Towards understanding the power of quantum

Quantum information utilizes quantum theory in order to perform informational tasks that are difficult on a classical computer. Thus far, quantum algorithms have been devised for factoring of large numbers and for efficient searching through an unstructured list. Quantum cryptography promises informationaly robust communication between parties, even in the case of eavesdroppers. The superiority of these protocols rests on quantum features such as the superposition of states, entanglement and the delicacy of quantum systems during observation. Whether these phenomena are truly unique only to quantum theory has been the subject of several “toy models” [1,2,3]. We explore one such toy model, the Spekkens toy model (STM)[2], outlining its main assumptions accomplishments and drawbacks. We propose a more epistemic model, the fully epistemic model (FEM), and show that it is superior to STM in the way it describes quantum operations.