Ramón Muñóz-Tapia

The task of testing the validity of a hypothesis underlies numerous applications in quantum information theory. The most commonly investigated approach is that of gathering all the available (quantum) data and making a final decision based on a collective measurement. However, such offline strategies are often far from practical, both in the amount of data required as well as in the complexity of the required measurement. In some settings, when the goal is quick detection, offline algorithms are not applicable at all, as they can only make a decision once all samples are received. Sequential methods offer the use of online strategies, where samples are requested on a need-to-know basis, drastically reducing the number of required samples in order to guarantee the, task specific, associated performance criteria. While extensively investigated and applied in the classical setting, we know far less about the optimal performance of such online strategies when quantum data is available. In this joint submission we present major recent progress on sequential methods for the fundamental tasks of quantum state discrimination, channel discrimination and quickest change point detection. In summary, we provide a comprehensive picture of the optimal asymptotic performance of online strategies in these settings under different performance criteria.