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arXiv:2107.13486

Queue-Channel Capacities with Generalized Amplitude Damping

Vikesh Siddhu, Avhishek Chatterjee, Krishna Jagannathan, Prabha Mandayam, SRIDHAR R. TAYUR

Published Jul 28, 2021• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The generalized amplitude damping channel (GADC) is considered an important model for quantum communications, especially over optical networks. We make two salient contributions in this paper apropos of this channel. First, we consider a symmetric GAD channel characterized by the parameter $n=1/2,$ and derive its exact classical capacity, by constructing a specific induced classical channel. We show that the Holevo quantity for the GAD channel equals the Shannon capacity of the induced binary symmetric channel, establishing at once the capacity result and that the GAD channel capacity can be achieved without the use of entanglement at the encoder or joint measurements at the decoder. Second, motivated by the inevitable buffering of qubits in quantum networks, we consider a generalized amplitude damping \emph{queue-channel} -- that is, a setting where qubits suffer a waiting time dependent GAD noise as they wait in a buffer to be transmitted. This GAD queue channel is characterized by non-i.i.d. noise due to correlated waiting times of consecutive qubits. We exploit a conditional independence property in conjunction with additivity of the channel model, to obtain a capacity expression for the GAD queue channel in terms of the stationary waiting time in the queue. Our results provide useful insights towards designing practical quantum communication networks, and highlight the need to explicitly model the impact of buffering.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2107.13486

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The generalized amplitude damping channel (GADC) is considered an important model for quantum communications, especially over optical networks. We make two salient contributions in this paper apropos of this channel. First, we consider a symmetric GAD channel characterized by the parameter n=1/2,n=1/2,n=1/2, and derive its exact classical capacity, by constructing a specific induced classical channel. We show that the Holevo quantity for the GAD channel equals the Shannon capacity of the induced binary symmetric channel, establishing at once the capacity result and that the GAD channel capacity can be achieved without the use of entanglement at the encoder or joint measurements at the decoder. Second, motivated by the inevitable buffering of qubits in quantum networks, we consider a generalized amplitude damping \emph{queue-channel} -- that is, a setting where qubits suffer a waiting time dependent GAD noise as they wait in a buffer to be transmitted. This GAD queue channel is characterized by non-i.i.d. noise due to correlated waiting times of consecutive qubits. We exploit a conditional independence property in conjunction with additivity of the channel model, to obtain a capacity expression for the GAD queue channel in terms of the stationary waiting time in the queue. Our results provide useful insights towards designing practical quantum communication networks, and highlight the need to explicitly model the impact of buffering.
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.
The classical capacity of a quantum channel generally requires regularization because input codewords may be entangled across channel uses. We remove this regularization for generalized amplitude-damping channels (GADCs) and determine their exact strong-converse exponent throughout the full parameter range. The exponent is a single-letter transform of the sandwiched Rényi Holevo information and is attained by product input codewords with collective decoding. The key ingredient is a decomposition of the joint output into positive operators whose triangular factors have identical scalar Gram matrices after norm compression. A sharp triangular Schatten-norm compression inequality then establishes maximum output norm multiplicativity for diagonally sandwiched GADCs tensored with arbitrary completely positive maps. This yields additivity of the sandwiched Rényi Holevo information at every order above one. Consequently, the classical capacity equals the known one-copy Holevo information and admits a scalar optimization. Thus, entangled input codewords improve neither the capacity nor the optimal exponential decay of decoding success above capacity.
The generalized amplitude-damping channel (GADC) is one of the sources of noise in superconducting-circuit-based quantum computing. It can be viewed as the qubit analog of the bosonic thermal channel, and it thus can be used to model lossy processes in the presence of background noise for low-temperature systems. In this work, we provide an information-theoretic study of the GADC. We first determine the parameter range for which the GADC is entanglement breaking and the range for which it is antidegradable. We then establish several upper bounds on its classical, quantum, and private capacities. These bounds are based on data-processing inequalities and the uniform continuity of information-theoretic quantities, as well as other techniques. Our upper bounds on the quantum capacity of the GADC are tighter than the known upper bound reported recently in Rosati et al., [Nat. Commun. 9, 4339 (2018)] for the entire parameter range of the GADC, thus reducing the gap between the lower and upper bounds. We also establish upper bounds on the two-way assisted quantum and private capacities of the GADC. These bounds are based on the squashed entanglement, and they are established by constructing particular squashing channels. We compare these bounds with the max-Rains information bound, the mutual information bound, and another bound based on approximate covariance. For all capacities considered, we find that a large variety of techniques are useful in establishing bounds.
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.
Determining a noisy quantum channel's classical capacity and entanglement cost generally requires regularization over many channel uses. We remove both regularizations for every qubit-to-qubit channel admitting a pure output. For each such channel, Holevo information, channel entanglement of formation, and parallel entanglement cost are additive with those of any finite-dimensional partner channel. This class includes all qubit-to-qubit channels of Kraus rank at most two. For the amplitude damping channel with damping probability ppp, the unassisted classical capacity equals the known single-use Holevo information, attained by a binary pure-state ensemble with collective decoding, and the entanglement cost is h2((1+p)/2)h_2((1+\sqrt p)/2)h2​((1+p​)/2) ebits per use. The common mechanism is a support criterion for strong superadditivity of entanglement of formation: one marginal has no support on the sector in which both local systems are orthogonal to fixed distinguished vectors. We prove this criterion in arbitrary finite dimensions using a triangular block-matrix entropy inequality and decompositions preserving two expectations. For amplitude damping, we also derive an exact finite-block Holevo deficit, identify the unique optimal average input for p<1p<1p<1, and construct a binary Kraus representation attaining the uniform formation bound.
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.