We discuss a Bosonic channel model with memory effects. It relies on a multi-mode squeezed (entangled) environment's state. The case of lossy Bosonic channels is analyzed in detail. We show that in the absence of input energy constraints the memory channels are equivalent to their memoryless counterparts. In the case of input energy constraint we provide lower and upper bounds for the memory 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 present a study of the achievable rates for classical information transmission via a lossy bosonic channel with memory, using homodyne detection. A comparison with the memoryless case shows that the presence of memory enhances the bit rate if information is encoded in collective states, i.e. states which are entangled over different uses of the channel.
We study the security of the information transmission between two honest parties realized through a lossy bosonic memory channel when losses are captured by a dishonest party. We then show that entangled inputs can enhance the private information of such a channel, which however does never overcome that of unentangled inputs in absence of memory.
We provide a simple and realistic model to study memory effects in a lossy bosonic quantum channel over arbitrary number of uses. The noise correlation among different uses is introduced by contiguous modes interactions which results in an exponential decay of the correlations over channel uses (modes). This model allows us to characterize the asymptotic behavior of the channel for classical information transmission.
We first derive for the general form of the fidelity for various bosonic channels. Thereby we give the fidelity of different quantum bosonic channel, possibly with product input and entangled input respectively, as examples. The properties of the fidelity are carefully examined.
The bosonic quantum channels have recently attracted a growing interest, motivated by the hope that they open a tractable approach to the generally hard problem of evaluating quantum channel capacities. These studies, however, have always been restricted to memoryless channels. Here, it is shown that the classical capacity of a bosonic Gaussian channel with memory can be significantly enhanced if entangled symbols are used instead of product symbols. For example, the capacity of a photonic channel with 70%-correlated thermal noise of one third the shot noise is enhanced by about 11% when using…
We study the information transmission through a quantum channel, defined over a continuous alphabet and losing its energy en route, in presence of correlated noise among different channel uses. We then show that entangled inputs improve the rate of transmission of such a channel.
Recently, there have been considerable progresses on the bounds of various quantum channel capacities for bosonic Gaussian channels. Especially, several upper bounds for the classical capacity and the quantum capacity on the bosonic Gaussian channels, via a technique known as quantum entropy power inequality, have been shed light on understanding the mysterious quantum-channel-capacity problems. However, upper bounds for the private capacity on quantum channels are still missing for the study on certain universal upper bounds. Here, we derive upper bounds on the private capacity for bosonic Ga…
We address the classical capacity of a quantum bosonic memory channel with additive noise, subject to an input energy constraint. The memory is modeled by correlated noise emerging from a Gauss-Markov process. Under reasonable assumptions, we show that the optimal modulation results from a "quantum water-filling" solution above a certain input energy threshold, similar to the optimal modulation for parallel classical Gaussian channels. We also derive analytically the optimal multimode input state above this threshold, which enables us to compute the capacity of this memory channel in the limit…
We show that when coherent-state encoding is employed in conjunction with coherent detection, the Bosonic broadcast channel is equivalent to a classical degraded Gaussian broadcast channel whose capacity region is dual to that of the classical Gaussian multiple-access channel. We further show that if a minimum output-entropy conjecture holds true, then the ultimate classical information capacity of the Bosonic broadcast channel can be achieved by a coherent-state encoding. We provide some evidence in support of the conjecture.
We prove an upper bound on the private capacity of the single-mode noiseless bosonic wiretap channel. Combined with a previous lower bound, we obtain the low photon-number asymptotic expression for the private capacity. We then show that the multiple-mode noiseless bosonic wiretap channel is equivalent to parallel single-mode channels, hence the single-mode bounds can be applied. Finally, we consider multiple-spatial-mode propagation through atmospheric turbulence, and derive a private-capacity lower bound that only requires second moments of the channel matrix.
We discuss the structure of decoherence-free subsystems for a bosonic channel affected by collective depolarization. A single use of the channel is defined as a transmission of a pair of bosonic modes. Collective depolarization consists in a random linear U(2) transformation of the respective mode operators, which is assumed to be identical for $N$ consecutive uses of the channel. We derive a recursion formula that characterizes the dimensionality of available decoherence-free subsystems in such a setting.
