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arXiv:2010.02408

Entropic Continuity Bounds & Eventually Entanglement-Breaking Channels

Eric P. Hanson

Published Apr 3, 2020• 1 citation
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Abstract

In the first part of this thesis, we present a general technique for establishing local and uniform continuity bounds for Schur concave functions. Our technique uses a particular relationship between majorization and the trace distance between quantum states. Namely, the majorization pre-order attains a minimum over $ε$-balls in this distance. By tracing the path of the majorization-minimizer as a function of the distance $ε$, we obtain the path of "majorization flow". This yields a new proof of the Audenaert-Fannes continuity bound for the von Neumann entropy in a universal framework which extends to the other functions, including the $α$-Rényi entropy, for which we obtain novel bounds in the case $α> 1$. We apply this technique to other Schur concave functions, such as the number of connected components of a certain random graph model, and the number of distinct realizations of a random variable. In the second part, we consider repeated interaction systems, in which a system of interest interacts with a sequence of probes one at a time. We characterize which repeated interaction systems break any initially-present entanglement between the system and an untouched reference after finitely many steps. Additionally, when the probes and their interactions with the system are slowly-varying (i.e. adiabatic), we analyze the saturation of Landauer's bound, an inequality between the entropy change of the system and the energy change of the probes, in the limit in which the number of steps tends to infinity and both the difference between consecutive probes and the difference between their interactions vanishes. This analysis proceeds at a fine-grained level by means of a two-time measurement protocol, in which the energy of the probes is measured before and after each interaction.

