Quantum Encoding of Classical Information
Ashwin Nayak
The University of Waterloo
The Perimeter Institute
The problem of characterising the ``information capacity'' of quantum states is of fundamental importance in the study of communication using quantum states. Since the classical description of a general superposition over $n$ quantum bits has size exponential in $n$, it is natural to expect that it be possible to encode a large amount of classical information into substantially fewer quantum bits. However, the information encoded in a quantum state can be accessed only indirectly, through the process of a measurement. Measurements typically disturb a quantum state under observation, and severely restrict its information capacity. We will describe some results in quantum communication where this property manifests itself, and discuss their implications for computation and cryptography.
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