Communication theory problems incorporating quantum effects for optical-frequency applications are discussed. Under suitable conditions, a unique quantum channel model corresponding to a given classical space-time varying linear random channel is established. A procedure is described by which a proper density-operator representation applicable to any receiver configuration can be constructed directly from the channel output field. Some examples illustrating the application of our methods to the development of optical quantum channel representations are given. Optimizations of communication system performance under different criteria are considered. In particular, certain necessary and sufficient conditions on the optimal detector in M-ary quantum signal detection are derived. Some examples are presented. Parameter estimation and channel capacity are discussed briefly.
We study the role of ancillary entanglement in quantum channel parameter estimation and investigate the minimal ancilla dimension required to achieve the maximum Fisher information. We introduce the
k-ancilla Fisher information, which quantifies the optimal estimation precision achievable with input states of rank at most
k, and derive a variational characterization in terms of a rank-constrained optimization problem. This formulation leads to a simple characterization of the minimum ancilla dimension
k∗ required for optimal estimation, given by the minimum rank among the maximizers of the associated variational problem. We further identify sufficient conditions under which ancillary entanglement provides no advantage, including channel families admitting a fixed measure-and-prepare representation and channels satisfying a natural horizontality condition. In addition, we derive a bound on the incremental gain in Fisher information obtained by increasing the ancilla dimension under suitable structural assumptions on the optimal input states. The general results are illustrated through explicit examples, including unitary channels, qubit depolarizing and amplitude damping channels. These results provide a systematic framework for understanding and quantifying the entanglement resources required for optimal quantum channel estimation.
Quantum channels, which are completely positive and trace preserving mappings, can alter the dimension of a system, e.g. a quantum channel from a qubit to a qutrit. We study the convex set properties of dimension-altering quantum channels, and particularly the channel decomposition problem in terms of convex sum of extreme channels. We provide various quantum circuit representations of extreme and generalized extreme channels, which can be employed in an optimization to approximately decompose an arbitrary channel. Numerical simulations of low-dimensional channels are performed to demonstrate our channel decomposition scheme.