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arXiv:1406.0833 · Open Systems & Information Dynamics

Maximizing the Divergence from a Hierarchical Model of Quantum States

Stephan Weis, Andreas Knauf, Nihat Ay, Ming‐Jing Zhao

Published Mar 1, 2015• 17 citations
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Abstract

We study many-party correlations quantified in terms of the Umegaki relative entropy (divergence) from a Gibbs family known as a hierarchical model. We derive these quantities from the maximum-entropy principle which was used earlier to define the closely related irreducible correlation. We point out the differences between quantum states and probability vectors which exist in hierarchical models, in the divergence from a hierarchical model and in local maximizers of this divergence. The differences are, respectively, missing factorization, discontinuity and reduction of uncertainty. We discuss global maximizers of the mutual information of separable qubit states.

DOI
10.1142/s1230161215500067

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A departure of a mixed quantum state from a local Gibbs description is generally invisible to local observables but can be detected by the conditional mutual information (CMI). Here we study the relationship between the renormalization group (RG) and CMI, and in particular, how RG constrains CMI. We first show that the CMI between nonadjacent regions AAA and CCC, conditioned on the buffer region BBB, is UV-finite whenever the state admits a locally reversible RG with a fixed on-site Hilbert space dimension. We then study two hierarchical models that have long-range CMI and yet admit a simple RG description. The first model has a divergent Markov length at every temperature 0<T<∞0<T<\infty0<T<∞ but nevertheless flows to an infinite-temperature product state under RG. The second model satisfies the local Markov condition while violating the global one and is stable against weak noise. At the critical noise strength, the two-point CMI decays only polynomially as a function of the system size, while the two-point mutual information vanishes.