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On the entropy of a pseudo-density matrix

  • James Fullwood
  • Boyu Yang
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Abstract

The pseudo-density matrix (PDM) formalism naturally extends the notion of density operator to the spatiotemporal domain. While PDMs are Hermitian and of unit trace, they admit negative eigenvalues when encoding temporal correlations unattainable for spacelike separated systems. Consequently, there have been various approaches to extending the von~Neumann entropy---which is only defined for positive operators---to PDMs. Here, we prove that there exists a unique extension of the von~Neumann entropy functional to Hermitian matrices of unit trace satisfying two simple assumptions: unitary invariance and strong additivity with respect to affine combinations within the interval [−1,1], which we prove contains the eigenvalues of a PDM. We also prove that this unique extension of von~Neumann entropy to PDMs is subadditive for single qubit dynamics, and we analyze its behavior in a number of examples.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@misc{fullwood2026entropy,
  title = {{On the entropy of a pseudo-density matrix}},
  author = {James Fullwood and Boyu Yang},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = aug,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.28946},
  eprint = {2608.28946},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28946},
}
RIS
TY  - UNPB
TI  - On the entropy of a pseudo-density matrix
AU  - James Fullwood
AU  - Boyu Yang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/28
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.28946
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28946
AB  - The pseudo-density matrix (PDM) formalism naturally extends the notion of density operator to the spatiotemporal domain. While PDMs are Hermitian and of unit trace, they admit negative eigenvalues when encoding temporal correlations unattainable for spacelike separated systems. Consequently, there have been various approaches to extending the von~Neumann entropy---which is only defined for positive operators---to PDMs. Here, we prove that there exists a unique extension of the von~Neumann entropy functional to Hermitian matrices of unit trace satisfying two simple assumptions: unitary invariance and strong additivity with respect to affine combinations within the interval [−1,1], which we prove contains the eigenvalues of a PDM. We also prove that this unique extension of von~Neumann entropy to PDMs is subadditive for single qubit dynamics, and we analyze its behavior in a number of examples.
ER  -