The min-entropy of classical quantum combs and some applications

It is often the case that interaction with a quantum system does not simply occur between an initial point in time and a final one, but rather over many time steps. In such cases, an interaction at a given time step can have an influence on the dynamics of the system at a much later time. Just as quantum channels model dynamics between two time steps, quantum combs model the more general multi-time dynamics described above, and have accordingly found application in such fields as open quantum systems and quantum cryptography. In this talk, we will consider ensembles of combs indexed by a random variable, dubbed classical-quantum combs, and discuss how much can be learnt about said variable through interacting with the system. We characterise the amount of information gain using the comb min-entropy, an extension of the analogous entropic quantity for quantum states. With combs and the min-entropy in our toolbox, we turn to a number of applications largely inspired by Measurement-Based Quantum Computing (MBQC), including the security analysis of a specific Blind Quantum Computing protocol and some comments regarding learning causal structure.

Zoom Link: https://pitp.zoom.us/j/98315660866?pwd=cWU3RzB6SG9DOGIza1BqV1lqNklvQT09