Han's entropy inequality 2026-09-24
For a random vector ,
This is equivalent to Han's inequality for relative entropy after expansion against a product reference measure.
For , Han's inequality for relative entropy states that, when ,
First prove the chain rule for relative entropy. For two coordinates,
Taking expectation under gives
and iteration proves the chain rule for any finite product.
Write for the successive conditional distributions. Since is a product, the chain rule gives
For a fixed omitted coordinate , applying the chain rule in the remaining coordinate order gives
The convexity of Kullback-Leibler divergence implies that removing from the conditioning can only decrease each averaged conditional divergence. Summing over , each full conditional increment occurs for exactly the indices , and therefore
which is the claimed inequality. Equivalently, this is Han's entropy inequality after expanding each divergence: the product-reference cross-entropy terms cancel because they are modular.
Define the tilted probability measure by ; this is normalized because . Then
Let average only coordinate , keeping fixed. The marginal density of relative to is , and hence
Moreover,
Substituting Han's inequality for relative entropy and rearranging gives the tensorization of entropy