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arXiv:1406.7142 · IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

On the Power of PPT-Preserving and Non-Signalling Codes

Debbie Leung, William Matthews

Published Jun 2, 2015• 83 citations
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Abstract

We derive one-shot upper bounds for quantum noisy channel codes. We do so by regarding a channel code as a bipartite operation with an encoder belonging to the sender and a decoder belonging to the receiver, and imposing constraints on the bipartite operation. We investigate the power of codes whose bipartite operation is non-signalling from Alice to Bob, positive-partial transpose (PPT) preserving, or both, and derive a simple semidefinite program for the achievable entanglement fidelity. Using the semidefinite program, we show that the non-signalling-assisted quantum capacity for memoryless channels is equal to the entanglement-assisted capacity. We also relate our PPT-preserving codes and the PPT-preserving entanglement distillation protocols studied by Rains. Applying these results to a concrete example, the 3-dimensional Werner-Holevo channel, we find that codes that are non-signalling and PPT-preserving can be strictly less powerful than codes satisfying either one of the constraints, and therefore provide a tighter bound for unassisted codes. Furthermore, PPT-preserving non-signalling codes can send 1 qubit perfectly over two uses of the channel, which has no quantum capacity. We discuss whether this can be interpreted as a form of superactivation of quantum capacity.

DOI
10.1109/tit.2015.2439953

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We investigate the classical communication over quantum channels when assisted by no-signaling and positive-partial-transpose-preserving (PPT) codes, for which both the optimal success probability of a given transmission rate and the one-shot E-error capacity are formalized as semidefinite programs (SDPs). Based on this, we obtain improved SDP finite blocklength converse bounds of general quantum channels for entanglement-assisted codes and unassisted codes. Furthermore, we derive two SDP strong converse bounds for the classical capacity of general quantum channels: for any code with a rate exceeding either of the two bounds of the channel, the success probability vanishes exponentially fast as the number of channel uses increases. In particular, applying our efficiently computable bounds, we derive an improved upper bound on the classical capacity of the amplitude damping channel. We also establish the strong converse property for the classical and private capacities of a new class of quantum channels. We finally study the zero-error setting and provide efficiently computable upper bounds on the one-shot zero-error capacity of a general quantum channel.
We investigate the generation of EPR pairs between three observers in a general causally structured setting, where communication occurs via a noisy quantum broadcast channel. The most general quantum codes for this setup take the form of tripartite quantum channels. Since the receivers are constrained by causal ordering, additional temporal relationships naturally emerge between the parties. These causal constraints enforce intrinsic no-signalling conditions on any tripartite operation, ensuring that it constitutes a physically realizable quantum code for a quantum broadcast channel. We analyze these constraints and, more broadly, characterize the most general quantum codes for communication over such channels. We examine the capabilities of codes that are fully no-signalling among the three parties, positive partial transpose (PPT)-preserving, or both, and derive simple semidefinite programs to compute the achievable entanglement fidelity.We then establish a hierarchy of semidefinite programming converse bounds—both weak and strong—for the capacity of quantum broadcast channels for EPR pair generation, in both one-shot and asymptotic regimes. Notably, in the special case of a point-to-point channel, our strong converse bound recovers and strengthens existing results. Finally, we demonstrate how the PPT-preserving codes we develop can be leveraged to construct PPT-preserving entanglement combing schemes, and vice versa.
We study the classical communication over quantum channels when assisted by no-signalling (NS) and PPT-preserving (PPT) codes. We first show that both the optimal success probability of a given transmission rate and one-shot ϵ-error capacity can be formalized as semidefinite programs (SDPs) when assisted by NS or NS∩PPT codes. Based on this, we derive SDP finite blocklength converse bounds for general quantum channels, which also reduce to the converse bound of Polyanskiy, Poor, and Verdu for classical channels. Furthermore, we derive an SDP strong converse bound for the classical capacity of a general quantum channel: for any code with a rate exceeding this bound, the optimal success probability vanishes exponentially fast as the number of channel uses increases. In particular, applying our efficiently computable bound, we derive improved upper bounds to the classical capacity of the amplitude damping channels and also establish the strong converse property for a new class of quantum channels.
We show that the max-Rains information of a quantum channel is an efficiently computable, single-letter strong converse upper bound for transmitting quantum information over quantum channels when assisted by positive-partial-transpose (PPT) preserving channels between every use of the channel. This includes in particular the quantum capacity with local operations and classical communication (LOCC) assistance. For our proof we make use of the amortized entanglement of quantum channels, which is defined as the largest net amount of entanglement that can be generated if the sender and receiver are allowed to share an arbitrary state before using the channel. Our main technical result is that amortization does not enhance the entanglement of quantum channels when entanglement is quantified by the max-Rains relative entropy. We prove this statement by employing semi-definite programming (SDP) duality and SDP formulations for the max-Rains relative entropy and the channel's max-Rains information, found recently in [Wang et al., arXiv:1709.00200].
We investigate dense coding by imposing various locality restrictions to our decoder by employing the resource theory of asymmetry framework. In this task, the sender Alice and the receiver Bob share an entangled state. She encodes the classical information into it using a symmetric preserving encoder and sends the encoded state to Bob through a noiseless quantum channel. The decoder is limited to a measurement to satisfy a certain locality condition on the bipartite system composed of the receiving system and the preshared entanglement half. Our contributions are summarized as follows: First, we derive an achievable transmission rate for this task dependently of conditions of encoder and decoder. Surprisingly, we show that the obtained rate cannot be improved even when the decoder is relaxed to local measurements, two-way LOCCs, separable measurements, or partial transpose positive (PPT) measurements for the bipartite system. Moreover, depending on the class of allowed measurements with a locality condition, we relax the class of encoding operations to super-quantum encoders in the framework of general probability theory (GPT). That is, when our decoder is restricted to a separable measurement, theoretically, a positive operation is allowed as an encoding operation. Surprisingly, even under this type of super-quantum relaxation, the transmission rate cannot be improved. This fact highlights the universal validity of our analysis beyond quantum theory.