We study the communication capacities of bosonic broadband channels in the presence of different sources of noise. In particular we analyze lossy channels in presence of white noise and thermal bath. In this context, we provide a numerical solution for the entanglement assisted capacity and upper and lower bounds for the classical and quantum capacities.
We calculate the information capacities of a time-correlated amplitude-damping channel, provided the sender and receiver share prior entanglement. Our analytical results show that the noisy channel with zero capacity can transmit information if it has finite memory. The capacities increase as the memory increases attaining maximum value for perfect memory channel.
We survey what is known about the information transmitting capacities of quantum channels, and give a proposal for how to calculate some of these capacities using linear programming.
By using the Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland (HSW) theorem and through solving eigenvalues of states out from the quantum noisy channels directly, or with the help of the Bloch sphere representation, or Stokes parametrization representation, we investigate the classical information capacities of some well-known quantum noisy channels.
We calculate the entanglement-assisted and unassisted channel capacities of an exactly solvable spin star system, which models the quantum dephasing channel. The capacities for this non-Markovian model exhibit a strong dependence on the coupling strengths of the bath spins with the system, the bath temperature, and the number of bath spins. For equal couplings and bath frequencies, the channel becomes periodically noiseless.
Entanglement shared between the two ends of a quantum communication channel has been shown to be a useful resource in increasing both the quantum and classical capacities for these channels. The entanglement-assisted capacities were derived assuming an unlimited amount of shared entanglement per channel use. In this paper, bounds are derived on the minimum amount of entanglement required per use of a channel, in order to asymptotically achieve the capacity. This is achieved by introducing a class of entanglement-assisted quantum codes. Codes for classes of qubit channels are shown to achieve t…
We propose a method to detect lower bounds to quantum capacities of a noisy quantum communication channel by means of few measurements. The method is easily implementable and does not require any knowledge about the channel. We test its efficiency by studying its performance for most well known single qubit noisy channels and for the generalised Pauli channel in arbitrary finite dimension.
The quantum analog of the classical erasure channel provides a simple example of a channel whose asymptotic capacity for faithful transmission of intact quantum states, with and without the assistance of a two-way classical side channel, can be computed exactly. We derive the quantum and classical capacities for the quantum erasure channel and related channels, and compare them to the depolarizing channel, for which only upper and lower bounds on the capacities are known.
Classical capacity of unital qubit channels is well known, whereas that of nonunital qubit channels is not. We find lower and upper bounds on classical capacity of nonunital qubit channels by using a recently developed decomposition technique relating nonunital and unital positive qubit maps.
The maximum rates for information transmission through noisy quantum channels has primarily been developed for memoryless channels, where the noise on each transmitted state is treated as independent. Many real world communication channels experience noise which is modelled better by errors that are correlated between separate channel uses. In this paper, upper bounds on the classical information capacities of a class of quantum memory channels are derived. The class of channels consists of indecomposable quantum memory channels, a generalization of classical indecomposable finite-state channe…
We calculate the entanglement assisted capacity of a multimode bosonic channel with loss. As long as the efficiency of the channel is above 50%, the superdense coding effect can be used to transmit more bits than those that can be stored in the message sent down the channel. Bounds for the other capacities of the multimode channel are also provided.
For quantum states of two subsystems, entanglement measures are related to capacities of communication tasks -- highly entangled states give higher capacity of transmitting classical as well as quantum information. However, we show that this is no more the case in general: quantum capacities of multi-access channels, motivated by communication in quantum networks, do not have any relation with genuine multiparty entanglement measures. Along with revealing the structural richness of multi-access channel capacities, this gives us a tool to classify multiparty quantum states from the perspective …
We prove that a broad array of capacities of a quantum channel are continuous. That is, two channels that are close with respect to the diamond norm have correspondingly similar communication capabilities. We first show that the classical capacity, quantum capacity, and private classical capacity are continuous, with the variation on arguments epsilon apart bounded by a simple function of epsilon and the channel's output dimension. Our main tool is an upper bound of the variation of output entropies of many copies of two nearby channels given the same initial state; the bound is linear in the …
We review in a unified way a recently proposed method to detect properties of unknown quantum channels and lower bounds to quantum capacities, without resorting to full quantum process tomography. The method is based on the preparation of a fixed bipartite entangled state at the channel input or, equivalently, an ensemble of an overcomplete set of single-system states, along with few local measurements at the channel output.
