Languages of Quantum Information Theory

Abstract

This note will introduce some notation and definitions for information theoretic quantities in the context of quantum systems, such as (conditional) entropy and (conditional) mutual information. We will employ the natural C*-algebra formalism, and it turns out that one has an allover dualism of language: we can define everything for (compatible) observables, but also for (compatible) C*-subalgebras. The two approaches are unified in the formalism of quantum operations, and they are connected by a very satisfying inequality, generalizing the well known Holevo bound. Then we turn to communication via (discrete memoryless) quantum channels: we formulate the Fano inequality, bound the capacity region of quantum multiway channels, and comment on the quantum broadcast channel.