About the concept of quantum information

SEBASTIAN FORTIN; OLIMPIA LOMBARDI

La Plata

Workshop; VI Conference on Quantum Foundations: The Observer Effect in Quantum Mechanics; 2016

Centro Latinoamerican de Física

Although the word ?information? refers to aconcept associated with very different phenomena, in the traditional communicational context, the classical locus is ClaudeShannon?s formalism. However, despite the existence of a precise formalism, theproblems of the interpretation of the concept of information do not disappear:differentent, even incompatible interpretations still coexist.During the lastdecades, new interpretive problems have arisen with the advent of quantuminformation; those problems combine the difficulties in the understanding ofthe concept of information with the well-known foundational puzzles derivedfrom quantum mechanics itself. Benjamin Schumacher?s article ?Quantum Coding?,it is usually considered the first precise formalization of the quantuminformation theory. In this context, the question ?What is quantuminformation?? is still far from having an answer which the whole quantuminformation community agrees with.The aim of thispaper is to consider some arguments traditionally put forward to support theidea that quantum information is qualitatively different from classicalinformation. On the basis of the analysis of those arguments, we will concludethat there are no reasons to admit the existence of quantum information asqualitatively different from classical information: there is only one kind ofinformation, physically neutral, which can be encoded by means of classical or ofquantum states.