Advantages of adaptive methods for quantum information theory and quantum foundations

As quantum technologies progress towards the building of larger computational devices and communication networks, our need to develop efficient methods to certify properties of quantum systems grows. In this project, we plan to develop new techniques for certifying properties of such quantum systems by considering adaptive procedures, i.e., protocols that can change their behaviour on the fly as we learn new information about a system. These methods can therefore be more efficient than the most commonly used techniques that operate in a strictly fixed manner. After developing general means for optimizing adaptive protocols we will tailor our new methods to explore applications to information processing, specifically to types of computations called one-way computations and to certain multipartite cryptographic tasks. We will further explore insights into the foundations of quantum theory that can be gained by using these methods. In particular, we will apply our techniques to the question of identifying the physical principles underlying quantum theory