A long-standing problem on the classical capacity of bosonic Gaussian channels has recently been resolved by proving the minimum output entropy conjecture. It is also known that the ultimate capacity quantified by the Holevo bound can be achieved asymptotically by using an infinite number of channels. However, it is less understood to what extent the communication capacity can be reached if one uses a finite number of channels, which is a topic of practical importance. In this paper, we study the capacity of Gaussian communication, i.e., employing Gaussian states and Gaussian measurements to encode and decode information under a single-channel use. We prove that the optimal capacity of single-channel Gaussian communication is achieved by one of two well-known protocols, i.e., coherent-state communication or squeezed-state communication, depending on the energy (number of photons) as well as the characteristics of the channel. Our result suggests that the coherent-state scheme known to achieve the ultimate information-theoretic capacity is not a practically optimal scheme for the case of using a finite number of channels. We find that overall the squeezed-state communication is optimal in a small-photon-number regime whereas the coherent-state communication performs better in a large-photon-number regime.
A long-standing problem on the classical capacity of bosonic Gaussian channels has recently been resolved by proving the minimum output entropy conjecture. It is also known that the ultimate capacity quantified by the Holevo bound can be achieved asymptotically by using an infinite number of channels. However, it is less understood to what extent the communication capacity can be reached if one uses a finite number of channels, which is a topic of practical importance. In this paper, we study the capacity of Gaussian communication, i.e., employing Gaussian states and Gaussian measurements to encode and decode information under a single-channel use. We prove that the optimal capacity of single-channel Gaussian communication is achieved by one of two well-known protocols, i.e., coherent-state communication or squeezed-state communication, depending on the energy (number of photons) as well as the characteristics of the channel. Our result suggests that the coherent-state scheme known to achieve the ultimate information-theoretic capacity is not a practically optimal scheme for the case of using a finite number of channels. We find that overall the squeezed-state communication is optimal in a small-photon-number regime whereas the coherent-state communication performs better in a large-photon-number regime.
The classical capacity of a noisy optical channel is the maximum rate at which information can be transmitted reliably, given a constraint on the mean input energy. For the ubiquitous bosonic Gaussian channels, which include standard models of loss and noise in fibre and free-space optical links, determining this rate requires addressing whether entanglement between channel uses or non-Gaussian signals can outperform Gaussian encodings. More precisely, the question is whether the energy-constrained Holevo information is additive across arbitrarily many channel uses and coincides with its Gaussian counterpart. We answer these fundamental questions in the affirmative for every single-mode bosonic Gaussian channel at every input energy. Namely, we prove that independently prepared Gaussian states with Gaussian-distributed random displacements achieve the capacity, including in the low-energy regime where squeezing the signals competes with encoding information in their displacement. Our proof connects an entanglement inequality to a sharp, additive lower bound on output entropy. We then characterise communication above capacity: under a strict total photon-number cutoff, the probability of correct decoding decreases exponentially with the number of channel uses, and we derive explicit bounds on the decay exponent. When only the mean photon number is constrained, a simple energy-rescaling formula determines exactly the entire asymptotic rate--error trade-off: the capacity at mean photon number N and allowed average decoding error ε equals the vanishing-error capacity at mean photon number N/(1−ε). Together, these results identify the ultimate limits of classical communication for some of the most fundamental models of optical communication.
In this thesis we study the information transmission through Gaussian quantum channels. Gaussian quantum channels model physical communication links, such as free space communication or optical fibers and therefore, may be considered as the most relevant quantum channels. One of the central characteristics of any communication channel is its capacity. In this work we are interested in the classical capacity, which is the maximal number of bits that can be reliably transmitted per channel use. An important lower bound on the classical capacity is given by the Gaussian capacity, which is the maximal transmission rate with the restriction that only Gaussian encodings are allowed: input messages are encoded in so-called Gaussian states for which the mean field amplitudes are Gaussian distributed. We focus in this work mainly on the Gaussian capacity for the following reasons. First, Gaussian encodings are easily accessible experimentally. Second, the difficulty of studying the classical capacity, which arises due to an optimization problem in an infinite dimensional Hilbert space, is greatly reduced when considering only Gaussian input encodings. Third, the Gaussian capacity is conjectured to coincide with the classical capacity, even though this longstanding conjecture is unsolved until today. We start with the investigation of the capacities of the single-mode Gaussian channel. We show that the most general case can be reduced to a simple, fiducial Gaussian channel which depends only on three parameters: its transmissivity (or gain), the added noise variance and the squeezing of the noise. Above a certain input energy threshold, the optimal input variances are given by a quantum water-filling solution, which implies that the optimal modulated output state is a thermal state. This is a quantum extension (or generalization) of the well-known classical water-filling solution for parallel Gaussian channels. Below the energy threshold the solution is given by a transcendental equation and only the less noisy quadrature is modulated. We characterize in detail the dependence of the Gaussian capacity on its channel parameters. In particular, we show that the Gaussian capacity is a non-monotonous function of the noise squeezing and analytically specify the regions where it exhibits one maximum, a maximum and a minimum, a saddle point or no extrema. Then, we investigate the case of n-mode channels with noise correlations (i.e. memory), where we focus in particular on the classical additive noise channel. We consider memory models for which the noise correlations can be unraveled by a passive symplectic transformation. Therefore, we can simplify the problem to the study of the Gaussian capacity in an uncorrelated basis, which corresponds to the Gaussian capacity of n single-mode channels with a common input energy constraint. Above an input energy threshold the solutions is given by a global quantum water-filling solution, which implies that all modulated single-mode output states are thermal states with the same temperature. Below the threshold the channels are divided into three sets: i) those that are excluded from information transmission, ii) those for which only the less noisy quadrature is modulated, and iii) those for which the quantum water-filling solution is satisfied. As an example we consider a Gauss-Markov correlated noise, which in the uncorrelated basis corresponds to a collection of single-mode classical additive noise channels. When rotating the collection of optimal single-mode input states back to the original, correlated basis the optimal multi-mode input state becomes a highly entangled state. We then compare the performance of the optimal input state with a simple coherent state encoding and conclude that one gains up to 10% by using the optimal encoding. Since the preparation of the optimal input state may be very challenging we consider sub-optimal Gaussian-matrix product states (GMPS) as input states as well. GMPS have a known experimental setup and, though being heavily entangled, can be generated sequentially. We demonstrate that for the Markovian correlated noise as well as for a non-Markovian noise model in a wide range of channel parameters, a nearest-neighbor correlated GMPS achieves more than 99.9% of the Gaussian capacity. At last, we introduce a new noise model for which the GMPS is the exact optimal input state. Since GMPS are known to be ground states of quadratic Hamiltonians this suggests a starting point to develop links between optimization problems of quantum communication and many body physics.
