Introduction to quantum information theory and outline of two applications to physics: the black hole information paradox and the renormalization group information flow

This review paper is intended for scholars with different backgrounds, possibly in only one of the subjects covered, and therefore little background knowledge is assumed. The first part is an introduction to classical and quantum information theory (CIT, QIT): basic definitions and tools of CIT are introduced, such as the information content of a random variable, the typical set, and some principles of data compression. Some concepts and results of QIT are then introduced, such as the qubit, the pure and mixed states, the Holevo theorem, the no-cloning theorem, and the quantum complementarity. In the second part, two applications of QIT to open problems in theoretical physics are discussed. The black hole (BH) information paradox is related to the phenomenon of the Hawking radiation (HR). Consid- ering a BH starting in a pure state, after its complete evaporation only the Hawking radiation will remain, which is shown to be in a mixed state. This either describes a non-unitary evolution of an isolated system, contradicting the evolution postulate of quantum mechanics and violating the no-cloning theorem, or it implies that the initial information content can escape the BH, therefore contradicting general relativity. The progress toward the solution of the paradox is discussed. The renormalization group (RG) aims at the extraction of the macroscopic description of a physical system from its microscopic description. This passage from microscopic to macroscopic can be described in terms of several steps from one scale to another, and is therefore formalized as the action of a group. The c-theorem proves the existence, under certain conditions, of a function which is monotonically decreasing along the group transformations. This result suggests an interpretation of this function as entropy, and its use to study the information flow along the RG transformations.