The more than thirty years old issue of the information capacity of quantum communication channels was dramatically clarified during the last period, when a number of direct quantum coding theorems was discovered. To considerable extent this progress is due to an interplay between the quantum communication theory and quantum information ideas related to more recent development in quantum computing. It is remarkable, however, that many probabilistic tools underlying the treatment of quantum case have their roots, and in some cases direct prototypes, in classical Shannon's theory. This paper presents an outline of some basic ideas and results in that direction.
The sending station being the classical device can be eavesdropped by classical means. Dense coding and quantum nature of wave function give the additional resource to raise the safety of the quantum channel as a whole.
We present a quantum hyperdense coding protocol with hyperentanglement in polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom of photons first and then give the details for a quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol based on this quantum hyperdense coding protocol. This QSDC protocol has the advantage of having a higher capacity than the quantum communication protocols with a qubit system. Compared with the QSDC protocol based on superdense coding with $d$-dimensional systems, this QSDC protocol is more feasible as the preparation of a high-dimension quantum system is more difficult th…
We present a proof for the quantum channel coding theorem which relies on the fact that a randomly chosen code space typically is highly suitable for quantum error correction. In this sense, the proof is close to Shannon's original treatment of information transmission via a noisy classical channel.
The weak converse coding theorems have been proved for the quantum source and channel. The results give the lower bound for capacity of source and the upper bound for capacity of channel. The monotonicity of mutual quantum information have also been proved. PACS numbers: 03.65.Bz
A new proof of the direct part of the quantum channel coding theorem is shown based on a standpoint of quantum hypothesis testing. A packing procedure of mutually noncommutative operators is carried out to derive an upper bound on the error probability, which is similar to Feinstein's lemma in classical channel coding. The upper bound is used to show the proof of the direct part along with a variant of Hiai-Petz's theorem in quantum hypothesis testing.
A lower bound on the probability of decoding error of quantum communication channel is presented. The strong converse to the quantum channel coding theorem is shown immediately from the lower bound. It is the same as Arimoto's method exept for the difficulty due to non-commutativity.
Recently Xia and Song [Phys. Lett. A (In press)] have proposed a controlled quantum secure direct communication (CQSDC) protocol. They claimed that in their protocol only with the help of the controller Charlie, the receiver Alice can successfully extract the secret message from the sender Bob. In this letter, first we will show that within their protocol the controller Charlie's role can be excluded due to their unreasonable design. We then revise the Xia-Song CQSDC protocol such that its original advantages are retained and the CQSDC can be really realized.
The present work continues investigation of the capacities of measurement (quantum-classical) channels in the most general setting, initiated in~\cite{HCT}. The proof of coding theorems is given for the classical capacity and entanglement-assisted classical capacity of the measurement channel with arbitrary output alphabet, without assuming that the channel is given by a bounded operator-valued density.
Coding theorems and (strong) converses for memoryless quantum communication channels and quantum sources are proved: for the quantum source the coding theorem is reviewed, and the strong converse proven. For classical information transmission via quantum channels we give a new proof of the coding theorem, and prove the strong converse, even under the extended model of nonstationary channels. As a by-product we obtain a new proof of the famous Holevo bound. Then multi-user systems are investigated, and the capacity region for the quantum multiple access channel is determined. The last chapter c…
In this paper the quantum source coding theorem is obtained for a completely ergodic source. This results extends Shannon's classical theorem as well as Schumacher's quantum noiseless coding theorem for memoryless sources. The control of the memory effects requires earlier results of Hiai and Petz on high probability subspaces.
We prove direct quantum coding theorem for random quantum codes. The problem is separated into two parts: proof of distinguishability of codewords by receiver, and that of indistinguishability of codewords by environment (privacy). For a large class of codes, only privacy has to be checked.
In this paper we consider the transmission of classical information through a class of quantum channels with long-term memory, which are given by convex combinations of product channels. Hence, the memory of such channels is given by a Markov chain which is aperiodic but not irreducible. We prove the coding theorem and weak converse for this class of channels. The main techniques that we employ, are a quantum version of Feinstein's Fundamental Lemma and a generalization of Helstrom's Theorem.
