We introduce two information-theoretical invariants for the projective unitary group acting on a finite-dimensional complex Hilbert space: PVM-and POVM-dynamical (quantum) entropies, which are analogues of the classical Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy rate. They quantify the maximal randomness of the successive quantum measurement results in the case where the evolution of the system between each two consecutive measurements is described by a given unitary operator. We study the class of chaotic unitaries, i.e., the ones of maximal entropy, or equivalently, such that they can be represented by suitably rescaled complex Hadamard matrices in some orthonormal bases. We provide necessary conditions for a unitary operator to be chaotic, which become also sufficient for qubits and qutrits. These conditions are expressed in terms of the relation between the trace and the determinant of the operator. We also compute the volume of the set of chaotic unitaries in dimensions two and three, and the average PVM-dynamical entropy over the unitary group in dimension two. We prove that this mean value behaves as the logarithm of the dimension of the Hilbert space, which implies that the probability that the dynamical entropy of a unitary is almost as large as possible approaches unity as the dimension tends to infinity.

No abstract

Fix a point in a finite-dimensional complex vector space and consider the sequence of iterates of this point under the composition of a unitary map with the orthogonal projection on the hyperplane orthogonal to the starting point. We prove that, generically, the series of the squared norms of these iterates sums to the dimension of the underlying space. This leads us to construct a (device-dependent) dimension witness for quantum systems which involves the probabilities of obtaining certain strings of outcomes in a sequential yes-no measurement. The exact formula for this series in non-generic cases is provided as well as its analogue in the real case.