We characterize the class of all physical operations that transform Gaussian states to Gaussian states. We show that this class coincides with that of all operations that can be performed on Gaussian states using linear optical elements and homodyne measurements. For bipartite systems we characterize the processes that can be implemented by local operations and classical communication, as well as those that can be implemented using positive partial transpose preserving maps. As an application, we show that Gaussian states cannot be distilled by local Gaussian operations and classical communication. We also define and characterize positive (but not completely positive) Gaussian maps.
We introduce an operational discord-type measure for quantifying nonclassical correlations in bipartite Gaussian states based on using Gaussian measurements. We refer to this measure as operational Gaussian discord (OGD). It is defined as the difference between the entropies of two conditional probability distributions associated to one subsystem, which are obtained by performing optimal local and joint Gaussian measurements. We demonstrate the operational significance of this measure in terms of a Gaussian quantum protocol for extracting maximal information about an encoded classical signal. As examples, we calculate OGD for several Gaussian states in the standard form.
We consider the rate-limited quantum-to-classical optimal transport in terms of output-constrained rate-distortion coding for both finite-dimensional and continuous-variable quantum-to-classical systems with limited classical common randomness. The main coding theorem provides a single-letter characterization of the achievable rate region of a lossy quantum measurement source coding for an exact construction of the destination distribution (or the equivalent quantum state) while maintaining a threshold of distortion from the source state according to a generally defined distortion observable. The constraint on the output space fixes the output distribution to an IID predefined probability mass function. Therefore, this problem can also be viewed as information-constrained optimal transport which finds the optimal cost of transporting the source quantum state to the destination classical distribution via a quantum measurement with limited communication rate and common randomness. We develop a coding framework for continuous-variable quantum systems by employing a clipping projection and a dequantization block and using our finite-dimensional coding theorem. Moreover, for the Gaussian quantum systems, we derive an analytical solution for rate-limited Wasserstein distance of order 2, along with a Gaussian optimality theorem, showing that Gaussian measurement optimizes the rate in a system with Gaussian quantum source and Gaussian destination distribution. The results further show that in contrast to the classical Wasserstein distance of Gaussian distributions, which corresponds to an infinite transmission rate, in the Quantum Gaussian measurement system, the optimal transport is achieved with a finite transmission rate due to the inherent noise of the quantum measurement imposed by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.