On dynamical measures of quantum information

Abstract

In this work, we use the theory of quantum states over time to define an entropy $S(\rho,\mathcal{E})$ associated with quantum processes $(\rho,\mathcal{E})$, where $\rho$ is a state and $\mathcal{E}$ is a quantum channel responsible for the dynamical evolution of $\rho$. The entropy $S(\rho,\mathcal{E})$ is a generalization of the von Neumann entropy in the sense that $S(\rho,\mathrm{id})=S(\rho)$ (where $\mathrm{id}$ denotes the identity channel), and is a dynamical analogue of the quantum joint entropy for bipartite states. Such an entropy is then used to define dynamical formulations of the quantum conditional entropy and quantum mutual information, and we show such information measures satisfy many desirable properties, such as a quantum entropic Bayes' rule. We also use our entropy function to quantify the information loss/gain associated with the dynamical evolution of quantum systems, which enables us to formulate a precise notion of information conservation for quantum processes.