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 introduce a class of quantum channels called passive-environment bosonic channels. These channels are relevant from a quantum thermodynamical viewpoint because they correspond to the energy-preserving linear coupling of a bosonic system with a bosonic environment that is in a passive state (no energy can be extracted from it by using a unitary transformation) followed by discarding the environment. The Fock-majorization relation defined in [New J. Phys. 18, 073047 (2016)] happens to be especially useful in this context as, unlike regular majorization, it connects the disorder of a state tog…
We determine the ultimate classical information capacity of a linear time-invariant bosonic channel with additive phase-insensitive Gaussian noise. This channel can model fiber-optic communication at power levels below the threshold for significant nonlinear effects. We provide a general continuous-time result that gives the ultimate capacity for such a channel operating in the quasimonochromatic regime under an average power constraint. This ultimate capacity is compared with corresponding results for heterodyne and homodyne detection over the same channel.
The classical capacity of the lossy bosonic channel is calculated exactly. It is shown that its Holevo information is not superadditive, and that a coherent-state encoding achieves capacity. The capacity of far-field, free-space optical communications is given as an example.
I show that classical capacity per unit cost of noisy bosonic Gaussian channels can be attained by employing generalized on-off keying modulation format and a projective measurement of individual output states. This means that neither complicated collective measurements nor phase-sensitive detection is required to communicate over optical channels at the ultimate limit imposed by laws of quantum mechanics in the limit of low average cost.
A complete degradability analysis of one-mode Gaussian Bosonic channels is presented. We show that apart from the class of channels which are unitarily equivalent to the channels with additive classical noise, these maps can be characterized in terms of weak- and/or anti-degradability. Furthermore a new set of channels which have null quantum capacity is identified. This is done by exploiting the composition rules of one-mode Gaussian maps and the fact that anti-degradable channels can not be used to transfer quantum information.
The minimum Renyi and Wehrl output entropies are found for bosonic channels in which the signal photons are either randomly displaced by a Gaussian distribution (classical-noise channel), or in which they are coupled to a thermal environment through lossy propagation (thermal-noise channel). It is shown that the Renyi output entropies of integer orders z>1 and the output Wehrl entropy are minimized when the channel input is a coherent state.
Bosonic qubits encoded in continuous-variable systems provide a promising alternative to two-level qubits for quantum computation and communication. So far, photon loss has been the dominant source of errors in bosonic qubits, but the significant reduction of photon loss in recent bosonic qubit experiments suggests that dephasing errors should also be considered. However, a detailed understanding of the combined photon loss and dephasing channel is lacking. Here, we show that, unlike its constituent parts, the combined loss-dephasing channel is non-degradable, pointing towards a richer structu…
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.
We aim to devise feasible, efficient verification schemes for bosonic channels. To this end, we construct an average-fidelity witness that yields a tight lower bound for average fidelity plus a general framework for verifying optimal quantum channels. For both multi-mode unitary Gaussian channels and single-mode amplification channels, we present experimentally feasible average-fidelity witnesses and reliable verification schemes, for which sample complexity scales polynomially with respect to all channel specification parameters. Our verification scheme provides an approach to benchmark the p…
We obtain several analogs of real polar decomposition for even dimensional matrices. In particular, we decompose a non-degenerate matrix as a product of a Hamiltonian and an anti-symplectic matrix and under additional requirements we decompose a matrix as a skew-Hamiltonian and a symplectic matrix. We apply our results to study bosonic Gaussian channels up to inhomogeneous symplectic transforms.
We consider a line with noise in the simplest case. Loss does not add noise. Amplification via phase insensitive amplifiers do add noise. A lower bound of this capacity is the quantum analog to the Shannon capacity of a linear channel with additive white Gaussian noise, namely the difference of the Von Neumann entropy of the signal plus noise at the output of the line and the entropy of the noise alone. We show that this expression is indeed the capacity for the case of an amplifier with infinitesimal gain $G = 1+ε$, and for a cascade of an amplifier with arbitrary gain and a large loss, such …
The von Neumann entropy at the output of a bosonic channel with thermal noise is analyzed. Coherent-state inputs are conjectured to minimize this output entropy. Physical and mathematical evidence in support of the conjecture is provided. A stronger conjecture--that output states resulting from coherent-state inputs majorize the output states from other inputs--is also discussed.
