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Physical Review A

Capacity of quantum Gaussian channels

Alexander Semenovich Holevo, Masaki Sohma, Osamu Hirota

Published Mar 1, 1999• 313 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to give explicit calculation of the classical capacity of quantum Gaussian channels, in particular, involving squeezed states. The calculation is based on a general formula for the entropy of a quantum Gaussian state, which is of independent interest, and on the recently proved coding theorem for quantum communication channels.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.59.1820

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The aim of this paper is to give explicit calculation of the classical capacity of quantum Gaussian channels, in particular, involving squeezed states. The calculation is based on a general formula for the entropy of a quantum Gaussian state, which is of independent interest, and on the recently proved coding theorem for quantum communication channels.
As its classical counterpart，quantum Gaussian noise is an important noise model in quantum information theory. The study of capacity of quantum Gaussian channel plays an important role in quantum communications. Based on the definition of quantum Gaussian state，the entropy of quantum Gaussian state，and Holevo bound theorem，the classical capacity of quantum Gaussian channel is given at first in the paper，where the classical capacity is defined as the capacity when only classical messages are transmitted through the quantum channel. Then，the classical capacities of quantum multiple access Gaussian channels are deduced according to the classical capacity theorem of multiple access quantum channels. For simplicity and generality，a multiple access quantum channel with two senders and one receiver is used for computation. The results can be generalized to the quantum channel with n senders and one receiver.
A long-standing problem on the classical capacity of bosonic Gaussian channels has recently been resolved by proving the minimum output entropy conjecture. It is also known that the ultimate capacity quantified by the Holevo bound can be achieved asymptotically by using an infinite number of channels. However, it is less understood to what extent the communication capacity can be reached if one uses a finite number of channels, which is a topic of practical importance. In this paper, we study the capacity of Gaussian communication, i.e., employing Gaussian states and Gaussian measurements to encode and decode information under a single-channel use. We prove that the optimal capacity of single-channel Gaussian communication is achieved by one of two well-known protocols, i.e., coherent-state communication or squeezed-state communication, depending on the energy (number of photons) as well as the characteristics of the channel. Our result suggests that the coherent-state scheme known to achieve the ultimate information-theoretic capacity is not a practically optimal scheme for the case of using a finite number of channels. We find that overall the squeezed-state communication is optimal in a small-photon-number regime whereas the coherent-state communication performs better in a large-photon-number regime.
In most communication scenarios, sending a symbol encoded in a quantum state requires spending resources such as energy, which can be quantified by a cost of communication. A standard approach in this context is to quantify the performance of communication protocol by classical capacity, quantifying the maximal amount of information that can be transmitted through a quantum channel per single use of the channel. However, different figures of merit are also possible and a particularly well-suited one is the classical capacity per unit cost, which quantifies the maximal amount of information that can be transmitted per unit cost. I generalize this concept to account for the quantum nature of the information carriers and communication channels and show that if there exists a state with cost equal to zero, e.g., a vacuum state, the capacity per unit cost can be expressed by a simple formula containing maximization of the relative entropy between two quantum states. This enables me to analyze the behavior of photon information efficiency for general communication tasks and show simple bounds on the capacity per unit cost in terms of quantities familiar from quantum estimation theory. I calculate also the capacity per unit cost for general Gaussian quantum channels.
The classical capacity of a noisy optical channel is the maximum rate at which information can be transmitted reliably, given a constraint on the mean input energy. For the ubiquitous bosonic Gaussian channels, which include standard models of loss and noise in fibre and free-space optical links, determining this rate requires addressing whether entanglement between channel uses or non-Gaussian signals can outperform Gaussian encodings. More precisely, the question is whether the energy-constrained Holevo information is additive across arbitrarily many channel uses and coincides with its Gaussian counterpart. We answer these fundamental questions in the affirmative for every single-mode bosonic Gaussian channel at every input energy. Namely, we prove that independently prepared Gaussian states with Gaussian-distributed random displacements achieve the capacity, including in the low-energy regime where squeezing the signals competes with encoding information in their displacement. Our proof connects an entanglement inequality to a sharp, additive lower bound on output entropy. We then characterise communication above capacity: under a strict total photon-number cutoff, the probability of correct decoding decreases exponentially with the number of channel uses, and we derive explicit bounds on the decay exponent. When only the mean photon number is constrained, a simple energy-rescaling formula determines exactly the entire asymptotic rate--error trade-off: the capacity at mean photon number NNN and allowed average decoding error εεε equals the vanishing-error capacity at mean photon number N/(1−ε)N/(1-ε)N/(1−ε). Together, these results identify the ultimate limits of classical communication for some of the most fundamental models of optical communication.