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arXiv:1701.03195 · IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

Moderate Deviation Analysis for Classical-Quantum Channels and Quantum Hypothesis Testing

Hao–Chung Cheng, Min-Hsiu Hsieh

Published Dec 8, 2017• 45 citations
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Abstract

In this paper, we study the tradeoffs between the error probabilities of classical-quantum channels and the block-length n when the transmission rates approach the channel capacity at a rate lower than 1/√n, a research topic known as moderate deviation analysis. We show that the optimal error probability vanishes under this rate convergence. Our main technical contributions are a tight quantum sphere-packing bound, obtained via Chaganty and Sethuraman's concentration inequality in strong large deviation theory, and asymptotic expansions of error-exponent functions. Moderate deviation analysis for quantum hypothesis testing is also established. The converse directly follows from our channel coding result, while the achievability relies on a martingale inequality.

DOI
10.1109/tit.2017.2781254

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In this paper, we study the tradeoffs between the error probabilities of classical-quantum channels and the block-length n when the transmission rates approach the channel capacity at a rate lower than 1/√n, a research topic known as moderate deviation analysis. We show that the optimal error probability vanishes under this rate convergence. Our main technical contributions are a tight quantum sphere-packing bound, obtained via Chaganty and Sethuraman's concentration inequality in strong large deviation theory, and asymptotic expansions of error-exponent functions. Moderate deviation analysis for quantum hypothesis testing is also established. The converse directly follows from our channel coding result, while the achievability relies on a martingale inequality.
We analyse families of codes for classical data transmission over quantum channels that have both a vanishing probability of error and a code rate approaching capacity as the code length increases. To characterise the fundamental tradeoff between decoding error, code rate and code length for such codes we introduce a quantum generalisation of the moderate deviation analysis proposed by Altŭg and Wagner as well as Polyanskiy and Verdú. We derive such a tradeoff for classical-quantum (as well as image-additive) channels in terms of the channel capacity and the channel dispersion, giving further evidence that the latter quantity characterises the necessary backoff from capacity when transmitting finite blocks of classical data. To derive these results we also study asymmetric binary quantum hypothesis testing in the moderate deviations regime. Due to the central importance of the latter task, we expect that our techniques will find further applications in the analysis of other quantum information processing tasks.
We study lower bounds on the optimal error probability in channel coding at rates below capacity, commonly termed sphere-packing bounds. In this work, we establish a sphere-packing bound for classical-quantum channels, which significantly improves previous prefactor from the order of subexponential to polynomial. Furthermore, the gap between the obtained error exponent for constant composition codes and the best known classical random coding exponent vanishes in the order of o(log n/n), indicating our sphere-packing bound is almost exact in the high rate regime. The main technical contributions are two converse Hoeffding bounds for quantum hypothesis testing and the saddle-point properties of error exponent functions.
“To be considered for the 2017 IEEE Jack Keil Wolf ISIT Student Paper Award.” We show that the reliable communication through a classical-quantum channel is possible when the transmission rate approaches the channel capacity sufficiently slowly. This scenario exists between the non-vanishing error probability regime, where the rate tends to capacity with a fixed error, and the small error probability regime, where the error vanishes given a rate below capacity. The proof employs a sharp concentration bound in strong large deviation theory, and the asymptotic expansions of the error-exponent functions.
The moderate deviation regime is concerned with the finite block length trade-off between communication cost and error for information processing tasks in the asymptotic regime, where the communication cost approaches a capacity-like quantity and the error vanishes at the same time. We find exact characterisations of these trade-offs for a variety of fully quantum communication tasks, including quantum source coding, quantum state splitting, entanglement-assisted quantum channel coding, and entanglement-assisted quantum channel simulation. The main technical tool we derive is a tight relation between the partially smoothed max-information and the hypothesis testing relative entropy. This allows us to obtain the expansion of the partially smoothed max-information for i.i.d. states in the moderate deviation regime.
We study lower bounds on the optimal error probability in classical coding over classical-quantum channels at rates below the capacity, commonly termed quantum sphere-packing bounds. Winter and Dalai have derived such bounds for classical-quantum channels; however, the exponents in their bounds only coincide when the channel is classical. In this paper, we show that these two exponents admit a variational representation and are related by the Golden-Thompson inequality, reaffirming that Dalai's expression is stronger in general classical-quantum channels. Second, we establish a finite blocklength sphere-packing bound for classical-quantum channels, which significantly improves Dalai's prefactor from the order of subexponential to polynomial. Furthermore, the gap between the obtained error exponent for constant composition codes and the best known classical random coding exponent vanishes in the order of o(logn/n), indicating our sphere-packing bound is almost exact in the high rate regime. Finally, for a special class of symmetric classical-quantum channels, we can completely characterize its optimal error probability without the constant composition code assumption. The main technical contributions are two converse Hoeffding bounds for quantum hypothesis testing and the saddle-point properties of error exponent functions.
Quantum hypothesis testing concerns the discrimination between quantum states. This paper introduces novel lower and upper bounds for asymmetric quantum hypothesis testing based on the Nussbaum-Szkoła mapping. Together, these bounds provide a unified recovery of both converse and achievability results across all major asymptotic regimes, including large-, moderate-, and small-deviations. Unlike existing bounds, which either rely on technically involved information-spectrum arguments or suffer from fixed prefactors and limited applicability in the non-asymptotic regime, the proposed bounds arise from a unified framework and enable, in some cases, the direct use of classical results. It is further demonstrated that these bounds provide accurate approximations to the optimal quantum error trade-off function at small blocklengths. Numerical comparisons with existing bounds, including those based on fidelity and information spectrum methods, highlight their improved tightness.