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arXiv:0805.0328 · Physical Review A

Reexamination of quantum data compression and relative entropy

Alexei Kaltchenko

Published Aug 7, 2008• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Schumacher and Westmoreland [Phys. Rev. A 64, 42304 (2001)] have established a quantum analog of a well-known classical information theory result on a role of relative entropy as a measure of nonoptimality in (classical) data compression. In this paper, we provide an alternative simple and constructive proof of this result by constructing quantum compression codes (schemes) from classical data compression codes. Moreover, as the quantum data compression or coding task can be effectively reduced to a (quasi)classical one, we show that relevant results from classical information theory and data compression become applicable and therefore can be extended to the quantum domain.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.78.022311

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Schumacher and Westmoreland [Phys. Rev. A 64, 42304 (2001)] have established a quantum analog of a well-known classical information theory result on a role of relative entropy as a measure of nonoptimality in (classical) data compression. In this paper, we provide an alternative simple and constructive proof of this result by constructing quantum compression codes (schemes) from classical data compression codes. Moreover, as the quantum data compression or coding task can be effectively reduced to a (quasi)classical one, we show that relevant results from classical information theory and data compression become applicable and therefore can be extended to the quantum domain.
The general scheme of data compression using the quantum noiseless coding theorem of Schumacher is dicussed for general quantum sources. When the Hilbert space of the quantum source is decomposable into orthogonal subspaces, one can first perform classical data compression before performing the quantum data compression for individual subspaces. For minimizing the resource in quantum coding, a general parameterization of the dimensions in the Jozsa-Schumacher quantum data compression scheme is presented.
One of the fundamental tasks in classical information theory is the compression of information. Given access to many uses of a noiseless classical channel, what is the best that a sender and receiver can make of this resource for compressed data transmission? Shannon's compression theorem demonstrates that the Shannon entropy is the fundamental limit for the compression rate in the IID setting (recall the development in Section 13.4). That is, if one compresses at a rate above the Shannon entropy, then it is possible to recover the compressed data perfectly in the asymptotic limit, and otherwise, it is not possible to do so. This theorem establishes the prominent role of the entropy in Shannon's theory of information. In the quantum world, it very well could be that one day a sender and a receiver would have many uses of a noiseless quantum channel available, and the sender could use this resource to transmit compressed quantum information. But what exactly does this mean in the quantum setting? A simple model of a quantum information source is an ensemble of quantum states { pX(x) , ∣ψ x ⟩}, i.e., the source outputs the state ∣ψ x ⟩ with probability pX(x) , and the states {∣ψ x ⟩} do not necessarily have to form an orthonormal basis. Let us suppose for the moment that the classical data x is available as well, even though this might not necessarily be the case in practice. A naive strategy for compressing this quantum information source would be to ignore the quantum states coming out, handle the classical data instead, and exploit Shannon's compression protocol from Section 13.4.
By looking at quantum data compression in the second quantization, we present a model for the efficient generation and use of variable length codes. In this picture, lossless data compression can be seen as the minimum energy required to faithfully represent or transmit classical information contained within a quantum state. In order to represent information, we create quanta in some predefined modes (i.e., frequencies) prepared in one of the two possible internal states (the information carrying degrees of freedom). Data compression is now seen as the selective annihilation of these quanta, the energy of which is effectively dissipated into the environment. As any increase in the energy of the environment is intricately linked to any information loss and is subject to Landauer's erasure principle, we use this principle to distinguish lossless and lossy schemes and to suggest bounds on the efficiency of our lossless compression protocol. In line with the work of Bostroem and Felbinger [Phys. Rev. A 65, 032313 (2002)], we also show that when using variable length codes the classical notions of prefix or uniquely decipherable codes are unnecessarily restrictive given the structure of quantum mechanics and that a 1-1 mapping is sufficient. In the absence of this restraint, we translate existing classical results on 1-1 coding to the quantum domain to derive a new upper bound on the compression of quantum information. Finally, we present a simple quantum circuit to implement our scheme.
In order to compress quantum messages without loss of information it is necessary to allow the length of the encoded messages to vary. We develop a general framework for variable-length quantum messages in close analogy to the classical case and show that lossless compression is only possible if the message to be compressed is known to the sender. The lossless compression of an ensemble of messages is bounded from below by its von-Neumann entropy. We show that it is possible to reduce the number of qbits passing through a quantum channel even below the von Neumann entropy by adding a classical side channel. We give an explicit communication protocol that realizes lossless and instantaneous quantum data compression and apply it to a simple example. This protocol can be used for both online quantum communication and storage of quantum data.
In this article we study lossless compression of strings of pure quantum states of indeterminate-length quantum codes which were introduced by Schumacher and Westmoreland. Past work has assumed that the strings of quantum data are prepared to be encoded in an independent and identically distributed way. We discuss the notion of quantum stochastic ensembles, allowing us to consider strings of quantum states prepared in a general way. For any quantum stochastic ensemble we define an associated quantum dynamical system and prove that the optimal average codeword length via lossless coding is equal to the quantum dynamical entropy of the associated quantum dynamical system.