The classical information capacity of channels that are subject to quantum Gaussian noise is studied. Recent work has established the capacity of the pure-loss channel, as well as bounds on and a conjecture for the capacity of the lossy channel with isotropic-Gaussian excess noise. This work is applied to the pure-loss free-space channel that uses multiple Hermite-Gaussian (HG) or Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) spatial modes to communicate between soft-aperture transmit and receive pupils, and to the lossy channel with anisotropic (colored) Gaussian noise.
The classical information capacity of channels that are subject to quantum Gaussian noise is studied. Recent work has established the capacity of the pure-loss channel, as well as bounds on and a conjecture for the capacity of the lossy channel with isotropic-Gaussian excess noise. This work is applied to the pure-loss free-space channel that uses multiple Hermite-Gaussian (HG) or Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) spatial modes to communicate between soft-aperture transmit and receive pupils, and to the lossy channel with anisotropic (colored) Gaussian noise.
The classical capacity of quantum channels is the tight upper bound for the transmission rate of classical information. This is a quantum counterpart of the foundational notion of the channel capacity introduced by Shannon. Bosonic Gaussian quantum channels provide a good model for optical communications. In order to properly define the classical capacity for these quantum systems, an energy constraint at the channel input is necessary, as in the classical case. A further restriction to Gaussian input ensembles defines the Gaussian (classical) capacity, which can be studied analytically. It also provides a lower bound on the classical capacity and moreover, it is conjectured to coincide with the classical capacity. Therefore, the Gaussian capacity is a useful and important notion in quantum information theory. Recently, we have shown that the study of both the classical and Gaussian capacity of an arbitrary single mode Gaussian quantum channel can be reduced to the study of a particular fiducial channel. In this work we consider the Gaussian capacity of the fiducial channel, discuss its additivity and analyze its dependence on the channel parameters. In addition, we extend previously obtained results on the optimal channel environment to the single mode fiducial channel. In particular, we show that the optimal channel environment for the lossy, amplification, and phase conjugating channels is given by a pure quantum state if its energy is constrained.
The capacity C for transmitting classical information is investigated for Bosonic channels with isotropic Gaussian noise. For the pure‐loss channel—in which signal photons may be lost in propagation—the exact value of C is derived. The Holevo information of this channel is shown to be additive, and a “classical” encoding procedure employing coherent states is shown to achieve capacity. For active channel models—in which noise photons are injected from an external environment or the signal is amplified with unavoidable quantum noise—upper and lower bounds are obtained for the capacity. These bounds are asymptotically tight at low and high noise levels. Exact capacity results—given by the lower bounds—would follow from proving the conjecture that a coherent‐state input minimizes the output entropy from such 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 N and allowed average decoding error ε equals the vanishing-error capacity at mean photon number N/(1−ε). Together, these results identify the ultimate limits of classical communication for some of the most fundamental models of optical communication.
In this thesis we study the information transmission through Gaussian quantum channels. Gaussian quantum channels model physical communication links, such as free space communication or optical fibers and therefore, may be considered as the most relevant quantum channels. One of the central characteristics of any communication channel is its capacity. In this work we are interested in the classical capacity, which is the maximal number of bits that can be reliably transmitted per channel use. An important lower bound on the classical capacity is given by the Gaussian capacity, which is the maximal transmission rate with the restriction that only Gaussian encodings are allowed: input messages are encoded in so-called Gaussian states for which the mean field amplitudes are Gaussian distributed. We focus in this work mainly on the Gaussian capacity for the following reasons. First, Gaussian encodings are easily accessible experimentally. Second, the difficulty of studying the classical capacity, which arises due to an optimization problem in an infinite dimensional Hilbert space, is greatly reduced when considering only Gaussian input encodings. Third, the Gaussian capacity is conjectured to coincide with the classical capacity, even though this longstanding conjecture is unsolved until today. We start with the investigation of the capacities of the single-mode Gaussian channel. We show that the most general case can be reduced to a simple, fiducial Gaussian channel which depends only on three parameters: its transmissivity (or gain), the added noise variance and the squeezing of the noise. Above a certain input energy threshold, the optimal input variances are given by a quantum water-filling solution, which implies that the optimal modulated output state is a thermal state. This is a quantum extension (or generalization) of the well-known classical water-filling solution for parallel Gaussian channels. Below the energy threshold the solution is given by a transcendental equation and only the less noisy quadrature is modulated. We characterize in detail the dependence of the Gaussian capacity on its channel parameters. In particular, we show that the Gaussian capacity is a non-monotonous function of the noise squeezing and analytically specify the regions where it exhibits one maximum, a maximum and a minimum, a saddle point or no extrema. Then, we investigate the case of n-mode channels with noise correlations (i.e. memory), where we focus in particular on the classical additive noise channel. We consider memory models for which the noise correlations can be unraveled by a passive symplectic transformation. Therefore, we can simplify the problem to the study of the Gaussian capacity in an uncorrelated basis, which corresponds to the Gaussian capacity of n single-mode channels with a common input energy constraint. Above an input energy threshold the solutions is given by a global quantum water-filling solution, which implies that all modulated single-mode output states are thermal states with the same temperature. Below the threshold the channels are divided into three sets: i) those that are excluded from information transmission, ii) those for which only the less noisy quadrature is modulated, and iii) those for which the quantum water-filling solution is satisfied. As an example we consider a Gauss-Markov correlated noise, which in the uncorrelated basis corresponds to a collection of single-mode classical additive noise channels. When rotating the collection of optimal single-mode input states back to the original, correlated basis the optimal multi-mode input state becomes a highly entangled state. We then compare the performance of the optimal input state with a simple coherent state encoding and conclude that one gains up to 10% by using the optimal encoding. Since the preparation of the optimal input state may be very challenging we consider sub-optimal Gaussian-matrix product states (GMPS) as input states as well. GMPS have a known experimental setup and, though being heavily entangled, can be generated sequentially. We demonstrate that for the Markovian correlated noise as well as for a non-Markovian noise model in a wide range of channel parameters, a nearest-neighbor correlated GMPS achieves more than 99.9% of the Gaussian capacity. At last, we introduce a new noise model for which the GMPS is the exact optimal input state. Since GMPS are known to be ground states of quadratic Hamiltonians this suggests a starting point to develop links between optimization problems of quantum communication and many body physics.
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.
Laser-light (coherent-state) modulation is sufficient to achieve the ultimate (Holevo) capacity of classical communication over a lossy and noisy optical channel, but requires a receiver that jointly detects long modulated codewords with highly nonlinear quantum operations, which are near-impossible to realize using current technology. We analyze the capacity of the lossy-noisy optical channel when the transmitter uses coherent state modulation but the receiver is restricted to a general quantum-limited Gaussian receiver, i.e., one that may involve arbitrary combinations of Gaussian operations (passive linear optics: beamsplitters and phase-shifters, second order nonlinear process (squeezers), along with homodyne or heterodyne detection measurements) and any amount of classical feedforward within the receiver. Under these assumptions, we show that the Gaussian receiver that attains the maximum mutual information is either homodyne detection, heterodyne detection, or time sharing between the two, depending upon the received power level. In other words, our result shows that to exceed the theoretical limit of conventional coherent optical communications, one has to incorporate non-Gaussian (i.e. higher order nonlinear) operations in the receiver.