We exhibit infinitely many new, constrained inequalities for the von Neumann entropy, and show that they are independent of each other and the known inequalities obeyed by the von Neumann entropy (basically strong subadditivity). The new inequalities were proved originally by Makarychevfor the Shannon entropy, using properties of probability distributions. Our approach extends the proof of the inequalities to the quantum domain, and includes their independence for the quantum and also the classical cases.
The strong subadditivity inequality of von Neumann entropy relates the entropy of subsystems of a tripartite state ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{ABC}$ to that of the composite system. Here, we define ${\mathbit{T}}^{(a)}({\ensuremath{\rho}}_{ABC})$ as the extent to which ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{ABC}$ fails to satisfy the strong subadditivity inequality $S({\ensuremath{\rho}}_{B})+S({\ensuremath{\rho}}_{C})\ensuremath{\le}S({\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AB})+S({\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AC})$ with equality and investigate its properties. In particular, by introducing auxiliary subsystem E, we consider any purification $|{\ensuremath{\psi}}_{ABCE}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ of ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{ABC}$ and formulate ${\mathbit{T}}^{(a)}({\ensuremath{\rho}}_{ABC})$ as the extent to which the bipartite quantum correlations of ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AB}$ and ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AC}$, measured by entanglement of formation and quantum discord, change under the transformation $B\ensuremath{\rightarrow}BE$ and $C\ensuremath{\rightarrow}CE$. Invariance of quantum correlations of ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AB}$ and ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AC}$ under such transformation is shown to be a necessary and sufficient condition for vanishing ${\mathbit{T}}^{(a)}({\ensuremath{\rho}}_{ABC})$. Our approach allows one to characterize, intuitively, the structure of states for which the strong subadditivity is saturated. Moreover, along with providing a conservation law for quantum correlations of states for which the strong subadditivity inequality is satisfied with equality, we find that such states coincide with those that the Koashi-Winter monogamy relation is saturated.