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Thermodynamical cost of accessing quantum information. (English) Zbl 1073.81540

Summary: Thermodynamics is a macroscopic physical theory whose two very general laws are independent of any underlying dynamical laws and structures. Nevertheless, its generality enables us to understand a broad spectrum of phenomena in physics, information science and biology. Does thermodynamics then imply any results in quantum information theory? Taking accessible information in a system as an example, we show that thermodynamics implies a weaker bound on it than the quantum mechanical one (the Holevo bound). In other words, if any post-quantum physics should allow more information storage it could still be under the umbrella of thermodynamics.

MSC:

81P68 Quantum computation
81P15 Quantum measurement theory, state operations, state preparations
94A17 Measures of information, entropy