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arXiv:1906.01356 · IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory

The Classical Capacity of Additive Quantum Queue-Channels

Prabha Mandayam, Krishna Jagannathan, Avhishek Chatterjee

Published Aug 1, 2020• 16 citations
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Abstract

We consider a setting where a stream of qubits is processed sequentially. We derive fundamental limits on the rate at which classical information can be transmitted using qubits that decohere as they wait to be processed. Specifically, we model the sequential processing of qubits using a single server queue, and derive expressions for the classical capacity of such a quantum `queue-channel.' Focusing on two important noise models, namely the erasure channel and the depolarizing channel, we obtain explicit single-letter capacity formulas in terms of the stationary waiting time of qubits in the queue. Our capacity proof also implies that a `classical' coding/decoding strategy is optimal, i.e., an encoder which uses only orthogonal product states, and a decoder which measures in a fixed product basis, are sufficient to achieve the classical capacity of both queue-channels. Our proof technique for the converse theorem generalizes readily - in particular, whenever the underlying quantum noise channel is additive, we can obtain a single-letter upper bound on the classical capacity of the corresponding quantum queue-channel. More broadly, our work begins to quantitatively address the impact of decoherence on the performance limits of quantum information processing systems.

DOI
10.1109/jsait.2020.3015055

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We consider a setting where a stream of qubits is processed sequentially. We derive fundamental limits on the rate at which classical information can be transmitted using qubits that decohere as they wait to be processed. Specifically, we model the sequential processing of qubits using a single server queue, and derive expressions for the classical capacity of such a quantum queue-channel.' Focusing on two important noise models, namely the erasure channel and the depolarizing channel, we obtain explicit single-letter capacity formulas in terms of the stationary waiting time of qubits in the queue. Our capacity proof also implies that a classical' coding/decoding strategy is optimal, i.e., an encoder which uses only orthogonal product states, and a decoder which measures in a fixed product basis, are sufficient to achieve the classical capacity of both queue-channels. Our proof technique for the converse theorem generalizes readily - in particular, whenever the underlying quantum noise channel is additive, we can obtain a single-letter upper bound on the classical capacity of the corresponding quantum queue-channel. More broadly, our work begins to quantitatively address the impact of decoherence on the performance limits of quantum information processing systems.
We consider a setting where a stream of qubits is processed sequentially. We derive fundamental limits on the rate at which classical information can be transmitted using qubits that decohere as they wait to be processed. Specifically, we model the sequential processing of qubits using a single server queue, and derive expressions for the classical capacity of such a quantum `queue-channel.' Focusing on quantum erasures, we obtain an explicit single-letter capacity formula in terms of the stationary waiting time of qubits in the queue. Our capacity proof also implies that a `classical' coding/decoding strategy is optimal, i.e., an encoder which uses only orthogonal product states, and a decoder which measures in a fixed product basis, are sufficient to achieve the classical capacity of the quantum erasure queue-channel. More broadly, our work begins to quantitatively address the impact of decoherence on the performance limits of quantum information processing systems.
We consider a setting where qubits are processed sequentially, and derive fundamental limits on the rate at which classical information can be transmitted using quantum states that decohere in time. Specifically, we model the sequential processing of qubits using a single server queue, and derive explicit expressions for the capacity of such a `queue-channel.' We also demonstrate a sweet-spot phenomenon with respect to the arrival rate to the queue, i.e., we show that there exists a value of the arrival rate of the qubits at which the rate of information transmission (in bits/sec) through the queue-channel is maximised. Next, we consider a setting where the average rate of processing qubits is fixed, and show that the capacity of the queue-channel is maximised when the processing time is deterministic. We also discuss design implications of these results on quantum information processing systems.
Quantum queue-channels arise naturally in the context of buffering in quantum networks, wherein the noise suffered by the quantum states depends on the time spent waiting in the buffer. Mandayam (2020) derived a simple upper bound on the classical capacity of an additive queue-channel and showed it to be achievable for the erasure and depolarizing channels. In this article, we characterize the classical capacity for the class of unital qubit queue-channels and show that a simple product (nonentangled) decoding strategy is capacity achieving. As an intermediate step, we present a simpler derivation of an explicit capacity-achieving product decoding strategy for any independent identically distributed unital qubit channel, which may be of interest. As an important special case, we also derive the capacity and optimal decoding strategies for a symmetric generalized amplitude damping queue-channel. Our results provide useful insights toward designing practical quantum communication networks and highlight the need to explicitly model the impact of buffering.
We study the fundamental limits of classical communication using quantum states that decohere as they traverse through a network of queues. We consider a network of Markovian queues, known as a Jackson network, with a single source or multiple sources and a single destination. Qubits are communicated through this network with inevitable buffering at intermediate nodes. We model each node as a ‘queue-channel,’ wherein as the qubits wait in buffer, they continue to interact with the environment and suffer a waiting time-dependent noise. Focusing on erasures, we first obtain explicit classical capacity expressions for simple topologies such as tandem queue-channel and parallel queue-channel. Using these as building blocks, we characterize the classical capacity of a general quantum Jackson network with waiting time-dependent erasures. Throughout, we study two types of quantum networks, namely, (i) Repeater-assisted and (ii) Repeater-less. We also obtain optimal pumping rates and routing probabilities to maximize capacity in simple topologies. More broadly, our work quantifies the impact of delay-induced decoherence on the fundamental limits of classical communication over quantum networks.
We consider a queue-channel model that captures the waiting time-dependent degradation of information bits as they wait to be transmitted. Such a scenario arises naturally in quantum communications, where quantum bits tend to decohere rapidly. Trailing the capacity results obtained recently for certain queue-channels, this paper aims to construct practical channel codes for the erasure queue-channel (EQC)—a channel characterized by highly correlated erasures, governed by the underlying queuing dynamics. Our main contributions in this paper are twofold: (i) We propose a generic ‘wrapper’ based on interleaving across renewal blocks of the queue to convert any capacity-achieving block code for a memoryless erasure channel to a capacity-achieving code for the EQC. Next, due to the complexity involved in implementing interleaved systems, (ii) we study the performance of LDPC and Polar codes without any interleaving. We show that standard Arıkan’s Polar transform polarizes the EQC for certain restricted class of erasure probability functions. We also highlight some possible approaches and the corresponding challenges involved in proving the polarization of a general EQC.
A strong converse bound for the classical identification capacity of a quantum channel is an upper bound on the asymptotic identification rate of classical messages sent through the channel, such that, above this rate, the probability of an identification error necessarily converges to one. Converse bounds for identification are notoriously difficult to obtain for fully quantum channels. The only previously known converse bound, due to Atif, Pradhan and Winter [Int.~J.~Quantum Inf.~22(5):2440013, 2024], has the unsatisfactory feature of remaining strictly positive even for a completely noisy channel, for which identification is clearly impossible. We derive strong (and hence also weak) converse bounds, for the qubit depolarizing channel with noise parameter ppp, that vanish as p→1p\to 1p→1, thereby yielding the correct behavior in the completely noisy limit. Moreover, in the setting of simultaneous classical identification under the constraint of complete product measurements, our converse bound matches the corresponding achievability bound, and establishes that in this case the identification capacity equals the classical capacity of the channel.