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arXiv:2507.06232

Error Exponents for Quantum Packing Problems via An Operator Layer Cake Theorem

Hao–Chung Cheng, Po-Chieh Liu

Published Jul 8, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this work, we prove a one-shot random coding bound for classical-quantum channel coding, a problem conjectured by Burnashev and Holevo in 1998. By choosing the optimal input distribution, the bound implies the optimal error exponent (i.e., the reliability function) of classical-quantum channels for rates above the critical rate, even in infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. Our result extends to various quantum packing-type problems, including classical communication over any fully quantum channel with or without entanglement-assistance, constant composition codes, and classical data compression with quantum side information via fixed-length or variable-length coding. Our technical ingredient is to establish an operator layer cake theorem - the directional derivative of an operator logarithm admits an integral representation of certain projections. This shows that a kind of pretty-good measurement is equivalent to a randomized Holevo-Helstrom measurement, which provides an operational explanation of why the pretty-good measurement is pretty good.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2507.06232

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In this work, we prove a one-shot random coding bound for classical-quantum channel coding, a problem conjectured by Burnashev and Holevo in 1998. By choosing the optimal input distribution, the bound implies the optimal error exponent (i.e., the reliability function) of classical-quantum channels for rates above the critical rate, even in infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. Our result extends to various quantum packing-type problems, including classical communication over any fully quantum channel with or without entanglement-assistance, constant composition codes, and classical data compression with quantum side information via fixed-length or variable-length coding. Our technical ingredient is to establish an operator layer cake theorem - the directional derivative of an operator logarithm admits an integral representation of certain projections. This shows that a kind of pretty-good measurement is equivalent to a randomized Holevo-Helstrom measurement, which provides an operational explanation of why the pretty-good measurement is pretty good.
A fundamental quantity of interest in Shannon theory, classical or quantum, is the error exponent of a given channel W and rate R: the constantE(W,R)E(W,R)E(W,R)which governs the exponential decay of decoding error when using ever larger optimal codes of fixed rate R to communicate over ever more (memoryless) instances of a given channel W. Nearly matching lower and upper bounds are well-known for classical channels. Here I show a lower bound on the error exponent of communication over arbitrary classical-quantum (CQ) channels which matches Dalai’s sphere-packing upper bound for rates above a critical value, exactly analogous to the case of classical channels. This proves a conjecture made by Holevo in his investigation of the problem. Unlike the classical case, however, the argument does not proceed via a refined analysis of a suitable decoder, but instead by leveraging a bound by Hayashi on the error exponent of the cryptographic task of privacy amplification. This bound is then related to the coding problem via tight entropic uncertainty relations and Gallager’s method of constructing capacity-achieving parity-check codes for arbitrary channels. Along the way, I find a lower bound on the error exponent of the task of compression of classical information relative to quantum side information that matches the sphere-packing upper bound of Cheng et al. In turn, the polynomial prefactors to the sphere-packing bound found by Cheng et al. may be translated to the privacy amplification problem, sharpening a recent result by Li, Yao, and Hayashi, at least for linear randomness extractors.
A fundamental quantity of interest in Shannon theory, classical or quantum, is the optimal error exponent of a given channel W and rate R: the constant E(W,R) which governs the exponential decay of decoding error when using ever larger codes of fixed rate R to communicate over ever more (memoryless) instances of a given channel W. Here I show that a bound by Hayashi [CMP 333, 335 (2015)] for an analogous quantity in privacy amplification implies a lower bound on the error exponent of communication over symmetric classical-quantum channels. The resulting bound matches Dalai’s [IEEE TIT 59, 8027 (2013)] sphere-packing upper bound for rates above a critical value, and reproduces the well-known classical result for symmetric channels. The argument proceeds by first relating the error exponent of privacy amplification to that of compression of classical information with quantum side information, which gives a lower bound that matches the sphere-packing upper bound of Cheng et al. [IEEE TIT 67, 902 (2021)]. In turn, the polynomial prefactors to the sphere-packing bound found by Cheng et al. may be translated to the privacy amplification problem, sharpening a recent result by Li, Yao, and Hayashi [arXiv:2111.01075 [quant-ph]], at least for linear randomness extractors.
Single-shot quantum information theory is governed not only by entropy exponents, but also by the finite-resource constants that multiply them. These constants directly affect the quantitative performance of decoupling, covering, convex-splitting, position-based decoding, and one-shot communication protocols, yet they are often inherited from nonoptimal scalar estimates or from classical-to-quantum lifting arguments that introduce additional losses. In this work we show that the operator layer-cake representation provides a mechanism for lifting sharp scalar inequalities to the noncommutative setting without loss. Using an iterative Riemann--Stieltjes integration-by-parts method, we derive sharp quantum trace inequalities that tighten several standard single-shot bounds. For a logarithmic trace inequality recently introduced by Cheng \emph{et al.}\ and subsequently used in quantum covering and decoupling problems, we determine the exact optimal prefactor, replacing the previously known constant by a smaller Lambert-WWW constant and proving universal optimality for positive operators. We also completely characterize the threshold behavior that appears under normalization to quantum states. In addition, we establish optimal two-sided collision-divergence inequalities, which lead to improved position-based decoding and single-shot classical communication bounds. These results show that several finite-resource bounds in single-shot quantum information can be tightened, and that within the layer-cake Rényi-divergence framework the resulting constants are genuine optimality barriers rather than artifacts of the proof.
We introduce a new quantum decoder based on a variant of the pretty good measurement, but defined via an alternative matrix quotient. We then use this novel decoder to derive new lower bounds on the error exponent both in the one-shot and asymptotic regimes for the classical-quantum and the entanglement-assisted channel coding problems. Our bounds are expressed in terms of measured (for the one-shot bounds) and sandwiched (for the asymptotic bounds) channel Rényi mutual information of order between 1/2 and 1. The bounds are not comparable with some previously established bounds for general channels, yet they are tight (for rates close to capacity) when the channel is classical. Finally, we also use our new decoder to rederive Cheng’s recent tight bound on the decoding error probability, which implies that most existing asymptotic results also hold for the new decoder.
In this paper, we propose an elegant and simple one-shot achievability proof for classical-quantum channel coding. The established one-shot bound admits a closed-form expression as in the celebrated Holevo–Helstrom Theorem. Namely, the average error probability of sending M messages through a classical-quantum channel is upper bounded by the minimum error of distinguishing the joint state between channel input and output against (M−1)-many products of its marginals. Our result provides the tightest achievable one-shot capacity for classical-quantum channel coding, and it improves the third-order coding rate in the asymptotic scenario. Moreover, the derived bound directly leads to asymptotic achievability results in the large deviation, small deviation, and moderate deviation regimes in a unified manner.The full version of the manuscript can be found at [arXiv:2208.02132] [1].
We study the reliability function of general classical-quantum channels, which describes the optimal exponent of the decay of decoding error when the communication rate is below the capacity. As the main result, we prove a lower bound, in terms of the quantum Rényi information in Petz's form, for the reliability function. This resolves Holevo's conjecture proposed in 2000, a long-standing open problem in quantum information theory. It turns out that the obtained lower bound matches the upper bound derived by Dalai in 2013, when the communication rate is above a critical value. Thus, we have determined the reliability function in this high-rate case. Our approach relies on Renes' breakthrough made in 2022, which relates classical-quantum channel coding to that of privacy amplification, as well as our new characterization of the channel Rényi information.