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arXiv:1103.6067

Short proofs of the Quantum Substate Theorem

Rahul Jain, Ashwin Nayak

Published Mar 31, 2011• 3 citations
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Abstract

The Quantum Substate Theorem due to Jain, Radhakrishnan, and Sen (2002) gives us a powerful operational interpretation of relative entropy, in fact, of the observational divergence of two quantum states, a quantity that is related to their relative entropy. Informally, the theorem states that if the observational divergence between two quantum states rho, sigma is small, then there is a quantum state rho' close to rho in trace distance, such that rho' when scaled down by a small factor becomes a substate of sigma. We present new proofs of this theorem. The resulting statement is optimal up to a constant factor in its dependence on observational divergence. In addition, the proofs are both conceptually simpler and significantly shorter than the earlier proof.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1103.6067

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The Quantum Substate Theorem due to Jain, Radhakrishnan, and Sen (2002) gives us a powerful operational interpretation of relative entropy, in fact, of the observational divergence of two quantum states, a quantity that is related to their relative entropy. Informally, the theorem states that if the observational divergence between two quantum states rho, sigma is small, then there is a quantum state rho' close to rho in trace distance, such that rho' when scaled down by a small factor becomes a substate of sigma. We present new proofs of this theorem. The resulting statement is optimal up to a constant factor in its dependence on observational divergence. In addition, the proofs are both conceptually simpler and significantly shorter than the earlier proof.
The Quantum Substate Theorem due to Jain (2002) gives us a powerful operational interpretation of relative entropy, in fact, of the observational divergence of two quantum states, a quantity that is related to their relative entropy. Informally, the theorem states that if the observational divergence between two quantum states ρ, σ is small, then there is a quantum state ρ'close to ρ in trace distance, such that ρ'when scaled down by a small factor becomes a substate of σ. We present new proofs of this theorem. The resulting statement is optimal up to a constant factor in its dependence on observational divergence. In addition, the proofs are both conceptually simpler and significantly shorter than the earlier proof.
We prove the following theorem about relative entropy of quantum states. "Substate theorem: Let rho and sigma be quantum states in the same Hilbert space with relative entropy S(rho|sigma) = Tr rho (log rho - log sigma) = c. Then for all epsilon > 0, there is a state rho' such that the trace distance ||rho' - rho||_t = Tr sqrt{(rho' - rho)^2} <= epsilon, and rho'/2^{O(c/epsilon^2)} <= sigma." It states that if the relative entropy of rho and sigma is small, then there is a state rho' close to rho, i.e. with small trace distance ||rho' - rho||_t, that when scaled down by a factor 2^{O(c)} `sits inside', or becomes a `substate' of, sigma. This result has several applications in quantum communication complexity and cryptography. Using the substate theorem, we derive a privacy trade-off for the set membership problem in the two-party quantum communication model. Here Alice is given a subset A of [n], Bob an input i in [n], and they need to determine if i in A. "Privacy trade-off for set membership: In any two-party quantum communication protocol for the set membership problem, if Bob reveals only k bits of information about his input, then Alice must reveal at least n/2^{O(k)} bits of information about her input." We also discuss relationships between various information theoretic quantities that arise naturally in the context of the substate theorem.
We prove the following information-theoretic property about quantum states. Substate theorem: Let ρ and σ be quantum states in the same Hilbert space with relative entropy S (ρ ‖ σ) ≔ Tr ρ (log ρ - log σ) = c . Then for all ϵ > 0, there is a state ρ′ such that the trace distance ‖ρ′ - ρ‖ tr : Tr √(ρ′ - ρ) 2 ≤ ϵ, and ρ′/2 O ( c /ϵ 2 ) ≤ σ. It states that if the relative entropy of ρ and σ is small, then there is a state ρ′ close to ρ, i.e. with small trace distance ‖ρ′ - ρ‖ tr , that when scaled down by a factor 2 O ( c ) ‘sits inside’, or becomes a ‘substate’ of, σ. This result has several applications in quantum communication complexity and cryptography. Using the substate theorem, we derive a privacy trade-off for the set membership problem in the two-party quantum communication model. Here Alice is given a subset A ⊆ [ n ], Bob an input i ∈ [ n ], and they need to determine if i ∈ A . Privacy trade-off for set membership: In any two-party quantum communication protocol for the set membership problem, if Bob reveals only k bits of information about his input, then Alice must reveal at least n /2 O( k ) bits of information about her input. We also discuss relationships between various information theoretic quantities that arise naturally in the context of the substate theorem.
The notion of divergence information of an ensemble of probability distributions was introduced by Jain, Radhakrishnan and Sen in Jain et al. (2002; 2009) in the context of the ‘substate theorem’. Since then, divergence has been recognised as a more natural measure of information in several situations in both quantum and classical communication. We construct ensembles of probability distributions for which divergence information may be significantly smaller than the more standard Holevo information. As a result, we establish that bounds previously shown for Holevo information are weaker than similar ones shown for divergence information.
In this paper we present a new operational interpretation of relative-entropy between quantum states in the form of the following protocol. P: Alice gets to know the eigen-decomposition of a quantum state ρ\rhoρ. Bob gets to know the eigen-decomposition of a quantum state σ\sigmaσ. Both Alice and Bob know c=S(ρ∣∣σ)c= S(\rho || \sigma)c=S(ρ∣∣σ), the relative entropy between ρ\rhoρ and σ\sigmaσ and an error parameter ϵ\epsilonϵ. Alice and Bob use shared entanglement and after communication of O((c+1)/ϵ4)O((c +1)/\epsilon^4)O((c+1)/ϵ4) bits from Alice to Bob, Bob ends up with a quantum state ρ′\rho'ρ′ such that F(ρ,ρ′)≥1−ϵF(\rho, \rho') \geq 1 - \epsilonF(ρ,ρ′)≥1−ϵ, where FFF represents fidelity. This result can be considered as a non-commutative generalization of a result due to Braverman and Rao [2011] where they considered the special case when ρ\rhoρ and σ\sigmaσ are classical probability distributions. We use protocol P to obtain an alternate proof of a direct-sum result for entanglement assisted quantum one-way communication complexity for all relations, which was first shown by Jain, Radhakrishnan and Sen [2005, 2008]. We also present a variant of protocol in which Bob has some side information about the state with Alice. We show that in such a case, the amount of communication can be further reduced, based on the side information that Bob has. Our second result provides a new operational meaning to trace distance between quantum states in the form of a protocol which can be viewed as a quantum analogue of the classical correlated-sampling protocol, which is widely used, for example by Holenstein [2007] in his proof of a parallel-repetition theorem for two-player one-round games. Recently Dinur, Steurer and Vidick [2013] have shown another version of a quantum correlated sampling protocol different from our protocol, and used it in their proof of a parallel-repetition theorem for two-prover one-round entangled projection games.