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arXiv:2609.15004

Failure of the Asymptotic Equipartition Property for Quantum Channels

Gilad Gour

quant-phmath-phSubmitted Sep 14, 2026• Announced Sep 15, 2026• 0 citations

Abstract

We establish two results on the asymptotic equipartition property (AEP) for quantum channels. First, the AEP formulated using smoothing over completely positive trace-preserving maps fails in general. Second, the AEP with smoothing over subchannels (completely positive trace-nonincreasing maps) is equivalent to the strong converse for parallel quantum channel Stein's lemma, to a sharp threshold for the channel hockey-stick divergence, and to an AEP for the channel Lorenz divergence. The counterexample reveals a surprising separation between channel and subchannel smoothing. Although states and classical channels admit a sharp, dimension-independent completion bound, which we establish, the corresponding single-shot gap for quantum channels is unbounded already for qubits. This separation persists asymptotically: we construct qutrit channel pairs with finite max-relative entropy whose CPTP-smoothed rate strictly exceeds the regularized channel relative entropy. The asymptotic gap between channel and subchannel smoothing is unbounded across the family, even when the subchannel approximation error decays exponentially. To establish the equivalences, we develop a uniform filter that converts Lorenz smoothing into a single nearby subchannel. The four conjectured formulations thus share a common asymptotic threshold, whose validity for general channel pairs remains open. Together, these results separate this threshold question from the obstruction imposed by exact trace preservation.

Comments: 28 pages, no figures, comments are welcome

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We establish two results on the asymptotic equipartition property (AEP) for quantum channels. First, the AEP formulated using smoothing over completely positive trace-preserving maps fails in general. Second, the AEP with smoothing over subchannels (completely positive trace-nonincreasing maps) is equivalent to the strong converse for parallel quantum channel Stein's lemma, to a sharp threshold for the channel hockey-stick divergence, and to an AEP for the channel Lorenz divergence. The counterexample reveals a surprising separation between channel and subchannel smoothing. Although states and classical channels admit a sharp, dimension-independent completion bound, which we establish, the corresponding single-shot gap for quantum channels is unbounded already for qubits. This separation persists asymptotically: we construct qutrit channel pairs with finite max-relative entropy whose CPTP-smoothed rate strictly exceeds the regularized channel relative entropy. The asymptotic gap between channel and subchannel smoothing is unbounded across the family, even when the subchannel approximation error decays exponentially. To establish the equivalences, we develop a uniform filter that converts Lorenz smoothing into a single nearby subchannel. The four conjectured formulations thus share a common asymptotic threshold, whose validity for general channel pairs remains open. Together, these results separate this threshold question from the obstruction imposed by exact trace preservation.

We prove that the regularized, stabilized sandwiched Rényi divergence of finite-dimensional quantum channels converges to their regularized relative entropy as the Rényi order tends to one. The key tool is the channel hockey-stick divergence: Gour's Stinespring approximation bound and a Schatten norm estimate amplify an asymptotic bound below one into exponential decay at higher threshold rates. For channel pairs with finite max-relative entropy, known operational connections then give exponential strong converses for parallel and adaptive discrimination, a sharp zero--one testing law, and the subchannel asymptotic equipartition property.

We establish the quantum channel Stein lemma at every fixed type-I error tolerance in

(0,1)

and prove an exponential strong converse under arbitrary adaptive strategies. For any finite-dimensional channel pair, the optimal type-II exponent equals the regularized channel relative entropy and is attained by parallel strategies. When this divergence is finite, every strictly larger type-II rate forces the probability of accepting the null hypothesis to decay exponentially, uniformly over strategies and quantum memories. The proof rests on a uniform Stinespring approximation: tensor powers of the null dilation are approximated by tensor powers of the alternative dilation after applying an auxiliary linear map to the environment. The operator-norm error is exponentially small under a squared-norm bound at any rate above the regularized relative entropy. We construct the approximation from a weak testing bound by iterative rate reduction and a fixed-block tensor expansion with an exact residual. It implies right continuity at order one of the regularized sandwiched Rényi channel divergence, which yields the adaptive converse through the channel chain rule. We also obtain a sharp hockey-stick threshold and a subchannel smoothing asymptotic equipartition property for fixed and subexponentially vanishing diamond-norm errors.

