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arXiv:1501.05636 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Quantum Markov chains, sufficiency of quantum channels, and Rényi information measures

Nilanjana Datta, Mark M. Wilde

Published Nov 20, 2015• 21 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A short quantum Markov chain is a tripartite state such that system A can be recovered perfectly by acting on system C of the reduced state Such states have conditional mutual information equal to zero and are the only states with this property. A quantum channel is sufficient for two states ρ and σ if there exists a recovery channel using which one can perfectly recover ρ from and σ from The relative entropy difference is equal to zero if and only if is sufficient for ρ and σ . In this paper, we show that these properties extend to Rényi generalizations of these information measures which were proposed in (Berta et al 2015 J. Math. Phys. 56 022205 ; Seshadreesan et al 2015 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 48 395303 ), thus providing an alternate characterization of short quantum Markov chains and sufficient quantum channels. These results give further support to these quantities as being legitimate Rényi generalizations of the conditional mutual information and the relative entropy difference. Along the way, we solve some open questions of Ruskai and Zhang, regarding the trace of particular matrices that arise in the study of monotonicity of relative entropy under quantum operations and strong subadditivity of the von Neumann entropy.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8113/48/50/505301

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A short quantum Markov chain is a tripartite state such that system A can be recovered perfectly by acting on system C of the reduced state Such states have conditional mutual information equal to zero and are the only states with this property. A quantum channel is sufficient for two states ρ and σ if there exists a recovery channel using which one can perfectly recover ρ from and σ from The relative entropy difference is equal to zero if and only if is sufficient for ρ and σ . In this paper, we show that these properties extend to Rényi generalizations of these information measures which were proposed in (Berta et al 2015 J. Math. Phys. 56 022205 ; Seshadreesan et al 2015 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 48 395303 ), thus providing an alternate characterization of short quantum Markov chains and sufficient quantum channels. These results give further support to these quantities as being legitimate Rényi generalizations of the conditional mutual information and the relative entropy difference. Along the way, we solve some open questions of Ruskai and Zhang, regarding the trace of particular matrices that arise in the study of monotonicity of relative entropy under quantum operations and strong subadditivity of the von Neumann entropy.
Quantum conditional mutual information (QCMI) is a fundamental measure of conditional independence, with central applications throughout quantum information theory and many-body physics. Despite its importance, finding a fully quantum Rényi generalization that satisfies all desirable structural properties has remained an open question. In this work, we introduce a quantum Rényi conditional mutual information possessing these desirable properties: it is monotone under local quantum channels, additive under tensor products, monotone in the Rényi parameter, and converges to the QCMI in the limit α→1α\to 1α→1. We establish bounds on this quantity in terms of relative entropies to the Petz-recovered state, showing that it provides a distinct measure of approximate conditional independence. As a consequence, we derive recovery-based upper and lower bounds on the QCMI in terms of quantum generalizations of the Kullback-Leibler divergence, improving upon the best known results in certain regimes. Finally, we establish bounds in terms of relative entropies to the sets of Markov and separable states and derive Rényi chain rules, which appear to be novel even in the classical setting.
The conditional quantum mutual information I(A; B|C) of a tripartite state ρABC is an information quantity which lies at the center of many problems in quantum information theory. Three of its main properties are that it is non-negative for any tripartite state, that it decreases under local operations applied to systems A and B, and that it obeys the duality relation I(A; B|C) = I(A; B|D) for a four-party pure state on systems ABCD. The conditional mutual information also underlies the squashed entanglement, an entanglement measure that satisfies all of the axioms desired for an entanglement measure. As such, it has been an open question to find Rényi generalizations of the conditional mutual information, that would allow for a deeper understanding of the original quantity and find applications beyond the traditional memoryless setting of quantum information theory. The present paper addresses