Quantum broadcast channels

We consider quantum channels with one sender and two receivers, used in several different ways for the simultaneous transmission of independent messages. We begin by extending the technique of superposition coding to quantum channels with a classical input to give a general achievable region. We also give outer bounds to the capacity regions for various special cases from the classical literature and prove that superposition coding is optimal for a class of channels. We then consider extensions of superposition coding for channels with a quantum input, where some of the messages transmitted are quantum instead of classical, in the sense that the parties establish bipartite or tripartite GHZ entanglement. We conclude by using state merging to give achievable rates for establishing bipartite entanglement between different pairs of parties with the assistance of free classical communication.Comment: 15 pages; IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 57, no. 10, October 201

Capacities of Quantum Amplifier Channels

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 channels in three different scenarios. First, we establish the capacities of quantum-limited amplifier channels for one of the most general communication tasks, characterized by the trade-off between classical communication, quantum communication, and entanglement generation or consumption. Second, we establish capacities of quantum-limited amplifier channels for the trade-off between public classical communication, private classical communication, and secret key generation. Third, we determine the capacity region for a broadcast channel induced by the quantum-limited amplifier channel, and we also show that a fully quantum strategy outperforms those achieved by classical coherent detection strategies. In all three scenarios, we find that the capacities significantly outperform communication rates achieved with a naive time-sharing strategy.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review

Energy-constrained two-way assisted private and quantum capacities of quantum channels

With the rapid growth of quantum technologies, knowing the fundamental characteristics of quantum systems and protocols is essential for their effective implementation. A particular communication setting that has received increased focus is related to quantum key distribution and distributed quantum computation. In this setting, a quantum channel connects a sender to a receiver, and their goal is to distill either a secret key or entanglement, along with the help of arbitrary local operations and classical communication (LOCC). In this work, we establish a general theory of energy-constrained, LOCC-assisted private and quantum capacities of quantum channels, which are the maximum rates at which an LOCC-assisted quantum channel can reliably establish secret key or entanglement, respectively, subject to an energy constraint on the channel input states. We prove that the energy-constrained squashed entanglement of a channel is an upper bound on these capacities. We also explicitly prove that a thermal state maximizes a relaxation of the squashed entanglement of all phase-insensitive, single-mode input bosonic Gaussian channels, generalizing results from prior work. After doing so, we prove that a variation of the method introduced in [Goodenough et al., New J. Phys. 18, 063005 (2016)] leads to improved upper bounds on the energy-constrained secret-key-agreement capacity of a bosonic thermal channel. We then consider a multipartite setting and prove that two known multipartite generalizations of the squashed entanglement are in fact equal. We finally show that the energy-constrained, multipartite squashed entanglement plays a role in bounding the energy-constrained LOCC-assisted private and quantum capacity regions of quantum broadcast channels.Comment: 31 pages, 6 figure

Applications of position-based coding to classical communication over quantum channels

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 entanglement-assisted or unassisted communication over a quantum multiple access channel to open questions in multiple quantum hypothesis testing. We then determine achievable rate regions for entanglement-assisted or unassisted classical communication over a quantum multiple-access channel, when using a particular quantum simultaneous decoder. The achievable rate regions given in this latter case are generally suboptimal, involving differences of Renyi-2 entropies and conditional quantum entropies.Comment: v4: 44 pages, v4 includes a simpler proof for an upper bound on one-shot entanglement-assisted capacity, also found recently and independently in arXiv:1804.0964

Classical capacity of bosonic broadcast communication and a new minimum output entropy conjecture

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 tightest available lower bound on the capacity of the single-user thermal-noise channel is that channel's capacity if, as conjectured, the minimum von Neumann entropy at the output of a bosonic channel with additive thermal noise occurs for coherent-state inputs. Evidence in support of this minimum output entropy conjecture has been accumulated, but a rigorous proof has not been obtained. In this paper, we propose a new minimum output entropy conjecture that, if proved to be correct, will establish that the capacity region of the bosonic broadcast channel equals the inner bound achieved using a coherent-state encoding and optimum detection. We provide some evidence that supports this new conjecture, but again a full proof is not available.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure