Zero-error channel capacity and simulation assisted by non-local correlations

Shannon's theory of zero-error communication is re-examined in the broader setting of using one classical channel to simulate another exactly, and in the presence of various resources that are all classes of non-signalling correlations: Shared randomness, shared entanglement and arbitrary non-signalling correlations. Specifically, when the channel being simulated is noiseless, this reduces to the zero-error capacity of the channel, assisted by the various classes of non-signalling correlations. When the resource channel is noiseless, it results in the "reverse" problem of simulating a noisy channel exactly by a noiseless one, assisted by correlations. In both cases, 'one-shot' separations between the power of the different assisting correlations are exhibited. The most striking result of this kind is that entanglement can assist in zero-error communication, in stark contrast to the standard setting of communicaton with asymptotically vanishing error in which entanglement does not help at all. In the asymptotic case, shared randomness is shown to be just as powerful as arbitrary non-signalling correlations for noisy channel simulation, which is not true for the asymptotic zero-error capacities. For assistance by arbitrary non-signalling correlations, linear programming formulas for capacity and simulation are derived, the former being equal (for channels with non-zero unassisted capacity) to the feedback-assisted zero-error capacity originally derived by Shannon to upper bound the unassisted zero-error capacity. Finally, a kind of reversibility between non-signalling-assisted capacity and simulation is observed, mirroring the famous "reverse Shannon theorem".Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure. Small changes to text in v2. Removed an unnecessarily strong requirement in the premise of Theorem 1

Improving zero-error classical communication with entanglement

Given one or more uses of a classical channel, only a certain number of messages can be transmitted with zero probability of error. The study of this number and its asymptotic behaviour constitutes the field of classical zero-error information theory, the quantum generalisation of which has started to develop recently. We show that, given a single use of certain classical channels, entangled states of a system shared by the sender and receiver can be used to increase the number of (classical) messages which can be sent with no chance of error. In particular, we show how to construct such a channel based on any proof of the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem. This is a new example of the use of quantum effects to improve the performance of a classical task. We investigate the connection between this phenomenon and that of ``pseudo-telepathy'' games. The use of generalised non-signalling correlations to assist in this task is also considered. In this case, a particularly elegant theory results and, remarkably, it is sometimes possible to transmit information with zero-error using a channel with no unassisted zero-error capacity.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Version 2 is the same as the journal version plus figure 1 and the non-signalling box exampl

Quantum enigma machines and the locking capacity of a quantum channel

The locking effect is a phenomenon which is unique to quantum information theory and represents one of the strongest separations between the classical and quantum theories of information. The Fawzi-Hayden-Sen (FHS) locking protocol harnesses this effect in a cryptographic context, whereby one party can encode n bits into n qubits while using only a constant-size secret key. The encoded message is then secure against any measurement that an eavesdropper could perform in an attempt to recover the message, but the protocol does not necessarily meet the composability requirements needed in quantum key distribution applications. In any case, the locking effect represents an extreme violation of Shannon's classical theorem, which states that information-theoretic security holds in the classical case if and only if the secret key is the same size as the message. Given this intriguing phenomenon, it is of practical interest to study the effect in the presence of noise, which can occur in the systems of both the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper. This paper formally defines the locking capacity of a quantum channel as the maximum amount of locked information that can be reliably transmitted to a legitimate receiver by exploiting many independent uses of a quantum channel and an amount of secret key sublinear in the number of channel uses. We provide general operational bounds on the locking capacity in terms of other well-known capacities from quantum Shannon theory. We also study the important case of bosonic channels, finding limitations on these channels' locking capacity when coherent-state encodings are employed and particular locking protocols for these channels that might be physically implementable.Comment: 37 page

Multi-party zero-error classical channel coding with entanglement

We study the effects of quantum entanglement on the performance of two classical zero-error communication tasks among multiple parties. Both tasks are generalizations of the two-party zero-error channel-coding problem, where a sender and a receiver want to perfectly communicate messages through a one-way classical noisy channel. If the two parties are allowed to share entanglement, there are several positive results that show the existence of channels for which they can communicate strictly more than what they could do with classical resources. In the first task, one sender wants to communicate a common message to multiple receivers. We show that if the number of receivers is greater than a certain threshold then entanglement does not allow for an improvement in the communication for any finite number of uses of the channel. On the other hand, when the number of receivers is fixed, we exhibit a class of channels for which entanglement gives an advantage. The second problem we consider features multiple collaborating senders and one receiver. Classically, cooperation among the senders might allow them to communicate on average more messages than the sum of their individual possibilities. We show that whenever a channel allows single-sender entanglement-assisted advantage, then the gain extends also to the multi-sender case. Furthermore, we show that entanglement allows for a peculiar amplification of information which cannot happen classically, for a fixed number of uses of a channel with multiple senders.Comment: Some proofs have been modifie

