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Physical Review A

Classical information capacity of a quantum channel

Paul A. Hausladen, Richard Jozsa, Benjamin W. Schumacher, Michael D. Westmoreland, William K. Wootters

Published Sep 1, 1996• 497 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We consider the transmission of classical information over a quantum channel. The channel is defined by an ``alphabet'' of quantum states, e.g., certain photon polarizations, together with a specified set of probabilities with which these states must be sent. If the receiver is restricted to making separate measurements on the received ``letter'' states, then the Kholevo theorem implies that the amount of information transmitted per letter cannot be greater than the von Neumann entropy H of the letter ensemble. In fact the actual amount of transmitted information will usually be significantly less than H. We show, however, that if the sender uses a block coding scheme consisting of a choice of code words that respects the a priori probabilities of the letter states, and the receiver distinguishes whole words rather than individual letters, then the information transmitted per letter can be made arbitrarily close to H and never exceeds H. This provides a precise information-theoretic interpretation of von Neumann entropy in quantum mechanics. We apply this result to ``superdense'' coding, and we consider its extension to noisy channels. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.54.1869

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We consider the transmission of classical information over a quantum channel. The channel is defined by an alphabet'' of quantum states, e.g., certain photon polarizations, together with a specified set of probabilities with which these states must be sent. If the receiver is restricted to making separate measurements on the received letter'' states, then the Kholevo theorem implies that the amount of information transmitted per letter cannot be greater than the von Neumann entropy H of the letter ensemble. In fact the actual amount of transmitted information will usually be significantly less than H. We show, however, that if the sender uses a block coding scheme consisting of a choice of code words that respects the a priori probabilities of the letter states, and the receiver distinguishes whole words rather than individual letters, then the information transmitted per letter can be made arbitrarily close to H and never exceeds H. This provides a precise information-theoretic interpretation of von Neumann entropy in quantum mechanics. We apply this result to ``superdense'' coding, and we consider its extension to noisy channels. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
We discuss the capacity of quantum channels for information transmission and storage. Quantum channels have dual uses: they can be used to transmit known quantum states which code for classical information, and they can be used in a purely quantum manner, for transmitting or storing quantum entanglement. We propose here a definition of the von Neumann capacity of quantum channels, which is a quantum-mechanical extension of the Shannon capacity and reverts to it in the classical limit. As such, the von Neumann capacity assumes the role of a classical or quantum capacity depending on the usage of the channel. In analogy to the classical construction, this capacity is defined as the maximum von Neumann mutual entropy processed by the channel, a measure which reduces to the capacity for classical information transmission through quantum channels (the ``Kholevo capacity'') when known quantum states are sent. The quantum mutual entropy fulfills all basic requirements for a measure of information, and observes quantum data-processing inequalities. We also derive a quantum Fano inequality relating the quantum loss of the channel to the fidelity of the quantum code. The quantities introduced are calculated explicitly for the quantum depolarizing channel. The von Neumann capacity is interpreted within the context of superdense coding, and an extended Hamming bound is derived that is consistent with that capacity.
We consider a channel coding for sending classical information through a quantum channel with a given ensemble of quantum states (letter states). As is well known, it is generically possible in a quantum channel that the transmittable information in block coding of length nnn can exceed nnn times the maximum amount that can be sent without any coding scheme. This so-called superadditivity in classical capacity of a quantum channel is a distinct feature that cannot be found in a classical memoryless channel. In this paper, a practical model of channel coding that shows this property is presented. It consists of a simple code-word selection and the optimum decoding of the code words minimizing the average error probability. At first, optimization of decoding strategy is discussed. Then the channel coding that shows the superadditivity in classical capacity is demonstrated.
We prove a new result limiting the amount of accessible information in a quantum channel. This generalizes Kholevo's theorem and implies it as a simple corollary. Our proof uses the strong subadditivity of the von Neumann entropy functional $S(\ensuremath{\rho})$ and a specific physical analysis of the measurement process. The result presented here has application in information obtained from ``weak'' measurements, such as those sometimes considered in quantum cryptography.
To transmit classical information using a quantum system, the sender prepares the system in one of a set of possible states and sends it to the receiver. The receiver then makes a measurement on the system to obtain information about the senders choice of state. The amount of information which is accessible to the receiver depends upon the encoding and the measurement. Here we derive a bound on this information which generalizes the bound derived by Schumacher, Westmoreland and Wootters [Schumacher, Westmoreland and Wootters, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3452 (1996)] to include inefficient measurements, and thus all quantum operations. This also allows us to obtain a generalization of a bound derived by Hall [Hall, Phys. Rev. A 55, 100 (1997)], and to show that the average reduction in the von Neumann entropy which accompanies a measurement is concave in the initial state, for all quantum operations.
Quantum systems may be used to transmit classical information. To do this the sender encodes information by preparing the system in one of an alphabet of possible states, and sends it to the receiver. The receiver then performs a measurement on the system in order to obtain information about which state was sent. Here we describe a general bound on the information which is accessible to the receiver in such a channel when the receivers measurement is noisy. In addition to extracting classical information, measurements also reduce the entropy of a quantum system. This is important, for example, in quantum feedback control. We discuss two corollaries of the information bound that involve this entropy reduction.