We study classical capacities of quantum multi-access channels in geometric terms revealing breaking of additivity of Holevo-like capacity. This effect is purely quantum since, as one points out, any classical multi-access channels have their regions additive. The observed non-additivity in quantum version presented here seems to be the first effect of this type with no additional resources like side classical or quantum information (or entanglement) involved. The simplicity of quantum channels involved resembles butterfly effect in case of classical channel with two senders and two receivers.
We introduce potential capacities of quantum channels in an operational way and provide upper bounds for these quantities, which quantify the ultimate limit of usefulness of a channel for a given task in the best possible context. Unfortunately, except for a few isolated cases, potential capacities seem to be as hard to compute as their "plain" analogues. We thus study upper bounds on some potential capacities: For the classical capacity, we give an upper bound in terms of the entanglement of formation. To establish a bound for the quantum and private capacity, we first "lift" the channel to a…
We test a general method to detect lower bounds of the quantum channel capacity for two-qubit correlated channels. We consider in particular correlated dephasing, depolarising and amplitude damping channels. We show that the method is easily implementable, it does not require a priori knowledge about the channels, and it is very efficient, since it does not rely on full quantum process tomography.
Quantum entropy inequalities are studied. Some quantum entropy inequalities are obtained by several methods. For entanglement breaking channel, we show that the entanglement-assisted classical capacity is upper bounded by $\log d$. A relationship between entanglement-assisted and one-shot unassisted capacities is obtained. This relationship shows the entanglement-assisted channel capacity is upper bounded by the sum of $\log d$ and the one-shot unassisted classical capacity.
Reciprocal pairs of quantum channels are defined as completely positive transformations which admit a rigid, distance-preserving, yet not completely-positive transformation that allows to reproduce the outcome of one from the corresponding outcome of the other. From a classical perspective these transmission lines should exhibit the same communication efficiency. This is no longer the case in the quantum setting: explicit asymmetric behaviours are reported studying the classical communication capacities of reciprocal pairs of depolarizing and Weyl-covariant channels.
We study information transmission over a fully correlated amplitude damping channel acting on two qubits. We derive the single-shot classical channel capacity and show that entanglement is needed to achieve the channel best performance. We discuss the degradability properties of the channel and evaluate the quantum capacity for any value of the noise parameter. We finally compute the entanglement-assisted classical channel capacity.
We introduce a general model for a lossy bosonic memory channel and calculate the classical and the quantum capacity, proving that coherent state encoding is optimal. The use of a proper set of collective field variables allows to unravel the memory, showing that the n-fold concatenation of the memory channel is unitarily equivalent to the direct product of n single-mode lossy bosonic channels.
We investigate the capacity of bosonic quantum channels for the transmission of quantum information. Achievable rates are determined from measurable moments of the channel by showing that every channel can asymptotically simulate a Gaussian channel which is characterized by second moments of the initial channel. We calculate the quantum capacity for a class of Gaussian channels, including channels describing optical fibers with photon losses, by proving that Gaussian encodings are optimal. Along the way we provide a complete characterization of degradable Gaussian channels and those arising fr…
We extend a recent method to detect lower bounds to the quantum capacity of quantum communication channels by considering realistic scenarios with general input probe states and arbitrary detection procedures at the output. Realistic certification relies on a new bound for the coherent information of a quantum channel that can be applied with arbitrary bipartite mixed input states and generalized output measurements.