We study the problem of transmitting classical information using quantum Gaussian states in the absence of a shared phase reference. This problem is relevant for long-distance communication in free space and optical fiber, where phase noise is typically considered as a limiting factor. We consider a family of phase-noise channels with a finite decoherence time, such that the phase-reference is lost after m consecutive uses of the transmission line. The Holevo capacity of these channels is always attained with photon-number encodings, challenging with current technology. Restricting to Gaussian encodings, we show that an optimal encoding can always be generated by acting with a Haar-random passive interferometer on ensembles of product single-mode squeezed-coherent states. Hence for coherent-state encodings the optimal rate depends only on the total-energy distribution and we provide upper and lower bounds for all m, the latter attainable at low energies with on/off modulation and photodetection. We generalize this lower bound to squeezed-coherent encodings, exhibiting for the first time to our knowledge an unconditional advantage with respect to any coherent encoding for m=1 and a considerable advantage with respect to its direct coherent counterpart for m>1. Finally, we show that the use of part of the energy to establish a reference frame is sub-optimal even at large energies. Our results represent a key departure from the case of phase-covariant Gaussian channels and constitute a proof-of-principle of the advantages of using non-classical, squeezed light in a motivated communication setting.
The quantum capacity of the bosonic thermal attenuator, which is given by the regularization of its coherent information, is unknown. The seminal work of Holevo and Werner established in 1999 the standard one-use lower bound obtained from input thermal states. We first prove that this long-standing lower bound is the exact supremum over all single-mode Gaussian states and then show that, crucially, a non-Gaussian state can do better. As a consequence, we prove positivity of the quantum capacity in a parameter region where the channel is not antidegradable, yet its coherent information optimized over single-mode Gaussian states vanishes. For example, with one thermal photon in the environment and at transmissivity η=0.8, the coherent information is non-positive for every single-mode Gaussian input. We give an explicit rank-two non-Gaussian state, supported on only six Fock levels, whose coherent information is certified to be at least 4.7×10−4 qubits per channel use. This short witness is far from numerically optimal: a numerical optimization over fixed non-Gaussian families reaches at least 8.4×10−3 qubits per channel use at the same point. More generally, at ν=1, using non-Gaussian inputs we certify positivity of the coherent information, and therefore of the quantum capacity, down to η=0.7841; by contrast, the channel is antidegradable, and hence has zero quantum capacity, for η≤0.75. Overall, our work identifies new high-noise regimes in which bosonic quantum communication is possible.
We establish the fundamental limit of communication capacity within Gaussian schemes under phase-insensitive Gaussian channels, which employ multimode Gaussian states for encoding and collective Gaussian operations and measurements for decoding. We prove that this Gaussian capacity is additive, i.e., its upper bound occurs with separable encoding and separable receivers so that a single-mode communication suffices to achieve the largest capacity under Gaussian schemes. This rigorously characterizes the gap between the ultimate Holevo capacity and the capacity within Gaussian communication, showing that Gaussian regime is not sufficient to achieve the Holevo bound particularly in the low-photon regime. Furthermore, the Gaussian benchmark established here can be used to critically assess the performance of non-Gaussian protocols for optical communication. We move on to identify non-Gaussian schemes to beat the Gaussian capacity and show that a non-Gaussian receiver recently implemented by Becerra et al. [F. E. Becerra et al., Nat. Photon. 7, 147 (2013)] can achieve this aim with an appropriately chosen encoding strategy.
We prove Gaussian optimality for the energy-constrained one-shot Holevo capacity of single-mode bosonic Gaussian channels, including phase-sensitive channels with arbitrarily squeezed thermal noise. The unresolved regime is the low energy branch, where the Gaussian optimizer modulates only one quadrature and minimum-output-entropy arguments cannot decouple the average state from the letters. For pure one-mode dilations we retain a stronger pointwise result: moment-matched Gaussianization improves the fixed average Holevo function for every input. For mixed environments, whose purification produces a 1:2 entanglement-of-formation problem, we avoid any generic 1:2 Gaussian extremality conjecture. The optimal Gaussian letter selects an effective environmental Schmidt mode and an affine two-mode EPR witness. Its null direction is exactly the modulated quadrature, while its slope equals the negative derivative of the Gaussian letter-output entropy. This produces a supporting lower bound on the dilated entanglement of formation; Gaussian maximum entropy and concavity then give a global upper bound tangent at the Gaussian optimizer. Consequently the known Gaussian formulas for attenuating, amplifying, phase-conjugating, and additive-noise fiducial channels are exact over unrestricted ensembles at every input energy. Via the passive-input fiducial decomposition and energy-constrained continuity, the result extends to every single-mode Gaussian channel, including lower-rank canonical limits. No additivity across channel uses is assumed.