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arXiv:2607.24687

Sharp continuity of quantum conditional entropy

Mario Berta, Pablo Costa Rico, Gereon Kossmann, Ludovico Lami, Julius A. Zeiss

quant-phmath-phSubmitted Jul 27, 2026• Announced Jul 28, 2026• 0 citations
v1 · Jul 27, 2026v2 · Sep 28, 2026
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Abstract

We prove the sharp uniform continuity bound for quantum conditional entropy. If two bipartite states are at trace distance at most $δ$ and $d=\dim A$, the optimal dimension-only modulus of continuity is $h_2(δ)+δ\log(d^2-1)$ up to $δ=1-d^{-2}$ and $2\log d$ thereafter, where $h_2$ denotes the binary entropy. When $\dim B\ge d$, this bound is tight for every $δ\in[0,1]$. The key proof idea was developed with the assistance of ChatGPT 5.6 Sol, building on and adapting the tight classical proof of Alhejji \& Smith [IEEE ISIT (2020)], which follows a conceptually different approach.

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4 pages + 2 pages appendix

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We prove the sharp uniform continuity bound for quantum conditional entropy. If two bipartite states are at trace distance at most δδδ and d=dim⁡Ad=\dim Ad=dimA, the optimal dimension-only modulus of continuity is h2(δ)+δlog⁡(d2−1)h_2(δ)+δ\log(d^2-1)h2​(δ)+δlog(d2−1) up to δ=1−d−2δ=1-d^{-2}δ=1−d−2 and 2log⁡d2\log d2logd thereafter, where h2h_2h2​ denotes the binary entropy. When dim⁡B≥d\dim B\ge ddimB≥d, this bound is tight for every δ∈[0,1]δ\in[0,1]δ∈[0,1]. The key proof idea was developed with the assistance of ChatGPT 5.6 Sol, building on and adapting the tight classical proof of Alhejji & Smith [IEEE ISIT (2020)], which follows a conceptually different approach.
We determine the sharp modulus of continuity, in trace distance, of the optimized Petz and sandwiched Rényi conditional entropies for every order α∈[12,1)α\in[\frac12,1)α∈[21​,1). If two bipartite states are within trace distance δδδ, then both conditional entropies differ by at most 11−αlog⁡[(1−ε)α+(D−1)1−αεα]\frac{1}{1-α} \log[(1-\varepsilon)^α +(D-1)^{1-α}\varepsilon^α]1−α1​log[(1−ε)α+(D−1)1−αεα], where ε:=min⁡{δ,1−1/D}\varepsilon := \min\{δ,1-1/D\}ε:=min{δ,1−1/D} and DDD is the effective dimension, given by the dimension of the first subsystem times the largest possible Schmidt rank. For every distance constraint δ∈[0,1]δ\in[0,1]δ∈[0,1], the bound is attained by an isotropic pair with a maximally entangled anchor. Taking α↑1α\uparrow1α↑1 recovers the recent sharp continuity bound of quantum conditional entropy by Berta et al. [arXiv:2607.24687]. The proof linearizes the relevant concave Rényi functional at a comparison point dictated by the isotropic equality family. Schmidt-rank domination extends the equality geometry to an arbitrary anchor state, after which trace-distance duality and a noncommutative calibration estimate control the perturbation and anchor term without weakening the sharp constant. The latter estimate requires matrix analysis and is assisted by ChatGPT 5.6 Sol.
In this short note, I show how a recent result of Alhejji and Smith (A tight uniform continuity bound for equivocation, 2019. arXiv:1909.00787v1) regarding an optimal uniform continuity bound for classical conditional entropy leads to an optimal uniform continuity bound for quantum conditional entropy of classical–quantum states. The bound is optimal in the sense that there always exists a pair of classical–quantum states saturating the bound, and so, no further improvements are possible. An immediate application is a uniform continuity bound for the entanglement of formation that improves upon the one previously given by Winter (Commun Math Phys 347(1):291–313, 2016. arXiv:1507.07775). Two intriguing open questions are raised regarding other possible uniform continuity bounds for conditional entropy: one about quantum–classical states and another about fully quantum bipartite states.
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We prove a tight uniform continuity bound for Arimoto’s version of the conditional$\alpha −Reˊnyientropyfortherange-Rényi entropy for the range−Reˊnyientropyfortherange\alpha \in [0, 1).Thisdefinitionoftheconditional). This definition of the conditional).Thisdefinitionoftheconditional\alpha −Reˊnyientropyisthemostnaturaloneamongthemultipleformswhichexistintheliterature,sinceitsatisfiestwodesirablepropertiesofaconditionalentropy,namely,thefactthatconditioningreducesentropy,andthattheassociatedreductioninuncertaintycannotexceedtheinformationgainedbyconditioning.Furthermore,ithasfoundinterestingapplicationsinvariousinformationtheoretictaskssuchasguessingwithsideinformationandsequentialdecoding.ThisconditionalentropyreducestotheconditionalShannonentropyinthelimit-Rényi entropy is the most natural one among the multiple forms which exist in the literature, since it satisfies two desirable properties of a conditional entropy, namely, the fact that conditioning reduces entropy, and that the associated reduction in uncertainty cannot exceed the information gained by conditioning. Furthermore, it has found interesting applications in various information theoretic tasks such as guessing with side information and sequential decoding. This conditional entropy reduces to the conditional Shannon entropy in the limit−Reˊnyientropyisthemostnaturaloneamongthemultipleformswhichexistintheliterature,sinceitsatisfiestwodesirablepropertiesofaconditionalentropy,namely,thefactthatconditioningreducesentropy,andthattheassociatedreductioninuncertaintycannotexceedtheinformationgainedbyconditioning.Furthermore,ithasfoundinterestingapplicationsinvariousinformationtheoretictaskssuchasguessingwithsideinformationandsequentialdecoding.ThisconditionalentropyreducestotheconditionalShannonentropyinthelimit\alpha \to 1,andthisinturnallowsustorecovertherecentlyobtainedtightuniformcontinuityboundforthelatterfromourresult.Finally,weapplyourresulttoobtainatightuniformcontinuityboundfortheconditional, and this in turn allows us to recover the recently obtained tight uniform continuity bound for the latter from our result. Finally, we apply our result to obtain a tight uniform continuity bound for the conditional,andthisinturnallowsustorecovertherecentlyobtainedtightuniformcontinuityboundforthelatterfromourresult.Finally,weapplyourresulttoobtainatightuniformcontinuityboundfortheconditional\alpha −Reˊnyientropyofaclassical−quantumstate,for-Rényi entropy of a classical-quantum state, for−Reˊnyientropyofaclassical−quantumstate,for\alpha inthesamerangeasabove.Thisagainyieldsthecorrespondingknownboundfortheconditionalentropyofthestateinthelimitin the same range as above. This again yields the corresponding known bound for the conditional entropy of the state in the limitinthesamerangeasabove.Thisagainyieldsthecorrespondingknownboundfortheconditionalentropyofthestateinthelimit\alpha \to 1$.
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.
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