Average Contraction Coefficients of Quantum Channels

Abstract: The data-processing inequality ensures quantum channels reduce state distinguishability, with contraction coefficients quantifying optimal bounds. However, these can be overly optimistic and not representative of the usual behavior. We study how noise contracts distinguishability of `typical' states, beyond the worst-case. To that end, we introduce and study a family of moments of contraction for quantum divergences, which interpolate between the worst-case contraction coefficient of a channel and its average behavior under a chosen ensemble of input states. We establish general properties of these moments, relate moments for different divergences, and derive bounds in terms of channel parameters like the entropy or purity of its Choi state. Focusing on the trace distance, we obtain upper and lower bounds on its average contraction under tensor-product noise channels, and prove that, depending on the local noise strength, there is a phase transition in the limit of many channel uses: below a critical error rate the average contraction remains near unity, whereas above it decays exponentially with system size. We extend these phase-transition phenomena to random quantum circuits with unital noise, showing that constant-depth noisy circuits do not shrink the trace distance on average, even when given highly entangled states as input. In contrast, even at $\log\log n$ depth, the average trace distance can become superpolynomially small. Finally, we explore moments of contraction for f-divergences and discuss applications to local differential privacy, demonstrating that noise regimes ensuring privacy can render outputs essentially indistinguishable on average. Thus, our results provide a fine-grained framework to quantify typical channel noise in quantum information and computation and unveil new phenomena in contraction coefficients, such as phase transitions for average contraction.