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arXiv:2501.03799

Some properties and applications of the new quantum $f$-divergences

Salman Beigi, Christoph Hirche, Marco Tomamichel

Published Jan 7, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

Recently, a new definition for quantum $f$-divergences was introduced based on an integral representation. These divergences have shown remarkable properties, for example when investigating contraction coefficients under noisy channels. At the same time, many properties well known for other definitions have remained elusive for the new quantum $f$-divergence because of its unusual representation. In this work, we investigate alternative ways of expressing these quantum $f$-divergences. We leverage these expressions to prove new properties of these $f$-divergences and demonstrate some applications. In particular, we give a new proof of the achievability of the quantum Chernoff bound by establishing a strengthening of an inequality by Audenaert et al. We also establish inequalities between some previously known Renyi divergences and the new Renyi divergence. We further investigate some monotonicity and convexity properties of the new $f$-divergences, and prove inequalities between these divergences for various functions.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2501.03799

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Some properties and applications of the new quantum fff-divergences
Recently, a new definition for quantum fff-divergences was introduced based on an integral representation. These divergences have shown remarkable properties, for example when investigating contraction coefficients under noisy channels. At the same time, many properties well known for other definitions have remained elusive for the new quantum fff-divergence because of its unusual representation. In this work, we investigate alternative ways of expressing these quantum fff-divergences. We leverage these expressions to prove new properties of these fff-divergences and demonstrate some applications. In particular, we give a new proof of the achievability of the quantum Chernoff bound by establishing a strengthening of an inequality by Audenaert et al. We also establish inequalities between some previously known Renyi divergences and the new Renyi divergence. We further investigate some monotonicity and convexity properties of the new fff-divergences, and prove inequalities between these divergences for various functions.
Quantum f-divergences are a quantum generalization of the classical notion of f-divergences, and are a special case of Petz' quasi-entropies. Many well known distinguishability measures of quantum states are given by, or derived from, f-divergences; special examples include the quantum relative entropy, the Renyi relative entropies, and the Chernoff and Hoeffding measures. Here we show that the quantum f-divergences are monotonic under the dual of Schwarz maps whenever the defining function is operator convex. This extends and unifies all previously known monotonicity results. We also analyze the case where the monotonicity inequality holds with equality, and extend Petz' reversibility theorem for a large class of f-divergences and other distinguishability measures. We apply our findings to the problem of quantum error correction, and show that if a stochastic map preserves the pairwise distinguishability on a set of states, as measured by a suitable f-divergence, then its action can be reversed on that set by another stochastic map that can be constructed from the original one in a canonical way. We also provide an integral representation for operator convex functions on the positive half-line, which is the main ingredient in extending previously known results on the monotonicity inequality and the case of equality. We also consider some special cases where the convexity of f is sufficient for the monotonicity, and obtain the inverse Holder inequality for operators as an application. The presentation is completely self-contained and requires only standard knowledge of matrix analysis.
Quantum f-divergences are a quantum generalization of the classical notion of f-divergences, and are a special case of Petz' quasi-entropies. Many well-known distinguishability measures of quantum states are given by, or derived from, f-divergences. Special examples include the quantum relative entropy, the Rényi relative entropies, and the Chernoff and Hoeffding measures. Here we show that the quantum f-divergences are monotonic under substochastic maps whenever the defining function is operator convex. This extends and unifies all previously known monotonicity results for this class of distinguishability measures. We also analyze the case where the monotonicity inequality holds with equality, and extend Petz' reversibility theorem for a large class of f-divergences and other distinguishability measures. We apply our findings to the problem of quantum error correction, and show that if a stochastic map preserves the pairwise distinguishability on a set of states, as measured by a suitable f-divergence, then its action can be reversed on that set by another stochastic map that can be constructed from the original one in a canonical way. We also provide an integral representation for operator convex functions on the positive half-line, which is the main ingredient in extending previously known results on the monotonicity inequality and the case of equality. We also consider some special cases where the convexity of f is sufficient for the monotonicity, and obtain the inverse Hölder inequality for operators as an application. The presentation is completely self-contained and requires only standard knowledge of matrix analysis.
