The fact that the quantum relative entropy is non-increasing with respect to
quantum physical evolutions lies at the core of many optimality theorems in
quantum information theory and has applications in other areas of physics. In
this work, we establish improvements of this entropy inequality in the form of
physically meaningful remainder terms. One of the main results can be
summarized informally as follows: if the decrease in quantum relative entropy
between two quantum states after a quantum physical evolution is relatively
small, then it is possible to perform a recovery operation, such that one can
perfectly recover one state while approximately recovering the other. This can
be interpreted as quantifying how well one can reverse a quantum physical
evolution. Our proof method is elementary, relying on the method of complex
interpolation, basic linear algebra, and the recently introduced Renyi
generalization of a relative entropy difference. The theorem has a number of
applications in quantum information theory, which have to do with providing
physically meaningful improvements to many known entropy inequalities.Comment: v5: 26 pages, generalized lower bounds to apply when supp(rho) is
contained in supp(sigma