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…
It is shown that phase-insensitive Gaussian bosonic channels are majorization-preserving over the set of passive states of the harmonic oscillator. This means that comparable passive states under majorization are transformed into equally comparable passive states. The proof relies on a new preorder relation called Fock-majorization, which coincides with regular majorization for passive states but also induces a mean photon number order, thereby connecting the concepts of energy and disorder of a quantum state. As an application, the consequences of majorization preservation are investigated in…
We prove that several known upper bounds on the classical capacity of thermal and additive noise bosonic channels are actually strong converse rates. Our results strengthen the interpretation of these upper bounds, in the sense that we now know that the probability of correctly decoding a classical message rapidly converges to zero in the limit of many channel uses if the communication rate exceeds these upper bounds. In order for these theorems to hold, we need to impose a maximum photon number constraint on the states input to the channel (the strong converse property need not hold if there …
The communication capacity of Gaussian bosonic channels with memory has recently attracted much interest. Here, we investigate a method to prepare the multimode entangled input symbol states for encoding classical information into these channels. In particular, we study the usefulness of a Gaussian matrix product state (GMPS) as an input symbol state, which can be sequentially generated although it remains heavily entangled for an arbitrary number of modes. We show that the GMPS can achieve more than 99.9% of the Gaussian capacity for Gaussian bosonic memory channels with a Markovian or non-Ma…
Previous work on the classical information capacities of bosonic channels has established the capacity of the single-user pure-loss channel, bounded the capacity of the single-user thermal-noise channel, and bounded the capacity region of the multiple-access channel. The latter is a multi-user scenario in which several transmitters seek to simultaneously and independently communicate to a single receiver. We study the capacity region of the bosonic broadcast channel, in which a single transmitter seeks to simultaneously and independently communicate to two different receivers. It is known that…
The additivity problem asks if the use of entanglement can boost the information-carrying capacity of a given channel beyond what is achievable by coding with simple product states only. This has recently been shown not to be the case for phase-insensitive one-mode Gaussian channels, but remains unresolved in general. Here we consider two general classes of bosonic noise channels, which include phase-insensitive Gaussian channels as special cases: these are beamsplitters with general, potentially non-Gaussian environment states and classical noise channels with general probabilistic noise. We …
We show the existence of a majorization ladder in bosonic Gaussian channels, that is, we prove that the channel output resulting from the $n\text{th}$ energy eigenstate (Fock state) majorizes the channel output resulting from the $(n\!+\!1)\text{th}$ energy eigenstate (Fock state). This reflects a remarkable link between the energy at the input of the channel and a disorder relation at its output as captured by majorization theory. This result was previously known in the special cases of a pure-loss channel and quantum-limited amplifier, and we achieve here its nontrivial generalization to any…
A minimal energy quantum superposition of two maximally distinguishable, isoenergetic single mode Gaussian states is used to construct the system-environment representation of a class of linear bosonic quantum channels acting on a single bosonic mode. The quantum channels are further defined by unitary dynamics of the system and environment corresponding to either a passive linear optical element $U_{\text{BS}}$ or two-mode squeezing $U_{\text{TM}}$. The notion of nonclassicality distance is used to show that the initial environment superposition state becomes maximally nonclassical as the con…
Upper bounds on the secret-key-agreement capacity of a quantum channel serve as a way to assess the performance of practical quantum-key-distribution protocols conducted over that channel. In particular, if a protocol employs a quantum repeater, achieving secret-key rates exceeding these upper bounds is a witness to having a working quantum repeater. In this paper, we extend a recent advance [Liuzzo-Scorpo et al., arXiv:1705.03017] in the theory of the teleportation simulation of single-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels such that it now applies to the relative entropy of entanglement me…
We address the estimation of the loss parameter of a bosonic channel probed by Gaussian signals. We derive the ultimate quantum bound on precision and show that no improvement may be obtained by having access to the environment degrees of freedom. We found that, for small losses, the variance of the optimal estimator is proportional to the loss parameter itself, a result that represents a qualitative improvement over the shot noise limit. An observable based on the symmetric logarithmic derivative is derived, which attains the ultimate bound and may be implemented using Gaussian operations and…