From Classical to Quantum: Explicit Classical Distributions Achieving Maximal Quantum fff-Divergence
Explicit classical states achieving maximal fff-divergence are given, allowing for a simple proof of Matsumoto's Theorem, and the systematic extension of any inequality between classical fff-divergences to quantum fff-divergences. Our methodology is particularly simple as it does not require any elaborate matrix analysis machinery but only basic linear algebra. It is also effective, as illustrated by two examples improving existing bounds: (i)~an improved quantum Pinsker inequality is derived between χ2χ^2χ2 and trace norm, and leveraged to improve a bound in decoherence theory; (ii)~a new reverse quantum Pinsker inequality is derived for any quantum fff-divergence, and compared to previous (Audenaert-Eisert and Hirche-Tomamichel) bounds.
We introduce a new quantum Rényi divergence Dα# for α∈(1,∞) defined in terms of a convex optimization program. This divergence has several desirable computational and operational properties such as an efficient semidefinite programming representation for states and channels, and a chain rule property. An important property of this new divergence is that its regularization is equal to the sandwiched (also known as the minimal) quantum Rényi divergence. This allows us to prove several results. First, we use it to get a converging hierarchy of upper bounds on the regularized sandwiched α -Rényi divergence between quantum channels for α>1 . Second it allows us to prove a chain rule property for the sandwiched α -Rényi divergence for α>1 which we use to characterize the strong converse exponent for channel discrimination. Finally it allows us to get improved bounds on quantum channel capacities.
In this paper we give a systematic and unified treatment and extensions of various results on a new notion of quantum fff-divergences defined from quantum hockey stick divergences, the theory of which has been developed recently in \cite{BHT_fdiv,HircheTomamichel_integral,LiuHircheCheng2025}. In particular, we consider non-normalized states and hockey stick fff-divergences defined from more general notions of quantum hockey stick divergences, as well as a somewhat more general form of the integral representation defined in terms of an additional real parameter. We also consider the extension of the theory to general von Neumann algebras, and extend various results from \cite{HircheTomamichel_integral,LiuHircheCheng2025} to this setting. Our main results here are the representation of the hockey stick fff-divergences in terms of Neyman-Pearson error probabilities, which was given in the finite-dimensional case in \cite{LiuHircheCheng2025}, an extension of Jen\v cová's result \cite{Jencova2023} on the detection of reversibility of a quantum channel on a pair of states in terms of the hockey stick divergences, and an extension of a result in \cite{HircheTomamichel_integral} showing that the regularized hockey stick Rényi ααα-divergences coincide with the Petz-type Rényi divergences for α∈(0,1)α\in(0,1)α∈(0,1) and with the sandwiched Rényi divergences for α>1α>1α>1. Moreover, we give some partial results on the characterization of when different notions of quantum fff-divergences give the same value on a pair of quantum states.
Quantum generalizations of Rényi's entropies are a useful tool to describe a variety of operational tasks in quantum information processing. Two families of such generalizations turn out to be particularly useful: the Petz quantum Rényi divergence Dˉα\bar{D}_αDˉα​ and the minimal quantum Rényi divergence D~α\widetilde{D}_αDα​. Moreover, the maximum quantum Rényi divergence D^α\widehat{D}_αDα​ is of particular mathematical interest. In this Master thesis, we investigate relations between these divergences and their applications in quantum information theory. Our main result is a reverse Araki-Lieb-Thirring inequality that implies a new relation between the minimal and the Petz divergence, namely that αDˉα(ρ∥σ)⩽D~α(ρ∥σ)α\bar{D}_α(ρ\| σ) \leqslant \widetilde{D}_α(ρ\| σ)αDˉα​(ρ∥σ)⩽Dα​(ρ∥σ) for α∈[0,1]α\in [0,1]α∈[0,1] and where ρρρ and σσσ are density operators. This bound suggests defining a "pretty good fidelity", whose relation to the usual fidelity implies the known relations between the optimal and pretty good measurement as well as the optimal and pretty good singlet fraction. In addition, we provide a new proof of the inequality D~1(ρ∥σ)⩽D^1(ρ∥σ) ,\widetilde{D}_{1}(ρ\| σ) \leqslant \widehat{D}_{1}(ρ\| σ)\, ,D1​(ρ∥σ)⩽D1​(ρ∥σ), based on the Araki-Lieb-Thirring inequality. This leads to an elegant proof of the logarithmic form of the reverse Golden-Thompson inequality.