the original channel, and its performance can be obtained by Monte Carlo simulations on a classical computer.

The ability to transfer information securely is essential in the modern world we live in. While the field of cryptography has long researched ways to do this, events over the last couple of years have brought the issues of secure information transfer squarely into the public eye. As a consequence, security and cryptography have quickly become issues of social and political importance, sparking debates about the values of privacy and the role of government. An essential ingredient of modern cryptography is the generation of randomness: cryptographic techniques are built on the premise that one has access to random bits. It is well known, however, that computers cannot produce algorithmically random sequences – that is, sequences with maximal algorithmic information content – but are doomed to produce 'pseudorandomness'. This lack of randomness can be, and has been, exploited to compromise security, see [4]. The active field of quantum information theory has proposed approaches to provide supposedly 'unbreakable' security by exploiting various quantum phenomena. This security unfortunately 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]. This foundational principle is in line with a wider paradigm shift to view quantum information as an extension of classical information, but it is nonetheless unsatisfying to simply postulate this principle, given its importance in determining the practical advantages of quantum information theory. 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. Indeed, 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). The indeterminism of quantum measurements can be formalised via the notion of value indefiniteness. To explain this concept, let us consider an arbitrary quantum system and ask whether the outcome of a measurement of any observable quantity A (such as the energy of the system, its angular momentum (spin), etc.) is determined prior to the measurement. If this is the case, then we say the observable is value definite with value v(A); otherwise, the observable is value indefinite and v(A) is undefined. Mathematically, one can reduce all observable quantities to so-called projection observables, which can only take the values 0 or 1. Thus, the question of whether the outcome of several measurements can be simultaneously determined in advance can be rephrased in terms of the information 'carried' by a particular system in a definite quantum state. Classically, one expects that all quantities are determined in advance, and hence all observables are value definite. Quantum mechanically, however, the belief is that this is not the case, and the information content of quantum systems is limited. Formulating carefully the notion of value indefiniteness allows us to formalise the notion of (quantum) indeterminism; however, this doesn't help clarify whether quantum systems are indeed value indefinite or not. Staying in this formal framework, the Kochen-Specker theorem [5] provides a first positive result, showing that at least some observables must be value indefinite if one makes the assumption known as non-contextuality, which states that any definite values that exist must be independent of other compatible measurements that may or may not be performed on the system. Under the same assumption, this theorem can be strengthened to show that only one single observable can have the definite value 1 (see [2]). Furthermore, only observables that can be measured simultaneously with this single one can have the definite value 0; the rest must all be value indefinite. Since the preparation of a system involves precisely ensuring that, usually via measurement, the system is in a definite state with respect to some desired observable, this result shows that no other incompatible observable can be value definite. That is, preparing a system in a definite state by making the 'preparation' observable value definite specifies completely the information content of the quantum system. This is an example of syntactical quantum information acquiring meaning at the level of the quantum itself. Can the syntactical information at the level of the quantum generate meaning outside the quantum, that is, at the macroscopic level? The results cited above hold in the Hilbert-space framework of quantum mechanics and are formulated only in terms of a syntactical notion of information. Their real importance becomes evident when one interprets them in the context of quantum measurements. Specifically, if we prepare a quantum system in a known state, they allow us to 'locate' observables which we can measure, but which are value indefinite; that is, observables whose measurement results are not specified by any pre-existing property of the quantum system. Furthermore, with respect to a mathematical model of unpredictability which we developed in [3], the results of these measurements can be shown to be absolutely unpredictable. In this way we get a mathematical explanation and justification of the largely accepted intuition that quantum mechanics is inherently unpredictable, and that this unpredictability arises from the phenomenon of indefiniteness within the quantum world. Furthermore, if one considers a hypothetical infinite sequence generated by the repeated measurement of a quantum value indefinite observable, one can prove that these sequences must be strongly incomputable, technically 'bi-immune' [1]. Such sequences cannot be generated by any Turing machine or classical computer, showing that value indefiniteness leads to a clear classical/quantum split in a purely algorithmic context. Importantly, bi-immunity is a property of observed, macroscopic quantities, quite separate from the quantum framework in which the value indefiniteness is formalised. This form of macroscopic meaning created from the lack of syntactic information is precisely the scenario that quantum random number generators try to create, and which is essential for the development and certification of quantum cryptographic systems. The fact that the macroscopic information created goes beyond anything classically obtainable serves as a valuable practical resource, outside of and removed from the quantum formalism. To conclude, quantum information creates meaning within the quantum and via measure- ment, the lack of information within the quantum, creates meaning and valuable information at the macroscopic level. Acknowledgments The second author thanks Prof. S. Marcus for useful conversations on quantum information theory. This work was supported in part by Marie Curie FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IRSES Grant RANPHYS. References and Notes Abbott, A.A.; Calude, C.S.; Svozil, K. Strong Kochen-Specker theorem and incomputability of quantum randomness. Physical Review A 2012, 86, 062109. Abbott, A.A.; Calude, C.S.; Svozil, K. Value-indefinite observables are almost everywhere. Physical Review A 2013, 89, 032109. Abbott, A.A.; Calude, C.S.; Svozil, K. On the unpredictability of individual quantum measurement outcomes. CDMTCS Research Report 2014, 458. Calude, C.S. Quantum randomness & cryptology. CyberTalk 2013, 3, 42–43. Kochen, S.; Specker, E. The problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics. Journal of Mathematics and Mechanics 1967, 17, 59–87. Zeilinger, A. A foundational principle for quantum mechanics. Foundations of Physics 1999, 29(4),631–643.

