Entropy and expansion

Abstract

Shearer's inequality bounds the sum of joint entropies of random variables in terms of the total joint entropy. We give another lower bound for the same sum in terms of the individual entropies when the variables are functions of independent random seeds. The inequality involves a constant characterizing the expansion properties of the system. Our results generalize to entropy inequalities used in recent work in invariant settings, including the edge-vertex inequality for factor-of-IID processes, Bowen's entropy inequalities, and Bollob\'as's entropy bounds in random regular graphs. The proof method yields inequalities for other measures of randomness, including covariance. As an application, we give upper bounds for independent sets in both finite and infinite graphs.