Relative Entropy Decay via BKM coercivity for Quantum Markov Semigroups

We introduce the notion of the BKM coercivity constant and show that the positivity of this constant governs the exponential relative entropy decay of the semigroup. Indeed, we prove that the modified log-Sobolev constant is equivalent to the BKM coercivity constant up to a constant depending on the asymptotic conditional expectation. We also discover that the BKM coercivity constants for matrix amplifications are already attained with a qubit auxiliary system, which also coincides with the GNS spectral gap of the generating Lindbladian. As a corollary, we establish a criterion that the complete modified log-Sobolev inequality holds if and only if the GNS gap of the semigroup is strictly positive. All the discussion above applies to quantum Markov semigroups that admit a faithful asymptotic conditional expectation as long-time equilibration, with no detailed balance condition assumed. As an application, we show the finite-dimensional Chen-Kastoryano-Gilyén Gibbs samplers always satisfy the complete modified log-Sobolev inequality.