Uniform Additivity in Classical and Quantum Information

Abstract

Information theory quantifies the optimal rates of resource interconversions, usually in terms of entropies. However, nonadditivity often makes evaluating entropic formulas intractable. In a few auspicious cases, additivity allows a full characterization of optimal rates. We study uniform additivity of formulas, which is easily evaluated and captures all known additive quantum formulas. Our complete characterization of uniform additivity exposes an intriguing new additive quantity and identifies a remarkable coincidence—the classical and quantum uniformly additive functions with one auxiliary variable are identical.