The Quantumness of a Set of Quantum States

Abstract

This article is an introduction to quant-ph/0302092. We propose to quantify how "quantum" a set of quantum states is. The quantumness of a set is the worst-case difficulty of transmitting the states through a classical communication channel. Potential applications of this measure arise in quantum cryptography, where one might like to use an alphabet of states most sensitive to quantum eavesdropping, and in lab demonstrations of quantum teleportation, where it is necessary to check that entanglement has indeed been used.