Maximally entangled states---a resource for quantum information processing---can only be shared through noiseless quantum channels, whereas in practice channels are noisy. Here we ask: Given a noisy quantum channel, what is the maximum attainable purity (measured by singlet fraction) of shared entanglement for single channel use and local trace preserving operations? We find an exact formula of the maximum singlet fraction attainable for a qubit channel and give an explicit protocol to achieve the optimal value. The protocol distinguishes between unital and nonunital channels and requires no local postprocessing. In particular, the optimal singlet fraction is achieved by transmitting part of an appropriate pure entangled state, which is maximally entangled if and only if the channel is unital. A linear function of the optimal singlet fraction is also shown to be an upper bound on the distillable entanglement of the mixed state dual to the channel.
We consider the problem of establishing a two-qubit entangled state of optimal fidelity across a noisy quantum channel when only a single use of the channel and local postprocessing by trace-preserving operations are allowed. We show that the optimal fidelity is obtained only when part of an appropriate nonmaximally entangled state is transmitted through the channel. The entanglement of this state can be vanishingly small when the channel becomes very noisy. Moreover, in the optimal case no further local processing is required to enhance the fidelity. We further show that local postprocessing can enhance fidelity if and only if the amount of noise is larger than a critical value and entanglement of the transmitted state is bounded from below. A notable consequence of these results is that the ordering of states under an entanglement monotone can be reversed even when the states undergo the same local interaction via a trace-preserving, completely positive map.
We consider a single copy of a mixed state of two qubits and prove tight lower and upper bounds for its fidelity in terms of its concurrence or negativity. Next we derive the optimal filtering operations and the optimal trace-preserving local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC) such as to maximize the fidelity of a given copy of a mixed state of two qubits. The optimal LOCC operations turn out to be very simple and implementable by 1-LOCC protocols, and always yield a fidelity larger then 1/2 if the original state was entangled.
Free classical communication can yield an unbounded single-shot saving in quantum compression, even though it leaves the asymptotic rate of an i.i.d. source unchanged. At every fixed error in
(0,1), we exhibit sources whose unassisted compression cost is arbitrarily large, yet a single qubit suffices with classical communication and no preshared entanglement. We establish this separation by determining the exact optimal source fidelity for compression through an
m-dimensional noiseless quantum channel, with and without free classical communication, while preserving correlations with an inaccessible reference. Without classical assistance, the optimal fidelity is exactly the Ky Fan norm
∥ρ∥(m), the sum of the
m largest eigenvalues of the source state. With classical assistance, we obtain an explicit spectral threshold formula and a protocol attaining it. Classical communication strictly improves fidelity whenever
m is smaller than the source rank. The corresponding compression costs are two smoothed versions of the log-rank entropy, also called max-entropy: trace-distance smoothing under local operations and quadratic smoothing under LOCC. For i.i.d. copies of a fixed source with positive entropy variance, however, the two costs have identical first-, second-, and third-order asymptotic terms. For nonlattice spectra, we determine the constant-order advantage: classical communication saves
log2(e)−1 bits per block asymptotically, and the ratio of assisted to unassisted minimum communication dimensions converges to
2/e.
Two three-party schemes are put forward for sharing quantum operations on a remote qutrit with local operation and classical communication as well as shared entanglements. The first scheme uses a two-qutrit and three-qutrit non-maximally entangled states as quantum channels, while the second replaces the three-qutrit non-maximally entangled state with a two-qutrit. Both schemes are treated and compared from the four aspects of quantum and classical resource consumption, necessary-operation complexity, success probability and efficiency. It is found that the latter is overall more optimal than the former as far as a restricted set of operations is concerned. In addition, comparisons of both schemes with other four relevant ones are also made to show their two features, including degree generalization and channel-state generalization. Furthermore, some concrete discussions on both schemes are made to expose their important features of security, symmetry and experimental feasibility. Particularly, it is revealed that the success probabilities and intrinsic efficiencies in both schemes are completely determined by the shared entanglement.
The one-shot success probability of a noisy classical channel for transmitting one classical bit is the optimal probability with which the bit can be successfully sent via a single use of the channel. Prevedel et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 110505 (2011)] recently showed that for a specific channel, this quantity can be increased if the parties using the channel share an entangled quantum state. In this paper, we characterize the optimal entanglement-assisted protocols in terms of the radius of a set of operators associated with the channel. This characterization can be used to construct optimal entanglement-assisted protocols for a given classical channel and to prove the limits of such protocols. As an example, we show that the Prevedel et al. protocol is optimal for two-qubit entanglement. We also prove some tight upper bounds on the improvement that can be obtained from quantum and nonsignaling correlations.