DOI
10.17863/cam.58687

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In the first part of this thesis, we present a general technique for establishing local and uniform continuity bounds for Schur concave functions. Our technique uses a particular relationship between majorization and the trace distance between quantum states. Namely, the majorization pre-order attains a minimum over εεε-balls in this distance. By tracing the path of the majorization-minimizer as a function of the distance εεε, we obtain the path of "majorization flow". This yields a new proof of the Audenaert-Fannes continuity bound for the von Neumann entropy in a universal framework which extends to the other functions, including the ααα-Rényi entropy, for which we obtain novel bounds in the case α>1α> 1α>1. We apply this technique to other Schur concave functions, such as the number of connected components of a certain random graph model, and the number of distinct realizations of a random variable. In the second part, we consider repeated interaction systems, in which a system of interest interacts with a sequence of probes one at a time. We characterize which repeated interaction systems break any initially-present entanglement between the system and an untouched reference after finitely many steps. Additionally, when the probes and their interactions with the system are slowly-varying (i.e. adiabatic), we analyze the saturation of Landauer's bound, an inequality between the entropy change of the system and the energy change of the probes, in the limit in which the number of steps tends to infinity and both the difference between consecutive probes and the difference between their interactions vanishes. This analysis proceeds at a fine-grained level by means of a two-time measurement protocol, in which the energy of the probes is measured before and after each interaction.
Entropies play a fundamental role in classical and quantum information theory. There are a plethora of quantum entropies and they satisfy a host of interesting properties. The von Neumann entropy, the first quantum entropy to be defined and arguably the most important of them, satisfies a powerful property called strong subadditivity. It was proved by Lieb and Ruskai in 1973 and has turned out to be an essential tool in establishing various important results in quantum information theory. We briefly review this property and its applications. Our main focus, however, is on another desirable property of entropies, namely, continuity. We introduce a notion of majorization flow and demonstrate it to be a powerful tool for deriving simple and universal proofs of continuity bounds for Schur concave functions with a particular emphasis on entropic functions relevant in information theory. In particular, for the case of the α\alphaα-Rényi entropy, whose connections to thermodynamics are discussed in this chapter, majorization flow yields a Lipschitz continuity bound for the case α>1\alpha>1α>1, thus resolving an open problem and providing a substantial improvement over previously known bounds.
Given an arbitrary quantum state (σ), we obtain an explicit construction of a state ρε*(σ) [respectively, ρ*,ε(σ)] which has the maximum (respectively, minimum) entropy among all states which lie in a specified neighborhood (ε-ball) of σ. Computing the entropy of these states leads to a local strengthening of the continuity bound of the von Neumann entropy, i.e., the Audenaert-Fannes inequality. Our bound is local in the sense that it depends on the spectrum of σ. The states ρε*(σ) and ρ*,ε(σ) depend only on the geometry of the ε-ball and are in fact optimizers for a larger class of entropies. These include the Rényi entropy and the minimum- and maximum-entropies, providing explicit formulas for certain smoothed quantities. This allows us to obtain local continuity bounds for these quantities as well. In obtaining this bound, we first derive a more general result which may be of independent interest, namely, a necessary and sufficient condition under which a state maximizes a concave and Gâteaux-differentiable function in an ε-ball around a given state σ. Examples of such a function include the von Neumann entropy and the conditional entropy of bipartite states. Our proofs employ tools from the theory of convex optimization under non-differentiable constraints, in particular Fermat’s rule, and majorization theory.
Uniform continuity bounds on entropies are generally expressed in terms of a single distance measure between probability distributions or quantum states, typically, the total variation- or trace distance. However, if an additional distance measure is known, the continuity bounds can be significantly strengthened. Here, we prove a tight uniform continuity bound for the Shannon entropy in terms of both the local- and total variation distances, sharpening an inequality in (Sason, 2013). We also obtain a uniform continuity bound for the von Neumann entropy in terms of both the operator norm- and trace distances. We then apply our results to compute upper bounds on channel capacities. We first refine the concept of approximate degradable channels by introducing(ε,ν)(\varepsilon ,\nu)(ε,ν)–degradable channels. These are$\varepsilon –closeindiamondnormand–close in diamond norm and–closeindiamondnormand\nu $–close in completely bounded spectral norm to their complementary channel when composed with a degrading channel. This leads to improved upper bounds to the quantum- and private classical capacities of such channels. Moreover, these bounds can be further improved by considering certain unstabilized versions of the above norms. We show that upper bounds on the latter can be efficiently expressed as semidefinite programs. As an application, we obtain a new upper bound on the quantum capacity of the qubit depolarizing channel.
We construct for a Schur concave function fff on the set of quantum states a tight upper bound on the difference f(ρ)−f(σ)f(ρ)-f(σ)f(ρ)−f(σ) for a quantum state ρρρ with finite f(ρ)f(ρ)f(ρ) and any quantum state σσσ mmm-partially majorized by the state ρρρ in the sense described in [1]. We also obtain a tight upper bound on this difference under the additional condition 12∥ρ−σ∥1≤ε\frac{1}{2}\|ρ-σ\|_1\leq\varepsilon21​∥ρ−σ∥1​≤ε and find simple sufficient conditions for vanishing this bound with  min⁡{ε,1/m}→0 \,\min\{\varepsilon,1/m\}\to0\,min{ε,1/m}→0. The obtained results are applied to the von Neumann entropy. The concept of ε\varepsilonε-sufficient majorization rank of a quantum state with finite entropy is introduced and a tight upper bound on this quantity is derived and applied to the Gibbs states of a quantum oscillator. We also show how the obtained results can be reformulated for Schur concave functions on the set of probability distributions with a finite or countable set of outcomes.
We present a continuity bound for quantum conditional entropies in terms of fidelity, with no dependence on the dimension of the conditioning system. Our results encompass both the von Neumann entropy and one version of sandwiched Rényi entropy, which is particularly relevant for applications in quantum key distribution (QKD). In such applications, this bound should provide improved results as compared to previous continuity bounds based on trace distance. We also show that the bounds can be sharpened as expected for classical-quantum states, and verify that they hold when the conditioning system has countably infinite dimension. Finally, we present several variants tailored for exponential functions of the Rényi entropies instead, which should be relevant for QKD applications.
In quantum information theory, communication capacities are mostly given in terms of entropic formulas. Continuity of such entropic quantities are significant, as they ensure uniformity of measures against perturbations of quantum states. Traditionally, continuity bounds have been provided in terms of the trace distance, which is a bonafide metric on the set of quantum states. In the present contribution we derive continuity bounds for various information measures based on the difference in purity of the concerned quantum states. In a finite-dimensional system, we establish continuity bounds for von Neumann entropy which depend only on purity distance and dimension of the system. We then obtain uniform continuity bounds for conditional von Neumann entropy in terms of purity distance which is free of the dimension of the conditioning subsystem. Furthermore, we derive the uniform continuity bounds for other entropic quantities like relative entropy distance, quantum mutual information and quantum conditional mutual information. As an application, we investigate the variation in squashed entanglement with respect to purity. We also obtain a bound to the quantum conditional mutual information of a quantum state which is arbitrarily close to a quantum Markov chain.