For equiprobable quantum code states with average decoding error , data-processing inequality for quantum relative entropy applied to the binary test for quantum decoding success gives
for . Here is binary entropy. The case is trivial. Taking the supremum over allowed input distributions yields a code-size bound in terms of the largest Holevo quantity; at the undivided inequality is vacuous.
Choose uniform on and zero outside it, so the marginal density operator of is . Define the binary test for quantum decoding success by
Each is a positive contraction. The computational basis blocks of are these effects on and zero elsewhere. Thus , making a POVM on the whole space, including labels outside .
On the correlated classical-quantum state, its acceptance probability is
On the product of the marginal density operators,
since . The two requested probabilities are therefore and . In the notation for binary output density operators, the measurement channel sends the joint input to and the product input to ; their parameters describe outcome one, not outcome zero.