A Closed-Form Shave from Occam's Quantum Razor: Exact Results for Quantum Compression

Abstract

The causal structure of a stochastic process can be more efficiently transmitted via a quantum channel than a classical one, an advantage that increases with codeword length. While previously difficult to compute, we express the quantum advantage in closed form using spectral decomposition, leading to direct computation of the quantum communication cost at all encoding lengths, including infinite. This makes clear how finite-codeword compression is controlled by the classical process' cryptic order and allows us to analyze structure within the length-asymptotic regime of infinite-cryptic order (and infinite Markov order) processes.