MSc presentation Fabian IJpelaar

Title:

"Entropy as a measure of uncertainty and entanglement"

Abstract:

Entropy, though perhaps most well known for its contribution to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, has been adopted in the more abstract framework of information theory. Here, rather than being interpreted as a physical quantity, it is interpreted as quantifying the uncertainty we have about processes that are random. In this presentation, this view will be discussed. At the same time, the conventional notion of entropy has its limitations, and we will discuss some of the proposed alternatives, called generalized entropies. Lastly, we will discuss how this more general notion of entropy can be used in quantum mechanics to quantify entanglement. This leads to the Von Neumann entropy, which in this context is also known as the entanglement entropy. Using this definition, we will discuss how we can view entropy as a resource in certain quantum communication protocols.