We discuss concepts of message identification in the sense of Ahlswede and
Dueck via general quantum channels, extending investigations for classical
channels, initial work for classical-quantum (cq) channels and "quantum
fingerprinting".
We show that the identification capacity of a discrete memoryless quantum
channel for classical information can be larger than that for transmission;
this is in contrast to all previously considered models, where it turns out to
equal the common randomness capacity (equals transmission capacity in our
case): in particular, for a noiseless qubit, we show the identification
capacity to be 2, while transmission and common randomness capacity are 1.
Then we turn to a natural concept of identification of quantum messages (i.e.
a notion of "fingerprint" for quantum states). This is much closer to quantum
information transmission than its classical counterpart (for one thing, the
code length grows only exponentially, compared to double exponentially for
classical identification). Indeed, we show how the problem exhibits a nice
connection to visible quantum coding. Astonishingly, for the noiseless qubit
channel this capacity turns out to be 2: in other words, one can compress two
qubits into one and this is optimal. In general however, we conjecture quantum
identification capacity to be different from classical identification capacity.Comment: 18 pages, requires Rinton-P9x6.cls. On the occasion of Alexander
Holevo's 60th birthday. Version 2 has a few theorems knocked off: Y Steinberg
has pointed out a crucial error in my statements on simultaneous ID codes.
They are all gone and replaced by a speculative remark. The central results
of the paper are all unharmed. In v3: proof of Proposition 17 corrected,
without change of its statemen
