Abstract We consider a communication scenario where classical information is encoded in an ensemble of quantum states that admit a power series expansion in a cost parameter and converge to a single zero cost state with vanishing cost. For a given measurement scheme, we derive an approximate expression for mutual information in the leading order of the cost parameter. The general results are applied to selected problems in optical communication, where coherent states of light are used as input symbols and the cost is quantified as the average number of photons per symbol. We show that for an arbitrary individual measurement on phase shift keyed (PSK) symbols, the photon information efficiency is upper bounded by 2 nats of information per photon in the low-cost limit, which coincides with the conventional homodyne detection bound. The presented low-cost approximation facilitates a systematic analysis of few-symbol measurements that exhibit superadditivity of accessible information. For the binary PSK alphabet of coherent states, we present designs for two- and three-symbol measurement schemes based on linear optics, homodyning, and single photon detection that offer respectively 2.49% and 3.40% enhancement relative to individual measurements. We also show how designs for scalable superadditive measurement schemes emerge from the introduced low-cost formalism.
Abstract We consider a communication scenario where classical information is encoded in an ensemble of quantum states that admit a power series expansion in a cost parameter and converge to a single zero cost state with vanishing cost. For a given measurement scheme, we derive an approximate expression for mutual information in the leading order of the cost parameter. The general results are applied to selected problems in optical communication, where coherent states of light are used as input symbols and the cost is quantified as the average number of photons per symbol. We show that for an arbitrary individual measurement on phase shift keyed (PSK) symbols, the photon information efficiency is upper bounded by 2 nats of information per photon in the low-cost limit, which coincides with the conventional homodyne detection bound. The presented low-cost approximation facilitates a systematic analysis of few-symbol measurements that exhibit superadditivity of accessible information. For the binary PSK alphabet of coherent states, we present designs for two- and three-symbol measurement schemes based on linear optics, homodyning, and single photon detection that offer respectively 2.49% and 3.40% enhancement relative to individual measurements. We also show how designs for scalable superadditive measurement schemes emerge from the introduced low-cost formalism.
Laser-light (coherent-state) modulation is sufficient to achieve the ultimate (Holevo) capacity of classical communication over a lossy and noisy optical channel, but requires a receiver that jointly detects long modulated code words with highly nonlinear quantum operations, which are near-impossible to realize using current technology. We analyze the capacity of the lossy-noisy optical channel when the transmitter uses coherent-state modulation but the receiver is restricted to a general quantum-limited Gaussian receiver, i.e., one that may involve arbitrary combinations of Gaussian operations [passive linear optics: beam splitters and phase shifters; second-order nonlinear optics (or active linear optics): squeezers, along with homodyne or heterodyne detection measurements] and any amount of classical feedforward within the receiver. Under these assumptions, we show that the Gaussian receiver that attains the maximum mutual information is either homodyne detection, heterodyne detection, or time sharing between the two, depending upon the received power level. In other words, our result shows that to exceed the theoretical limit of conventional coherent optical communication, one has to incorporate non-Gaussian, i.e., third- or higher-order nonlinear operations in the receiver. Finally we compare our Gaussian receiver limit with experimentally feasible non-Gaussian receivers and show that in the regime of low received photon flux, it is possible to overcome the Gaussian receiver limit by relatively simple non-Gaussian receivers based on photon counting.
