We prove a data processing inequality for quantum communication channels, which states that processing a received quantum state may never increase the mutual information between input and output states.
Quantum data processing inequality bounds the set of bipartite states that can be generated by two far apart parties under local operations; having access to a bipartite state as a resource, two parties cannot locally transform it to another bipartite state with a mutual information greater than that of the resource state. But due to the additivity of quantum mutual information under tensor product, the data processing inequality gives no bound when the parties are provided with arbitrary number of copies of the resource state. In this paper, we introduce a measure of correlation on bipartite quantum states, called maximal correlation, that is not additive and gives the same number when computed for multiple copies. Then by proving a data processing inequality for this measure, we find a bound on the set of states that can be generated under local operations even when an arbitrary number of copies of the resource state is available.
Using a tripartite framework consisting of an open quantum system, its environment, and a passive reference system, in this study we discuss quantum mutual information (QMI) and data processing inequality (DPI). Without any restriction on the initial correlations, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the decrease or increase as well as for the conservation of QMI are obtained for any joint unitary evolution of the open quantum system and its environment. In the special case of the input Markov states, it has been shown that as long as the tripartite input state is a Markov state then DPI holds for every joint unitary evolution even in the presence of initial correlations encoded in the input. We also point out that the converse of the last statement, that is, sufficiency of the existence of a local quantum channel or of the fulfillment of DPI for the input Markov state does not hold in general and this fact is exhibited by counterexamples.
The quantum data processing inequality asserts that two quantum states become harder to distinguish when a noisy channel is applied. On the other hand, a reverse quantum data processing inequality characterizes whether distinguishability is preserved after the application of a noisy channel. In this work, we explore these concepts through contraction and expansion coefficients of the relative entropy of quantum channels. Our first result is that quantum channels with an input dimension greater than or equal to the output dimension do not have a non-zero expansion coefficient, which means that they cannot admit a reverse data-processing inequality. We propose a comparative approach by introducing a relative expansion coefficient, to assess how one channel expands relative entropy compared to another. We show that this relative expansion coefficient is positive for three important classes of quantum channels: depolarizing channels, generalized dephasing channels, and amplitude damping channels. As an application, we give the first rigorous construction of level-1 less noisy quantum channels that are non-degradable.
It is well-known that any quantum channel E satisfies the data processing inequality (DPI), with respect to various divergences, e.g., quantum χκ2 divergences and quantum relative entropy. More specifically, the data processing inequality states that the divergence between two arbitrary quantum states ρ and σ does not increase under the action of any quantum channel E . For a fixed channel E and a state σ , the divergence between output states E(ρ) and E(σ) might be strictly smaller than the divergence between input states ρ and σ , which is characterized by the strong data processing inequality (SDPI). Among various input states ρ , the largest value of the rate of contraction is known as the SDPI constant. An important and widely studied property for classical channels is that SDPI constants tensorize. In this paper, we extend the tensorization property to the quantum regime: we establish the tensorization of SDPIs for the quantum χκ1/22 divergence for arbitrary quantum channels and also for a family of χκ2 divergences (with κ≥κ1/2 ) for arbitrary quantum-classical channels.