Twelve years before the quantum no-cloning theorem
arXiv:1707.06910 · doi:10.1119/1.5021356
Abstract
The celebrated quantum no-cloning theorem establishes the impossibility of making a perfect copy of an unknown quantum state. The discovery of this important theorem for the field of quantum information is currently dated 1982. I show here that an article published in 1970 [J. L. Park, Foundations of Physics, 1, 23-33 (1970)] contained an explicit mathematical proof of the impossibility of cloning quantum states. I analyze Park's demonstration in the light of published explanations concerning the genesis of the better-known papers on no-cloning.
Some changes with respect to the previous version. This matches closely the published in AJP