Abstract
Quantum information processing is limited, in practice, to efficiently implementable operations. This motivates the study of quantum divergences that preserve their operational meaning while faithfully capturing these computational constraints. Using geometric, computational, and information theoretic tools, we define two new types of computational divergences, which we term computational max-divergence and computational measured Rényi divergences. Both are constrained by a family of efficient binary measurements, and thus useful for state discrimination tasks in the computational setting. We prove that, in the infinite-order limit, the computational measured Rényi divergence coincides with the computational max-divergence, mirroring the corresponding relation in the unconstrained information-theoretic setting. For the many-copy regime, we introduce regularized versions and establish a one-sided computational Stein bound on achievable hypothesis-testing exponents under efficient measurements, giving the regularized computational measured relative entropy an operational meaning. We further define resource measures induced by our computational divergences and prove an asymptotic continuity bound for the computational measured relative entropy of resource. Focusing on entanglement, we relate our results to previously proposed computational entanglement measures and provide explicit separations from the information-theoretic setting. Together, these results provide a principled, cohesive approach towards state discrimination tasks and resource quantification under computational constraints.
Overview
This article introduces computational max-divergence and computational measured Rényi divergences constrained by efficient binary measurements, and develops applications to hypothesis testing and quantum resource quantification.
Publication details
- Journal: IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
- Issue: Volume 72, issue 6
- Pages: 4085–4114
- Published: June 2026; first published online 2 April 2026
- DOI: 10.1109/TIT.2026.3680247
- Preprint: arXiv:2509.21308
Citation
Álvaro Yángüez, Thomas A. Hahn, and Jan Kochanowski, “Efficient Quantum Measurements: Computational Max- and Measured Rényi Divergences and Applications,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 72(6), 4085–4114 (2026). Download the BibTeX entry.
BibTeX
@article{Yanguez2026efficient,
title = {Efficient Quantum Measurements: Computational Max- and Measured R{\'e}nyi Divergences and Applications},
author = {Y{\'a}ng{\"u}ez, {\'A}lvaro and Hahn, Thomas A. and Kochanowski, Jan},
journal = {IEEE Transactions on Information Theory},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
volume = {72},
number = {6},
pages = {4085--4114},
doi = {10.1109/TIT.2026.3680247},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.2026.3680247}
}