Quantum Information Complexity and Amortized Communication

We define a new notion of information cost for quantum protocols, and a corresponding notion of quantum information complexity for bipartite quantum channels, and then investigate the properties of such quantities. These are the fully quantum generalizations of the analogous quantities for bipartite classical functions that have found many applications recently, in particular for proving communication complexity lower bounds. Our definition is strongly tied to the quantum state redistribution task. Previous attempts have been made to define such a quantity for quantum protocols, with particular applications in mind; our notion differs from these in many respects. First, it directly provides a lower bound on the quantum communication cost, independent of the number of rounds of the underlying protocol. Secondly, we provide an operational interpretation for quantum information complexity: we show that it is exactly equal to the amortized quantum communication complexity of a bipartite channel on a given state. This generalizes a result of Braverman and Rao to quantum protocols, and even strengthens the classical result in a bounded round scenario. Also, this provides an analogue of the Schumacher source compression theorem for interactive quantum protocols, and answers a question raised by Braverman. We also discuss some potential applications to quantum communication complexity lower bounds by specializing our definition for classical functions and inputs. Building on work of Jain, Radhakrishnan and Sen, we provide new evidence suggesting that the bounded round quantum communication complexity of the disjointness function is \Omega (n/M + M), for M-message protocols. This would match the best known upper bound.Comment: v1, 38 pages, 1 figur

The Flow of Information in Interactive Quantum Protocols: the Cost of Forgetting

In two-party interactive quantum communication protocols, we study a recently defined notion of quantum information cost (QIC), which has most of the important properties of its classical analogue (IC). Notably, its link with amortized quantum communication complexity has been used to prove an (almost) tight lower bound on the bounded round quantum complexity of Disjointness. However, QIC was defined through a purification of the input state. This is valid for fully quantum inputs and tasks but difficult to interpret even for classical tasks. Also, its link with other notions of information cost that had appeared in the literature was not clear. We settle both these issues: for quantum communication with classical inputs, we characterize QIC in terms of information about the input registers, avoiding any reference to the notion of a purification of the classical input state. We provide an operational interpretation of this new characterization as the sum of the costs of revealing and of forgetting information about the inputs. To obtain this result, we prove a general Information Flow Lemma assessing the transfer of information in general interactive quantum processes. Specializing this lemma to interactive quantum protocols accomplishing classical tasks, we are able to demistify the link between QIC and other previous notions of information cost in quantum protocols. Furthermore, we clarify the link between QIC and IC by simulating quantumly classical protocols. Finally, we apply these concepts to argue that any quantum protocol that does not forget information solves Disjointness on n-bits in Omega(n) communication, completely losing the quadratic quantum speedup. Hence forgetting information is here a necessary feature in order to obtain any significant improvement over classical protocols. We also prove that QIC at 0-error is exactly n for Inner Product, and n (1 - o(1)) for a random Boolean function on n+n bits

Smooth Entropy Bounds on One-Shot Quantum State Redistribution

In quantum state redistribution as introduced in [Luo and Devetak (2009)] and [Devetak and Yard (2008)], there are four systems of interest: the $A$ system held by Alice, the $B$ system held by Bob, the $C$ system that is to be transmitted from Alice to Bob, and the $R$ system that holds a purification of the state in the $ABC$ registers. We give upper and lower bounds on the amount of quantum communication and entanglement required to perform the task of quantum state redistribution in a one-shot setting. Our bounds are in terms of the smooth conditional min- and max-entropy, and the smooth max-information. The protocol for the upper bound has a clear structure, building on the work [Oppenheim (2008)]: it decomposes the quantum state redistribution task into two simpler quantum state merging tasks by introducing a coherent relay. In the independent and identical (iid) asymptotic limit our bounds for the quantum communication cost converge to the quantum conditional mutual information $I(C:R|B)$, and our bounds for the total cost converge to the conditional entropy $H(C|B)$. This yields an alternative proof of optimality of these rates for quantum state redistribution in the iid asymptotic limit. In particular, we obtain a strong converse for quantum state redistribution, which even holds when allowing for feedback.Comment: v3: 29 pages, 1 figure, extended strong converse discussio

Augmented Index and Quantum Streaming Algorithms for DYCK(2)

We show how two recently developed quantum information theoretic tools can be applied to obtain lower bounds on quantum information complexity. We also develop new tools with potential for broader applicability, and use them to establish a lower bound on the quantum information complexity for the Augmented Index function on an easy distribution. This approach allows us to handle superpositions rather than distributions over inputs, the main technical challenge faced previously. By providing a quantum generalization of the argument of Jain and Nayak [IEEE TIT\u2714], we leverage this to obtain a lower bound on the space complexity of multi-pass, unidirectional quantum streaming algorithms for the DYCK(2) language

Trade-off capacities of the quantum Hadamard channels

Coding theorems in quantum Shannon theory express the ultimate rates at which a sender can transmit information over a noisy quantum channel. More often than not, the known formulas expressing these transmission rates are intractable, requiring an optimization over an infinite number of uses of the channel. Researchers have rarely found quantum channels with a tractable classical or quantum capacity, but when such a finding occurs, it demonstrates a complete understanding of that channel's capabilities for transmitting classical or quantum information. Here, we show that the three-dimensional capacity region for entanglement-assisted transmission of classical and quantum information is tractable for the Hadamard class of channels. Examples of Hadamard channels include generalized dephasing channels, cloning channels, and the Unruh channel. The generalized dephasing channels and the cloning channels are natural processes that occur in quantum systems through the loss of quantum coherence or stimulated emission, respectively. The Unruh channel is a noisy process that occurs in relativistic quantum information theory as a result of the Unruh effect and bears a strong relationship to the cloning channels. We give exact formulas for the entanglement-assisted classical and quantum communication capacity regions of these channels. The coding strategy for each of these examples is superior to a naive time-sharing strategy, and we introduce a measure to determine this improvement.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures, some slight refinements and submitted to Physical Review