The Fourth-Order Coefficient of the Relative-Entropy Disturbance under Gaussian Coherent Noise: Closed Forms and Kubo-Mori Geometry

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

A pure encoded state of an approximate quantum code is perturbed by exp(i eps W) with W drawn from a centered Gaussian ensemble, and D(eps) denotes the relative-entropy disturbance of a reduced state. This paper derives the complete fourth-order coefficient of the mean disturbance in closed form, and identifies what that coefficient is made of. The derivation has two stages, and they assume different things. The first assumes nothing about the noise beyond that it is centered and Gaussian: the coefficient splits into five channels, one disconnected drift term and four connected ones, each a finite sum over pairs of Karhunen-Loeve modes of the covariance contracted with exact confluent divided differences of the logarithm. For any concrete noise model the whole quartic disturbance is then computable deterministically, with no sampling. The second stage adds one hypothesis, that the mode family is complete and orthonormal, and evaluates every channel. The device throughout is to substitute the integral representation of the divided differences before performing the index sums, which turns each Kronecker delta into a coincidence of resolvent labels, and then to integrate by parts in the ring Q[d_1][t, m_1, ..., m_4] of resolvent traces. No coefficient is fitted and no index contraction survives. What survives is four scalar functions of the Schmidt spectrum: Xi, chi, S_w and T. The assembled coefficient is a function of d_1, d_2 and those four alone, and four is the right number. The five functions 1, Xi, chi, T, S_w are proved linearly independent for every d_1 >= 3, analytically: a degeneration lemma confines the kernel to two dimensions and an expansion about the degenerate spectrum closes it, with discriminant d_1 (d_1 - 2)^2 / 4, which vanishes exactly at d_1 = 2, where the two relations that do make the set reducible are exhibited. The four are not a list that happens to close. Each is a contraction of the Kubo-Mori metric and the Amari-Chentsov skewness tensor on two operator directions, the identity and the maximal-coherence operator of the Schmidt eigenbasis; and those directions are not chosen but read off the mode two-point function, which the Gaussian ensemble fixes identically in the spectrum and for every d_1. The two are Kubo-Mori orthogonal, so chi is the squared classical Fisher length of the spectrum and S_w - chi the squared coherent length, bounded below sharply by d_1^2 (d_1 - 1). Every channel is a rational-weighted sum of metric and skewness contractions, with d_2 the only number entering from outside the geometry, and the skewness tensor enters the whole coefficient exactly once: at order d_2^0 and with weight -1/6, which is precisely the weight the relative-entropy expansion assigns to its own cubic term. The paper is explicit about scope. A dedicated section separates what is proved about the ensemble alone, which is everything, from what the code supplies, which is the Schmidt spectrum and the reading of log d_2 as an area term, and from where the gap lies. On a family of Pauli strings satisfying the Knill-Laflamme conditions on a stabilizer code the first-order mode objects vanish identically, so three of the five channels are not small but exactly zero, and the entire Amari-Chentsov contribution goes with them: the mechanism is a property of the ensemble, not of approximate codes in general. The step from the coefficient to a physical reconstruction-error floor requires fixing the backreaction at a chosen fraction of its Page value, a modelling decision that this paper does not make. The limitations section states four further points, including one archived measurement at d_1 = 3, d_2 = 12 which is located at a definite configuration, quantified, and left unadjudicated with the two reasons given. Every closed form is certified. The checks run from the defining index sums, from the raw five-channel sum built from the mode objects on an explicit orthonormal basis, from the geometric identifications, and, beyond the invariant ensemble, against direct simulation on structured families and stabilizer codes. Two of the latter are retrodictions: coefficients measured and archived earlier in this programme, before the present theory existed, are reproduced to +0.4 and 0.0 standard errors, with a previously unexplained connected excess given exactly by the connected-channel formula. The appendix evaluates the eighteen connected contractions on which the connected channel rests, and that evaluation is verified symbolically in the deposited code. This paper supersedes and absorbs three earlier preprints of this programme: 10.5281/zenodo.23644208, 10.5281/zenodo.23684111 and 10.5281/zenodo.23726789, together with the contraction appendix of 10.5281/zenodo.23621356. Those records remain available and are not withdrawn; readers should cite the present paper for any of their results, which are proved here in full and without reliance on unrefereed material. The verification scripts that generate every entry of the certification table, together with the symbolic verification of the appendix, are included in the attached archive under the MIT licence.