On Dimension Bounds for Auxiliary Quantum Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new technique for bounding the dimension of auxiliary quantum systems in quantum information theory, addressing a key gap due to the lack of a quantum Carathéodory theorem.

Contribution

It develops a non-Carathéodory-type tool for quantum auxiliary systems and explores quantum conditioning, advancing understanding of quantum information expressions involving auxiliary registers.

Findings

Quantum conditioning is strictly richer than classical conditioning.

A new method for evaluating quantum auxiliary system expressions.

Implications for entanglement-assisted communication problems.

Abstract

Expressions of several capacity regions in quantum information theory involve an optimization over auxiliary quantum registers. Evaluating such expressions requires bounds on the dimension of the Hilbert space of these auxiliary registers, for which no non-trivial technique is known; we lack a quantum analog of the Carath\'{e}odory theorem. In this paper, we develop a new non-Carath\'{e}odory-type tool for evaluating expressions involving a single quantum auxiliary register and several classical random variables. As we show, such expressions appear in problems of entanglement-assisted Gray-Wyner and entanglement-assisted channel simulation, where the question of whether entanglement helps in these settings is related to that of evaluating expressions with a single quantum auxiliary register. To evaluate such expressions, we argue that developing a quantum analog of the Carath\'{e}odory theorem requires a better understanding of a notion which we call ``quantum conditioning." We then proceed by proving a few results about quantum conditioning, one of which is that quantum conditioning is strictly richer than the usual classical conditioning.