Quantum information

Quantum information is the information of the state of a quantum system. It is the basic entity of study in quantum information science, and can be manipulated using quantum information processing techniques. Quantum information refers to both the technical definition in terms of Von Neumann entropy and the general computational term.

It is an interdisciplinary field that involves quantum mechanics, computer science, information theory, philosophy and cryptography among other fields. Its study is also relevant to disciplines such as cognitive science, psychology and neuroscience. Its main focus is in extracting information from matter at the microscopic scale. Observation in science is one of the most important ways of acquiring information and measurement is required in order to quantify the observation, making this crucial to the scientific method. In quantum mechanics, due to the uncertainty principle, non-commuting observables cannot be precisely measured simultaneously, as an eigenstate in one basis is not an eigenstate in the other basis. According to the eigenstate–eigenvalue link, an observable is well-defined (definite) when the state of the system is an eigenstate of the observable. Since any two non-commuting observables are not simultaneously well-defined, a quantum state can never contain definitive information about both non-commuting observables.

Data can be encoded into the quantum state of a quantum system as quantum information. While quantum mechanics deals with examining properties of matter at the microscopic level, quantum information science focuses on extracting information from those properties, and quantum computation manipulates and processes information – performs logical operations – using quantum information processing techniques.

Quantum information, like classical information, can be processed using digital computers, transmitted from one location to another, manipulated with algorithms, and analyzed with computer science and mathematics. Just like the basic unit of classical information is the bit, quantum information deals with qubits. Quantum information can be measured using Von Neumann entropy.

Recently, the field of quantum computing has become an active research area because of the possibility to disrupt modern computation, communication, and cryptography.

The history of quantum information theory began at the turn of the 20th century when classical physics was revolutionized into quantum physics. The theories of classical physics were predicting absurdities such as the ultraviolet catastrophe, or electrons spiraling into the nucleus. At first these problems were brushed aside by adding ad hoc hypotheses to classical physics. Soon, it became apparent that a new theory must be created in order to make sense of these absurdities, and the theory of quantum mechanics was born.

Quantum mechanics was formulated by Erwin Schrödinger using wave mechanics and Werner Heisenberg using matrix mechanics. The equivalence of these methods was proven later. Their formulations described the dynamics of microscopic systems but had several unsatisfactory aspects in describing measurement processes. Von Neumann formulated quantum theory using operator algebra in a way that it described measurement as well as dynamics. These studies emphasized the philosophical aspects of measurement rather than a quantitative approach to extracting information via measurements.

See: Dynamical Pictures