The apex of the family tree of protocols: Optimal rates and resource inequalities

We establish bounds on the maximum entanglement gain and minimum quantum communication cost of the Fully Quantum Slepian-Wolf protocol in the one-shot regime, which is considered to be at the apex of the existing family tree in Quantum Information Theory. These quantities, which are expressed in terms of smooth min- and max-entropies, reduce to the known rates of quantum communication cost and entanglement gain in the asymptotic i.i.d. scenario. We also provide an explicit proof of the optimality of these asymptotic rates. We introduce a resource inequality for the one-shot FQSW protocol, which in conjunction with our results, yields achievable one-shot rates of its children protocols. In particular, it yields bounds on the one-shot quantum capacity of a noisy channel in terms of a single entropic quantity, unlike previously bounds. We also obtain an explicit expression for the achievable rate for one-shot state redistribution.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures. Published versio

Asymptotic State Discrimination and a Strict Hierarchy in Distinguishability Norms

In this paper, we consider the problem of discriminating quantum states by local operations and classical communication (LOCC) when an arbitrarily small amount of error is permitted. This paradigm is known as asymptotic state discrimination, and we derive necessary conditions for when two multipartite states of any size can be discriminated perfectly by asymptotic LOCC. We use this new criterion to prove a gap in the LOCC and separable distinguishability norms. We then turn to the operational advantage of using two-way classical communication over one-way communication in LOCC processing. With a simple two-qubit product state ensemble, we demonstrate a strict majorization of the two-way LOCC norm over the one-way norm.Comment: Corrected errors from the previous draft. Close to publication for

One-shot entanglement-assisted quantum and classical communication

We study entanglement-assisted quantum and classical communication over a single use of a quantum channel, which itself can correspond to a finite number of uses of a channel with arbitrarily correlated noise. We obtain characterizations of the corresponding one-shot capacities by establishing upper and lower bounds on them in terms of the difference of two smoothed entropic quantities. In the case of a memoryless channel, the upper and lower bounds converge to the known single-letter formulas for the corresponding capacities, in the limit of asymptotically many uses of it. Our results imply that the difference of two smoothed entropic quantities characterizing the one-shot entanglement-assisted capacities serves as a one-shot analogue of the mutual information, since it reduces to the mutual information, between the output of the channel and a system purifying its input, in the asymptotic, memoryless scenario.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. Title changed due to new results on the one-shot entanglement-assisted quantum communication. In addition, an error in the previous version regarding the converse proof of the one-shot EAC capacity has been correcte

Universal coding for transmission of private information

We consider the scenario in which Alice transmits private classical messages to Bob via a classical-quantum channel, part of whose output is intercepted by an eavesdropper, Eve. We prove the existence of a universal coding scheme under which Alice's messages can be inferred correctly by Bob, and yet Eve learns nothing about them. The code is universal in the sense that it does not depend on specific knowledge of the channel. Prior knowledge of the probability distribution on the input alphabet of the channel, and bounds on the corresponding Holevo quantities of the output ensembles at Bob's and Eve's end suffice.Comment: 31 pages, no figures. Published versio

Adaptively correcting quantum errors with entanglement

Contrary to the assumption that most quantum error-correcting codes (QECC) make, it is expected that phase errors are much more likely than bit errors in physical devices. By employing the entanglement-assisted stabilizer formalism, we develop a new kind of error-correcting protocol which can flexibly trade error correction abilities between the two types of errors, such that high error correction performance is achieved both in symmetric and in asymmetric situations. The characteristics of the QECCs can be optimized in an adaptive manner during information transmission. The proposed entanglement-assisted QECCs require only one ebit regardless of the degree of asymmetry at a given moment and can be decoded in polynomial time.Comment: 5 pages, final submission to ISIT 2011, Saint-Petersburg, Russi

Round Complexity in the Local Transformations of Quantum and Classical States

A natural operational paradigm for distributed quantum and classical information processing involves local operations coordinated by multiple rounds of public communication. In this paper we consider the minimum number of communication rounds needed to perform the locality-constrained task of entanglement transformation and the analogous classical task of secrecy manipulation. Specifically we address whether bipartite mixed entanglement can always be converted into pure entanglement or whether unsecure classical correlations can always be transformed into secret shared randomness using local operations and a bounded number of communication exchanges. Our main contribution in this paper is an explicit construction of quantum and classical state transformations which, for any given $r$, can be achieved using $r$ rounds of classical communication exchanges but no fewer. Our results reveal that highly complex communication protocols are indeed necessary to fully harness the information-theoretic resources contained in general quantum and classical states. The major technical contribution of this manuscript lies in proving lower bounds for the required number of communication exchanges using the notion of common information and various lemmas built upon it. We propose a classical analog to the Schmidt rank of a bipartite quantum state which we call the secrecy rank, and we show that it is a monotone under stochastic local classical operations.Comment: Submitted to QIP 2017. Proof strategies have been streamlined and differ from the submitted versio

Entanglement generation with a quantum channel and a shared state

We introduce a new protocol, the channel-state coding protocol, to quantum Shannon theory. This protocol generates entanglement between a sender and receiver by coding for a noisy quantum channel with the aid of a noisy shared state. The mother and father protocols arise as special cases of the channel-state coding protocol, where the channel is noiseless or the state is a noiseless maximally entangled state, respectively. The channel-state coding protocol paves the way for formulating entanglement-assisted quantum error-correcting codes that are robust to noise in shared entanglement. Finally, the channel-state coding protocol leads to a Smith-Yard superactivation, where we can generate entanglement using a zero-capacity erasure channel and a non-distillable bound entangled state.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Entanglement-assisted communication of classical and quantum information

We consider the problem of transmitting classical and quantum information reliably over an entanglement-assisted quantum channel. Our main result is a capacity theorem that gives a three-dimensional achievable rate region. Points in the region are rate triples, consisting of the classical communication rate, the quantum communication rate, and the entanglement consumption rate of a particular coding scheme. The crucial protocol in achieving the boundary points of the capacity region is a protocol that we name the classically-enhanced father protocol. The classically-enhanced father protocol is more general than other protocols in the family tree of quantum Shannon theoretic protocols, in the sense that several previously known quantum protocols are now child protocols of it. The classically-enhanced father protocol also shows an improvement over a time-sharing strategy for the case of a qubit dephasing channel--this result justifies the need for simultaneous coding of classical and quantum information over an entanglement-assisted quantum channel. Our capacity theorem is of a multi-letter nature (requiring a limit over many uses of the channel), but it reduces to a single-letter characterization for at least three channels: the completely depolarizing channel, the quantum erasure channel, and the qubit dephasing channel.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, simplification of capacity region--it now has the simple interpretation as the unit resource capacity region translated along the classically-enhanced father trade-off curv

Entanglement-assisted Coding Theory

In this dissertation, I present a general method for studying quantum error correction codes (QECCs). This method not only provides us an intuitive way of understanding QECCs, but also leads to several extensions of standard QECCs, including the operator quantum error correction (OQECC), the entanglement-assisted quantum error correction (EAQECC). Furthermore, we can combine both OQECC and EAQECC into a unified formalism, the entanglement-assisted operator formalism. This provides great flexibility of designing QECCs for different applications. Finally, I show that the performance of quantum low-density parity-check codes will be largely improved using entanglement-assisted formalism.Comment: PhD dissertation, 102 page