The information spectrum approach gives general formulae for optimal rates of various information theoretic protocols, under minimal assumptions on the nature of the sources, channels and entanglement resources involved. This paper culminates in the derivation of the dense coding capacity for a noiseless quantum channel, assisted by arbitrary shared entanglement, using this approach. We also review the currently known coding theorems, and their converses, for protocols such as data compression for arbitrary quantum sources and transmission of classical information through arbitrary quantum cha…
A quantum secure direct communication network scheme is proposed with quantum superdense coding and decoy photons. The servers on a passive optical network prepare and measure the quantum signal, i.e., a sequence of the $d$-dimensional Bell states. After confirming the security of the photons received from the receiver, the sender codes his secret message on them directly. For preventing a dishonest server from eavesdropping, some decoy photons prepared by measuring one photon in the Bell states are used to replace some original photons. One of the users on the network can communicate any othe…
The more than thirty years old issue of the (classical) information capacity of quantum communication channels was dramatically clarified during the last years, when a number of direct quantum coding theorems was discovered. The present paper gives a self contained treatment of the subject, following as much in parallel as possible with classical information theory and, on the other side, stressing profound differences of the quantum case. An emphasis is made on recent results, such as general quantum coding theorems including cases of infinite (possibly continuous) alphabets and constrained i…
Quantum dense coding is one of the most important protocols in quantum communication. It derives from the idea of using quantum resources to boost the communication capacity and now serves as a key primitive across a variety of quantum information protocols. Here, we focus on the basic theoretical ideas behind quantum dense coding, discussing its development history from discrete and continuous variables to quantum networks, then to its variant protocols and applications in quantum secure communication. With this basic background in hand, we then review the main experimental achievements, from…
In the direct communication quantum channels the authorized recipient (Bob) and the non-authorized recipient (Eve) have different abilities for verification of received information. Bob can apply the feedback to commit the sender (Alice) to perform verification. Eve has to use for verification an indirect method based on the measurement of a set of incompatible observables enough for determination of the coding basis used by Alice. In the protocol of direct communication regular modification of coding basis and masking it with an equilibrium in average information carrier density matrix preven…
A scheme to achieve dense quantum coding for the quadrature amplitudes of the electromagnetic field is presented. The protocol utilizes shared entanglement provided by nondegenerate parametric down conversion in the limit of large gain to attain high efficiency. For a constraint in the mean number of photons n associated with modulation in the signal channel, the channel capacity for dense coding is found to be ln(1+n+n^2), which always beats coherent-state communication and surpasses squeezed-state communication for n>1. For n>>1, the dense coding capacity approaches twice that of either sche…
This paper introduces a new quantum protocol for secure direct communication. This protocol is based on Entanglement and Super-Dense coding. In this paper we present some basic definitions of entanglement in quantum mechanics, present how to use the maximally entangled states known as Bell States, and super dense coding technique to achieve secure direct message communication. Finally, we will apply some error models that could affect the transmission of the quantum data on the quantum channels, and how to treat these errors and acquire a safe transmission of the data.
We prove a theorem for coding mixed-state quantum signals. For a class of coding schemes, the von Neumann entropy $S$ of the density operator describing an ensemble of mixed quantum signal states is shown to be equal to the number of spin-$1/2$ systems necessary to represent the signal faithfully. This generalizes previous works on coding pure quantum signal states and is analogous to the Shannon's noiseless coding theorem of classical information theory. We also discuss an example of a more general class of coding schemes which {\em beat} the limit set by our theorem.
Superdense coding proved that entanglement-assisted quantum communications can improve the data transmission rates compared to classical systems. It allows sending 2 classical bits between the parties in exchange of 1 quantum bit and a pre-shared entangled Bell pair. This paper introduces a new protocol which is intended for distributed communication. Using a pre-shared entangled Bell pair and 1 classical bit 2,5 classical bits can be transmitted in average. This means not only valuable increase in capacity but the two-way distributed operation opens new fields of investigation.