We investigate the quantum-secure covert-communication capabilities of lossy thermal-noise bosonic channels, the quantum-mechanical model for many practical channels. We determine the expressions for the covert capacity of these channels: $L_{\text{no-EA}}$, when Alice and Bob share only a classical secret, and $L_{\text{EA}}$, when they benefit from entanglement assistance. We find that entanglement assistance alters the fundamental scaling law for covert communication. Instead of $L_{\text{no-EA}}\sqrt{n}-r_{\text{no-EA}}(n)$, $r_{\text{no-EA}}(n)=o(\sqrt{n})$, entanglement assistance allows…
The extremality of Gaussian states is exploited to show that Gaussian states are the most robust, among all possible bipartite continuous-variable states at fixed energy, against disentanglement due to noisy evolutions in Markovian Gaussian channels involving dissipation and thermal hopping. This proves a conjecture raised recently in [M. Allegra, P. Giorda, and M. G. A. Paris, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 105}, 100503 (2010)], providing a rigorous validation of the conclusions of that work. The problem of identifying continuous variable states with maximum resilience to entanglement damping in more …
We study the quantum capacity of continuous variable dephasing channel, which is a notable example of non-Gaussian quantum channel. We prove that a single letter formula applies. We then consider input energy restriction and show that by increasing it, the capacity saturates to a finite value. The optimal input state is found to be diagonal in the Fock basis and with a distribution that is a discrete version of a Gaussian. Relations between its mean/variance and dephasing rate/input energy are put forward. We also show that quantum capacity decays exponentially for large values of dephasing ra…
We present an algorithm for calculation of the Gaussian classical capacity of a quantum bosonic memory channel with additive Gaussian noise. The algorithm, restricted to Gaussian input states, is applicable to all channels with noise correlations obeying certain conditions and works in the full input energy domain, beyond previous treatments of this problem. As an illustration, we study the optimal input states and capacity of a quantum memory channel with Gauss-Markov noise [J. Schäfer, Phys. Rev. A 80, 062313 (2009)]. We evaluate the enhancement of the transmission rate when using these opti…
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…
A scheme for transferring classical information over a lossy bosonic channel is proposed by generalizing the proposal presented in Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 240502 (2011) by Guha. It employs codewords formed by products of coherent states of fixed mean photon number with multiple phases which, through a passive unitary transformation, reduce to a Pulse-Position Modulation code with multiple pulse phases. The maximum information rate achievable with optimal, yet difficult to implement, detection schemes is computed and shown to saturate the classical capacity of the channel in the low energy regime…
Upper bounds for private communication over quantum channels can be derived by adopting channel simulation, protocol stretching, and relative entropy of entanglement. All these ingredients have led to single-letter upper bounds to the secret key capacity which can be directly computed over suitable resource states. For bosonic Gaussian channels, the tightest upper bounds have been derived by employing teleportation simulation over asymptotic resource states, namely the asymptotic Choi matrices of these channels. In this work, we adopt a different approach. We show that teleporting over an anal…
We analyze the role of nonlinear Hamiltonians in bosonic channels. We show that the information capacity as a function of the channel energy is increased with respect to the corresponding linear case, although only when the energy used for driving the nonlinearity is not considered as part of the energetic cost and when dispersive effects are negligible.
We consider a model of bosonic memory channel, which induces correlations among the transmitted signals. The application of suitable unitary transformations at encoding and decoding stages allows the complete removal of correlations, mapping the memory channel into a memoryless one. However, such transformations, being global over an arbitrary large number of bosonic modes, are not realistically implementable. We then introduce a family of efficiently realizable transformations which can be used to partially remove correlations among errors, and we quantify the reduction of the gap with memory…
Operator-sum or Kraus representations for single-mode Bosonic Gaussian channels are developed, and several of their consequences explored. Kraus operators are employed to bring out the manner in which the unphysical matrix transposition map when accompanied by injection of a threshold classical noise becomes a physical channel. The action of the quantum-limited attenuator and amplifier channels as simply scaling maps on suitable quasi-probabilities in phase space is examined in the Kraus picture. Consideration of cumulants is used to examine the issue of fixed points. In the cases of entanglem…
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…