English

How long can it take for a quantum channel to forget everything?

Quantum Physics 2012-05-04 v1

Abstract

We investigate quantum channels, which after a finite number kk of repeated applications erase all input information, i.e., channels whose kk-th power (but no smaller power) is a completely depolarizing channel. We show that on a system with Hilbert space dimension dd, the order is bounded by kd21k\leq d^2-1, and give an explicit construction scheme for such channels. We also consider strictly forgetful memory channels, i.e., channels with an additional input and output in every step, which after exactly kk steps retain no information about the initial memory state. We establish an explicit representation for such channels showing that the same bound applies for the memory depth kk in terms of the memory dimension dd.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1205.0693,
  title  = {How long can it take for a quantum channel to forget everything?},
  author = {Andre Ahlbrecht and Florian Richter and Reinhard F. Werner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1205.0693},
  year   = {2012}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T20:58:10.818Z