An important problem in quantum information theory is finding the best possible performance of the optical communication channel employing suitable codewords, receiver design, and constellation optimization techniques. Many receiver designs have been studied in the past to discriminate Phase-Shift Keying (PSK) quantum states that are used to encode information before transmitting over the communication channel. Among many types of quantum states, there has been significant work on the use of coherent states for encoding information. Previous work has sought to improve the communication performance in terms of various metrics such as error probability of state discrimination and capacities by employing a number of quantum states such as coherent states and squeezed-displaced states. In this thesis, we provide optimal receiver design employing coherent states and squeezed-displaced states to maximize the mutual information and lower the error probability of state discrimination. In the case of pure coherent states, we derive an alternative channel capacity of phase-shift keying coherent state with a realizable displacement receiver by maximizing mutual information over symbol priors and pre-detection displacement. We find that the capacity is higher than the capacity achieved by maximizing mutual information over symbol prior but with zero displacements. The overall scheme demonstrates designing an improved, yet easy-to-implement receiver for better communication performance by tuning it at different photon number regime. We also explore the use of squeezing operations with a displacement receiver for state discrimination. Our calculation demonstrates that we see no performance improvement in terms of the probability of error of state discrimination or mutual information using displacement receivers when optimal squeezing on the transmitter side is used. In addition, we also study the receiver design scheme for QPSK modulation where squeezing is employed at the receiver side. We find that using the squeezing operation on the receiver side provides an advantage in terms of increased mutual information for the low-photon number regime compared to when no squeezing is used. In the later part of the thesis, we study entanglement-assisted communication using two-mode squeezing vacuum. The use of pre-shared entanglement in entanglement-assisted communication provides a superior alternative to classical communication specifically in the low brightness regime and highly noisy environment. In this thesis, we analyze the performance of a few low-complexity receivers that employ optical parametric amplifiers. In the simulation, we demonstrate that receiver designs with an entanglement-assisted scheme using phase-shift-keying modulation can outperform classical capacities. We describe a newly proposed 2x2 optical hybrid receiver for entanglement-assisted communication whose performance is roughly 10% better in terms of error probability as compared to previously proposed optical parametric amplifier-based receivers. Further, we find that using unequal priors for BPSK provides approximately three times the advantage over equal priors in terms of information rate.
We analyze the effect of phase fluctuations in an optical communication scheme based on collective detection of sequences of binary coherent state symbols using linear optics and photon counting. When the phase noise is absent, the scheme offers qualitatively improved nonlinear scaling of the spectral efficiency with the mean photon number in the low-power regime compared to individual detection. We show that this feature, providing a demonstration of superaddivitity of accessible information in classical communication over quantum channels, is preserved if random phases imprinted on transmitted symbols fluctuate around a reference fixed over the sequence length.
When classical information is sent over a channel with quantum-state modulation alphabet, such as the free-space optical (FSO) channel, attaining the ultimate (Holevo) limit to channel capacity requires the receiver to make joint measurements over long codeword blocks. In recent work, we showed a receiver for a pure-state channel that can attain the ultimate capacity by applying a single-shot optical (unitary) transformation on the received codeword state followed by simultaneous (but separable) projective measurements on the single-modulation-symbol state spaces. In this paper, we study the ultimate tradeoff between photon efficiency and spectral efficiency for the FSO channel. Based on our general results for the pure-state quantum channel, we show some of the first concrete examples of codes and laboratory-realizable joint-detection optical receivers that can achieve fundamentally higher (superadditive) channel capacity than receivers that physically detect each modulation symbol one at a time, as is done by all conventional (coherent or direct-detection) optical receivers.
Laser-light (coherent-state) modulation is sufficient to achieve the ultimate (Holevo) capacity of classical communication over a lossy and noisy optical channel, but requires a receiver that jointly detects long modulated codewords with highly nonlinear quantum operations, which are near-impossible to realize using current technology. We analyze the capacity of the lossy-noisy optical channel when the transmitter uses coherent state modulation but the receiver is restricted to a general quantum-limited Gaussian receiver, i.e., one that may involve arbitrary combinations of Gaussian operations (passive linear optics: beamsplitters and phase-shifters, second order nonlinear process (squeezers), along with homodyne or heterodyne detection measurements) and any amount of classical feedforward within the receiver. Under these assumptions, we show that the Gaussian receiver that attains the maximum mutual information is either homodyne detection, heterodyne detection, or time sharing between the two, depending upon the received power level. In other words, our result shows that to exceed the theoretical limit of conventional coherent optical communications, one has to incorporate non-Gaussian (i.e. higher order nonlinear) operations in the receiver.
Abstract The achievable rate of information transfer in optical communications is determined by the physical properties of the communication channel, such as the intrinsic channel noise. Bosonic phase noise channels, a class of non-Gaussian channels, have emerged as a relevant noise model in quantum information and optical communication. However, while the fundamental limits for communication over Gaussian channels have been extensively studied, the properties of communication over Bosonic phase noise channels are not well understood. Here we propose and demonstrate experimentally the concept of optimized communication strategies for communication over phase noise channels to enhance information transfer beyond what is possible with conventional methods of modulation and detection. Two key ingredients are generalized constellations of coherent states that interpolate between standard on-off keying and binary phase-shift keying formats, and non-Gaussian measurements based on photon number resolving detection of the coherently displaced signal. For a given power constraint and channel noise strength, these novel strategies rely on joint optimization of the input alphabet and the measurement to provide enhanced communication capability over a non-Gaussian channel characterized in terms of the error rate as well as mutual information.