Recent progresses in characterising information inequalities (Q657542)

Summary: We present a revision on some of the recent progresses made in characterising and understanding information inequalities, which are the fundamental physical laws in communications and compression. We will begin with the introduction of a geometric framework for information inequalities, followed by the first non-Shannon inequality proved by \textit{Z. Zhang} and \textit{R. W. Young} [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 44, 1440--1452 (1998; Zbl 1153.94336)]. The discovery of this non-Shannon inequality is a breakthrough in the area and has led to the subsequent discovery of many more non-Shannon inequalities. We will also review the close relations between information inequalities and other research areas such as Kolmogorov complexity, determinantal inequalities, and group-theoretic inequalities. These relations have led to non-traditional techniques in proving information inequalities and at the same time made impacts back onthose related areas by the introduction of information-theoretic tools.