Quantum Institute: Visitor Schedule

The Quantum Lunch is regularly held on Thursdays in the Theoretical Division Conference Room, TA-3, Building 123, Room 121.
For more information, contact Diego Dalvit.

May 9 , 2006
1:00 PM, Tuesday

Matt Leifer,
Perimeter Institute

A Causal Network Formalism for Quantum Information

Abstract

In this talk, I will outline quantum generalizations of causal networks that are used in the classical case to analyze complex decision scenarios involving large numbers of correlated random variables.

Firstly, I will motivate the work by outlining potential applications, including the simulation of quantum systems and the equivalence and verification of quantum protocols. I will then review the framework of classical causal networks, including entailed conditional independence, d-separation and Markov equivalence. I will show how to generalize the definition of causal networks to the quantum case in two distinct ways, depending on whether the networks represent states or entire processes. In the former, most of the results from the classical case have straightforward generalizations. For the latter, I introduce a modified variant of the usual isomorphism between quantum states and completely positive maps, which allows them to be partially classified along the lines of the classical results.