Rényi Entropy, Signed Probabilities, and the Qubit

Abstract: The states of the qubit, the basic unit of quantum information, are $2 \times 2$ positive semi-definite Hermitian matrices with trace 1. We contribute to the program to axiomatize quantum mechanics by characterizing these states in terms of an entropic uncertainty principle formulated on an eight-point phase space. We do this by employing R\'enyi entropy (a generalization of Shannon entropy) suitably defined for the signed phase-space probability distributions that arise in representing quantum states.