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While the quantum mutual information is a fundamental measure of quantum information, it is only defined for spacelike-separated quantum systems. Such a limitation is not present in the theory of classical information, where the mutual information between two random variables is well-defined irrespective of whether or not the variables are separated in space or separated in time. Motivated by this disparity between the classical and quantum mutual information, we employ the pseudo-density matrix formalism to define a simple extension of quantum mutual information into the time domain. As in the spatial case, we show that such a notion of quantum mutual information in time serves as a natural measure of correlation between timelike-separated systems, while also highlighting ways in which quantum correlations distinguish between space and time. We also show how such quantum mutual information is time-symmetric with respect to quantum Bayesian inversion, and then we conclude by showing how mutual information in time yields a Holevo bound for the amount of classical information that may be extracted from sequential measurements on an ensemble of quantum states., Comment: 8 pages + Supplementary Material, 1 figure

Two-time expectation values of sequential measurements of dichotomic observables are known to be time symmetric for closed quantum systems. Namely, if a system evolves unitarily between sequential measurements of dichotomic observables $\mathscr{O}_{A}$ followed by $\mathscr{O}_{B}$, then it necessarily follows that $\langle\mathscr{O}_{A}\,,\mathscr{O}_{B}\rangle=\langle\mathscr{O}_{B}\,,\mathscr{O}_{A}\rangle$, where $\langle\mathscr{O}_{A}\,,\mathscr{O}_{B}\rangle$ is the two-time expectation value corresponding to the product of the measurement outcomes of $\mathscr{O}_{A}$ followed by $\mathscr{O}_{B}$, and $\langle\mathscr{O}_{B}\,,\mathscr{O}_{A}\rangle$ is the two-time expectation value associated with the time reversal of the unitary dynamics, where a measurement of $\mathscr{O}_{B}$ precedes a measurement of $\mathscr{O}_{A}$. In this work, we show that a quantum Bayes' rule implies a time symmetry for two-time expectation values associated with open quantum systems, which evolve according to a general quantum channel between measurements. Such results are in contrast with the view that processes associated with open quantum systems -- which may lose information to their environment -- are not reversible in any operational sense. We give an example of such time-symmetric correlations for the amplitude-damping channel, and we propose an experimental protocol for the potential verification of the theoretical predictions associated with our results., Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. Comments welcome!

While quantum correlations between two spacelike-separated systems are fully encoded by the bipartite density operator associated with the joint system, we prove that there does not exist an operator representation for general quantum correlations across space and time. This is in stark contrast to the case of classical random variables, which make no distinction between spacelike and timelike correlations. Despite this, we show that in the restricted setting of spatiotemporal correlations between light-touch observables (i.e., observables with only one singular value), there exists a unique operator representation of such spatiotemporal correlations for arbitrary timelike-separated quantum systems. A special case of our result reproduces generalized Pauli observables and pseudo-density matrices, which have, up until now, only been defined for multi-qubit systems. In the case of qutrit systems, we use our results to illustrate an intriguing connection between light-touch observables and symmetric, informationally complete, positive operator-valued measures (SIC-POVMs)., Comment: 22 pages + appendix + references. Comments are highly encouraged!

In statistical inference, retrodiction is the act of inferring potential causes in the past based on knowledge of the effects in the present and the dynamics leading to the present. Retrodiction is applicable even when the dynamics is not reversible, and it agrees with the reverse dynamics when it exists, so that retrodiction may be viewed as an extension of inversion, i.e., time-reversal. Recently, an axiomatic definition of retrodiction has been made in a way that is applicable to both classical and quantum probability using ideas from category theory. Almost simultaneously, a framework for information flow in in terms of semicartesian categories has been proposed in the setting of categorical probability theory. Here, we formulate a general definition of retrodiction to add to the information flow axioms in semicartesian categories, thus providing an abstract framework for retrodiction beyond classical and quantum probability theory. More precisely, we extend Bayesian inference, and more generally Jeffrey's probability kinematics, to arbitrary semicartesian categories., Comment: 20.5 pages + references, some diagrams

The quantum no-broadcasting theorem states that it is impossible to produce perfect copies of an arbitrary quantum state, even if the copies are allowed to be correlated. Here we show that, although quantum broadcasting cannot be achieved by any physical process, it can be achieved by a virtual process, described by a Hermitian-preserving trace-preserving map. This virtual process is canonical: it is the only map that broadcasts all quantum states, is covariant under unitary evolution, is invariant under permutations of the copies, and reduces to the classical broadcasting map when subjected to decoherence. We show that the optimal physical approximation to the canonical broadcasting map is the optimal universal quantum cloning, and we also show that virtual broadcasting can be achieved by a virtual measure-and-prepare protocol, where a virtual measurement is performed, and, depending on the outcomes, two copies of a virtual quantum state are generated. Finally, we use canonical virtual broadcasting to prove a uniqueness result for quantum states over time., Comment: 5 pages + appendices

