Entanglement fidelity quantifies how well a quantum channel preserves the correlations between a transmitted system and an inaccessible reference system. We derive closed-form expressions for the entanglement fidelity associated with several standard quantum noise models, including the random Pauli-X, dephasing, depolarizing, Werner-Holevo, generalized Pauli (Weyl), and amplitude-damping channels. For each model, we express the entanglement fidelity in terms of a general input density operator $ρ$, using Schumacher's Kraus-operator approach, which provides a channel-agnostic recipe applicable to any completely positive trace-preserving (CPTP) map with a finite Kraus representation. We then specialize to a communication scenario in which the source emits a two-letter parametric alphabet, thereby making explicit the dependence of entanglement preservation on both channel and source parameters. The resulting expressions enable direct comparisons of channel performance and rankings for representative families of input states, including common qubit states.
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A shorter version of this paper will appear at QCNC 2026
Entanglement fidelity quantifies how well a quantum channel preserves the correlations between a transmitted system and an inaccessible reference system. We derive closed-form expressions for the entanglement fidelity associated with several standard quantum noise models, including the random Pauli-X, dephasing, depolarizing, Werner-Holevo, generalized Pauli (Weyl), and amplitude-damping channels. For each model, we express the entanglement fidelity in terms of a general input density operator ρ, using Schumacher's Kraus-operator approach, which provides a channel-agnostic recipe applicable to any completely positive trace-preserving (CPTP) map with a finite Kraus representation. We then specialize to a communication scenario in which the source emits a two-letter parametric alphabet, thereby making explicit the dependence of entanglement preservation on both channel and source parameters. The resulting expressions enable direct comparisons of channel performance and rankings for representative families of input states, including common qubit states.
Entanglement fidelity quantifies how well a quantum channel preserves the correlations between a transmitted system and an inaccessible reference system. We derive closed-form expressions for the entanglement fidelity of several standard quantum noise models, including the random Pauli-X, dephasing, depolarizing, Werner-Holevo, generalized Pauli (Weyl), and amplitude-damping channels. For each model, we express the entanglement fidelity in terms of a general input density operatorρ, using Schumacher's Kraus-operator approach, which provides a channel-agnostic recipe for any completely positive trace-preserving map with a finite Kraus representation. We then specialize to a communication scenario in which the source emits a two-letter parametric alphabet, thereby making explicit the dependence of entanglement preservation on both channel and source parameters. The resulting expressions enable direct comparisons of channel performance and rankings for representative families of input states.
Sharing entanglement across quantum interconnects is fundamental for quantum information processing. We discuss a practical setting where this interconnect, modeled by a quantum channel, is used once with the aim of sharing high-fidelity entanglement. For any channel, we provide methods to easily find both this maximum fidelity and optimal inputs that achieve it. Unlike most metrics for sharing entanglement, this maximum fidelity can be shown to be multiplicative. This ensures a complete understanding in the sense that the maximum fidelity and optimal inputs found in our one-shot setting extend even when the channel is used multiple times, possibly with other channels. Optimal inputs need not be fully entangled. We find that the minimum entanglement in these optimal inputs can even vary discontinuously with channel noise. Generally, noise parameters are hard to identify and remain unknown for most channels. However, for all qubit channels with qubit environments, we provide a rigorous noise parametrization, which we explain in terms of no cloning. This noise parametrization and a channel representation that we call the standard Kraus decomposition have pleasing properties that make them useful more generally.
Introducing contravariant trace-densities for quantum states, we restore one to one correspondence between quantum operations described by normal CP maps and their trace densities as Hermitian positive operator-valued contravariant kernels. The CB-norm distance between two quantum operations with type one input algebras is explicitly expressed in terms of these densities, and this formula is also extended to a generalized CB-distances between quantum operations with type two inputs. A larger C-distance is given as the natural norm-distance for the channel densities, and another, Helinger type distance, related to minimax mean square optimization problem for purification of quantum channels, is also introduced and evaluated in terms of their contravariant trace-densities. It is proved that the Helinger type complete fidelity distance between two channels is equivalent to the CB distance at least for type one inputs, and this equivalence is also extended to type two for the generalized CB distance. An operational meaning for these distances and relative complete fidelity for quantum channels is given in terms of quantum encodings as generalized entanglements of quantum states opposite to the inputs and the output states.
