Deconstruction and conditional erasure of quantum correlations

We define the deconstruction cost of a tripartite quantum state on systems ABE as the minimum rate of noise needed to apply to the AE systems, such that there is negligible disturbance to the marginal state on the BE systems, while the system A of the resulting state is locally recoverable from the E system alone. We refer to such actions as deconstruction operations and protocols implementing them as state deconstruction protocols. State deconstruction generalizes Landauer erasure of a single-party quantum state as well the erasure of correlations of a two-party quantum state. We find that the deconstruction cost of a tripartite quantum state on systems ABE is equal to its conditional quantum mutual information (CQMI) I(A;B|E), thus giving the CQMI an operational interpretation in terms of a state deconstruction protocol. We also define a related task called conditional erasure, in which the goal is to apply noise to systems AE in order to decouple system A from systems BE, while causing negligible disturbance to the marginal state of systems BE. We find that the optimal rate of noise for conditional erasure is also equal to the CQMI I(A;B|E). State deconstruction and conditional erasure lead to operational interpretations of the quantum discord and squashed entanglement, which are quantum correlation measures based on the CQMI. We find that the quantum discord is equal to the cost of simulating einselection, the process by which a quantum system interacts with an environment, resulting in selective loss of information in the system. The squashed entanglement is equal to half the minimum rate of noise needed for deconstruction and/or conditional erasure if Alice has available the best possible system E to help in the deconstruction and/or conditional erasure task

Conditional decoupling of quantum information

Insights from quantum information theory show that correlation measures based on quantum entropy are fundamental tools that reveal the entanglement structure of multipartite states. In that spirit, Groisman, Popescu, and Winter [Phys. Rev. A 72, 032317 (2005)PLRAAN1050-294710.1103/PhysRevA.72.032317] showed that the quantum mutual information I(A;B) quantifies the minimal rate of noise needed to erase the correlations in a bipartite state of quantum systems AB. Here, we investigate correlations in tripartite systems ABE. In particular, we are interested in the minimal rate of noise needed to apply to the systems AE in order to erase the correlations between A and B given the information in system E, in such a way that there is only negligible disturbance on the marginal BE. We present two such models of conditional decoupling, called deconstruction and conditional erasure cost of tripartite states ABE. Our main result is that both are equal to the conditional quantum mutual information I(A;B|E) - establishing it as an operational measure for tripartite quantum correlations

Conditional quantum one-time pad

Suppose that Alice and Bob are located in distant laboratories, which are connected by an ideal quantum channel. Suppose further that they share many copies of a quantum state $\rho_{ABE}$, such that Alice possesses the $A$ systems and Bob the $BE$ systems. In our model, there is an identifiable part of Bob's laboratory that is insecure: a third party named Eve has infiltrated Bob's laboratory and gained control of the $E$ systems. Alice, knowing this, would like use their shared state and the ideal quantum channel to communicate a message in such a way that Bob, who has access to the whole of his laboratory ($BE$ systems), can decode it, while Eve, who has access only to a sector of Bob's laboratory ($E$ systems) and the ideal quantum channel connecting Alice to Bob, cannot learn anything about Alice's transmitted message. We call this task the conditional one-time pad, and in this paper, we prove that the optimal rate of secret communication for this task is equal to the conditional quantum mutual information $I(A;B|E)$ of their shared state. We thus give the conditional quantum mutual information an operational meaning that is different from those given in prior works, via state redistribution, conditional erasure, or state deconstruction. We also generalize the model and method in several ways, one of which demonstrates that the negative tripartite interaction information $-I_{3}(A;B;E) = I(A;BE)-I(A;B)-I(A;E)$ of a tripartite state $\rho_{ABE}$ is an achievable rate for a secret-sharing task, i.e., the case in which Alice's message should be secure from someone possessing only the $AB$ or $AE$ systems but should be decodable by someone possessing all systems $A$, $B$, and $E$.Comment: v2: 16 pages, final version accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Disentanglement cost of quantum states.

We show that the minimal rate of noise needed to catalytically erase the entanglement in a bipartite quantum state is given by the regularized relative entropy of entanglement. This offers a solution to the central open question raised in [Groisman et al., Phys. Rev. A 72, 032317 (2005)PLRAAN1050-294710.1103/PhysRevA.72.032317] and complements their main result that the minimal rate of noise needed to erase all correlations is given by the quantum mutual information. We extend our discussion to the tripartite setting where we show that an asymptotic rate of noise given by the regularized relative entropy of recovery is sufficient to catalytically transform the state to a locally recoverable version of the state

Entanglement-assisted private communication over quantum broadcast channels

We consider entanglement-assisted (EA) private communication over a quantum broadcast channel, in which there is a single sender and multiple receivers. We divide the receivers into two sets: the decoding set and the malicious set. The decoding set and the malicious set can either be disjoint or can have a finite intersection. For simplicity, we say that a single party Bob has access to the decoding set and another party Eve has access to the malicious set, and both Eve and Bob have access to the pre-shared entanglement with Alice. The goal of the task is for Alice to communicate classical information reliably to Bob and securely against Eve, and Bob can take advantage of pre-shared entanglement with Alice. In this framework, we establish a lower bound on the one-shot EA private capacity. When there exists a quantum channel mapping the state of the decoding set to the state of the malicious set, such a broadcast channel is said to be degraded. We establish an upper bound on the one-shot EA private capacity in terms of smoothed min- and max-entropies for such channels. In the limit of a large number of independent channel uses, we prove that the EA private capacity of a degraded quantum broadcast channel is given by a single-letter formula. Finally, we consider two specific examples of degraded broadcast channels and find their capacities. In the first example, we consider the scenario in which one part of Bob's laboratory is compromised by Eve. We show that the capacity for this protocol is given by the conditional quantum mutual information of a quantum broadcast channel, and so we thus provide an operational interpretation to the dynamic counterpart of the conditional quantum mutual information. In the second example, Eve and Bob have access to mutually exclusive sets of outputs of a broadcast channel.Comment: v2: 23 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in the special issue "Shannon's Information Theory 70 years on: applications in classical and quantum physics" for Journal of Physics

Thermodynamic Constraints on Quantum Information Gain and Error Correction: A Triple Trade-Off

Quantum error correction (QEC) is a procedure by which the quantum state of a system is protected against a known type of noise, by preemptively adding redundancy to that state. Such a procedure is commonly used in quantum computing when thermal noise is present. Interestingly, thermal noise has also been known to play a central role in quantum thermodynamics (QTD). This fact hints at the applicability of certain QTD statements in the QEC of thermal noise, which has been discussed previously in the context of Maxwell's demon. In this article, we view QEC as a quantum heat engine with a feedback controller (i.e., a demon). We derive an upper bound on the measurement heat dissipated during the error-identification stage in terms of the Groenewold information gain, thereby providing the latter with a physical meaning also when it is negative. Further, we derive the second law of thermodynamics in the context of this QEC engine, operating with general quantum measurements. Finally, we show that, under a set of physically motivated assumptions, this leads to a fundamental triple trade-off relation, which implies a trade-off between the maximum achievable fidelity of QEC and the super-Carnot efficiency that heat engines with feedback controllers have been known to possess. A similar trade-off relation occurs for the thermodynamic efficiency of the QEC engine and the efficacy of the quantum measurement used for error identification