The additivity of minimum output entropies is a central problem in quantum information theory. Nonadditivity is known for every Rényi order
p>1, at the von Neumann point
p=1, and for sufficiently small positive
p, while much of the interval
0<p<1 has remained open. In this work, we prove that for every
p>0 there exist finite-dimensional quantum channels whose minimum output
p-Rényi entropies violate additivity. Our proof combines two constructions: random projection-induced channels yield nonadditivity for
p>3/4, and antisymmetric postprocessing extends the violation to all positive Rényi orders. Our estimates also improve the output-dimension bound obtained by Belinschi, Collins, and Nechita for additivity violation of minimum output von Neumann entropy.
We find an upper bound for the minimum output entropy of a unital quantum channel, and obtain an exact formula for general qubit channels. Our techniques incorporate the Rényi entropies, particularly, with Rényi parameter α = 2. Moreover, since our upper bound is additive under tensor product, we get as a corollary an upper bound for the classical capacity of unital quantum channels. Interestingly, our upper bound for the classical capacity depends only on the operator norm of matrix representations of channels on the space of traceless Hermitian operators, and is tight in the sense that it gives the precise quantity of classical capacity of the Werner-Holevo channel. As an example, we study quantum channels with operator sum representation that is made of the discrete Weyl operators (generalized Pauli operators), and explain how our formula works in this case. Finally, we find new examples for which the minimum output Rényi 2-entropy is additive.
The problem of additivity of the Minimum Output Entropy is of fundamental importance in Quantum Information Theory (QIT). It was solved by Matthew B. Hastings [“Superadditivity of communication capacity using entangled inputs”, Nature Physics 5, 255–257 (2009; doi:)] in the one-shot case by exhibiting a pair of random quantum channels. However, the initial motivation was arguably to understand regularized quantities, and there was so far no way to solve additivity questions in the regularized case. The purpose of this paper is to give a solution to this problem. Specifically, we exhibit a pair of quantum channels that unearths additivity violation of the regularized minimum output entropy. Unlike previously known results in the one-shot case, our construction is non-random, infinite-dimensional, and in the commuting-operator setup. The commuting-operator setup is equivalent to the tensor-product setup in the finite-dimensional case for this problem, but their difference in the infinite-dimensional setting has attracted substantial attention and legitimacy recently in QIT with the celebrated resolutions of Tsirelson's and Connes embedding problem [ Z. Ji et al., “ \mathsf{MIP}^*= \mathsf{RE} ”, Preprint, ], Likewise, it is not clear that our approach works in the finite-dimensional setup. Our strategy of proof relies on developing a variant of the Haagerup inequality optimized for a product of free groups.