Generic increase of observational entropy in isolated systems

Observational entropy—a quantity that unifies Boltzmann's entropy, Gibbs' entropy, von Neumann's macroscopic entropy, and the diagonal entropy—was recently argued to play a key role in a modern formulation of statistical mechanics. Here, relying on algebraic techniques taken from Petz...

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Main Authors: Teruaki Nagasawa, Kohtaro Kato, Eyuri Wakakuwa, Francesco Buscemi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2024-12-01
Series:Physical Review Research
Online Access:http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.043327
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author Teruaki Nagasawa
Kohtaro Kato
Eyuri Wakakuwa
Francesco Buscemi
author_facet Teruaki Nagasawa
Kohtaro Kato
Eyuri Wakakuwa
Francesco Buscemi
author_sort Teruaki Nagasawa
collection DOAJ
description Observational entropy—a quantity that unifies Boltzmann's entropy, Gibbs' entropy, von Neumann's macroscopic entropy, and the diagonal entropy—was recently argued to play a key role in a modern formulation of statistical mechanics. Here, relying on algebraic techniques taken from Petz's theory of statistical sufficiency and on a Lévy-type concentration bound, we prove rigorous theorems showing how the observational entropy of a system undergoing a unitary evolution chosen at random tends to increase with overwhelming probability and to reach its maximum very quickly. More precisely, we show that for any observation that is sufficiently coarse with respect to the size of the system, regardless of the initial state of the system (be it pure or mixed), random evolution renders its state practically indistinguishable from the uniform (i.e., maximally mixed) distribution with a probability approaching 1 as the size of the system grows. The same conclusion holds not only for random evolutions sampled according to the unitarily invariant Haar distribution but also for approximate 2-designs, which are thought to provide a more physically and computationally reasonable model of random evolutions.
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spelling doaj-art-51c047d3941a48c28dfee4d4df1424c92025-08-20T02:51:10ZengAmerican Physical SocietyPhysical Review Research2643-15642024-12-016404332710.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.043327Generic increase of observational entropy in isolated systemsTeruaki NagasawaKohtaro KatoEyuri WakakuwaFrancesco BuscemiObservational entropy—a quantity that unifies Boltzmann's entropy, Gibbs' entropy, von Neumann's macroscopic entropy, and the diagonal entropy—was recently argued to play a key role in a modern formulation of statistical mechanics. Here, relying on algebraic techniques taken from Petz's theory of statistical sufficiency and on a Lévy-type concentration bound, we prove rigorous theorems showing how the observational entropy of a system undergoing a unitary evolution chosen at random tends to increase with overwhelming probability and to reach its maximum very quickly. More precisely, we show that for any observation that is sufficiently coarse with respect to the size of the system, regardless of the initial state of the system (be it pure or mixed), random evolution renders its state practically indistinguishable from the uniform (i.e., maximally mixed) distribution with a probability approaching 1 as the size of the system grows. The same conclusion holds not only for random evolutions sampled according to the unitarily invariant Haar distribution but also for approximate 2-designs, which are thought to provide a more physically and computationally reasonable model of random evolutions.http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.043327
spellingShingle Teruaki Nagasawa
Kohtaro Kato
Eyuri Wakakuwa
Francesco Buscemi
Generic increase of observational entropy in isolated systems
Physical Review Research
title Generic increase of observational entropy in isolated systems
title_full Generic increase of observational entropy in isolated systems
title_fullStr Generic increase of observational entropy in isolated systems
title_full_unstemmed Generic increase of observational entropy in isolated systems
title_short Generic increase of observational entropy in isolated systems
title_sort generic increase of observational entropy in isolated systems
url http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.043327
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AT kohtarokato genericincreaseofobservationalentropyinisolatedsystems
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AT francescobuscemi genericincreaseofobservationalentropyinisolatedsystems