Work

Additivity and Chain Rules for Quantum Entropies via Multi-index Schatten Norms

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: The primary entropic measures for quantum states are additive under the tensor product. In the analysis of quantum information processing tasks, the minimum entropy of a set of states, e.g., the minimum output entropy of a channel, often plays a crucial role. A fundamental question in quantum information and cryptography is whether the minimum output entropy remains additive under the tensor product of channels. Here, we establish a general additivity statement for the optimized sandwiched Rényi entropy of quantum channels. For that, we generalize the results of Devetak et al. (Commun Math Phys 266(1):37-63, 2006) to multi-index Schatten norms. As an application, we strengthen the additivity statement of Van Himbeeck and Brown (A tight and general finite-size security proof for quantum key distribution, 2025) thus allowing the analysis of time-adaptive quantum cryptographic protocols. In addition, we establish chain rules for Rényi conditional entropies that are similar to the ones used for the generalized entropy accumulation theorem of Metger et al. (Commun Math Phys 405(11):261, 2024).

Source: Communications in Mathematical Physics

DOI: 10.1007/s00220-026-05567-8

Authors: Omar Fawzi, Jan Kochanowski, Cambyse Rouzé, Thomas Van Himbeeck