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arXiv:1212.0248 · Proceedings of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences

The structure of Rényi entropic inequalities

Noah Linden, Milán Mosonyi, Andreas Winter

Published Aug 21, 2013• 76 citations

Abstract

We investigate the universal inequalities relating the α -Rényi entropies of the marginals of a multi-partite quantum state. This is in analogy to the same question for the Shannon and von Neumann entropies ( α =1), which are known to satisfy several non-trivial inequalities such as strong subadditivity. Somewhat surprisingly, we find for 0< α <1 that the only inequality is non-negativity: in other words, any collection of non-negative numbers assigned to the non-empty subsets of n parties can be arbitrarily well approximated by the α -entropies of the 2 n −1 marginals of a quantum state. For α >1, we show analogously that there are no non-trivial homogeneous (in particular, no linear) inequalities. On the other hand, it is known that there are further, nonlinear and indeed non-homogeneous, inequalities delimiting the α -entropies of a general quantum state. Finally, we also treat the case of Rényi entropies restricted to classical states (i.e. probability distributions), which, in addition to non-negativity, are also subject to monotonicity. For α ≠0,1, we show that this is the only other homogeneous relation.

DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2012.0737

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We investigate whether the presence or absence of correlations between subsystems of an N-partite quantum system is solely constrained by the non-negativity and monotonicity of mutual information. We argue that this relatively simple question is in fact very deep because it is sensitive to the structure of the set of N-partite states. It can be informed by inequalities satisfied by the von Neumann entropy, but has the advantage of being more tractable. We exemplify this by deriving the explicit solution for N=4, despite having limited knowledge of the entropic inequalities. Furthermore, we describe how this question can be tailored to the analysis of more specialized classes of states such as classical probability distributions, stabilizer states, and geometric states in the holographic gauge/gravity duality.

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The Rényi entropies constitute a family of information measures that generalizes the well-known Shannon entropy, inheriting many of its properties. They appear in the form of unconditional and conditional entropies, relative entropies, or mutual information, and have found many applications in information theory and beyond. Various generalizations of Rényi entropies to the quantum setting have been proposed, most prominently Petz's quasi-entropies and Renner's conditional min-, max-, and collision entropy. However, these quantum extensions are incompatible and thus unsatisfactory. We propose a new quantum generalization of the family of Rényi entropies that contains the von Neumann entropy, min-entropy, collision entropy, and the max-entropy as special cases, thus encompassing most quantum entropies in use today. We show several natural properties for this definition, including data-processing inequalities, a duality relation, and an entropic uncertainty relation.