167 research outputs found
Information-theoretic aspects of the generalized amplitude damping channel
The generalized amplitude damping channel (GADC) is one of the sources of
noise in superconducting-circuit-based quantum computing. It can be viewed as
the qubit analogue of the bosonic thermal channel, and it thus can be used to
model lossy processes in the presence of background noise for low-temperature
systems. In this work, we provide an information-theoretic study of the GADC.
We first determine the parameter range for which the GADC is entanglement
breaking and the range for which it is anti-degradable. We then establish
several upper bounds on its classical, quantum, and private capacities. These
bounds are based on data-processing inequalities and the uniform continuity of
information-theoretic quantities, as well as other techniques. Our upper bounds
on the quantum capacity of the GADC are tighter than the known upper bound
reported recently in [Rosati et al., Nat. Commun. 9, 4339 (2018)] for the
entire parameter range of the GADC, thus reducing the gap between the lower and
upper bounds. We also establish upper bounds on the two-way assisted quantum
and private capacities of the GADC. These bounds are based on the squashed
entanglement, and they are established by constructing particular squashing
channels. We compare these bounds with the max-Rains information bound, the
mutual information bound, and another bound based on approximate covariance.
For all capacities considered, we find that a large variety of techniques are
useful in establishing bounds.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figures; close to the published versio
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
The squashed entanglement of a quantum channel
This paper defines the squashed entanglement of a quantum channel as the
maximum squashed entanglement that can be registered by a sender and receiver
at the input and output of a quantum channel, respectively. A new subadditivity
inequality for the original squashed entanglement measure of Christandl and
Winter leads to the conclusion that the squashed entanglement of a quantum
channel is an additive function of a tensor product of any two quantum
channels. More importantly, this new subadditivity inequality, along with prior
results of Christandl, Winter, et al., establishes the squashed entanglement of
a quantum channel as an upper bound on the quantum communication capacity of
any channel assisted by unlimited forward and backward classical communication.
A similar proof establishes this quantity as an upper bound on the private
capacity of a quantum channel assisted by unlimited forward and backward public
classical communication. This latter result is relevant as a limitation on
rates achievable in quantum key distribution. As an important application, we
determine that these capacities can never exceed log((1+eta)/(1-eta)) for a
pure-loss bosonic channel for which a fraction eta of the input photons make it
to the output on average. The best known lower bound on these capacities is
equal to log(1/(1-eta)). Thus, in the high-loss regime for which eta << 1, this
new upper bound demonstrates that the protocols corresponding to the above
lower bound are nearly optimal.Comment: v3: 25 pages, 3 figures, significant expansion of paper; v2: error in
a prior version corrected (main result unaffected), cited Tucci for his work
related to squashed entanglement; 5 + epsilon pages and 2-page appendi
Fundamental rate-loss tradeoff for optical quantum key distribution
Since 1984, various optical quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols have
been proposed and examined. In all of them, the rate of secret key generation
decays exponentially with distance. A natural and fundamental question is then
whether there are yet-to-be discovered optical QKD protocols (without quantum
repeaters) that could circumvent this rate-distance tradeoff. This paper
provides a major step towards answering this question. We show that the
secret-key-agreement capacity of a lossy and noisy optical channel assisted by
unlimited two-way public classical communication is limited by an upper bound
that is solely a function of the channel loss, regardless of how much optical
power the protocol may use. Our result has major implications for understanding
the secret-key-agreement capacity of optical channels---a long-standing open
problem in optical quantum information theory---and strongly suggests a real
need for quantum repeaters to perform QKD at high rates over long distances.Comment: 9+4 pages, 3 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1310.012
Entanglement and secret-key-agreement capacities of bipartite quantum interactions and read-only memory devices
A bipartite quantum interaction corresponds to the most general quantum
interaction that can occur between two quantum systems in the presence of a
bath. In this work, we determine bounds on the capacities of bipartite
interactions for entanglement generation and secret key agreement between two
quantum systems. Our upper bound on the entanglement generation capacity of a
bipartite quantum interaction is given by a quantity called the bidirectional
max-Rains information. Our upper bound on the secret-key-agreement capacity of
a bipartite quantum interaction is given by a related quantity called the
bidirectional max-relative entropy of entanglement. We also derive tighter
