We show that the minimum von Neumann entropy output of a quantum channel is locally additive. Hastings' counterexample for the additivity conjecture makes this result quite surprising. In particular, it indicates that the nonadditivity of the minimum entropy output is a global effect of quantum channels.
Counterexamples to additivity of minimum output p-Rényi entropy of quantum channels for all p≥0
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 give an explicit non-random example of nonadditivity of minimum output von Neumann entropy. The proof uses a finite-dimensional construction which imitates free Haar unitary behavior. The same channel gives a violation of additivity for the minimum output Rényi-p entropy for any p∈[1,∞]. Additionally, given any p0>0 and g>0, we extend the construction to obtain an explicit non-random channel which has entropy gap ≥g uniformly over p∈[p0,∞].
Hastings recently reported a randomized construction of channels violating the minimum output entropy additivity conjecture. Here we revisit his argument, presenting a simplified proof. In particular, we do not resort to the exact probability distribution of the Schmidt coefficients of a random bipartite pure state, as in the original proof, but rather derive the necessary large deviation bounds by a concentration of measure argument. Furthermore, we prove non-additivity for the overwhelming majority of channels consisting of a Haar random isometry followed by partial trace over the environment, for an environment dimension much bigger than the output dimension. This makes Hastings' original reasoning clearer and extends the class of channels for which additivity can be shown to be violated.