Quantum Fluctuation-Response Inequality and Its Application in Quantum Hypothesis Testing

Abstract: We uncover the quantum fluctuation-response inequality, which, in the most general setting, establishes a bound for the mean difference of an observable at two different quantum states, in terms of the quantum relative entropy. When the spectrum of the observable is bounded, the sub-Gaussian property is used to further our result by explicitly linking the bound with the sub-Gaussian norm of the observable, based on which we derive a novel bound for the sum of statistical errors in quantum hypothesis testing. This error bound holds nonasymptotically and is stronger and more informative than that based on quantum Pinsker's inequality. We also show the versatility of our results by their applications in problems like thermodynamic inference and speed limit.