Some remarks on classical and classical-quantum sphere packing bounds: Rényi vs. Kullback-Leibler

We review the use of binary hypothesis testing for the derivation of the sphere packing bound in channel coding, pointing out a key difference between the classical and the classical-quantum setting. In the first case, two ways of using the binary hypothesis testing are known, which lead to the same bound written in different analytical expressions. The first method historically compares output distributions induced by the codewords with an auxiliary fixed output distribution, and naturally leads to an expression using the Renyi divergence. The second method compares the given channel with an auxiliary one and leads to an expression using the Kullback-Leibler divergence. In the classical-quantum case, due to a fundamental difference in the quantum binary hypothesis testing, these two approaches lead to two different bounds, the first being the "right" one. We discuss the details of this phenomenon, which suggests the question of whether auxiliary channels are used in the optimal way in the second approach and whether recent results on the exact strong-converse exponent in classical-quantum channel coding might play a role in the considered problem