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arXiv:2306.12633 · Quantum Information and Computation

Adversarial guesswork with quantum side information

Baasanchimed Avirmed, Kaito Niinomi, Michele Dall’Arno

Published Nov 1, 2023• 2 citations
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Abstract

The guesswork of a classical-quantum channel quantifies the cost incurred in guessing the state transmitted by the channel when only one state can be queried at a time, maximized over any classical pre-processing and minimized over any quantum post-processing. For arbitrary-dimensional covariant classical-quantum channels, we prove the invariance of the optimal pre-processing and the covariance of the optimal ost-processing. In the qubit case, we compute the optimal guesswork for the class of so-called highly symmetric informationally complete classical-quantum channels.

DOI
10.26421/qic23.13-14-3

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The guesswork of a classical-quantum channel quantifies the cost incurred in guessing the state transmitted by the channel when only one state can be queried at a time, maximized over any classical pre-processing and minimized over any quantum post-processing. For arbitrary-dimensional covariant classical-quantum channels, we prove the invariance of the optimal pre-processing and the covariance of the optimal ost-processing. In the qubit case, we compute the optimal guesswork for the class of so-called highly symmetric informationally complete classical-quantum channels.
The guesswork quantifies the minimum cost incurred in guessing the state of an ensemble, when only one state can be queried at a time. In the classical case, it is well known that the optimal strategy trivially consists of querying the states in their non-increasing order of posterior probability. In the quantum case, on the other hand, the most general strategy to obtain the optimal ordering in which to perform the queries consist of a quantum measurement. Here, we solve such an optimization problem by deriving the quantum measurement attaining the guesswork for a broad class of ensembles and cost functions.
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What is the minimum number of guesses needed on average to correctly guess a realization of a random variable? The answer to this question led to the introduction of the notion of a quantity called guesswork by Massey in 1994, which can be viewed as an alternate security criterion to entropy. In this paper, we consider guesswork in the presence of quantum side information, and show that a general sequential guessing strategy is equivalent to performing a single quantum measurement and choosing a guessing strategy based on the outcome. We use this result to deduce entropic one-shot and asymptotic bounds on the guesswork in the presence of quantum side information, and to formulate a semi-definite program (SDP) to calculate the quantity. We evaluate the guesswork for a simple example involving the BB84 states, and we prove a continuity result that certifies the security of slightly imperfect key states when the guesswork is used as the security criterion.
A model of quantum noisy channel with input encoding by a classical random vector is described. An equation of optimality is derived to determine a complete set of wave functions describing quantum decodings based on quasi-measurements maximizing the classical amount of transmitted information. A solution of this equation is found for the Gaussian multimode case with input Gaussian distribution. It is described by the overcomplete family of coherent vectors describing an optimal quasimeasurement of the canonical annihilation amplitudes in the output Hilbert space. It is found that the optimal decoding in this case realizes the maximum amount I=Spln[1+S/(N+1)] of the classical information as transmitted via the classical Gaussian channel with the effective noise covariance matrix N+I. A physical realization of optimal quasi-measurement based on an indirect (heterodyne) observation of the canonical operators is suggested.