Relative entropy derivation of the uncertainty principle with quantum side information

Abstract

We give a simple proof of the uncertainty principle with quantum side information, as in [Berta et al. Nature Physics 6, 659 (2010)], invoking the monotonicity of the relative entropy. Our proof shows that the entropic uncertainty principle can be viewed as a data-processing inequality, a special case of the notion that information cannot increase due to evolution in time. This leads to a systematic method for finding the minimum uncertainty states of various entropic uncertainty relations; interestingly such states are intimately connected with the reversibility of time evolution.