We develop the first method for finding strong converse bounds in quantum network information theory. The general scheme relies on a recently obtained result in the field of non-commutative functional inequalities, namely the tensorization property of quantum reverse hypercontractivity for the quantum depolarizing semigroup, and properties of the projectively measured Rényi relative entropies. We develop a novel technique to employ this result to find both finite blocklength and exponential strong converse bounds for the tasks of distributed quantum hypothesis testing with communication constraints for a classical-quantum state, quantum source coding with compressed classical side information, and classical-quantum degraded broadcast channel coding. A full version of this paper is accessible at: arXiv:1905.00873 and arXiv:1905.00874.
We develop the first method for finding strong converse bounds in quantum network information theory. The general scheme relies on a recently obtained result in the field of non-commutative functional inequalities, namely the tensorization property of quantum reverse hypercontractivity for the quantum depolarizing semigroup, and properties of the projectively measured Rényi relative entropies. We develop a novel technique to employ this result to find both finite blocklength and exponential strong converse bounds for the tasks of distributed quantum hypothesis testing with communication constraints for a classical-quantum state, quantum source coding with compressed classical side information, and classical-quantum degraded broadcast channel coding. A full version of this paper is accessible at: arXiv:1905.00873 and arXiv:1905.00874.
In this paper, we develop the first method for finding strong converse bounds in quantum network information theory. The general scheme relies on a recently obtained result in the field of non-commutative functional inequalities, namely the tensorization property of quantum reverse hypercontractivity for the quantum depolarizing semigroup. We develop a novel technique to employ this result to find both finite blocklength and exponential strong converse bounds for the tasks of quantum source coding with compressed classical side information, and distributed quantum hypothesis testing with communication constraints for a classical-quantum state. In the classical setting, these two problems can be reformulated in a unified framework in terms of the so-called image-size characterization problem, which we extend to the classical-quantum setting. We also use this technique to establish analogous strong converse bounds in broadcast communication scenarios. In particular, we consider the transmission of classical information through a degraded broadcast channel, whose outputs are two quantum systems, with the state of one being a degraded version of the other. In establishing this last result, we prove a second-order Fano-type inequality, which is of independent interest. Our method to study strong converses has potential applications in other important tasks of quantum network information theory.
We consider a distributed quantum hypothesis testing problem with communication constraints, in which the two hypotheses correspond to two different states of a bipartite quantum system, multiple identical copies of which are shared between Alice and Bob. They are allowed to perform local operations on their respective systems and send quantum information to Charlie at limited rates. By doing measurements on the systems that he receives, Charlie needs to infer which of the two different states the original bipartite state was in, that is, which of the two hypotheses is true. We prove that the Stein exponent for this problem is given by a regularized quantum relative entropy. The latter reduces to a single letter formula when the alternative hypothesis consists of the products of the marginals of the null hypothesis, and there is no rate constraint imposed on Bob. Our proof relies on certain properties of the so-called quantum information bottleneck function. The second part of this paper concerns the general problem of finding finite blocklength strong converse bounds in quantum network information theory. In the classical case, the analogue of this problem has been reformulated in terms of the so-called image size characterization problem. Here, we extend this problem to the classical-quantum setting and prove a second order strong converse bound for it. As a by-product, we obtain a similar bound for the Stein exponent for distributed hypothesis testing in the special case in which the bipartite system is a classical-quantum system, as well as for the task of quantum source coding with compressed classical side information. Our proofs use a recently developed tool from quantum functional inequalities, namely, the tensorization property of reverse hypercontractivity for the quantum depolarizing semigroup.
We use a Rényi entropy method to prove strong converse theorems for certain information-theoretic tasks which involve local operations and quantum (or classical) communication between two parties. These include state redistribution, coherent state merging, quantum state splitting, measurement compression with quantum side information, randomness extraction against quantum side information, and data compression with quantum side information. The method we employ in proving these results extends ideas developed by Sharma [preprint arXiv:1404.5940 [quant-ph] (2014)], which he used to give a new proof of the strong converse theorem for state merging. For state redistribution, we prove the strong converse property for the boundary of the entire achievable rate region in the (e, q)-plane, where e and q denote the entanglement cost and quantum communication cost, respectively. In the case of measurement compression with quantum side information, we prove a strong converse theorem for the classical communication cost, which is a new result extending the previously known weak converse. For the remaining tasks, we provide new proofs for strong converse theorems previously established using smooth entropies. For each task, we obtain the strong converse theorem from explicit bounds on the figure of merit of the task in terms of a Rényi generalization of the optimal rate. Hence, we identify candidates for the strong converse exponents for each task discussed in this paper. To prove our results, we establish various new entropic inequalities, which might be of independent interest. These involve conditional entropies and mutual information derived from the sandwiched Rényi divergence. In particular, we obtain novel bounds relating these quantities, as well as the Rényi conditional mutual information, to the fidelity of two quantum states.
We consider the transmission of classical information through a degraded broadcast channel, whose outputs are two quantum systems, with the state of one being a degraded version of the other. Yard et al. proved that the capacity region of such a channel is contained in a region characterized by certain entropic quantities. We prove that this region satisfies the strong converse property, that is, the maximal probability of error incurred in transmitting information at rates lying outside this region converges to one exponentially in the number of uses of the channel. In establishing this result, we prove a second-order Fano-type inequality, which might be of independent interest. A powerful analytical tool which we employ in our proofs is the tensorization property of the quantum reverse hypercontractivity for the quantum depolarizing semigroup.
The quantum capacity of a noisy channel quantifies the maximum rate at which quantum information can be transmitted reliably. For general channels, its evaluation requires an optimization over arbitrarily many channel uses. Degradable channels form a central exception: their capacity is given by the single-letter coherent information, while antidegradable channels have zero capacity. Nevertheless, even for these fundamental classes, it has remained open whether communication above capacity becomes possible when a fixed non-maximal error is tolerated. Here we resolve this problem by proving an exponential strong converse for every finite-dimensional degradable and antidegradable channel: at any rate above capacity, the fidelity of every coding scheme decays exponentially with the number of channel uses. As an immediate consequence, we establish the first all-code exponential strong converse for the quantum erasure channel throughout its full parameter range, strengthening previous results that applied only to almost all codes. We also show that exponential strong-converse bounds are preserved under receiver post-processing. This yields efficiently computable semidefinite-programming bounds for arbitrary finite-dimensional channels, improved bounds for Pauli channels, and an exact exponential strong converse for a nondegradable multilevel amplitude-damping family.