Quantum Theory from First Principles

Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano is a Professor at Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy, where he teaches quantum mechanics and foundations of quantum theory, and leads the Quantum Information Theory (QUIT) group. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Optical Society of America, a member of the Academy Istituto Lombardo of Scienze e Lettere, the Center for Photonic Communication and Computing at Northwestern University, Illinois, and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). Giulio Chiribella is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Hong Kong. He is a Visiting Fellow of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, a member of the Standing Committee of the International Colloquia on Group Theoretical Methods in Physics, and a member of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). In 2010, he was awarded the Hermann Weyl Prize for applications of group theory in quantum information. Paolo Perinotti is Assistant Professor at Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy, where he teaches quantum information theory. His research activity is focused on foundations of quantum information, quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. He is a member of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) and the International Quantum Structures Association. In 2016 he was awarded the Birkhoff-von Neumann Prize for research in quantum foundations.

Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction; Part I. The Status Quo: 2. Quantum theory from Hilbert-spaces; Part II. The Informational Approach: 3. The framework; 4. The new principles; 5. Causal theories; 6. Theories with local discriminability; 7. The purification principle; Part III. Quantum Information without Hilbert Spaces: 8. Encoding information; 9. Three no-go theorems; 10. Perfectly discriminable states; 11. Identifying pure states; 12. Diagonalization; Part IV. Quantum Theory from the Principles: 13. Conclusive teleportation; 14. The qubit; 15. Projections; 16. The superposition principle; 17. Derivation of quantum theory; References; Index.