Entropy accumulation (Q2206013)

The authors show that entropy accumulation (in the sense that the total uncertainty about an \(n\)-partite system \(A = (A_1, \dots, A_n)\) corresponds to the sum of the entropies of its parts \(A_i\)) takes place in a more general framework than expected, no independence assumption being necessary, when one quantifies the uncertainty about the individual systems \(A_i\) via the von Neumann entropy of suitably chosen conditional states. Under this hypothesis, one can analyze the parts of a large system instead of studying it in its entirety, a property which turns out to be very useful when dealing with applications like the one in device-independent cryptography discussed here.