Erling Størmer - Böcker

During the last 30 years there have been several attempts at extending the notion of entropy to noncommutative dynamical systems. The authors present in the book the two most successful approaches to the extensions of measure entropy and topological entropy to the noncommutative setting and analyze in detail the main models in the theory. The book addresses mathematicians and physicists, including graduate students, who are interested in quantum dynamical systems and applications of operator algebras and ergodic theory. Although the authors assume a basic knowledge of operator algebras, they give precise definitions of the notions and in most cases complete proofs of the results which are used.

During the last 30 years there have been several attempts at extending the notion of entropy to noncommutative dynamical systems. The authors present in the book the two most successful approaches to the extensions of measure entropy and topological entropy to the noncommutative setting and analyze in detail the main models in the theory. The book addresses mathematicians and physicists, including graduate students, who are interested in quantum dynamical systems and applications of operator algebras and ergodic theory. Although the authors assume a basic knowledge of operator algebras, they give precise definitions of the notions and in most cases complete proofs of the results which are used.

This volume, setting out the theory of positive maps as it stands today, reflects the rapid growth in this area of mathematics since it was recognized in the 1990s that these applications of C*-algebras are crucial to the study of entanglement in quantum theory. The author, a leading authority on the subject, sets out numerous results previously unpublished in book form. In addition to outlining the properties and structures of positive linear maps of operator algebras into the bounded operators on a Hilbert space, he guides readers through proofs of the Stinespring theorem and its applications to inequalities for positive maps. The text examines the maps’ positivity properties, as well as their associated linear functionals together with their density operators. It features special sections on extremal positive maps and Choi matrices. In sum, this is a vital publication that covers a full spectrum of matters relating to positive linear maps, of which a large proportion is relevant and applicable to today’s quantum information theory. The latter sections of the book present the material in finite dimensions, while the text as a whole appeals to a wider and more general readership by keeping the mathematics as elementary as possible throughout.