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We develop a theory of the algorithmic information in bits contained in an individual pure quantum state. This extends classical Kolmogorov complexity to the quantum domain retaining classical descriptions. Quantum Kolmogorov complexity…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-11-17 Paul M. B. Vitanyi

A drawback of Kolmogorov-Chaitin complexity (K) as a function from s to the shortest program producing s is its noncomputability which limits its range of applicability. Moreover, when strings are short, the dependence of K on a particular…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2010-12-20 Jean-Paul Delahaye , Hector Zenil

A link between Kolmogorov Complexity and geometry is uncovered. A similar concept of projection and vector decomposition is described for Kolmogorov Complexity. By using a simple approximation to the Kolmogorov Complexity, coded in…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2012-06-14 Dara O Shayda

The even online Kolmogorov complexity of a string $x = x_1 x_2 \cdots x_{n}$ is the minimal length of a program that for all $i\le n/2$, on input $x_1x_3 \cdots x_{2i-1}$ outputs $x_{2i}$. The odd complexity is defined similarly. The sum of…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-07-15 Bruno Bauwens , Maria Marchenko

The word "complexity" is most often used as a meta--linguistic expression referring to certain intuitive characteristics of a natural system and/or its scientific description. These characteristics may include: sheer amount of data that…

History and Overview · Mathematics 2013-01-03 Yuri I. Manin

This is a short introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity. The interested reader is referred to the text books by Cover & Thomas as well as Li & V\'itanyi, which cover the fields of information theory and Kolmogorov complexity in depth and with…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2010-05-17 Volker Nannen

There is no single definition of complexity (Edmonds 1999; Gershenson 2008; Mitchell 2009; De Domenico, et al., 2019), as it acquires different meanings in different contexts. A general notion is the amount of information required to…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2021-02-26 Carlos Gershenson

The purpose of this paper is to answer two questions left open in [B. Durand, A. Shen, and N. Vereshchagin, Descriptive Complexity of Computable Sequences, Theoretical Computer Science 171 (2001), pp. 47--58]. Namely, we consider the…

Logic · Mathematics 2019-02-05 Nikolay Vereshchagin

Kolmogorov Complexity constitutes an integral part of computability theory, information theory, and computational complexity theory -- in the discrete setting of bits and Turing machines. Over real numbers, on the other hand, the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2008-03-28 Martin Ziegler , Wouter M. Koolen

It is impossible to effectively modify a string in order to increase its Kolmogorov complexity. But is it possible to construct a few strings, not longer than the input string, so that most of them have larger complexity? We show that the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2017-02-07 Marius Zimand

The incompressibility method is a counting argument in the framework of algorithmic complexity that permits discovering properties that are satisfied by most objects of a class. This paper gives a preliminary insight into Kolmogorov's…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2024-07-25 Carles Cardó

Symmetry of information states that $C(x) + C(y|x) = C(x,y) + O(\log C(x))$. We show that a similar relation for online Kolmogorov complexity does not hold. Let the even (online Kolmogorov) complexity of an n-bitstring $x_1x_2... x_n$ be…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2014-01-09 Bruno Bauwens

While Kolmogorov complexity is the accepted absolute measure of information content in an individual finite object, a similarly absolute notion is needed for the information distance between two individual objects, for example, two…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2010-06-18 Charles H. Bennett , Peter Gacs , Ming Li , Paul M. B. Vitanyi , Wojciech H. Zurek

According to Kolmogorov complexity, every finite binary string is compressible to a shortest code -- its information content -- from which it is effectively recoverable. We investigate the extent to which this holds for infinite binary…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2019-01-23 George Barmpalias , Andrew Lewis-Pye

Is the universe computable? If so, it may be much cheaper in terms of information requirements to compute all computable universes instead of just ours. I apply basic concepts of Kolmogorov complexity theory to the set of possible…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Juergen Schmidhuber

Normalized information distance (NID) uses the theoretical notion of Kolmogorov complexity, which for practical purposes is approximated by the length of the compressed version of the file involved, using a real-world compression program.…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2010-06-17 Sebastiaan A. Terwijn , Leen Torenvliet , Paul M. B. Vitanyi

Kolmogorov complexity is often used as a convenient language for counting and/or probabilistic existence proofs. However, there are some applications where Kolmogorov complexity is used in a more subtle way. We provide one (somehow)…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2024-05-16 Alexander Shen

In computability theory and computable analysis, finite programs can compute infinite objects. Presenting a computable object via any program for it, provides at least as much information as presenting the object itself, written on an…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2014-09-25 Mathieu Hoyrup , Cristobal Rojas

Information distance is a parameter-free similarity measure based on compression, used in pattern recognition, data mining, phylogeny, clustering, and classification. The notion of information distance is extended from pairs to multiples…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2009-05-21 Paul M. B. Vitanyi

The purpose of this thesis is to give a formal definition of quantum Kolmogorov complexity (QC), and rigorous mathematical proofs of its basic properties. The definition used here is similar to that by Berthiaume, van Dam, and Laplante. It…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-12-31 Markus Mueller