In this paper, we introduce a new quantity called SVD entanglement entropy. This is a generalization of entanglement entropy in that it depends on two different states, as in pre- and post-selection processes. This SVD entanglement entropy takes non-negative real values and is bounded by the logarithm of the Hilbert space dimensions. The SVD entanglement entropy can be interpreted as the average number of Bell pairs distillable from intermediates states. We observe that the SVD entanglement entropy gets enhanced when the two states are in the different quantum phases in an explicit example of the transverse-field Ising model. Moreover, we calculate the R\'enyi SVD entropy in various field theories and examine holographic calculations using the AdS/CFT correspondence., Comment: 42 pages, 23 figures, V2: minor adjustments

In this work, we use the theory of quantum states over time to define an entropy $S(\rho,\mathcal{E})$ associated with quantum processes $(\rho,\mathcal{E})$, where $\rho$ is a state and $\mathcal{E}$ is a quantum channel responsible for the dynamical evolution of $\rho$. The entropy $S(\rho,\mathcal{E})$ is a generalization of the von Neumann entropy in the sense that $S(\rho,\mathrm{id})=S(\rho)$ (where $\mathrm{id}$ denotes the identity channel), and is a dynamical analogue of the quantum joint entropy for bipartite states. Such an entropy is then used to define dynamical formulations of the quantum conditional entropy and quantum mutual information, and we show such information measures satisfy many desirable properties, such as a quantum entropic Bayes' rule. We also use our entropy function to quantify the information loss/gain associated with the dynamical evolution of quantum systems, which enables us to formulate a precise notion of information conservation for quantum processes., Comment: Comments welcome!

Bayes' rule $\mathbb{P}(B|A)\mathbb{P}(A)=\mathbb{P}(A|B)\mathbb{P}(B)$ is one of the simplest yet most profound, ubiquitous, and far-reaching results of classical probability theory, with applications in any field utilizing statistical inference. Many attempts have been made to extend this rule to quantum systems, the significance of which we are only beginning to understand. In this work, we develop a systematic framework for defining Bayes' rule in the quantum setting, and we show that a vast majority of the proposed quantum Bayes' rules appearing in the literature are all instances of our definition. Moreover, our Bayes' rule is based upon a simple relationship between the notions of state over time and a time-reversal symmetry map, both of which are introduced here., Comment: Some adjustments and organizational changes, typos fixed, new tables added; 24 pages total

We propose a category-theoretic definition of retrodiction and use it to exhibit a time-reversal symmetry for all quantum channels. We do this by introducing retrodiction families and functors, which capture many intuitive properties that retrodiction should satisfy and are general enough to encompass both classical and quantum theories alike. Classical Bayesian inversion and all rotated and averaged Petz recovery maps define retrodiction families in our sense. However, averaged rotated Petz recovery maps, including the universal recovery map of Junge-Renner-Sutter-Wilde-Winter, do not define retrodiction functors, since they fail to satisfy some compositionality properties. Among all the examples we found of retrodiction families, the original Petz recovery map is the only one that defines a retrodiction functor. In addition, retrodiction functors exhibit an inferential time-reversal symmetry consistent with the standard formulation of quantum theory. The existence of such a retrodiction functor seems to be in stark contrast to the many no-go results on time-reversal symmetry for quantum channels. One of the main reasons is because such works defined time-reversal symmetry on the category of quantum channels alone, whereas we define it on the category of quantum channels and quantum states. This fact further illustrates the importance of a prior in time-reversal symmetry.

In 2017, D. Horsman, C. Heunen, M. Pusey, J. Barrett, and R. Spekkens proved that there is no physically reasonable assignment that takes a quantum channel and an initial state and produces a joint state on the tensor product of the input and output spaces. The interpretation was that there is a clear distinction between space and time in the quantum setting that is not visible classically, where in the latter, one can freely use Bayes' theorem to go between joint states and marginals with noisy channels. In this paper, we prove that there actually is such a physically reasonable assignment, bypassing the no-go result of Horsman et al., and we illustrate that this is achievable by restricting the domain of their assignment to a domain which represents the given data more faithfully., Comment: v3: minor clarifications added

We show that conditional expectations, optimal hypotheses, disintegrations, and adjoints of unital completely positive maps, are all instances of Bayesian inverses. We study the existence of the latter by means of the Tomita-Takesaki modular group and we provide extensions of a theorem of Takesaki as well as a theorem of Accardi and Cecchini to the setting of not necessarily faithful states on finite-dimensional $C^*$-algebras.

