Structure of the thermodynamic arrow of time in classical and quantum theories

In this work we analyse the structure of the thermodynamic arrow of time, defined by transformations that leave the thermal equilibrium state unchanged, in classical (incoherent) and quantum (coherent) regimes. We note that in the infinite-temperature limit the thermodynamic ordering of states in both regimes exhibits a lattice structure. This means that when energy does not matter and the only thermodynamic resource is given by information, the thermodynamic arrow of time has a very specific structure. Namely, for any two states at present there exists a unique state in the past consistent with them and with all possible joint pasts. Similarly, there also exists a unique state in the future consistent with those states and with all possible joint futures. We also show that the lattice structure in the classical regime is broken at finite temperatures, i.e., when energy is a relevant thermodynamic resource. Surprisingly, however, we prove that in the simplest quantum scenario of a two-dimensional system, this structure is preserved at finite temperatures. We provide the physical interpretation of these results by introducing and analysing the history erasure process, and point out that quantum coherence may be a necessary resource for the existence of an optimal erasure process.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures. Published version. Expanded discussion and a new section on history erasure process adde

Pure Nash Equilibria in Concurrent Deterministic Games

We study pure-strategy Nash equilibria in multi-player concurrent deterministic games, for a variety of preference relations. We provide a novel construction, called the suspect game, which transforms a multi-player concurrent game into a two-player turn-based game which turns Nash equilibria into winning strategies (for some objective that depends on the preference relations of the players in the original game). We use that transformation to design algorithms for computing Nash equilibria in finite games, which in most cases have optimal worst-case complexity, for large classes of preference relations. This includes the purely qualitative framework, where each player has a single omega-regular objective that she wants to satisfy, but also the larger class of semi-quantitative objectives, where each player has several omega-regular objectives equipped with a preorder (for instance, a player may want to satisfy all her objectives, or to maximise the number of objectives that she achieves.)Comment: 72 page

Strong and Weak Optimizations in Classical and Quantum Models of Stochastic Processes

Among the predictive hidden Markov models that describe a given stochastic process, the {\epsilon}-machine is strongly minimal in that it minimizes every R\'enyi-based memory measure. Quantum models can be smaller still. In contrast with the {\epsilon}-machine's unique role in the classical setting, however, among the class of processes described by pure-state hidden quantum Markov models, there are those for which there does not exist any strongly minimal model. Quantum memory optimization then depends on which memory measure best matches a given problem circumstance.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures; http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/compmech/pubs/uemum.ht

Transformations among Pure Multipartite Entangled States via Local Operations Are Almost Never Possible

Local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC) constitute the free operations in entanglement theory. Hence, the determination of LOCC transformations is crucial for the understanding of entanglement. We characterize here almost all LOCC transformations among pure multipartite multilevel states. Combined with the analogous results for qubit states shown by Gour \emph{et al.} [J. Math. Phys. 58, 092204 (2017)], this gives a characterization of almost all local transformations among multipartite pure states. We show that nontrivial LOCC transformations among generic, fully entangled, pure states are almost never possible. Thus, almost all multipartite states are isolated. They can neither be deterministically obtained from local-unitary-inequivalent (LU-inequivalent) states via local operations, nor can they be deterministically transformed to pure, fully entangled LU-inequivalent states. In order to derive this result, we prove a more general statement, namely, that, generically, a state possesses no nontrivial local symmetry. We discuss further consequences of this result for the characterization of optimal, probabilistic single copy and probabilistic multi-copy LOCC transformations and the characterization of LU-equivalence classes of multipartite pure states.Comment: 13 pages main text + 10 pages appendix, 1 figure; close to published versio