Transmitting quantum information across quantum channels is an important task. However quantum information is delicate, and is easily corrupted. We address the task of protecting quantum information from an information theoretic perspective -- we encode some message qudits into a quantum code, send the encoded quantum information across the noisy quantum channel, then recover the message qudits by decoding. In this dissertation, we discuss the coding problem from several perspectives.} \n \nThe noisy quantum channel is one of the central aspects of the quantum coding problem, and hence quantifying the noisy quantum channel from the physical model is an important problem. \nWe work with an explicit physical model -- a pair of initially decoupled quantum harmonic oscillators interacting with a spring-like coupling, where the bath oscillator is initially in a thermal-like state. In particular, we treat the completely positive and trace preserving map on the system as a quantum channel, and study the truncation of the channel by truncating its Kraus set. We thereby derive the matrix elements of the Choi-Jamiolkowski operator of the corresponding truncated channel, which are truncated transition amplitudes. Finally, we give a computable approximation for these truncated transition amplitudes with explicit error bounds, and perform a case study of the oscillators in the off-resonant and weakly-coupled regime numerically. \n \nIn the context of truncated noisy channels, we revisit the notion of approximate error correction of finite dimension codes. We derive a computationally simple lower bound on the worst case entanglement fidelity of a quantum code, when the truncated recovery map of Leung et. al. is rescaled. As an application, we apply our bound to construct a family of multi-error correcting amplitude damping codes that are permutation-invariant. This demonstrates an explicit example where the specific structure of the noisy channel allows code design out of the stabilizer formalism via purely algebraic means. \n \nWe study lower bounds on the quantum capacity of adversarial channels, where we restrict the selection of quantum codes to the set of concatenated quantum codes. \nThe adversarial channel is a quantum channel where an adversary corrupts a fixed fraction of qudits sent across a quantum channel in the most malicious way possible. The best known rates of communicating over adversarial channels are given by the quantum Gilbert-Varshamov (GV) bound, that is known to be attainable with random quantum codes. We generalize the classical result of Thommesen to the quantum case, thereby demonstrating the existence of concatenated quantum codes that can asymptotically attain the quantum GV bound. The outer codes are quantum generalized Reed-Solomon codes, and the inner codes are random independently chosen stabilizer codes, where the rates of the inner and outer codes lie in a specified feasible region. \n \nWe next study upper bounds on the quantum capacity of some low dimension quantum channels. \nThe quantum capacity of a quantum channel is the maximum rate at which quantum information can be transmitted reliably across it, given arbitrarily many uses of it. While it is known that random quantum codes can be used to attain the quantum capacity, the quantum capacity of many classes of channels is undetermined, even for channels of low input and output dimension. For example, depolarizing channels are \n important quantum channels, but do not have tight numerical bounds. \nWe obtain upper bounds on the quantum capacity of some unital and non-unital channels \n -- two-qubit Pauli channels, two-qubit depolarizing channels, two-qubit locally symmetric channels, \n shifted qubit depolarizing channels, and shifted two-qubit Pauli channels -- \n using the coherent information of some degradable channels. We use the notion \n of twirling quantum channels, and Smith and Smolin's method of constructing \n degradable extensions of quantum channels extensively. The degradable channels we \n introduce, study and use are two-qubit amplitude damping channels. Exploiting the \n notion of covariant quantum channels, we give sufficient conditions for the quantum \n capacity of a degradable channel to be the optimal value of a concave program with \n linear constraints, and show that our two-qubit degradable amplitude damping channels have this property.
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 p, 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) 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<1, and construct a binary Kraus representation attaining the uniform formation bound.
Abstract The purity and fidelity of quantum operations are of great importance in characterizing the quality of quantum operations. The currently available definitions of the purity and fidelity of quantum operations are based on the average over all possible input pure quantum states, i.e. they are state-dependent (SD). In this paper, without resorting to quantum states, we define the state-independent (SI) purity and fidelity of a general quantum operation (evolution) in virtue of a new density matrix formalism for quantum operations, which is extended from the quantum state level to quantum operation level. The SI purity and fidelity gain more intrinsic physical properties of quantum operations than state-dependent ones, such as the purity of a one-qubit amplitude damping channel (with damping rate 1) is 1/2, which is in line with the fact that the channel is still a nonunitary operation described by two Kraus operators rather than a unitary one. But the state-dependent Haar average purity is 1 in this case. So the SI purity and fidelity proposed here can help the experimentalists to exactly quantify the implementation quality of an operation. As a byproduct, a new measure of the operator entanglement is proposed for a quantum evolution (unitary or nonunitary) in terms of the linear entropy of its density matrix on the orthonormal operator bases (OOBs) in Hilbert–Schmidt space.