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arXiv:2510.16918

Single-letter Chain Rule for Quantum Relative Entropy

Giulio Gasbarri, Matt Hoogsteder Riera

Published Oct 19, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Relative entropy is the standard measure of distinguishability in classical and quantum information theory. In the classical case, its loss under channels admits an exact chain rule, while in the quantum case only asymptotic, regularized chain rules are known. We establish new chain rules for quantum relative entropy that apply already in the single-copy regime. The first inequality can be naturally obtained via POVM decompositions, extending the point distributions in the classical chain rule to quantum ensemble partitions. The second gives a sufficient condition for the most natural extension of the classical result, which uses projectors as an analog for the classical point distributions. We additionally find a semiclassical chain rule where the point distributions are replaced with the projectors of the initial states, and, finally, we find a relation to previous works on strengthened data processing inequalities and recoverability. These results show that meaningful chain inequalities are possible already at the single-copy level, but they also highlight that tighter bounds remain to be found.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2510.16918

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Relative entropy is the standard measure of distinguishability in classical and quantum information theory. In the classical case, its loss under channels admits an exact chain rule, while in the quantum case only asymptotic, regularized chain rules are known. We establish new chain rules for quantum relative entropy that apply already in the single-copy regime. The first inequality can be naturally obtained via POVM decompositions, extending the point distributions in the classical chain rule to quantum ensemble partitions. The second gives a sufficient condition for the most natural extension of the classical result, which uses projectors as an analog for the classical point distributions. We additionally find a semiclassical chain rule where the point distributions are replaced with the projectors of the initial states, and, finally, we find a relation to previous works on strengthened data processing inequalities and recoverability. These results show that meaningful chain inequalities are possible already at the single-copy level, but they also highlight that tighter bounds remain to be found.
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The chain rule for the classical relative entropy ensures that the relative entropy between probability distributions on multipartite systems can be decomposed into a sum of relative entropies of suitably chosen conditional distributions on the individual systems. Here, we prove a chain rule inequality for the quantum relative entropy. The new chain rule allows us to solve an open problem in the context of asymptotic quantum channel discrimination: surprisingly, adaptive protocols cannot improve the error rate for asymmetric channel discrimination compared to nonadaptive strategies.
Historically at the core of thermodynamics and information theory, entropy's use in quantum information extends to diverse topics including high-energy physics and operator algebras. Entropy can gauge the extent to which a quantum system departs from classicality, including by measuring entanglement and coherence, and in the form of entropic uncertainty relations between incompatible measurements. The theme of this dissertation is the quantum nature of entropy, and how exposure to a noisy environment limits and degrades non-classical features. An especially useful and general form of entropy is the quantum relative entropy, of which special cases include the von Neumann and Shannon entropies, coherent and mutual information, and a broad range of resource-theoretic measures. We use mathematical results on relative entropy to connect and unify features that distinguish quantum from classical information. We present generalizations of the strong subadditivity inequality and uncertainty-like entropy inequalities to subalgebras of operators on quantum systems for which usual independence assumptions fail. We construct new measures of non-classicality that simultaneously quantify entanglement and uncertainty, leading to a new resource theory of operations under which these forms of non-classicalty become interchangeable. Physically, our results deepen our understanding of how quantum entanglement relates to quantum uncertainty. We show how properties of entanglement limit the advantages of quantum superadditivity for information transmission through channels with high but detectable loss. Our method, based on the monogamy and faithfulness of the squashed entanglement, suggests a broader paradigm for bounding non-classical effects in lossy processes. We also propose an experiment to demonstrate superadditivity. Finally, we estimate decay rates in the form of modified logarithmic Sobolev inequalities for a variety of quantum channels, and in many cases we obtain the stronger, tensor-stable form known as a complete logarithmic Sobolev inequality. We compare these with our earlier results that bound relative entropy of the outputs of a particular class of quantum channels.
The direct static capacity region of a bipartite quantum state describes its asymptotic conversion into classical communication, quantum communication, and entanglement, with all communication directed from Alice to Bob. This paper gives a unified entropic converse for this region. The proof treats generated and consumed resources simultaneously and derives all three information inequalities for one local instrument. Its main ingredients are no-signalling, the chain rule, strong subadditivity, and continuity of conditional entropy. A supporting-hyperplane characterization leads to the static capacity formula, which is helpful in determining single-letterization of the capacity region. For a pure state of entanglement entropy hhh subjected to erasure with probability ppp, the complete region is the convex hull of 000 and (0,−ph,(1−p)h)(0,-ph,(1-p)h)(0,−ph,(1−p)h), plus the unit-resource cone. This statement holds for arbitrary collective instruments by using subset-entropy inequalities related to earlier methods used for the dynamic capacity region of the erasure channel. Complete characterizations also hold for symmetrically extendible states and locally flagged pure-state mixtures. For maximally correlated states, the optimization over local instruments admits an exact matrix formulation and an additive outer bound. An explicit qubit example shows that a nonorthogonal discarded quantum memory can outperform every efficient instrument and every instrument with conditionally commuting discarded states. For states obtained by qubit dephasing of Schmidt-aligned pure states, an exact threshold characterizes when the static capacity formula vanishes, at every blocklength and after regularization. Full single-letter characterizations for general Hadamard states and for the remaining trade-offs for dephased states remain open, with sufficient additivity conditions identified.
We investigate bounds in the transmission of classical information through quantum systems. Our focus lies in the generalized Holevo theorem, which provides a single-letter Holevo-like inequality from arbitrary quantum distance measures. Through the introduction of the [Formula: see text]-[Formula: see text]-Rényi relative entropies, which comprise known relevant quantities such as the Rényi relative entropy and the sandwiched Rényi relative entropy, we establish the Holevo–Rényi inequality. This result leads to a quantum bound for the [Formula: see text]-mutual information, suggesting new insights into communication channel performance and the fundamental limits for reliability functions in memoryless multi-letter communication channels.
Quantum R\'enyi relative entropies play a significant part in characterizing operational tasks in quantum information theory. In this paper, we first give some fundamental properties of the zero-relative entropy, and we find that the geometric R\'enyi relative entropy reduces to the zero-relative entropy in the limit case. Then, we define a new mutual information via the zero-relative entropy, and it is the so-called zero-mutual information. In particular, the zero-mutual information is a lower bound of the Petz-R\'enyi and geometric generalized mutual information. We establish the chain rules for the unsmoothed and smoothed versions of the zero-mutual information. As an application, we discuss generalized mutual information with the Petz-R\'enyi, sandwiched R\'enyi, and geometric R\'enyi types, our result gives a uniform chain rule inequality for quantum generalized mutual information.