This paper presents a new encryption scheme called Compact Coding that encodes information in time, phase, and intensity domains, simultaneously. While these approaches have previously been used one at a time, the proposed scheme brings to bear for the first time their strengths simultaneously leading to an increase in the secure information transfer rate. The proposed scheme is applicable to both optical fibers and free space optics, and can be considered as an alternative to polarization coding. This paper applies the proposed compact coding scheme to multi-photon tolerant quantum protocols …
Recently, a coding technique called position-based coding has been used to establish achievability statements for various kinds of classical communication protocols that use quantum channels. In the present paper, we apply this technique in the entanglement-assisted setting in order to establish lower bounds for error exponents, lower bounds on the second-order coding rate, and one-shot lower bounds. We also demonstrate that position-based coding can be a powerful tool for analyzing other communication settings. In particular, we reduce the quantum simultaneous decoding conjecture for entangle…
This paper considers a problem of quantum communication between parties that are connected through a network of quantum channels. The model in this paper assumes that there is no prior entanglement shared among any of the parties, but that classical communication is free. The task is to perfectly transfer an unknown quantum state from a source subsystem to a target subsystem, where both source and target are formed by ordered sets of some of the nodes. It is proved that a lower bound of the rate at which this quantum communication task is possible is given by the classical min-cut max-flow the…
This paper considers the problem of efficiently transmitting quantum states through a network. It has been known for some time that without additional assumptions it is impossible to achieve this task perfectly in general -- indeed, it is impossible even for the simple butterfly network. As additional resource we allow free classical communication between any pair of network nodes. It is shown that perfect quantum network coding is achievable in this model whenever classical network coding is possible over the same network when replacing all quantum capacities by classical capacities. More pre…
The classical-input quantum-output (cq) wiretap channel is a communication model involving a classical sender $X$, a legitimate quantum receiver $B$, and a quantum eavesdropper $E$. The goal of a private communication protocol that uses such a channel is for the sender $X$ to transmit a message in such a way that the legitimate receiver $B$ can decode it reliably, while the eavesdropper $E$ learns essentially nothing about which message was transmitted. The $\varepsilon $-one-shot private capacity of a cq wiretap channel is equal to the maximum number of bits that can be transmitted over the c…
The k-pair problem in network coding theory asks to send k messages simultaneously between k source-target pairs over a directed acyclic graph. In a previous paper [ICALP 2009, Part I, pages 622--633] the present authors showed that if a classical k-pair problem is solvable by means of a linear coding scheme, then the quantum k-pair problem over the same graph is also solvable, provided that classical communication can be sent for free between any pair of nodes of the graph. Here we address the main case that remained open in our previous work, namely whether nonlinear classical network coding…
We study quantum secure direct communication by using a general preshared quantum state and a generalization of dense coding. In this scenario, Alice is allowed to apply a unitary on the preshared state to encode her message, and the set of allowed unitaries forms a group. To decode the message, Bob is allowed to apply a measurement across his own system and the system he receives. In the worst scenario, we guarantee that Eve obtains no information for the message even when Eve access the joint system between the system that she intercepts and her original system of the preshared state. For a …
We consider ergodic causal classical-quantum channels (cq-channels) which additionally have a decaying input memory. In the first part we develop some structural properties of ergodic cq-channels and provide equivalent conditions for ergodicity. In the second part we prove the coding theorem with weak converse for causal ergodic cq-channels with decaying input memory. Our proof is based on the possibility to introduce joint input-output state for the cq-channels and an application of the Shannon-McMillan theorem for ergodic quantum states. In the last part of the paper it is shown how this res…
The development of automated gate specification for quantum communications and quantum networked computation opens up the way for malware designed at corrupting the automation software, changing the automated quantum communications protocols and algorithms. We study two types of attacks on automated quantum communications protocols and simulate these attacks on the superdense coding protocol, using remote access to IBM's Quantum Computers available through IBM Q Experience to simulate these attacks on what would be a low noise quantum communications network. The first type of attack leads to a…
