Common origin of no-cloning and no-deleting principles - Conservation of information

Abstract

We discuss the role of the notion of information in the description of physical reality. We consider theories for which dynamics is linear with respect to stochastic mixing. We point out that the no-cloning and no-deleting principles emerge in any such theory, if law of conservation of information is valid, and two copies contain more information than one copy. We then describe the quantum case from this point of view.

This paper is dedicated to Asher Peres on the occasion of his seventieth birthday