We show that the max-Rains information of a quantum channel is an efficiently computable, single-letter strong converse upper bound for transmitting quantum information over quantum channels when assisted by positive-partial-transpose (PPT) preserving channels between every use of the channel. This includes in particular the quantum capacity with local operations and classical communication (LOCC) assistance. For our proof we make use of the amortized entanglement of quantum channels, which is defined as the largest net amount of entanglement that can be generated if the sender and receiver are allowed to share an arbitrary state before using the channel. Our main technical result is that amortization does not enhance the entanglement of quantum channels when entanglement is quantified by the max-Rains relative entropy. We prove this statement by employing semi-definite programming (SDP) duality and SDP formulations for the max-Rains relative entropy and the channel's max-Rains information, found recently in [Wang et al., arXiv:1709.00200].
We show that the max-Rains information of a quantum channel is an efficiently computable, single-letter strong converse upper bound for transmitting quantum information over quantum channels when assisted by positive-partial-transpose (PPT) preserving channels between every use of the channel. This includes in particular the quantum capacity with local operations and classical communication (LOCC) assistance. For our proof we make use of the amortized entanglement of quantum channels, which is defined as the largest net amount of entanglement that can be generated if the sender and receiver are allowed to share an arbitrary state before using the channel. Our main technical result is that amortization does not enhance the entanglement of quantum channels when entanglement is quantified by the max-Rains relative entropy. We prove this statement by employing semi-definite programming (SDP) duality and SDP formulations for the max-Rains relative entropy and the channel's max-Rains information, found recently in [Wang et al., arXiv:1709.00200].
Given an entanglement measure E , the entanglement of a quantum channel is defined as the largest amount of entanglement E that can be generated from the channel, if the sender and receiver are not allowed to share a quantum state before using the channel. The amortized entanglement of a quantum channel is defined as the largest net amount of entanglement E that can be generated from the channel, if the sender and receiver are allowed to share an arbitrary state before using the channel. Our main technical result is that amortization does not enhance the entanglement of an arbitrary quantum channel, when entanglement is quantified by the max-Rains relative entropy. We prove this statement by employing semi-definite programming (SDP) duality and SDP formulations for the max-Rains relative entropy and a channel's max-Rains information, found recently in Wang et al (arXiv: 1709.00200 ). The main application of our result is a single-letter, strong converse, and efficiently computable upper bound on the capacity of a quantum channel for transmitting qubits when assisted by positive-partial-transpose preserving (PPT-P) channels between every use of the channel. As the class of local operations and classical communication (LOCC) is contained in PPT-P, our result establishes a benchmark for the LOCC-assisted quantum capacity of an arbitrary quantum channel, which is relevant in the context of distributed quantum computation and quantum key distribution.
Given an entanglement measure E, the entanglement of a quantum channel is defined as the largest amount of entanglement E that can be generated from the channel, if the sender and receiver are not allowed to share a quantum state before using the channel. The amortized entanglement of a quantum channel is defined as the largest net amount of entanglement E that can be generated from the channel, if the sender and receiver are allowed to share an arbitrary state before using the channel. Our main technical result is that amortization does not enhance the entanglement of an arbitrary quantum channel, when entanglement is quantified by the max-Rains relative entropy. We prove this statement by employing semi-definite programming (SDP) duality and SDP formulations for the max-Rains relative entropy and a channel's max-Rains information, found recently in Wang et al (arXiv:1709.00200). The main application of our result is a single-letter, strong converse, and efficiently computable upper bound on the capacity of a quantum channel for transmitting qubits when assisted by positive-partial-transpose preserving (PPT-P) channels between every use of the channel. As the class of local operations and classical communication (LOCC) is contained in PPT-P, our result establishes a benchmark for the LOCC-assisted quantum capacity of an arbitrary quantum channel, which is relevant in the context of distributed quantum computation and quantum key distribution.
We derive several efficiently computable converse bounds for quantum communication over quantum channels in both the one-shot and asymptotic regime. First, we derive one-shot semidefinite programming (SDP) converse bounds on the amount of quantum information that can be transmitted over a single use of a quantum channel, which improve the previous bound from [Tomamichel/Berta/Renes, Nat. Commun. 7, 2016]. As applications, we study quantum communication over depolarizing channels and amplitude damping channels with finite resources. Second, we find an SDP-strong converse bound for the quantum capacity of an arbitrary quantum channel, which means the fidelity of any sequence of codes with a rate exceeding this bound will vanish exponentially fast as the number of channel uses increases. Furthermore, we prove that the SDP-strong converse bound improves the partial transposition bound introduced by Holevo and Werner. Third, we prove that this SDP strong converse bound is equal to the so-called max-Rains information, which is an analog to the Rains information introduced in [Tomamichel/Wilde/Winter, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 63:715, 2017]. Our SDP strong converse bound is weaker than the Rains information, but it is efficiently computable for general quantum channels.
This paper defines the amortized entanglement of a quantum channel as the largest difference in entanglement between the output and the input of the channel, where entanglement is quantified by an arbitrary entanglement measure. We prove that the amortized entanglement of a channel obeys several desirable properties, and we also consider special cases such as the amortized relative entropy of entanglement and the amortized Rains relative entropy. These latter quantities are shown to be single-letter upper bounds on the secret-key-agreement and PPT-assisted quantum capacities of a quantum channel, respectively. Of especial interest is a uniform continuity bound for these latter two special cases of amortized entanglement, in which the deviation between the amortized entanglement of two channels is bounded from above by a simple function of the diamond norm of their difference and the output dimension of the channels. We then define approximately teleportation- and positive-partial-transpose-simulable (PPT-simulable) channels as those that are close in diamond norm to a channel which is either exactly teleportationor PPT-simulable, respectively. These results then lead to single-letter upper bounds on the secret-key-agreement and PPT-assisted quantum capacities of channels that are approximately teleportation- or PPT-simulable, respectively. Finally, we generalize many of the concepts in the paper to the setting of general resource theories, defining the amortized resourcefulness of a channel and the notion of ν-freely-simulable channels, connecting these concepts in an operational way as well.
We investigate the classical communication over quantum channels when assisted by no-signaling and positive-partial-transpose-preserving (PPT) codes, for which both the optimal success probability of a given transmission rate and the one-shot E-error capacity are formalized as semidefinite programs (SDPs). Based on this, we obtain improved SDP finite blocklength converse bounds of general quantum channels for entanglement-assisted codes and unassisted codes. Furthermore, we derive two SDP strong converse bounds for the classical capacity of general quantum channels: for any code with a rate exceeding either of the two bounds of the channel, the success probability vanishes exponentially fast as the number of channel uses increases. In particular, applying our efficiently computable bounds, we derive an improved upper bound on the classical capacity of the amplitude damping channel. We also establish the strong converse property for the classical and private capacities of a new class of quantum channels. We finally study the zero-error setting and provide efficiently computable upper bounds on the one-shot zero-error capacity of a general quantum channel.