A seminal result of Hastings showed that entangled inputs can increase the rate of classical communication through independent uses of a quantum channel. While Hastings' result proved the existence of this phenomenon, it has remained a major open problem to find an explicit channel with this property. In this work, we resolve this question by constructing an explicit family of finite-dimensional quantum channels for which entangling inputs between pairs of channel uses yields an unbounded separation from the achievable communication rate using unentangled inputs. We describe a circuit implementation of our channel that uses only deterministic qudit Clifford unitaries and a single binary measurement with classical feedforward. The key ingredient is a careful design of the measurement and feedforward process that yields the required one-copy and two-copy output entropy bounds from moment estimates alone, without requiring strong convergence of the underlying unitary family.
A seminal result of Hastings showed that entangled inputs can increase the rate of classical communication through independent uses of a quantum channel. While Hastings' result proved the existence of this phenomenon, it has remained a major open problem to find an explicit channel with this property. In this work, we resolve this question by constructing an explicit family of finite-dimensional quantum channels for which entangling inputs between pairs of channel uses yields an unbounded separation from the achievable communication rate using unentangled inputs. We describe a circuit implementation of our channel that uses only deterministic qudit Clifford unitaries and a single binary measurement with classical feedforward. The key ingredient is a careful design of the measurement and feedforward process that yields the required one-copy and two-copy output entropy bounds from moment estimates alone, without requiring strong convergence of the underlying unitary family.
We exhibit quantum channels whose classical and quantum capacities, when assisted by classical feedback, exceed their unassisted classical Holevo capacity. These channels are designed to be noisy in a way that can be corrected with the help of the output and a reference system entangled with part of the input. A similar construction yields quantum channels whose classical capacity, when assisted by two-way classical communication independent of the source, exceeds their classical capacity assisted by feedback alone. We give a hierarchy of capacity inequalities and open questions.
We determine the optimal success probability for transmitting a fixed number of classical messages through a finite number of uses of the quantum erasure channel, assisted by noiseless classical feedback and without initial shared entanglement. For an input dimension d, an erasure probability p, a blocklength n, and M equiprobable messages, the optimal success probability is equal to E[min{1,dK/M}], where K is binomial with parameters n and 1−p. The converse allows arbitrary adaptive quantum encoders, quantum memories, and receiver instruments. Its main ingredient is an elementary dimension bound for noiseless quantum communication with classical feedback, proved by fixing the classical controls without conditioning the sender's state on the observed transcript. A classical protocol that transmits the base-d digits of an integer representing the message, repeating each digit until the receiver acknowledges its reception or the prescribed blocklength is reached, attains the bound for every integer M. We also establish a relative-majorization property of erasure-channel outputs and exactly evaluate a hypothesis-testing converse, recovering the same numerical bound without feedback. That converse need not be achievable without feedback: four uses of the qubit erasure channel and four messages give a strict gap. A product-state code employing tetrahedral qubit states nevertheless outperforms every classical binary erasure code with these parameters. We give an explicit message-size formula and show that the bounded-remainder normal approximation and the average-success strong-converse exponent are unchanged without feedback. We also determine the feedback-assisted error exponent below capacity, prove that it agrees with the no-feedback exponent above a critical rate, and give no-feedback bounds at lower rates.
We establish unbounded two-use Holevo additivity gaps in finite dimensions. For each sufficiently large fixed integer K and all sufficiently large n, we construct channels Tn with output dimension Kn, input dimension exp(ΘK(n2)), and χ(Tn⊗2)−2χ(Tn)≥n[Klog2K−2log2(1+9/K)]−O(1/n). The gap is linear in output qubits, with an explicit quadratic input-qubit cost and an explicit threshold on n. We also obtain channels whose single-use Holevo quantity tends to zero while their two-use Holevo information, and hence classical capacity, diverges. The channels arise from structured tensor products of the complementary mixed-unitary channels used in Collins's free-probabilistic proof. We establish minimum-output-entropy gaps by combining Collins--Youn's product-group Haagerup inequality with Bordenave--Collins's quantitative strong-convergence estimates. We also provide a Lean certificate for our proofs.
Can entangling codewords across independent uses of a quantum channel improve the rate of classical communication? An old conjecture states that there is no such entanglement advantage for all channels. Although Hastings's result and follow-up works disproved this conjecture, it turns out that enormous dimension is required to construct a channel where entanglement enhances classical communication. This indicates that there might be no entanglement advantage for many physical channels, or for all low dimensional channels. Motivated by recent progress on (generalized) amplitude damping channels, we propose a general Schur-weighted block entropy inequality, and show that there is no entanglement advantage for all phase-covariant channels including multi-level amplitude damping channels, generalized dephasing channels, and damping-dephasing channels. As a by-product, we also recover the recently established result that there is no entanglement advantage for all qubit channels.
We study collective state preparation and channel encoding in fermionic systems under parity superselection and composition governed by the canonical anticommutation relations. For a two-mode Gaussian state τ, we obtain the exact entanglement of formation, EFphys(τ⊗m)=⌈m/2⌉log2 for every m≥1. Two copies have the same formation value as one, violating additivity and strong superadditivity, while regularization halves the single-copy value. For an associated Gaussian channel, we determine the minimum output entropy and Holevo information at every blocklength and prove nonadditivity of both. Together, these results give exact answers to the fermionic counterparts of the four additivity questions associated with Shor and Hastings. One physical use carries no classical information, whereas two uses transmit one bit perfectly. The unassisted classical and zero-error classical capacities both equal one half bit per mode. A sharp finite-block bound gives a strong converse: the decoding success probability vanishes at every rate above capacity. These optimizations cover all physical pure-state decompositions and channel inputs, with Gaussian ensembles and classical codes attaining the optima. The formation and minimum output entropy formulas hold for every Rényi order α∈(0,∞]. We also determine the unassisted quantum and zero-error quantum capacities, both equal to one half logical qubit per mode, and prove a strong converse: entanglement fidelity vanishes at every rate above capacity. For a noisy Gaussian family, we determine the one- and two-copy formation values and prove strict nonadditivity at full rank. For τ, Bell violation under local parity-preserving measurements first appears at three copies.
We consider the scenario of classical communication over a finite-dimensional quantum channel with memory using a separable-state input ensemble and local output measurements. We propose algorithms for estimating the information rate of such communication setups, along with algorithms for bounding the information rate based on so-called auxiliary channels. Some of the algorithms are extensions of their counterparts for (classical) finite-state-machine channels. Notably, we discuss suitable graphical models for doing the relevant computations. Moreover, the auxiliary channels are learned in a data-driven approach; i.e., only input/output sequences of the true channel are needed, but not the channel model of the true channel.