A new type of complementarity between quantum and classical information

Jonathan Oppenheim, Karol Horodecki, Michal Horodecki Pawel Horodecki, Ryszard Horodecki

Published 2002-07-03Version 1

Physical systems contain information which can be divided between classical and quantum information. Classical information is locally accessible and allows one to perform tasks such as physical work, while quantum information allows one to perform tasks such as teleportation. It is shown that these two kinds of information are complementarity in the sense that two parties can either gain access to the quantum information, or to the classical information but not both. This complementarity has a form very similar to the complementarities usually encountered in quantum mechanics. For pure states, the entanglement plays the role of Planck's constant. We also find another class of complementarity relations which applies to operators, and is induced when two parties can only perform local operations and communicate classical. In order to formalize this notion we define the restricted commutator. Observables such as the parity and phase of two qubits commute, but their restricted commutator is non-zero. It is also found that complementarity is pure in the sense that can be ''decoupled'' from the uncertainty principle.