Dartmouth Events

Abstract:  The Scrooge distribution, introduced in 1994, is a probability distribution over the set of pure states of a quantum system.  Specifically, it is the distribution that minimizes the amount of information one can extract from the system, compared to all other distributions having the same density matrix.  This talk begins by reviewing the basic properties of the Scrooge distribution.  Then I show how the same distribution, regarded as a distribution over a classical probability simplex, emerges as the solution to a certain classical communication problem.  The classical derivation requires one assumption that is not particularly natural but that may shed light on the relation between quantum theory and classical probability theory: one needs to imagine an observer of the communication scenario who is blind to a certain binary degree of freedom.