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A bound on the mutual information for quantum channels with inefficient measurements

Kurt A. Jacobs

Published Dec 1, 2004• 3 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The Holevo bound is a bound the mutual information for a given quantum encoding. In 1996 Schumacher, Westmoreland and Wootters [Schumacher, Westmoreland and Wootters, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3452 (1996)] derived a bound which reduces to the Holevo bound for complete measurements, but which is tighter for incomplete measurements. The most general quantum operations may be both incomplete and inefficient. Here we show that the bound derived by SWW can be further extended to obtain one which is yet again tighter for inefficient measurements. This allows us in addition to obtain a generalization of a bound derived by Hall, and to show that the average reduction in the von Neumann entropy during a quantum operation is concave in the initial state, for all quantum operations. This is a quantum version of the concavity of the mutual information. We also show that both this average entropy reduction, and the mutual information for pure state ensembles, are Schur-concave for unitarily covariant measurements; that is, for these measurements, information gain increases with initial uncertainty.

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The Holevo bound is a bound the mutual information for a given quantum encoding. In 1996 Schumacher, Westmoreland and Wootters [Schumacher, Westmoreland and Wootters, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3452 (1996)] derived a bound which reduces to the Holevo bound for complete measurements, but which is tighter for incomplete measurements. The most general quantum operations may be both incomplete and inefficient. Here we show that the bound derived by SWW can be further extended to obtain one which is yet again tighter for inefficient measurements. This allows us in addition to obtain a generalization of a bound derived by Hall, and to show that the average reduction in the von Neumann entropy during a quantum operation is concave in the initial state, for all quantum operations. This is a quantum version of the concavity of the mutual information. We also show that both this average entropy reduction, and the mutual information for pure state ensembles, are Schur-concave for unitarily covariant measurements; that is, for these measurements, information gain increases with initial uncertainty.
The Holevo bound is a bound on the mutual information for a given quantum encoding. In 1996 Schumacher, Westmoreland, and Wootters [Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3452 (1996)] derived a bound that reduces to the Holevo bound for complete measurements, but that is tighter for incomplete measurements. The most general quantum operations may be both incomplete and inefficient. Here we show that the bound derived by SWW can be further extended to obtain one that is yet again tighter for inefficient measurements. This allows us, in addition, to obtain a generalization of a bound derived by Hall, and to show that the average reduction in the von Neumann entropy during a quantum operation is concave in the initial state, for all quantum operations. This is a quantum version of the concavity of the mutual information. We also show that both this average entropy reduction and the mutual information for pure state ensembles, are Schur concave for unitarily covariant measurements; that is, for these measurements, information gain increases with initial uncertainty.
To transmit classical information using a quantum system, the sender prepares the system in one of a set of possible states and sends it to the receiver. The receiver then makes a measurement on the system to obtain information about the senders choice of state. The amount of information which is accessible to the receiver depends upon the encoding and the measurement. Here we derive a bound on this information which generalizes the bound derived by Schumacher, Westmoreland and Wootters [Schumacher, Westmoreland and Wootters, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3452 (1996)] to include inefficient measurements, and thus all quantum operations. This also allows us to obtain a generalization of a bound derived by Hall [Hall, Phys. Rev. A 55, 100 (1997)], and to show that the average reduction in the von Neumann entropy which accompanies a measurement is concave in the initial state, for all quantum operations.
When a measurement is made on a quantum system in which classical information is encoded, the measurement reduces the observers' average Shannon entropy for the encoding ensemble. This reduction, being the mutual information, is always non-negative. For efficient measurements the state is also purified; that is, on average, the observers' von Neumann entropy for the state of the system is also reduced by a non-negative amount. Here we point out that by rewriting a bound derived by Hall [Phys. Rev. A 55, 100 (1997)], which is dual to the Holevo bound, one finds that for efficient measurements, the mutual information is bounded by the reduction in the von Neumann entropy. We also show that this result, which provides a physical interpretation for Hall's bound, may be derived directly from the Schumacher-Westmoreland-Wootters theorem [Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3452 (1996)]. We discuss these bounds, and their relationship to another bound, valid for efficient measurements on pure state ensembles, which involves the subentropy.
The Holevo bound provides a limit to the amount of information which can be obtained by an observer for a fixed encoding. Here we point out that there exists a complementary bound, very similar in form, which provides a limit to the amount of information that can be obtained by an observer for a fixed measurement. Both of these bounds are corollaries of the Schumacher-Westmoreland-Wootters theorem [Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3452 (1996)]. We discuss this theorem and another bound involving the effect of the incompleteness of a measurement on information gathering. We also show that, given the Holevo bound, the measurement bound may be proved in a special case by exploiting the partial duality between measurements and encodings.
While a positive operator valued measure gives the probabilities in a quantum measurement, an instrument gives both the probabilities and the a posteriori states. By interpreting the instrument as a quantum channel and by using the monotonicity theorem for relative entropies many bounds on the classical information extracted in a quantum measurement are obtained in a unified manner. In particular, it is shown that such bounds can all be stated as inequalities between mutual entropies. This approach based on channels gives rise to a unified picture of known and new bounds on the classical information (the bounds by Holevo, by Shumacher, Westmoreland and Wootters, by Hall, by Scutaru, a new upper bound and a new lower one). Some examples clarify the mutual relationships among the various bounds.
It is shown that the entropy reduction (the information gain in the initial terminology) of an efficient (ideal or pure) quantum measurement coincides with the generalized quantum mutual information of a quantum-classical channel mapping an a priori state to the corresponding posteriori probability distribution of the outcomes of the measurement. As a result the entropy reduction is defined for arbitrary a priori states (not only for states with finite von Neumann entropy) and its analytical properties is studied in detail by using general properties of the quantum mutual information. By using this approach it is shown that the entropy reduction of an efficient quantum measurement is a nonnegative lower semicontinuous concave function on the set of all a priori states having continuous restrictions to subsets on which the von Neumann entropy is continuous. Monotonicity and subadditivity of the entropy reduction are also easily proved by this method. A simple continuity condition for the entropy reduction and for the mean posteriori entropy considered as functions of a pair (a priori state, measurement) is obtained. A characterization of an irreducible measurement (in the Ozawa sense) which is not efficient is considered in the Appendix.