paper

Conditioning on Subalgebras - Entropy Duality and Generalized Quantum Stein's Lemma in von Neumann Algebras

arXiv:2610.00772

Abstract

We establish duality relations for conditional entropies relative to subalgebras of arbitrary von Neumann algebras, including the Umegaki relative entropy as well as the sandwiched- and Petz-Rényi divergences. Even in finite dimensions, these results extend the familiar dualities for conditional entropies from tensor-product subsystems to general subalgebras, while also lifting the framework to the fully infinite-dimensional setting. As an application, we establish an infinite-dimensional extension of quantum Stein's lemma when the alternative hypothesis is the state space of a finite-index subalgebra, which gives an operational interpretation of the relative entropy to a subalgebra as the optimal asymptotic error exponent in composite quantum hypothesis testing-the first beyond finite dimensions.

67 pages, no figures