We present upper bounds on the quantum and private capacity of single-mode, phase-insentitive Bosonic Gaussian Channels based on degradable extensions. Our findings are state-of-the-art in the following parameter regions: low temperature and high transmissivity for the thermal attenuator, low temperature for additive Gaussian noise, high temperature and intermediate amplification for the thermal amplifier.
We show how to compute or at least to estimate various capacity-related quantities for Bosonic Gaussian channels. Among these are the coherent information, the entanglement assisted classical capacity, the one-shot classical capacity, and a new quantity involving the transpose operation, shown to be a general upper bound on the quantum capacity, even allowing for finite errors. All bounds are explicitly evaluated for the case of a one-mode channel with attenuation/amplification and classical noise.
The capacity of noisy quantum channels characterizes the highest rate at which information can be reliably transmitted and it is therefore of practical as well as fundamental importance. Capacities of classical channels are computed using alternating optimization schemes, called Blahut-Arimoto algorithms. In this work, we generalize classical Blahut-Arimoto algorithms to the quantum setting. In particular, we give efficient iterative schemes to compute the capacity of channels with classical input and quantum output, the quantum capacity of less noisy channels, the thermodynamic capacity of qu…
We present an effcient experimental procedure that certifies non vanishing quantum capacities for qubit noisy channels. Our method is based on the use of a fixed bipartite entangled state, where the system qubit is sent to the channel input. A particular set of local measurements is performed at the channel output and the ancilla qubit mode, obtaining lower bounds to the quantum capacities for any unknown channel with no need of a quantum process tomography. The entangled qubits have a Bell state configuration and are encoded in photon polarization. The lower bounds are found by estimating the…
We investigate the quantum capacity of noisy quantum channels which can be represented by coupling a system to an effectively small environment. A capacity formula is derived for all cases where both system and environment are two-dimensional--including all extremal qubit channels. Similarly, for channels acting on higher dimensional systems we show that the capacity can be determined if the channel arises from a sufficiently small coupling to a qubit environment. Extensions to instances of channels with larger environment are provided and it is shown that bounds on the capacity with unconstra…
We evaluate the information capacities of a lossy bosonic channel with correlated noise. The model generalizes the one recently discussed in [Phys. Rev. A 77, 052324 (2008)], where memory effects come from the interaction with correlated environments. Environmental correlations are quantified by a multimode squeezing parameter, which vanishes in the memoryless limit. We show that a global encoding/decoding scheme, which involves input entangled states among different channel uses, is always preferable with respect to a local one in the presence of memory. Moreover, in a certain range of the pa…
Optimization methods aimed at estimating the capacities of a general Gaussian channel are developed. Specifically evaluation of classical capacity as maximum of the Holevo information is pursued over all possible Gaussian encodings for the lossy bosonic channel, but extension to other capacities and other Gaussian channels seems feasible. Solutions for both memoryless and memory channels are presented. It is first dealt with single use (single-mode) channel where the capacity dependence from channel's parameters is analyzed providing a full classification of the possible cases. Then it is deal…
We analyze quantum network primitives which are entanglement-breaking. We show superadditivity of quantum and classical capacity regions for quantum multiple-access channel and quantum butterfly network. Since the effects are especially visible at high noise they suggest that quantum information effects may be particularly helpful in the case of the networks with occasional high noise rates. To our knowledge the present effects provide the first qualitative borderline between superadditivities of bipartite and multipartite systems.
