We prove a one-shot "minimax" converse bound for quantum channel coding
assisted by positive partial transpose channels between sender and receiver.
The bound is similar in spirit to the converse by Polyanskiy, Poor, and Verdu
[IEEE Trans. Info. Theory 56, 2307-2359 (2010)] for classical channel coding,
and also enjoys the saddle point property enabling the order of optimizations
to be interchanged. Equivalently, the bound can be formulated as a semidefinite
program satisfying strong duality. The convex nature of the bound implies
channel symmetries can substantially simplify the optimization, enabling us to
explicitly compute the finite blocklength behavior for several simple qubit
channels. In particular, we find that finite blocklength converse statements
for the classical erasure channel apply to the assisted quantum erasure
channel, while bounds for the classical binary symmetric channel apply to both
the assisted dephasing and depolarizing channels. This implies that these qubit
channels inherit statements regarding the asymptotic limit of large
blocklength, such as the strong converse or second-order converse rates, from
their classical counterparts. Moreover, for the dephasing channel, the finite
blocklength bounds are as tight as those for the classical binary symmetric
channel, since coding for classical phase errors yields equivalently-performing
unassisted quantum codes.Comment: merged with arXiv:1504.04617 version 1 ; see version