Coherent Communication of Classical Messages

We define "coherent communication" in terms of a simple primitive, show it is equivalent to the ability to send a classical message with a unitary or isometric operation, and use it to relate other resources in quantum information theory. Using coherent communication, we are able to generalize super-dense coding to prepare arbitrary quantum states instead of only classical messages. We also derive single-letter formulae for the classical and quantum capacities of a bipartite unitary gate assisted by an arbitrary fixed amount of entanglement per use.Comment: 5 pages, revtex, v2: updated references, v3: changed title, fixed error in eq (10

How many copies are needed for state discrimination?

Given a collection of states (rho_1, ..., rho_N) with pairwise fidelities F(rho_i, rho_j) <= F < 1, we show the existence of a POVM that, given rho_i^{otimes n}, will identify i with probability >= 1-epsilon, as long as n>=2(log N/eps)/log (1/F). This improves on previous results which were either dimension-dependent or required that i be drawn from a known distribution.Comment: 1 page, submitted to QCMC'06, answer is O(log # of states

Extremal eigenvalues of local Hamiltonians

We apply classical algorithms for approximately solving constraint satisfaction problems to find bounds on extremal eigenvalues of local Hamiltonians. We consider spin Hamiltonians for which we have an upper bound on the number of terms in which each spin participates, and find extensive bounds for the operator norm and ground-state energy of such Hamiltonians under this constraint. In each case the bound is achieved by a product state which can be found efficiently using a classical algorithm.Comment: 5 pages; v4: uses standard journal styl

Bidirectional coherent classical communication

A unitary interaction coupling two parties enables quantum communication in both the forward and backward directions. Each communication capacity can be thought of as a tradeoff between the achievable rates of specific types of forward and backward communication. Our first result shows that for any bipartite unitary gate, coherent classical communication is no more difficult than classical communication -- they have the same achievable rate regions. Previously this result was known only for the unidirectional capacities (i.e., the boundaries of the tradeoff). We then relate the tradeoff curve for two-way coherent communication to the tradeoff for two-way quantum communication and the tradeoff for coherent communiation in one direction and quantum communication in the other.Comment: 11 pages, v2 extensive modification and rewriting of the main proof, v3 published version with only a few more change