We consider a variation of the well-studied quantum state redistribution task, in which the starting state is known only to the receiver Bob and not to the sender Alice. We refer to this as quantum state redistribution with a one-sided promise. In addition, we consider communication from Alice to Bob over a noisy channel N, instead of the noiseless channel, as is usually considered in state redistribution. We take a natural approach towards the solution of this problem where we “embed” the promise as part of the state and then invoke known protocols for quantum state redistribution composed with known protocols for transfer of quantum information over noisy channels. Using our approach, we are able to reproduce the Alpha-bit capacities with or without entanglement assistance in Hayden and Penington, using known protocols for quantum state redistribution and quantum communication over noisy channels. Furthermore, we generalize the entanglement assisted classical Alpha-bit capacity, showing that any quantum state redistribution protocol can be used as a black box to simulate classical communication.
We consider a variation of the well-studied quantum state redistribution task, in which the starting state is known only to the receiver Bob and not to the sender Alice. We refer to this as quantum state redistribution with a one-sided promise. In addition, we consider communication from Alice to Bob over a noisy channel N, instead of the noiseless channel, as is usually considered in state redistribution. We take a natural approach towards the solution of this problem where we “embed” the promise as part of the state and then invoke known protocols for quantum state redistribution composed with known protocols for transfer of quantum information over noisy channels. Using our approach, we are able to reproduce the Alpha-bit capacities with or without entanglement assistance in Hayden and Penington, using known protocols for quantum state redistribution and quantum communication over noisy channels. Furthermore, we generalize the entanglement assisted classical Alpha-bit capacity, showing that any quantum state redistribution protocol can be used as a black box to simulate classical communication.
This chapter demonstrates the power of both coherent communication from Chapter 7 and the particular protocol for entanglement-assisted classical coding from the previous chapter. Recall that coherent dense coding is a version of the dense coding protocol in which the sender and receiver perform all of its steps coherently.1 Since our protocol for entanglement-assisted classical coding from the previous chapter is really just a glorified dense coding protocol, the sender and receiver can perform each of its steps coherently, generating a protocol for entanglement-assisted coherent coding. Then, by exploiting the fact that two coherent bits are equivalent to a qubit and an ebit, we obtain a protocol for entanglement-assisted quantum coding that consumes far less entanglement than a naive strategy would in order to accomplish this task. We next combine this entanglement-assisted quantum coding protocol with entanglement distribution (Section 6.2.1) and obtain a protocol for quantum communication at a rate equal to the channel's coherent information (Section 13.5). This sequence of steps demonstrates an alternate proof of the direct part of the quantum capacity theorem stated in Chapter 24. Entanglement-assisted classical communication is one generalization of superdense coding, in which the noiseless qubit channel becomes an arbitrary noisy quantum channel while the noiseless ebits remain noiseless. Another generalization of super-dense coding is a protocol named noisy super-dense coding , in which the shared entanglement becomes a shared noisy state ρ AB and the noiseless qubit channels remain noiseless. Interestingly, the protocol that we employ in this chapter for noisy super-dense coding is essentially equivalent to the protocol from the previous chapter for entanglement-assisted classical communication, with some slight modifications to account for the different setting. We can also construct a coherent version of noisy super-dense coding, leading to a protocol that we name coherent state transfer . Coherent state transfer accomplishes not only the task of generating coherent communication between Alice and Bob, but it also allows Alice to transfer her share of the state ρ AB to Bob.
A fundamental limitation of quantum communication is that a single qubit can carry at most 1 bit of classical information. For an important class of quantum communication channels, known as entanglement-breaking, this limitation holds even if the sender and receiver share entangled particles. But does this mean that, for the purpose of communicating classical messages, a noisy entanglement-breaking qubit channel can be replaced by a noisy bit channel? Here we answer the question in the negative. We introduce a game, similar to the Monty Hall problem in classical statistics, where a sender assists a receiver in finding a valuable item (the prize) hidden into one of four possible boxes, while avoiding a hazardous item (the bomb) hidden in one of the remaining three boxes. We show that no classical strategy using a noisy bit channel can ensure that the bomb is avoided, even if the sender and receiver share arbitrary amounts of randomness. In contrast, communication of a qubit through a class of noisy entanglement-breaking channels, which we call quantum NOT channels, allows the players to deterministically avoid the bomb and to find the prize with a guaranteed nonzero probability. Our findings show that the communication of classical messages through a noisy entanglement-breaking qubit channel assisted by quantum entanglement cannot, in general, be simulated by communication through a noisy bit channel assisted by classical correlations.
