Information Content of Systems as a Physical Principle

Abstract

To explain conceptual gap between classical/quantum and other, hypothetical descriptions of world, several principles has been proposed. So far, all these principles have not explicitly included the uncertainty relation. Here we introduce an information content principle (ICP) which represents the new - constrained uncertainty principle. The principle, by taking into account the encoding/decoding properties of single physical system, is capable of separation both classicality and quanta from a number of potential physical theories including hidden variable theories. The ICP, which is satisfied by both classical and quantum theory, states that the amount of non-redundant information which may be extracted from a given system is bounded by a perfectly decodable information content of the system. We show that ICP allows to discriminate theories which do not allow for correlations stronger than Tsirelson's bound. We show also how to apply the principle to composite systems, ruling out some theories despite their elementary constituents behave quantumly.

5 pages + 5 pages of appendix, 4 figures, version accepted in Phys. Rev. A

References in corpus (9)

• The uncertainty principle determines the non-locality of quantum mechanics
• A derivation of quantum theory from physical requirements
• Introduction to the book "Quantum Theory: Informational Foundations and Foils"
• Quasi-quantization: classical statistical theories with an epistemic restriction
• Quantum from principles
• Simple explanation of the quantum violation of a fundamental inequality
• Dimension of physical systems, information processing, and thermodynamics
• Types of quantum information
• Information and communication in polygon theories

Cited by in corpus (11)

• General probabilistic theories: An introduction
• No-hypersignaling principle
• Classical theories with entanglement
• Semi-definite programming and quantum information
• Operational foundations of complementarity and uncertainty relations
• Classical analogue of quantum superdense coding and communication advantage of a single quantum system
• Carrying an arbitrarily large amount of information using a single quantum particle
• From the problem of Future Contingents to Peres-Mermin square experiments: An introductory review to Contextuality
• Principle of Information Increase: An Operational Perspective of Information Gain in the Foundations of Quantum Theory
• Complete extension: the non-signaling analog of quantum purification
• Information causality beyond the random access code model