Infinite Divisibility of Information

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Abstract: We study an information analogue of infinitely divisible probability distributions, where the i.i.d. sum is replaced by the joint distribution of an i.i.d. sequence. A random variable X is called informationally infinitely divisible if, for any nge1, there exists an i.i.d. sequence of random variables Z1,ldots,Zn that contains the same information as X, i.e., there exists an injective function f such that X=f(Z1,ldots,Zn). While there does not exist informationally infinitely divisible discrete random variable, we show that any discrete random variable X has a bounded multiplicative gap to infinite divisibility, that is, if we remove the injectivity requirement on f, then there exists i.i.d. Z1,ldots,Zn and f satisfying X=f(Z1,ldots,Zn), and the entropy satisfies H(X)/nleH(Z1)le1.59H(X)/n+2.43. We also study a new class of discrete probability distributions, called spectral infinitely divisible distributions, where we can remove the multiplicative gap 1.59. Furthermore, we study the case where X=(Y1,ldots,Ym) is itself an i.i.d. sequence, mge2, for which the multiplicative gap 1.59 can be replaced by 1+5sqrt(logm)/m. This means that as m increases, (Y1,ldots,Ym) becomes closer to being spectral infinitely divisible in a uniform manner. This can be regarded as an information analogue of Kolmogorov's uniform theorem. Applications of our result include independent component analysis, distributed storage with a secrecy constraint, and distributed random number generation.












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