We prove a generalized quantum Stein lemma for parallel discrimination of an arbitrary finite-dimensional channel against families of alternative channels. The alternatives are compact and convex, closed under tensor products, and contain a faithful replacer. At every fixed type-I error tolerance, the optimal type-II error exponent equals the regularized Umegaki channel relative entropy minimized over the alternatives, and both defining limits exist. Inputs may be entangled across channel uses and with a reference system. The main technical result constructs exactly trace-preserving approximations with exponentially small diamond error, dominated in completely positive order by free channels at every rate above the common exponent. The proof combines uniform auxiliary map approximation, iterative reduction of the domination rate, and tensor amplification. It yields asymptotic equipartition with trace-preserving smoothing at every subexponentially vanishing error, an exponential strong converse, and stability under vanishing diamond-norm perturbations. Under additional permutation invariance and closure under insertion of a fixed faithful input state and discarding of its output, we also prove an explicit finite-block completion bound. This quantitative construction uses weighted discarding, local operator corrections, and comparison with auxiliary extensions. Applications include state-preserving, coherence-restricted, covariant, entanglement-breaking, and positive-partial-transpose channels. For isometric targets against entanglement-breaking or positive-partial-transpose alternatives, we obtain exact finite-block testing and smoothing formulas.

We show that the regularized channel Rényi divergence is continuous at

α= 1

. As consequences, we establish an exponentially strong converse for channel discrimination, a subchannel-smoothed asymptotic equipartition property, a relative entropy accumulation theorem, and a new proof of the generalized quantum Stein's lemma. Our result further shows that the regularized channel relative entropy is computable. The continuity proof relies on a variational formula that expresses the regularized channel divergence as a single-letter optimization over variables of unrestricted finite dimension. We then establish continuity using a novel spectral confinement technique.

We show that the generalization of the relative entropy of a resource from states to channels is not unique, and there are at least six such generalizations. Then, we show that two of these generalizations are asymptotically continuous, satisfy a version of the asymptotic equipartition property, and their regularizations appear in the power exponent of channel versions of the quantum Stein's lemma. To obtain our results, we use a new type of "smoothing" that can be applied to functions of channels (with no state analog). We call it "liberal smoothing" as it allows for more spread in the optimization. Along the way, we show that the diamond norm can be expressed as a max relative entropy distance to the set of quantum channels, and prove a variety of properties of all six generalizations of the relative entropy of a resource.

We establish exact thresholds for the failure of simultaneous quantum typicality: three parties for mixed states and four for pure states. For the four-qubit Higuchi--Sudbery state, every sequence satisfying the expected purity bounds on three overlapping marginals, with sufficiently small fixed positive entropy slack, is asymptotically perfectly distinguishable from the tensor powers of the input: its trace distance from them tends to the maximum value

2

. This maximal separation persists, with a common positive slack, throughout an open neighborhood in the full four-qubit state space. Tracing out one party yields a mixed tripartite example. The proof connects simultaneous quantum smoothing with polynomial concentration on $\CP^1$. Symmetry reduces the problem to a frame inequality on $\Sym^n(\mathbb C^2)$, where a linear entropy deficit competes with a quadratic cost of polynomial concentration. Bernstein--Markov estimates and a subharmonic barrier control this cost, yielding an exponential obstruction to simultaneous typicality. These results disprove Dutil's multiparty quantum typicality conjecture, formulated in 2011, and the one-shot simultaneous min-entropy-smoothing conjectures of Drescher--Fawzi and Colomer--Winter. Together with the positive results for smaller systems, they determine the smallest numbers of parties at which simultaneous typicality can fail.