upper bounds on the capacities of bipartite interactions obeying certain
symmetries. Observing that reading of a memory device is a particular kind of
bipartite quantum interaction, we leverage our bounds from the bidirectional
setting to deliver bounds on the capacity of a task that we introduce, called
private reading of a wiretap memory cell. Given a set of point-to-point quantum
wiretap channels, the goal of private reading is for an encoder to form
codewords from these channels, in order to establish secret key with a party
who controls one input and one output of the channels, while a passive
eavesdropper has access to one output of the channels. We derive both lower and
upper bounds on the private reading capacities of a wiretap memory cell. We
then extend these results to determine achievable rates for the generation of
entanglement between two distant parties who have coherent access to a
controlled point-to-point channel, which is a particular kind of bipartite
interaction.Comment: v3: 34 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review
Converse bounds for private communication over quantum channels
This paper establishes several converse bounds on the private transmission
capabilities of a quantum channel. The main conceptual development builds
firmly on the notion of a private state, which is a powerful, uniquely quantum
method for simplifying the tripartite picture of privacy involving local
operations and public classical communication to a bipartite picture of quantum
privacy involving local operations and classical communication. This approach
has previously led to some of the strongest upper bounds on secret key rates,
including the squashed entanglement and the relative entropy of entanglement.
Here we use this approach along with a "privacy test" to establish a general
meta-converse bound for private communication, which has a number of
applications. The meta-converse allows for proving that any quantum channel's
relative entropy of entanglement is a strong converse rate for private
communication. For covariant channels, the meta-converse also leads to
second-order expansions of relative entropy of entanglement bounds for private
communication rates. For such channels, the bounds also apply to the private
communication setting in which the sender and receiver are assisted by
unlimited public classical communication, and as such, they are relevant for
establishing various converse bounds for quantum key distribution protocols
conducted over these channels. We find precise characterizations for several
channels of interest and apply the methods to establish several converse bounds
on the private transmission capabilities of all phase-insensitive bosonic
channels.Comment: v3: 53 pages, 3 figures, final version accepted for publication in
IEEE Transactions on Information Theor
Unconstrained distillation capacities of a pure-loss bosonic broadcast channel
Bosonic channels are important in practice as they form a simple model for
free-space or fiber-optic communication. Here we consider a single-sender
two-receiver pure-loss bosonic broadcast channel and 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. We show how the state merging
protocol leads to achievable rates in this setting, giving an inner bound on
the capacity region. We also evaluate an outer bound on the region by using the
relative entropy of entanglement and a `reduction by teleportation' technique.
The outer bounds match the inner bounds in the infinite-energy limit, thereby
establishing the unconstrained capacity region for such channels. Our result
could provide a useful benchmark for implementing a broadcasting of
entanglement and secret key through such channels. An important open question
relevant to practice is to determine the capacity region in both this setting
and the single-sender single-receiver case when there is an energy constraint
on the transmitter.Comment: v2: 6 pages, 3 figures, introduction revised, appendix added where
the result is extended to the 1-to-m pure-loss bosonic broadcast channel. v3:
minor revision, typo error correcte
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
Entangled inputs cannot make imperfect quantum channels perfect
Entangled inputs can enhance the capacity of quantum channels, this being one
of the consequences of the celebrated result showing the non-additivity of
several quantities relevant for quantum information science. In this work, we
answer the converse question (whether entangled inputs can ever render noisy
quantum channels have maximum capacity) to the negative: No sophisticated
entangled input of any quantum channel can ever enhance the capacity to the
maximum possible value; a result that holds true for all channels both for the
classical as well as the quantum capacity. This result can hence be seen as a
bound as to how "non-additive quantum information can be". As a main result, we
find first practical and remarkably simple computable single-shot bounds to
capacities, related to entanglement measures. As examples, we discuss the qubit
amplitude damping and identify the first meaningful bound for its classical
capacity.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, an error in the argument on the quantum capacity
corrected, version to be published in the Physical Review Letter
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