The science of quantum information has arisen over the last two decades centered on the manipulation of individual quanta of information, known as quantum bits or qubits. Quantum computers, quantum cryptography, and quantum teleportation are among the most celebrated ideas that have emerged from this new field. It was realized later on that using continuous-variable quantum information carriers, instead of qubits, constitutes an extremely powerful alternative approach to quantum information processing. This review focuses on continuous-variable quantum information processes that rely on any combination of Gaussian states, Gaussian operations, and Gaussian measurements. Interestingly, such a restriction to the Gaussian realm comes with various benefits, since on the theoretical side, simple analytical tools are available and, on the experimental side, optical components effecting Gaussian processes are readily available in the laboratory. Yet, Gaussian quantum information processing opens the way to a wide variety of tasks and applications, including quantum communication, quantum cryptography, quantum computation, quantum teleportation, and quantum state and channel discrimination. This review reports on the state of the art in this field, ranging from the basic theoretical tools and landmark experimental realizations to the most recent successful developments.

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Gaussian quantum information

The science of quantum information has arisen over the last two decades centered on the manipulation of individual quanta of information, known as quantum bits or qubits. Quantum computers, quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation are among the most celebrated ideas that have emerged from this new field. It was realized later on that using continuous-variable quantum information carriers, instead of qubits, constitutes an extremely powerful alternative approach to quantum information processing. This review focuses on continuous-variable quantum information processes that rely on any combination of Gaussian states, Gaussian operations, and Gaussian measurements. Interestingly, such a restriction to the Gaussian realm comes with various benefits, since on the theoretical side, simple analytical tools are available and, on the experimental side, optical components effecting Gaussian processes are readily available in the laboratory. Yet, Gaussian quantum information processing opens the way to a wide variety of tasks and applications, including quantum communication, quantum cryptography, quantum computation, quantum teleportation, and quantum state and channel discrimination. This review reports on the state of the art in this field, ranging from the basic theoretical tools and landmark experimental realizations to the most recent successful developments.

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The large deviation approach to statistical mechanics

The theory of large deviations is concerned with the exponential decay of probabilities of large fluctuations in random systems. These probabilities are important in many fields of study, including statistics, finance, and engineering, as they often yield valuable information about the large fluctuations of a random system around its most probable state or trajectory. In the context of equilibrium statistical mechanics, the theory of large deviations provides exponential-order estimates of probabilities that refine and generalize Einstein's theory of fluctuations. This review explores this and other connections between large deviation theory and statistical mechanics, in an effort to show that the mathematical language of statistical mechanics is the language of large deviation theory. The first part of the review presents the basics of large deviation theory, and works out many of its classical applications related to sums of random variables and Markov processes. The second part goes through many problems and results of statistical mechanics, and shows how these can be formulated and derived within the context of large deviation theory. The problems and results treated cover a wide range of physical systems, including equilibrium many-particle systems, noise-perturbed dynamics, nonequilibrium systems, as well as multifractals, disordered systems, and chaotic systems. This review also covers many fundamental aspects of statistical mechanics, such as the derivation of variational principles characterizing equilibrium and nonequilibrium states, the breaking of the Legendre transform for nonconcave entropies, and the characterization of nonequilibrium fluctuations through fluctuation relations.

We consider two fundamental tasks in quantum information theory, data compression with quantum side information, as well as randomness extraction against quantum side information. We characterize these tasks for general sources using so-called one-shot entropies. These characterizations-in contrast to earlier results-enable us to derive tight second-order asymptotics for these tasks in the i.i.d. limit. More generally, our derivation establishes a hierarchy of information quantities that can be used to investigate information theoretic tasks in the quantum domain: The one-shot entropies most accurately describe an operational quantity, yet they tend to be difficult to calculate for large systems. We show that they asymptotically agree (up to logarithmic terms) with entropies related to the quantum and classical information spectrum, which are easier to calculate in the i.i.d. limit. Our technique also naturally yields bounds on operational quantities for finite block lengths.

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A Hierarchy of Information Quantities for Finite Block Length Analysis of Quantum Tasks

We consider symmetric hypothesis testing in quantum statistics, where the hypotheses are density operators on a finite-dimensional complex Hilbert space, representing states of a finite quantum system. We prove a lower bound on the asymptotic rate exponents of Bayesian error probabilities. The bound represents a quantum extension of the Chernoff bound, which gives the best asymptotically achievable error exponent in classical discrimination between two probability measures on a finite set. In our framework, the classical result is reproduced if the two hypothetic density operators commute. Recently, it has been shown elsewhere [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 (2007) 160504] that the lower bound is achievable also in the generic quantum (noncommutative) case. This implies that our result is one part of the definitive quantum Chernoff bound.

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The chernoff lower bound for symmetric quantum hypothesis testing

We present a quantum version of Sanov's theorem focussing on a hypothesis testing aspect of the theorem: There exists a sequence of typical subspaces for a given set Ψ of stationary quantum product states asymptotically separating them from another fixed stationary product state. Analogously to the classical case, the separating rate on a logarithmic scale is equal to the infimum of the quantum relative entropy with respect to the quantum reference state over the set Ψ. While in the classical case the separating subsets can be chosen universally, in the sense that they depend only on the chosen set of i.i.d. processes, in the quantum case the choice of the separating subspaces depends additionally on the reference state.

A quantum version of Sanov's theorem

We formulate and prove a quantum Shannon-McMillan theorem. The theorem demonstrates the significance of the von Neumann entropy for translation invariant ergodic quantum spin systems on ℤν-lattices: the entropy gives the logarithm of the essential number of eigenvectors of the system on large boxes. The one-dimensional case covers quantum information sources and is basic for coding theorems.

The Shannon-McMillan theorem for ergodic quantum lattice systems

In classical information theory, entropy rate and algorithmic complexity per symbol are related by a theorem of Brudno. In this paper, we prove a quantum version of this theorem, connecting the von Neumann entropy rate and two notions of quantum Kolmogorov complexity, both based on the shortest qubit descriptions of qubit strings that, run by a universal quantum Turing machine, reproduce them as outputs.

Arleta Szkola

Papers

The chernoff lower bound for symmetric quantum hypothesis testing

A quantum version of Sanov's theorem

The Shannon-McMillan theorem for ergodic quantum lattice systems

Entropy and Quantum Kolmogorov Complexity: A Quantum Brudno’s Theorem

A lower bound of Chernoff type for symmetric quantum hypothesis testing