Capacities of quantum channels and decoherence times both quantify the extent to which quantum information can withstand degradation by interactions with its environment. However, calculating capacities directly is known to be intractable in general. Much recent work has focused on upper bounding certain capacities in terms of more tractable quantities such as specific norms from operator theory. In the meantime, there has also been substantial recent progress on estimating decoherence times with techniques from analysis and geometry, even though many hard questions remain open. In this articl…
Quantum communication channels and quantum memories are the fundamental building blocks of large-scale quantum communication networks. Estimating their capacity to transmit and store quantum information is crucial in order to assess the performance of quantum communication systems, and to detect useful communication paths among the nodes of future quantum networks. However, the estimation of quantum capacities is a challenging task for continuous variable systems, such as the radiation field, for which a complete characterization via quantum tomography is practically unfeasible. Here we introd…
We show the equivalence of two different notions of quantum channel capacity: that which uses the entanglement fidelity as its criterion of success in transmission, and that which uses the minimum fidelity of pure states in a subspace of the input Hilbert space as its criterion. As a corollary, any source with entropy rate less than the capacity may be transmitted with high entanglement fidelity. We also show that a restricted class of encodings is sufficient to transmit any quantum source which may be transmitted on a given channel. This enables us to simplify a known upper bound for the chan…
Strong Converses for Quantum Channel Capacities from Blowing-Up Lemmata
School of Mathematics, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM)(基础科学研究所数学学院);Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore(新加坡国立大学量子技术中心);Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore(新加坡国立大学电气与计算机工程系)
The rates at which classical and quantum information can be simultaneously transmitted from two spatially separated senders to a single receiver over an arbitrary quantum channel are characterized. Two main results are proved in detail. The first describes the region of rates at which one sender can send classical information while the other sends quantum information. The second describes those rates at which both senders can send quantum information. For each of these situations, an example of a channel is given for which the associated region admits a single-letter description. This is the a…
We consider quantum key distribution (QKD) and entanglement distribution using a single-sender multiple-receiver pure-loss bosonic broadcast channel. We determine the unconstrained capacity region for the distillation of bipartite entanglement and secret key between the sender and each receiver, whenever they are allowed arbitrary public classical communication. A practical implication of our result is that the capacity region demonstrated drastically improves upon rates achievable using a naive time-sharing strategy, which has been employed in previously demonstrated network QKD systems. We s…
We analyze different aspects of multiparty communication over quantum memoryless channels and generalize some of key results known from bipartite channels to that of multiparty scenario. In particular, we introduce multiparty versions of minimal subspace transmission fidelity and entanglement transmission fidelity. We also provide alternative, local, versions of fidelities and show their equivalence to the global ones in context of capacity regions defined. The equivalence of two different capacity notions with respect to two types of the fidelities is proven. In analogy to bipartite case it i…
We investigate the capacity of three symmetric quantum states in three real dimensions to carry classical information. Several such capacities have already been defined, depending on what operations are allowed in the sending and receiving protocols. These include the C_{1,1} capacity, which is the capacity achievable if separate measurements must be used for each of the received states, and the C_{1,infinity} capacity, which is the capacity achievable if joint measurements are allowed on the tensor product of all the received states. We discover a new classical information capacity of quantum…
We determine the capacity of the classical compound quantum wiretapper channel with channel state information at the transmitter. Moreover we derive a lower bound on the capacity of this channel without channel state information and determine the capacity of the classical quantum compound wiretap channel with channel state information at the transmitter.
We study quantum channels that vary on time in a deterministic way, that is, they change in an independent but not identical way from one to another use. We derive coding theorems for the classical entanglement assisted and unassisted capacities. We then specialize the theory to lossy bosonic quantum channels and show the existence of contrasting examples where capacities can or cannot be drawn from the limiting behavior of the lossy parameter.
