Quantum Information Transmission over a Partially Degradable Channel

We investigate a quantum coding for quantum communication over a PD (partially degradable) degradable quantum channel. For a PD channel, the degraded environment state can be expressed from the channel output state up to a degrading map. PD channels can be restricted to the set of optical channels which allows for the parties to exploit the benefits in experimental quantum communications. We show that for a PD channel, the partial degradability property leads to higher quantum data rates in comparison to those of a degradable channel. The PD property is particular convenient for quantum communications and allows one to implement the experimental quantum protocols with higher performance. We define a coding scheme for PD-channels and give the achievable rates of quantum communication.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, Journal-ref: IEEE Acces

Quantum channels and their entropic characteristics

One of the major achievements of the recently emerged quantum information theory is the introduction and thorough investigation of the notion of quantum channel which is a basic building block of any data-transmitting or data-processing system. This development resulted in an elaborated structural theory and was accompanied by the discovery of a whole spectrum of entropic quantities, notably the channel capacities, characterizing information-processing performance of the channels. This paper gives a survey of the main properties of quantum channels and of their entropic characterization, with a variety of examples for finite dimensional quantum systems. We also touch upon the "continuous-variables" case, which provides an arena for quantum Gaussian systems. Most of the practical realizations of quantum information processing were implemented in such systems, in particular based on principles of quantum optics. Several important entropic quantities are introduced and used to describe the basic channel capacity formulas. The remarkable role of the specific quantum correlations - entanglement - as a novel communication resource, is stressed.Comment: review article, 60 pages, 5 figures, 194 references; Rep. Prog. Phys. (in press

Quantum Channel Capacities with Passive Environment Assistance

We initiate the study of passive environment-assisted communication via a quantum channel, modeled as a unitary interaction between the information carrying system and an environment. In this model, the environment is controlled by a benevolent helper who can set its initial state such as to assist sender and receiver of the communication link. (The case of a malicious environment, also known as jammer, or arbitrarily varying channel, is essentially well-understood and comprehensively reviewed.) Here, after setting out precise definitions, focussing on the problem of quantum communication, we show that entanglement plays a crucial role in this problem: indeed, the assisted capacity where the helper is restricted to product states between channel uses is different from the one with unrestricted helper. Furthermore, prior shared entanglement between the helper and the receiver makes a difference, too.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, IEEE format, Theorem 9 (statement and proof) changed, updated References and Example 11 added. Comments are welcome

The structure of degradable quantum channels

Degradable quantum channels are among the only channels whose quantum and private classical capacities are known. As such, determining the structure of these channels is a pressing open question in quantum information theory. We give a comprehensive review of what is currently known about the structure of degradable quantum channels, including a number of new results as well as alternate proofs of some known results. In the case of qubits, we provide a complete characterization of all degradable channels with two dimensional output, give a new proof that a qubit channel with two Kraus operators is either degradable or anti-degradable and present a complete description of anti-degradable unital qubit channels with a new proof. For higher output dimensions we explore the relationship between the output and environment dimensions ($d_B$ and $d_E$ respectively) of degradable channels. For several broad classes of channels we show that they can be modeled with a environment that is "small" in the sense $d_E \leq d_B$. Perhaps surprisingly, we also present examples of degradable channels with ``large'' environments, in the sense that the minimal dimension $d_E > d_B$. Indeed, one can have $d_E > \tfrac{1}{4} d_B^2$. In the case of channels with diagonal Kraus operators, we describe the subclass which are complements of entanglement breaking channels. We also obtain a number of results for channels in the convex hull of conjugations with generalized Pauli matrices. However, a number of open questions remain about these channels and the more general case of random unitary channels.Comment: 42 pages, 3 figures, Web and paper abstract differ; (v2 contains only minor typo corrections

The Private Classical Capacity of a Partially Degradable Quantum Channel

For a partially degradable (PD) channel, the channel output state can be used to simulate the degraded environment state. The quantum capacity of a PD channel has been proven to be additive. Here, we show that the private classical capacity of arbitrary dimensional PD channels is equal to the quantum capacity of the channel and also single-letterizes. We prove that higher rates of private classical communication can be achieved over a PD channel in comparison to standard degradable channels.Comment: 10 pages, Journal-ref: Physica Scripta, Special Issue on Quantum Information (2014

Public Quantum Communication and Superactivation

Is there a meaningful quantum counterpart to public communication? We argue that the symmetric-side channel -- which distributes quantum information symmetrically between the receiver and the environment -- is a good candidate for a notion of public quantum communication in entanglement distillation and quantum error correction. This connection is partially motivated by [Brand\~ao and Oppenheim, arXiv:1004.3328], where it was found that if a sender would like to communicate a secret message to a receiver through an insecure quantum channel using a shared quantum state as a key, then the insecure quantum channel is only ever used to simulate a symmetric-side channel, and can always be replaced by it without altering the optimal rate. Here we further show, in complete analogy to the role of public classical communication, that assistance by a symmetric-side channel makes equal the distillable entanglement, the recently-introduced mutual independence, and a generalization of the latter, which quantifies the extent to which one of the parties can perform quantum privacy amplification. Symmetric-side channels, and the closely related erasure channel, have been recently harnessed to provide examples of superactivation of the quantum channel capacity. Our findings give new insight into this non-additivity of the channel capacity and its relation to quantum privacy. In particular, we show that single-copy superactivation protocols with the erasure channel, which encompasses all examples of non-additivity of the quantum capacity found to date, can be understood as a conversion of mutual independence into distillable entanglement.Comment: 10 page