Strong converse exponents for a quantum channel discrimination problem and quantum-feedback-assisted communication

This paper studies the difficulty of discriminating between an arbitrary quantum channel and a "replacer" channel that discards its input and replaces it with a fixed state. We show that, in this particular setting, the most general adaptive discrimination strategies provide no asymptotic advantage over non-adaptive tensor-power strategies. This conclusion follows by proving a quantum Stein's lemma for this channel discrimination setting, showing that a constant bound on the Type I error leads to the Type II error decreasing to zero exponentially quickly at a rate determined by the maximum relative entropy registered between the channels. The strong converse part of the lemma states that any attempt to make the Type II error decay to zero at a rate faster than the channel relative entropy implies that the Type I error necessarily converges to one. We then refine this latter result by identifying the optimal strong converse exponent for this task. As a consequence of these results, we can establish a strong converse theorem for the quantum-feedback-assisted capacity of a channel, sharpening a result due to Bowen. Furthermore, our channel discrimination result demonstrates the asymptotic optimality of a non-adaptive tensor-power strategy in the setting of quantum illumination, as was used in prior work on the topic. The sandwiched Renyi relative entropy is a key tool in our analysis. Finally, by combining our results with recent results of Hayashi and Tomamichel, we find a novel operational interpretation of the mutual information of a quantum channel N as the optimal type II error exponent when discriminating between a large number of independent instances of N and an arbitrary "worst-case" replacer channel chosen from the set of all replacer channels.Comment: v3: 35 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Communications in Mathematical Physic

Quantum state discrimination bounds for finite sample size

In the problem of quantum state discrimination, one has to determine by measurements the state of a quantum system, based on the a priori side information that the true state is one of two given and completely known states, rho or sigma. In general, it is not possible to decide the identity of the true state with certainty, and the optimal measurement strategy depends on whether the two possible errors (mistaking rho for sigma, or the other way around) are treated as of equal importance or not. Results on the quantum Chernoff and Hoeffding bounds and the quantum Stein's lemma show that, if several copies of the system are available then the optimal error probabilities decay exponentially in the number of copies, and the decay rate is given by a certain statistical distance between rho and sigma (the Chernoff distance, the Hoeffding distances, and the relative entropy, respectively). While these results provide a complete solution to the asymptotic problem, they are not completely satisfying from a practical point of view. Indeed, in realistic scenarios one has access only to finitely many copies of a system, and therefore it is desirable to have bounds on the error probabilities for finite sample size. In this paper we provide finite-size bounds on the so-called Stein errors, the Chernoff errors, the Hoeffding errors and the mixed error probabilities related to the Chernoff and the Hoeffding errors.Comment: 31 pages. v4: A few typos corrected. To appear in J.Math.Phy

On the quantum Renyi relative entropies and related capacity formulas

We show that the quantum $\alpha$-relative entropies with parameter $\alpha\in (0,1)$ can be represented as generalized cutoff rates in the sense of [I. Csiszar, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 41, 26-34, (1995)], which provides a direct operational interpretation to the quantum $\alpha$-relative entropies. We also show that various generalizations of the Holevo capacity, defined in terms of the $\alpha$-relative entropies, coincide for the parameter range $\alpha\in (0,2]$, and show an upper bound on the one-shot epsilon-capacity of a classical-quantum channel in terms of these capacities.Comment: v4: Cutoff rates are treated for correlated hypotheses, some proofs are given in greater detai

Entropy growth of shift-invariant states on a quantum spin chain

We study the entropy of pure shift-invariant states on a quantum spin chain. Unlike the classical case, the local restrictions to intervals of length $N$ are typically mixed and have therefore a non-zero entropy $S_N$ which is, moreover, monotonically increasing in $N$. We are interested in the asymptotics of the total entropy. We investigate in detail a class of states derived from quasi-free states on a CAR algebra. These are characterised by a measurable subset of the unit interval. As the entropy density is known to vanishes, $S_N$ is sublinear in $N$. For states corresponding to unions of finitely many intervals, $S_N$ is shown to grow slower than $(\log N)^2$. Numerical calculations suggest a $\log N$ behaviour. For the case with infinitely many intervals, we present a class of states for which the entropy $S_N$ increases as $N^\alpha$ where $\alpha$ can take any value in $(0,1)$.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figure

Quantum hypothesis testing with group symmetry

The asymptotic discrimination problem of two quantum states is studied in the setting where measurements are required to be invariant under some symmetry group of the system. We consider various asymptotic error exponents in connection with the problems of the Chernoff bound, the Hoeffding bound and Stein's lemma, and derive bounds on these quantities in terms of their corresponding statistical distance measures. A special emphasis is put on the comparison of the performances of group-invariant and unrestricted measurements.Comment: 33 page

Stationary quantum source coding

In this paper the quantum source coding theorem is obtained for a completely ergodic source. This results extends Shannon's classical theorem as well as Schumacher's quantum noiseless coding theorem for memoryless sources. The control of the memory effects requires earlier results of Hiai and Petz on high probability subspaces.Comment: 8 page

Structure of sufficient quantum coarse-grainings

Let H and K be Hilbert spaces and T be a coarse-graining from B(H) to B(K). Assume that density matrices D_1 and D_2 acting on H are given. In the paper the consequences of the existence of a coarse-graining S from B(K) to B(H) satisfying ST(D_1)=D_1 and ST(D_2)=D_2 are given. (This condition means the sufficiency of T for D_1 and D_2.) Sufficiency implies a particular decomposition of the density matrices. This decomposition allows to deduce the exact condition for equality in the strong subadditivity of the von Neumann entropy.Comment: 13 pages, LATE