We provide a stochastic extension of the Baez-Fritz-Leinster characterization of the Shannon information loss associated with a measure-preserving function. This recovers the conditional entropy and a closely related information-theoretic measure that we call conditional information loss. Although not functorial, these information measures are semi-functorial, a concept we introduce that is definable in any Markov category. We also introduce the notion of an entropic Bayes' rule for information measures, and we provide a characterization of conditional entropy in terms of this rule., Comment: 31 pages; Typos fixed in Defn 2.12 and the proofs of Prop 4.2 iii) and Prop 6.8 (numbering scheme differs from published version)

We introduce a differential extension of algebraic K-theory of an algebra using Karoubi's Chern character. In doing so, we develop a necessary theory of secondary transgression forms as well as a differential refinement of the smooth Serre--Swan correspondence. Our construction subsumes the differential K-theory of a smooth manifold when the algebra is complex-valued smooth functions. Furthermore, our construction fits into a noncommutative differential cohomology hexagon diagram., Comment: 65 pages

A Bayesian functorial characterization of the classical relative entropy (KL divergence) of finite probabilities was recently obtained by Baez and Fritz. This was then generalized to standard Borel spaces by Gagn\'e and Panangaden. Here, we provide preliminary calculations suggesting that the finite-dimensional quantum (Umegaki) relative entropy might be characterized in a similar way. Namely, we explicitly prove that it defines an affine functor in the special case where the relative entropy is finite. A recent non-commutative disintegration theorem provides a key ingredient in this proof., Comment: 8 pages, submission to GSI'21 (post-print)

Conditional distributions, as defined by the Markov category framework, are studied in the setting of matrix algebras (quantum systems). Their construction as linear unital maps are obtained via a categorical Bayesian inversion procedure. Simple criteria establishing when such linear maps are positive are obtained. Several examples are provided, including the standard EPR scenario, where the EPR correlations are reproduced in a purely compositional (categorical) manner. A comparison between the Bayes map, the Petz recovery map, and the Leifer-Spekkens acausal belief propagation is provided, illustrating some similarities and key differences., Comment: In Proceedings QPL 2021, arXiv:2109.04886

Using convex Grothendieck fibrations, we characterize the von Neumann entropy as a functor from finite-dimensional non-commutative probability spaces and state-preserving *-homomorphisms to real numbers. Our axioms reproduce those of Baez, Fritz, and Leinster characterizing the Shannon entropy difference. The existence of disintegrations for classical probability spaces plays a crucial role in our characterization., Comment: 30 pages; slightly reorganized and more concise

Using a diagrammatic reformulation of Bayes' theorem, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of Bayesian inference in the setting of finite-dimensional $C^*$-algebras. In other words, we prove an analogue of Bayes' theorem in the joint classical and quantum context. Our analogue is justified by recent advances in categorical probability theory, which have provided an abstract formulation of the classical Bayes' theorem. In the process, we further develop non-commutative almost everywhere equivalence and illustrate its important role in non-commutative Bayesian inversion. The construction of such Bayesian inverses, when they exist, involves solving a positive semidefinite matrix completion problem for the Choi matrix. This gives a solution to the open problem of constructing Bayesian inversion for completely positive unital maps acting on density matrices that do not have full support. We illustrate how the procedure works for several examples relevant to quantum information theory., Comment: Comments welcome!

We introduce quantum Markov categories as a structure that refines and extends a synthetic approach to probability theory and information theory so that it includes quantum probability and quantum information theory. In this broader context, we analyze three successively more general notions of reversibility and statistical inference: ordinary inverses, disintegrations, and Bayesian inverses. We prove that each one is a strictly special instance of the latter for certain subcategories, providing a categorical foundation for Bayesian inversion as a generalization of reversing a process. We unify the categorical and $C^*$-algebraic notions of almost everywhere (a.e.) equivalence. As a consequence, we prove many results including a universal no-broadcasting theorem for S-positive categories, a generalized Fisher--Neyman factorization theorem for a.e. modular categories, a relationship between error correcting codes and disintegrations, and the relationship between Bayesian inversion and Umegaki's non-commutative sufficiency., Comment: substantial changes, 91 pages, comments welcome!