We exhibit discrete memoryless quantum channels whose quantum capacity assisted by two-way classical communication, $Q_2$, exceeds their unassisted one-shot Holevo capacity $C_H$. These channels may be thought of as having a data input and output, along with a control input that partly influences, and a control output that partly reveals, which of a set of unitary evolutions the data undergoes en route from input to output. The channel is designed so that the data's evolution can be exactly inferred by a classically coordinated processing of 1) the control output, and 2) a reference system ent…
Following initial work by Gregoratti and Werner [J. Mod. Optics 50, 913-933, 2003 and quant-ph/0403092] and Hayden and King [quant-ph/0409026], we study the problem of the capacity of a quantum channel assisted by a "friendly (channel) environment" that can locally measure and communicate classical messages to the receiver. Previous work [quant-ph/0505038] has yielded a capacity formula for the quantum capacity under this kind of help from the environment. Here we study the problem of the environment-assisted classical capacity, which exhibits a somewhat richer structure (at least, it seems to…
We consider classical message transmission under entanglement assistance for compound memoryless and arbitrarily varying quantum channels. In both cases, we prove general coding theorems together with corresponding weak converse bounds. In this way, we obtain single-letter characterizations of the entanglement-assisted classical capacities for both channel models. Moreover, we show that the entanglement-assisted classical capacity does exhibit no strong converse property for some compound quantum channels for the average as well as the maximal error criterion. A strong converse to the entangle…
A generalization of the superactivation of quantum channel capacities to the case of n>2 channels is considered. An explicit example of such superactivation for the 1-shot quantum zero-error capacity is constructed for n=3. Some implications of this example and its reformulation on terms of quantum measurements are described.
A quantum communication channel can be put to many uses: it can transmit classical information, private classical information, or quantum information. It can be used alone, with shared entanglement, or together with other channels. For each of these settings there is a capacity that quantifies a channel's potential for communication. In this short review, I summarize what is known about the various capacities of a quantum channel, including a discussion of the relevant additivity questions. I also give some indication of potentially interesting directions for future research.
In this article we consider flagged extensions of convex combination of quantum channels, and find general sufficient conditions for the degradability of the flagged extension. An immediate application is a bound on the quantum $Q$ and private $P$ capacities of any channel being a mixture of a unitary map and another channel, with the probability associated to the unitary component being larger than $1/2$. We then specialize our sufficient conditions to flagged Pauli channels, obtaining a family of upper bounds on quantum and private capacities of Pauli channels. In particular, we establish ne…
A wide variety of communication channels employ the quantized electromagnetic field to convey information. Their communication capacity crucially depends on losses associated to spatial characteristics of the channel such as diffraction and antenna design. Here we focus on the communication via a finite pupil, showing that diffraction is formally described as a memory channel. By exploiting this equivalence we then compute the communication capacity of an optical refocusing system, modeled as a converging lens. Even though loss of information originates from the finite pupil of the lens, we sh…
Quantum amplifier channels are at the core of several physical processes. Not only do they model the optical process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion, but the transformation corresponding to an amplifier channel also describes the physics of the dynamical Casimir effect in superconducting circuits, the Unruh effect, and Hawking radiation. Here we study the communication capabilities of quantum amplifier channels. Invoking a recently established minimum output-entropy theorem for single-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels, we determine capacities of quantum-limited amplifier chann…
Quantum communication is an important branch of quantum information science, promising unconditional security to classical communication and providing the building block of a future large-scale quantum network. Noise in realistic quantum communication channels imposes fundamental limits on the communication rates of various quantum communication tasks. It is therefore crucial to identify or bound the quantum capacities of a quantum channel. Here, we consider Gaussian channels that model energy loss and thermal noise errors in realistic optical and microwave communication channels and study the…
We show that entangling capacities based on the Jamiolkowski isomorphism may be used to place lower bounds on the communication capacities of arbitrary bipartite unitaries. Therefore, for these definitions, the relations which have been previously shown for two-qubit unitaries also hold for arbitrary dimensions. These results are closely related to the theory of the entanglement-assisted capacity of channels. We also present more general methods for producing ensembles for communication from initial states for entanglement creation.
The set of Multi-level Amplitude Damping (MAD) quantum channels is introduced as a generalization of the standard qubit Amplitude Damping Channel to quantum systems of finite dimension $d$. In the special case of $d=3$, by exploiting degradability, data-processing inequalities, and channel isomorphism, we compute the associated quantum and private classical capacities for a rather wide class of maps, extending the set of solvable models known so far. We proceed then to the evaluation of the entanglement assisted, quantum and classical, capacities.