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arXiv:2002.04153 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Superadditivity of channel capacity through quantum fields

Koji Yamaguchi, Aida Ahmadzadegan, Petar Simidzija, Achim Kempf, Eduardo Martín-Martínez

Published May 14, 2020• 18 citations

Abstract

Given that any communication is communication through quantum fields, we study here the scenario where a sender, Alice, causes information-carrying disturbances in a quantum field. We track the exact spread of these disturbances in space and time by using the technique of quantum information capsules (QIC). We find that the channel capacity between Alice and a receiver, Bob, is enhanced by Bob placing detectors not only inside but in addition also outside the causal future of Alice's encoding operation. Intuitively, this type of superadditivity arises because the field outside the causal future of Alice is entangled with the field inside Alice's causal future. Hence, the quantum noise picked up by Bob's detectors outside Alice's causal future is correlated with the noise of Bob's detectors inside Alice's causal future. In effect, this correlation allows Bob to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of those of his detectors which are in the causal future of Alice. Further, we develop the multimode generalization of the QIC technique. This allows us to extend the analysis to the case where Alice operates multiple localized and optionally entangled emitters. We apply the new techniques to the case where Alice enhances the channel capacity by operating multiple emitters that are suitably lined up and pretimed to generate a quantum shockwave in the field.

DOI: 10.1103/physrevd.101.105009

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Given that any communication is communication through quantum fields, we study here the scenario where a sender, Alice, causes information-carrying disturbances in a quantum field. We track the exact spread of these disturbances in space and time by using the technique of quantum information capsules (QIC). We find that the channel capacity between Alice and a receiver, Bob, is enhanced by Bob placing detectors not only inside but in addition also outside the causal future of Alice's encoding operation. Intuitively, this type of superadditivity arises because the field outside the causal future of Alice is entangled with the field inside Alice's causal future. Hence, the quantum noise picked up by Bob's detectors outside Alice's causal future is correlated with the noise of Bob's detectors inside Alice's causal future. In effect, this correlation allows Bob to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of those of his detectors which are in the causal future of Alice. Further, we develop the multimode generalization of the QIC technique. This allows us to extend the analysis to the case where Alice operates multiple localized and optionally entangled emitters. We apply the new techniques to the case where Alice enhances the channel capacity by operating multiple emitters that are suitably lined up and pretimed to generate a quantum shockwave in the field.

We present a scheme to produce shockwaves in quantum fields by means of pretimed emitters. We find that by suitably pre-entangeling the emitters, the shockwave's energy density can be locally modulated and amplified. When the large amplitudes in such a shockwave are used for communication, the channel capacity depends not only on the signal-to-noise ratio but also on the effect that the entanglement of the emitters has on the correlations in the signal and in the quantum noise at the receiver. As a consequence, by choosing the entanglement of the emitters, the flow of information in the shockwave can be modulated and spatially shaped to some extent independently of the flow of energy. We also find that there exists a finite optimal strength of the coupling between the receiver and the quantum field which optimizes the channel capacity by optimizing the tradeoff between sensitivity to the signal and sensitivity to the coupling-induced quantum noise.

Setups in which a system Alice emits field quanta that a system Bob receives are prototypical for wireless communication and have been extensively studied. In the most basic setup, Alice and Bob are modeled as Unruh-DeWitt detectors for scalar quanta, and the only noise in their communication is due to quantum fluctuations. For this basic setup, we construct the corresponding information-theoretic quantum channel. We calculate the classical channel capacity as a function of the spacetime separation, and we confirm that the classical as well as the quantum channel capacity are strictly zero for spacelike separations. We show that this channel can be used to entangle Alice and Bob instantaneously. Alice and Bob are shown to extract this entanglement from the vacuum through a Casimir-Polder effect.

Quantum dense coding is considered to be one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the existence of quantum entanglement. In this paper, we analyze the role of correlations (both classical and quantum) in quantum communication protocols. We study how the capacity of a single-qubit quantum channel depends on correlations between Alice and Bob. In particular, we consider a scenario when Alice and Bob share a pair of qubits in a state such that Alice's qubit is in the state described by the density operator $\ensuremath{\varrho}=\frac{1}{2}1+\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{n}\ensuremath{\cdot}\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}.$ We evaluate a capacity of the noiseless channel for two cases: (1) when Bob performs measurement just on the particle received from Alice, and (2) in the case when he utilizes correlations that have been established prior to the communication. We present a simple classical scenario which might serve as a prototype of quantum dense coding. We generalize our results also for qudits. In addition, we address some aspects of the issue of security in correlation-assisted communication protocols.

The entanglement-assisted capacity of a quantum channel admits an additive single-letter characterization, implying that joint encodings across channel uses cannot increase the ultimate communication rate. Here, we show that this additive picture does not extend to communication reliability. Specifically, we prove that the Petz-Rényi channel information can be strictly superadditive for every

α\in[1/2,1)

, yielding a genuine multi-copy enhancement of the entanglement-assisted random-coding error exponent, even though the entanglement-assisted capacity remains additive. We establish this phenomenon analytically already for measurement channels, which are entanglement-breaking and have additive unassisted capacity. Remarkably, this strict superadditivity is witnessed by a separable, classically correlated two-copy channel-input marginal, demonstrating that no entanglement between the transmitted systems is required. Our results show that, although correlations across channel uses cannot increase the ultimate rate of entanglement-assisted communication, they can enhance its reliability.

Entanglement-assisted communication over a random-parameter quantum channel with either causal or non-causal channel side information (CSI) at the encoder is considered.This describes a scenario where the quantum channel depends on the quantum state of the input environment.While Bob, the decoder, has no access to this state, Alice, the transmitter, performs a sequence of projective measurements on her environment to encode her message.Dupuis [10,9] established the entanglement-assisted capacity with non-causal CSI.Here, we establish characterization in the causal setting, and also give an alternative proof technique and further observations for the non-causal setting.