Efficient optimization of the quantum relative entropy

Abstract

Many quantum information measures can be written as an optimization of the quantum relative entropy between sets of states. For example, the relative entropy of entanglement of a state is the minimum relative entropy to the set of separable states. The various capacities of quantum channels can also be written in this way. We propose a unified framework to numerically compute these quantities using off-the-shelf semidefinite programming solvers, exploiting the approximation method proposed in [Fawzi, Saunderson, Parrilo, Semidefinite approximations of the matrix logarithm, arXiv:1705.00812]. As a notable application, this method allows us to provide numerical counterexamples for a proposed lower bound on the quantum conditional mutual information in terms of the relative entropy of recovery.