this question, by defining different α-Rényi generalizations Iα(A; B|C) of the conditional mutual information, some of which we can prove converge to the conditional mutual information in the limit α → 1. Furthermore, we prove that many of these generalizations satisfy non-negativity, duality, and monotonicity with respect to local operations on one of the systems A or B (with it being left as an open question to prove that monotonicity holds with respect to local operations on both systems). The quantities defined here should find applications in quantum information theory and perhaps even in other areas of physics, but we leave this for future work. We also state a conjecture regarding the monotonicity of the Rényi conditional mutual informations defined here with respect to the Rényi parameter α. We prove that this conjecture is true in some special cases and when α is in a neighborhood of one.
Abstract Chapter 20 provides a discussion of entropies and entropic quantities in quantum information theory, briefly considering the generalizations of the Rényi entropy to the quantum regime, but mainly focusing on the von Neumann entropy and its properties such as concavity, the Araki-Lieb inequality, and subadditivity. We introduce the quantum relative entropy, quantum joint entropy, quantum conditional entropy, and quantum mutual information, and prove key properties and results for these quantities, including Klein’s inequality, joint convexity, additivity, and monotonicity under completely positive and trace-preserving maps of the relative entropy, as well as weak monotonicity and strong subadditivity of the von Neumann entropy. We then analyse the relation of (negative) conditional entropy and entanglement. In this context we discuss the conditional amplitude operator and the mutual amplitude operator, as well as conditional Rényi entropies and their role for entanglement detection.
A Markov chain is a tripartite quantum state ρABCwhere there exists a recovery map RB→BCsuch that ρABC= RB→BC(ρAB). More generally, an approximate Markov chain ρABCis a state whose distance to the closest recovered state RB→BC(ρAB) is small. Recently it has been shown that this distance can be bounded from above by the conditional mutual information I(A : C|B)ρof the state. We improve on this connection by deriving the first bound that is tight in the commutative case and features an explicit recovery map that only depends on the reduced state pBC. The key tool in our proof is a multivariate extension of the Golden-Thompson inequality, which allows us to extend logarithmic trace inequalities from two to arbitrarily many matrices.
Lieb and Ruskai's strong subadditivity theorem, which shows that the conditional mutual information must be nonnegative, is fundamental in quantum theory. It has numerous applications, such as in quantum error correction. When the mutual information is zero, the Petz recovery map can be used to reconstruct the quantum channel. When the mutual information is small, one seeks to define an optimal recovery channel. To this end, a mathematical characterization of the mutual information is desirable. We address this problem by providing an exact characterization of the mutual information, along with characterizations for other entropies. Our controls are sharp, leaving no room for improvement, in the sense that we provide equalities, regardless of whether the mutual information (or remainder) is small or large. We transform the definitions of these entropies into a summation of explicitly constructed terms, and the definition of each term obviously demonstrates the desired positivity/convexity/concavity. The summation converges rapidly and absolutely in a chosen elementary norm.
Abstract It is well known that the conditional mutual information of a quantum state is zero if, and only if, the quantum state is a quantum Markov chain. Replacing the Umegaki relative entropy in the definition of the conditional mutual information by the Belavkin–Staszewski (BS) relative entropy, we obtain the BS-conditional mutual information, and we call the states with zero BS-conditional mutual information Belavkin–Staszewski quantum Markov chains. In this article, we establish a correspondence which relates quantum Markov chains and BS-quantum Markov chains. This correspondence allows us to find a recovery map for the BS-entropy in the spirit of the Petz recovery map. Furthermore, we show that, over the set of BS-quantum Markov chains, this correspondence constitutes an entanglement-breaking map. Moreover, we prove a structural decomposition of the Belavkin–Staszewski quantum Markov chains and also study states for which the BS-conditional mutual information is only approximately zero. We subsequently extend the aforementioned correspondence, structural decomposition, and recovery map to arbitrary pairs of states and quantum channels. As an application of the correspondence, we find a family of states with non-vanishing conditional mutual information for which it decays superexponentially fast with the size of the middle system.