Motivated by advances in categorical probability, we introduce non-commutative almost everywhere (a.e.) equivalence and disintegrations in the setting of C*-algebras. We show that C*-algebras (resp. W*-algebras) and a.e. equivalence classes of 2-positive (resp. positive) unital maps form a category. We prove non-commutative disintegrations are a.e. unique whenever they exist. We provide an explicit characterization for when disintegrations exist in the setting of finite-dimensional C*-algebras, and we give formulas for the associated disintegrations., Comment: slight reorganization, 51 pages, comments welcome!

Given a representation of a unital $C^*$-algebra $\mathcal{A}$ on a Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$, together with a bounded linear map $V:\mathcal{K}\to\mathcal{H}$ from some other Hilbert space, one obtains a completely positive map on $\mathcal{A}$ via restriction using the adjoint action associated to $V$. We show this restriction forms a natural transformation from a functor of $C^*$-algebra representations to a functor of completely positive maps. We exhibit Stinespring's construction as a left adjoint of this restriction. Our Stinespring adjunction provides a universal property associated to minimal Stinespring dilations and morphisms of Stinespring dilations. We use these results to prove the purification postulate for all finite-dimensional $C^*$-algebras., Comment: 33 pages + appendices

We provide a visual and intuitive introduction to effectively calculating in 2-groups along with explicit examples coming from non-abelian 1- and 2-form gauge theory. In particular, we utilize string diagrams, tools similar to tensor networks, to compute the parallel transport along a surface using approximations on a lattice. Although this work is mainly intended as expository, we prove a convergence theorem for the surface transport in the continuum limit. Locality is used to define infinitesimal parallel transport and two- dimensional algebra is used to derive finite versions along arbitrary surfaces with sufficient orientation data. The correct surface ordering is dictated by two-dimensional algebra and leads to an interesting diagrammatic picture for gauge fields interacting with particles and strings on a lattice. The surface ordering is inherently complicated, but we prove a simplification theorem confirming earlier results of Schreiber and Waldorf. Assuming little background, we present a simple way to understand some abstract concepts of higher category theory. In doing so, we review all the necessary categorical concepts from the tensor network point of view as well as many aspects of higher gauge theory., Comment: 85 pages, 132 figures, updated version of a part of the author's PhD thesis

We introduce a category of stochastic maps (certain Markov kernels) on compact Hausdorff spaces, construct a stochastic analogue of the Gelfand spectrum functor, and prove a stochastic version of the commutative Gelfand-Naimark Theorem. This relates concepts from algebra and operator theory to concepts from topology and probability theory. For completeness, we review stochastic matrices, their relationship to positive maps on commutative $C^*$-algebras, and the Gelfand-Naimark Theorem. No knowledge of probability theory nor $C^*$-algebras is assumed and several examples are drawn from physics., Comment: 74 pages, 5 figures, minor edits and clarifications added since v1, comments welcome

Given a representation of a C*-algebra, thought of as an abstract collection of physical observables, together with a unit vector, one obtains a state on the algebra via restriction. We show that the Gelfand-Naimark-Segal (GNS) construction furnishes a left adjoint of this restriction. To properly formulate this adjoint, it must be viewed as a weak natural transformation, a 1-morphism in a suitable 2-category, rather than as a functor between categories. Weak naturality encodes the functoriality and the universal property of adjunctions encodes the characterizing features of the GNS construction. Mathematical definitions and results are accompanied by physical interpretations., Comment: 30 pages + appendix; post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Applied Categorical Structures

There are few known computable examples of non-abelian surface holonomy. In this paper, we give several examples whose structure 2-groups are covering 2-groups and show that the surface holonomies can be computed via a simple formula in terms of paths of 1-dimensional holonomies inspired by earlier work of Chan Hong-Mo and Tsou Sheung Tsun on magnetic monopoles. As a consequence of our work and that of Schreiber and Waldorf, this formula gives a rigorous meaning to non-abelian magnetic flux for magnetic monopoles. In the process, we discuss gauge covariance of surface holonomies for spheres for any 2-group, therefore generalizing the notion of the reduced group introduced by Schreiber and Waldorf. Using these ideas, we also prove that magnetic monopoles have an abelian group structure., Comment: 99 pages, 31 figures (2 are new), v2 is published version, updates include: several points clarified, added Defn 2.33 and 3.37 for markings, statement of smoothness removed from Thm 2.39 and 3.41, proof of Thm 4.13 corrected, proof of Lem 3.46 has been enhanced, appendix on 2-categories removed, index of notation added