A fundamental limitation of quantum communication is that a single qubit can carry at most one bit of classical information. For an important class of quantum communication channels, known as entanglement breaking, this limitation holds even if the sender and receiver share entangled particles. But does this mean that, for the purpose of communicating classical messages, a noisy entanglement-breaking qubit channel can be replaced by a noisy bit channel? Here we answer the question in the negative. We introduce a game, similar to the Monty Hall problem in classical statistics, where a sender assists a receiver in finding a valuable item (the "prize") hidden in one of four possible boxes, while avoiding a hazardous item (the "bomb") hidden in one of the remaining three boxes. We show that no classical strategy using a noisy bit channel can ensure that the bomb is avoided, even if the sender and receiver share arbitrary amounts of randomness. In contrast, communication of a qubit through a class of noisy entanglement-breaking channels, which we call quantum not channels, allows the players to deterministically avoid the bomb and to find the prize with a guaranteed nonzero probability. Our findings show that the communication of classical messages through a noisy entanglement-breaking qubit channel assisted by quantum entanglement cannot, in general, be simulated by communication through a noisy bit channel assisted by classical correlations.
A central question in classical information theory is that of source compression, which is the task where Alice receives a sample from a known probability distribution and needs to transmit it to the receiver Bob with small error. This problem has a one-shot solution due to Huffman, in which the messages are of variable length and the expected length of the messages matches the asymptotic and i.i.d. compression rate of the Shannon entropy of the source. In this work, we consider a quantum extension of above task, where Alice receives a sample from a known probability distribution and needs to transmit a part of a pure quantum state (that is associated to the sample) to Bob. We allow entanglement assistance in the protocol, so that the communication is possible through classical messages, for example using quantum teleportation. The classical messages can have a variable length and the goal is to minimize their expected length. We provide a characterization of the expected communication cost of this task, by giving a lower bound that is near optimal up to some additive factors. A special case of above task, and the quantum analogue of the source compression problem, is when Alice needs to transmit the whole of her pure quantum state. Here we show that there is no one-shot interactive scheme which matches the asymptotic and i.i.d. compression rate of the von Neumann entropy of the average quantum state. This is a relatively rare case in quantum information theory where the cost of a quantum task is significantly different from its classical analogue. Further, we also exhibit similar results for the fully quantum task of quantum state redistribution, employing some different techniques. We show implications for the one-shot version of the problem of quantum channel simulation.
This chapter begins our exploration of “dynamic” information-processing tasks in quantum Shannon theory, where the term “dynamic” indicates that a quantum channel connects a sender to a receiver and their goal is to exploit this resource for communication. We specifically consider the scenario where a sender Alice would like to communicate classical information to a receiver Bob, and the capacity theorem that we prove here is one particular generalization of Shannon's noisy channel coding theorem from classical information theory (overviewed in Section 2.2). In later chapters, we will see other generalizations of Shannon's theorem, depending on what resources are available to assist their communication or depending on whether they are trying to communicate classical or quantum information. For this reason and others, quantum Shannon theory is quite a bit richer than classical information theory. The naive approach to communicate classical information over a quantum channel is for Alice and Bob simply to mimic the approach used in Shannon's noisy channel coding theorem. That is, they select a random classical code according to some distribution pX(x) , and Bob performs individual measurements of the outputs of a noisy quantum channel according to some POVM. The POVM at the output induces some conditional probability distribution pY∣X(y∣x) , which we can in turn think of as an induced noisy classical channel. The classical mutual information I(X; Y) of this channel is an achievable rate for communication, and the best strategy for Alice and Bob is to optimize the mutual information over all of Alice's inputs to the channel and over all measurements that Bob could perform at the output.
Abstract Can quantum processes be simulated using only classical resources? This question delineates the boundary between classical and quantum models and clarifies the origin of quantum advantage in information processing. We address this question through the task of quantum channel simulation, where a sender (Alice) holds the classical description of a quantum state and wishes to transmit it to a receiver (Bob) for measurement. Prior work has shown that, for qubit channels, 2 bits of forward communication with shared randomness suffice to reproduce the statistics of any single-qubit measurement. We argue, however, that true channel simulation requires reproducing statistics of joint measurements—including entangled effects—on Alice’s state and an auxiliary system held by Bob. Such scenarios naturally arise in network communication, where some nodes know the state, while others do not. We prove that a perfect qubit channel cannot be simulated with any finite amount of classical communication, even using the most general multi-round, bidirectional protocols. We further show that this no-go result is rooted in the necessity of reproducing statistics associated with entangled effects. On the other hand, we show that noisy qubit channels, such as depolarizing channels, admit classical simulation, though the required communication diverges as noise decreases.