On the failure of subadditivity of the Wigner–Yanase entropy

It was recently shown by Hansen that the Wigner–Yanase entropy is, for general states of quantum systems, not subadditive with respect to decomposition into two subsystems, although this property is known to hold for pure states. We investigate the question whether the weaker property of subadditivity for pure states with respect to decomposition into more than two subsystems holds. This property would have interesting applications in quantum chemistry. We show, however, that it does not hold in general, and provide a counterexample. Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant PHY-0353181 and by an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. This paper may be reproduced, in its entirety, for non-commerical purposes.