Quantum Reverse Shannon Theorem

Dual to the usual noisy channel coding problem, where a noisy (classical or quantum) channel is used to simulate a noiseless one, reverse Shannon theorems concern the use of noiseless channels to simulate noisy ones, and more generally the use of one noisy channel to simulate another. For channels of nonzero capacity, this simulation is always possible, but for it to be efficient, auxiliary resources of the proper kind and amount are generally required. In the classical case, shared randomness between sender and receiver is a sufficient auxiliary resource, regardless of the nature of the source, but in the quantum case the requisite auxiliary resources for efficient simulation depend on both the channel being simulated, and the source from which the channel inputs are coming. For tensor power sources (the quantum generalization of classical IID sources), entanglement in the form of standard ebits (maximally entangled pairs of qubits) is sufficient, but for general sources, which may be arbitrarily correlated or entangled across channel inputs, additional resources, such as entanglement-embezzling states or backward communication, are generally needed. Combining existing and new results, we establish the amounts of communication and auxiliary resources needed in both the classical and quantum cases, the tradeoffs among them, and the loss of simulation efficiency when auxiliary resources are absent or insufficient. In particular we find a new single-letter expression for the excess forward communication cost of coherent feedback simulations of quantum channels (i.e. simulations in which the sender retains what would escape into the environment in an ordinary simulation), on non-tensor-power sources in the presence of unlimited ebits but no other auxiliary resource. Our results on tensor power sources establish a strong converse to the entanglement-assisted capacity theorem.Comment: 35 pages, to appear in IEEE-IT. v2 has a fixed proof of the Clueless Eve result, a new single-letter formula for the "spread deficit", better error scaling, and an improved strong converse. v3 and v4 each make small improvements to the presentation and add references. v5 fixes broken reference

No-signalling-assisted zero-error capacity of quantum channels and an information theoretic interpretation of the lovász number

© 2015 IEEE. We study the one-shot zero-error classical capacity of a quantum channel assisted by quantum no-signalling correlations, and the reverse problem of exact simulation of a prescribed channel by a noiseless classical one. Quantum no-signalling correlations are viewed as two-input and twooutput completely positive and trace preserving maps with linear constraints enforcing that the device cannot signal. Both problems lead to simple semidefinite programmes (SDPs) that depend only on the Choi-Kraus (operator) space of the channel. In particular, we show that the zero-error classical simulation cost is precisely the conditional min-entropy of the Choi-Jamiozkowski matrix of the given channel. The zero-error classical capacity is given by a similar-looking but different SDP; the asymptotic zero-error classical capacity is the regularization of this SDP, and in general, we do not know of any simple form. Interestingly, however, for the class of classical-quantum channels, we show that the asymptotic capacity is given by a much simpler SDP, which coincides with a semidefinite generalization of the fractional packing number suggested earlier by Aram Harrow. This finally results in an operational interpretation of the celebrated Lovász θ function of a graph as the zero-error classical capacity of the graph assisted by quantum no-signalling correlations, the first information theoretic interpretation of the Lovász number

Entanglement can increase asymptotic rates of zero-error classical communication over classical channels

It is known that the number of different classical messages which can be communicated with a single use of a classical channel with zero probability of decoding error can sometimes be increased by using entanglement shared between sender and receiver. It has been an open question to determine whether entanglement can ever increase the zero-error communication rates achievable in the limit of many channel uses. In this paper we show, by explicit examples, that entanglement can indeed increase asymptotic zero-error capacity, even to the extent that it is equal to the normal capacity of the channel. Interestingly, our examples are based on the exceptional simple root systems E7 and E8.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figur

Separation between quantum Lovász number and entanglement-assisted zero-error classical capacity

© 1963-2012 IEEE. Quantum Lovász number is a quantum generalization of the Lovász number in graph theory. It is the best known efficiently computable upper bound of the entanglement-assisted zero-error classical capacity of a quantum channel. However, it remains an intriguing open problem whether quantum entanglement can always enhance the zero-error capacity to achieve the quantum Lovász number. In this paper, by constructing a particular class of qutrit-to-qutrit channels, we show that there exists a strict gap between the entanglement-assisted zero-error capacity and the quantum Lovász number. Interestingly, for this class of quantum channels, the quantum generalization of fractional packing number is strictly larger than the zero-error capacity assisted with feedback or no-signaling correlations, which differs from the case of classical channels

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