Converse for Multi-Server Single-Message PIR with Side Information

Abstract: Multi-server single-message private information retrieval is studied in the presence of side information. In this problem, $K$ independent messages are replicatively stored at $N$ non-colluding servers. The user wants to privately download one message from the servers without revealing the index of the message to any of the servers, leveraging its $M$ side information messages. We assume that the servers only know the number of the side information messages available at the user but not their indices. We prove a converse bound on the maximum download rates, which coincides with the known achievability scheme proposed by Kadhe {\it et. al.}. Hence, we characterize the capacity for this problem, which is $(1+\frac{1}{N}+\frac{1}{N^2}+\dots+\frac{1}{N^{\left\lceil \frac{K}{M+1}\right\rceil-1}})^{-1}$. The proof leverages a novel concept that we call {\it virtual side information}, which, for a fixed query and any message, identifies the side information that would be needed in order to recover that message.