We analyze the dynamics of entanglement entropy in a generic quantum many-body open system from the perspective of quantum information and error corrections. We introduce a random unitary circuit model with intermittent projective measurements, in which the degree of information scrambling by the unitary and the rate of projective measurements are independently controlled. This model displays two stable phases, characterized by the volume-law and area-law scaling entanglement entropy in steady states. The transition between the two phases is understood from the point of view of quantum error correction: the chaotic unitary evolution protects quantum information from projective measurements that act as errors. A phase transition occurs when the rate of errors exceeds a threshold that depends on the degree of information scrambling. We confirm these results using numerical simulations and obtain the phase diagram of our model. Our work shows that information scrambling plays a crucial role in understanding the dynamics of entanglement in an open quantum system and relates the entanglement phase transition to changes in quantum channel capacity.

Quantum resource theory is perhaps the most revolutionary framework that quantum physics has ever experienced. It plays vigorous roles in unifying the quantification methods of a requisite quantum effect as wells as in identifying protocols that optimize its usefulness in a given application in areas ranging from quantum information to computation. Moreover, the resource theories have transmuted radical quantum phenomena like coherence, nonclassicality and entanglement from being just intriguing to being helpful in executing realistic thoughts. A general quantum resource theoretical framework relies on the method of categorization of all possible quantum states into two sets, namely, the free set and the resource set. Associated with the set of free states there is a number of free quantum operations emerging from the natural constraints attributed to the corresponding physical system. Then, the task of quantum resource theory is to discover possible aspects arising from the restricted set of operations as resources. Along with the rapid growth of various resource theories corresponding to standard harmonic oscillator quantum optical states, significant advancement has been expedited along the same direction for generalized quantum optical states. Generalized quantum optical framework strives to bring in several prosperous contemporary ideas including nonlinearity, -symmetric non-Hermitian theories, q-deformed bosonic systems, etc., to accomplish similar but elevated objectives of the standard quantum optics and information theories. In this article, we review the developments of nonclassical resource theories of different generalized quantum optical states and their usefulness in the context of quantum information theories.

Randomness is a defining element of mixing processes in nature and an essential ingredient to many protocols in quantum information. In this work, we investigate how much randomness is required to transform a given quantum state into another one. Specifically, we ask whether there is a gap between the power of a classical source of randomness compared to that of a quantum one. We provide a complete answer to these questions, by identifying provably optimal protocols for both classical and quantum sources of randomness, based on a dephasing construction. We find that in order to implement any noisy transition on a d-dimensional quantum system it is necessary and sufficient to have a quantum source of randomness of dimension d or a classical one of dimension d. Interestingly, coherences provided by quantum states in a source of randomness offer a quadratic advantage. The process we construct has the additional features to be robust and catalytic; i.e., the source of randomness can be reused. Building upon this formal framework, we illustrate that this dephasing construction can serve as a useful primitive in both equilibration and quantum information theory: We discuss applications describing the smallest measurement device, capturing the smallest equilibrating environment allowed by quantum mechanics, or forming the basis for a cryptographic private quantum channel. We complement the exact analysis with a discussion of approximate protocols based on quantum expanders deriving from discrete Weyl systems. This gives rise to equilibrating environments of remarkably small dimension. Our results highlight the curious feature of randomness that residual correlations and dimension can be traded against each other.Received 13 June 2018Revised 21 August 2018DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.041016Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasQuantum channelsQuantum correlations in quantum informationQuantum cryptographyQuantum quenchThermodynamicsQuantum InformationInterdisciplinary Physics

We present a novel weather analysis of San Francisco from 2009 to 2019 using concepts from quantum information theory. We describe how to transform a classical weather dataset into a quantum-inspired analytical framework by treating it as a quantum information system embedded in a quantum-like representation, with data encoded as density matrices in Hilbert space. Transforming classical weather data into quantum states is a mathematical abstraction, whereas a quantum-inspired system is not a quantum-physical system. We study a quantum-inspired analytical framework using quantum information-theoretic metrics, including fidelity, classical information, quantum information, decoherent information, Shannon and von Neumann entropies, and the quantum stability index, to represent and analyze the dataset. Furthermore, we give predictions for each quantum information metric for 2020 and 2021. We fit Fourier-series models to the metrics to explore temporal patterns and structural properties in the data.

In this paper, we introduce an improved spontaneous Raman scattering (SRS) model to accurately determine the quantum communication channel's quality when integrated into a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) network. To assess the degradational effect of counter‐propagating SRS, we carried out laboratory experiments to analyse the impact of different variables, namely the input power, fibre length and channel arrangement. Based on the measurement results, we developed a new model for defining SRS within the C‐band, which provides more precision in describing the impact of SRS compared to the previously used simplified V‐shape model. A 96‐channel DWDM use case, including one quantum and 90 classical channels, is modelled to identify the optimal channel wavelength allocation strategy. Using the revised model, we concluded that the optimal channel layout, where the channel numbering is based on the ITU‐T standard, is with the quantum channel being the 88th (1533.4 nm), or the 96th (1530.2 nm) if we consider the classical capacity. In contrast, if the V‐shape model is used for defining the optimal channel allocation, the quantum channel would be the 59th (1545 nm). The results show the importance of accurately modelling SRS, as determining the right channel placement is essential for the coexistence of quantum and classical channels.