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IEEE/LEOS Summer Topical Meetings

Entropy power inequalities and classical capacities of bosonic noise channels

Robert König, Graeme Smith

Published Jul 1, 2013• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Characterizing information-carrying capacities of bosonic communication channels is of significant practical interest. For thermal noise channels, using coherent (product) states yields an achievable rate for classical communication which is conjectured to be optimal. However, it is not known whether coding strategies using entanglement may perform better. Here we discuss upper bounds on classical capacities of thermal noise channels. These imply that coherent-state coding is close to optimal. Our main tool is a quantum analog of the entropy power inequality introduced Shannon. It gives a lower bound on the output von Neumann entropy when two independent signals combine at a beamsplitter.

DOI
10.1109/phosst.2013.6614515

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Characterizing information-carrying capacities of bosonic communication channels is of significant practical interest. For thermal noise channels, using coherent (product) states yields an achievable rate for classical communication which is conjectured to be optimal. However, it is not known whether coding strategies using entanglement may perform better. Here we discuss upper bounds on classical capacities of thermal noise channels. These imply that coherent-state coding is close to optimal. Our main tool is a quantum analog of the entropy power inequality introduced Shannon. It gives a lower bound on the output von Neumann entropy when two independent signals combine at a beamsplitter.
Previous work on the classical information capacities of bosonic channels has established the capacity of the single-user pure-loss channel, bounded the capacity of the single-user thermal-noise channel, and bounded the capacity region of the multiple-access channel. The latter is a multiple-user scenario in which several transmitters seek to simultaneously and independently communicate to a single receiver. We study the capacity region of the bosonic broadcast channel, in which a single transmitter seeks to simultaneously and independently communicate to two different receivers. It is known that the tightest available lower bound on the capacity of the single-user thermal-noise channel is that channel's capacity if, as conjectured, the minimum von Neumann entropy at the output of a bosonic channel with additive thermal noise occurs for coherent-state inputs. Evidence in support of this minimum output entropy conjecture has been accumulated, but a rigorous proof has not been obtained. We propose a minimum output entropy conjecture that, if proved to be correct, will establish that the capacity region of the bosonic broadcast channel equals the inner bound achieved using a coherent-state encoding and optimum detection. We provide some evidence that supports this conjecture, but again a full proof is not available.
We consider a quantum bosonic channel that couples the input mode via a beam splitter or two-mode squeezer to an environmental mode that is prepared in an arbitrary state. We investigate the classical capacity of this channel, which we call a non-Gaussian attenuator or amplifier channel. If the environment state is thermal, we of course recover a Gaussian phase-covariant channel whose classical capacity is well known. Otherwise, we derive both a lower and an upper bound to the classical capacity of the channel, drawing inspiration from the classical treatment of the capacity of non-Gaussian additive-noise channels. We show that the lower bound to the capacity is always achievable and give examples where the non-Gaussianity of the channel can be exploited so that the communication rate beats the capacity of the Gaussian-equivalent channel (i.e. the channel where the environment state is replaced by a Gaussian state with the same covariance matrix). Finally, our upper bound leads us to formulate and investigate conjectures on the input state that minimizes the output entropy of non-Gaussian attenuator or amplifier channels. Solving these conjectures would be a main step toward accessing the capacity of a large class of non-Gaussian bosonic channels.
We consider a quantum bosonic channel that couples the input mode via a beam splitter or two-mode squeezer to an environmental mode that is prepared in an arbitrary state. We investigate the classical capacity of this channel, which we call a non-Gaussian attenuator or amplifier channel. If the environment state is thermal, we of course recover a Gaussian phase-covariant channel whose classical capacity is well known. Otherwise, we derive both a lower and an upper bound to the classical capacity of the channel, drawing inspiration from the classical treatment of the capacity of non-Gaussian additive-noise channels. We show that the lower bound to the capacity is always achievable and give examples where the non-Gaussianity of the channel can be exploited so that the communication rate beats the capacity of the Gaussian-equivalent channel (i.e. the channel where the environment state is replaced by a Gaussian state with the same covariance matrix). Finally, our upper bound leads us to formulate and investigate conjectures on the input state that minimizes the output entropy of non-Gaussian attenuator or amplifier channels. Solving these conjectures would be a main step toward accessing the capacity of a large class of non-Gaussian bosonic channels.
We propose a generalization of the quantum entropy power inequality involving condi-tional entropies. For the special case of Gaussian states, we give a proof based on perturba-tion theory for symplectic spectra. We discuss some implications for entanglement-assisted classical communication over additive bosonic noise channels. 1 Classical and quantum entropy-power inequalities The entropy power inequality, proposed by Shannon [27] and later established with increasing rigor by Stam [29] and Blachman [5], has become a fundamental tool in classical informa-tion theory. Shannon’s original application of the entropy power inequality is a lower bound on the capacity of an additive (but potentially non-Gaussian) noise channel [27, Theorem 18]. However, the usefulness of the entropy power inequality is especially evident in multi-terminal information theory. Among the most well-known applications are the characterization of the Gaussian broadcast channel by Bergman [4], the Gaussian two-description problem by Ozarow [25] and the quadratic Gaussian CEO problem by Oohama [24]. In these multi-user settings, Fano’s inequality by itself is insufficient to characterize different tradeoffs. A more recent application proposed by Liu and Viswanath [23] uses entropy power inequalities to solve certain optimization problems. The entropy power inequality lower bounds the differential entropy of the convolution of two independent random variables X, Y taking values in Rn. Its covariance-preserving version states that H( λX + 1 − λY) ≥ λH(X) + (1 − λ)H(Y) for all 0 ≤ λ ≤ 1. (1) Eq. (1) can be shown [22, 32] to be equivalent to the more commonly used statement e2H(X+Y)/n ≥ e2H(X)/n + e2H(Y)/n. The latter explains the terminology as e2H(X)/n is the power, i.e., variance of a Gaussian ran-dom variable with identical entropy as H(X). Inequalities such as (1) are closely related to Log-Sobolev inequalities (see e.g., [31]) as well as Brunn-Minkowski-type inequalities [6]. Gen-eralizations to free probability [30] and quantum states have been considered. 1 ar
We consider a line with noise in the simplest case. Loss does not add noise. Amplification via phase insensitive amplifiers do add noise. A lower bound of this capacity is the quantum analog to the Shannon capacity of a linear channel with additive white Gaussian noise, namely the difference of the Von Neumann entropy of the signal plus noise at the output of the line and the entropy of the noise alone. We show that this expression is indeed the capacity for the case of an amplifier with infinitesimal gain G=1+εG = 1+εG=1+ε, and for a cascade of an amplifier with arbitrary gain and a large loss, such that the overall gain of the cascade is infinitesimal.