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Cambridge University Press eBooks

Quantum data compression

E. Desurvire

Published Feb 19, 2009• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This chapter describes the principle of compression in quantum communication channels. The underlying concept is that it is possible to convey “faithfully” a quantum message with a large number of qubits, while transmitting a compressed version of this message with a reduced number of qubits through the channel. Beyond the mere notion of fidelity , which characterizes the quality of quantum message transmission, the description brings the new concept of typicality in the space defined by all possible “quantum codewords.” The theorem of Schumacher's quantum compression states that for a qubit source with von Neumann entropy S , the message compression factor R has S − ε for the lower bound, where ε is any nonnegative parameter that can be made arbitrarily small for sufficiently long messages (hence, R ≈ S is the best possible compression factor). An original graphical and numerical illustration of the effect of Schumacher's quantum compression and the evolution of the typical quantum-codeword subspace with increasing message length is provided. Quantum data compression and fidelity In this chapter, we have reached the stage where it is possible to start addressing the issues that are central to information theory, namely, “How efficiently can we code information in a quantum communication channel?” both in terms of economy of means – the concept of data compression – and accuracy of transmission – the concept of message integrity or minimal data error , referred to here as fidelity .

DOI
10.1017/cbo9780511803758.024

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This chapter describes the principle of compression in quantum communication channels. The underlying concept is that it is possible to convey “faithfully” a quantum message with a large number of qubits, while transmitting a compressed version of this message with a reduced number of qubits through the channel. Beyond the mere notion of fidelity , which characterizes the quality of quantum message transmission, the description brings the new concept of typicality in the space defined by all possible “quantum codewords.” The theorem of Schumacher's quantum compression states that for a qubit source with von Neumann entropy S , the message compression factor R has S − ε for the lower bound, where ε is any nonnegative parameter that can be made arbitrarily small for sufficiently long messages (hence, R ≈ S is the best possible compression factor). An original graphical and numerical illustration of the effect of Schumacher's quantum compression and the evolution of the typical quantum-codeword subspace with increasing message length is provided. Quantum data compression and fidelity In this chapter, we have reached the stage where it is possible to start addressing the issues that are central to information theory, namely, “How efficiently can we code information in a quantum communication channel?” both in terms of economy of means – the concept of data compression – and accuracy of transmission – the concept of message integrity or minimal data error , referred to here as fidelity .
In order to compress quantum messages without loss of information it is necessary to allow the length of the encoded messages to vary. We develop a general framework for variable-length quantum messages in close analogy to the classical case and show that lossless compression is only possible if the message to be compressed is known to the sender. The lossless compression of an ensemble of messages is bounded from below by its von-Neumann entropy. We show that it is possible to reduce the number of qbits passing through a quantum channel even below the von Neumann entropy by adding a classical side channel. We give an explicit communication protocol that realizes lossless and instantaneous quantum data compression and apply it to a simple example. This protocol can be used for both online quantum communication and storage of quantum data.
After K. Bostro/spl uml/m and T. Felbinger observed that lossless quantum data compression does not exist unless decoders know the lengths of codewords, they introduced a classical noiseless channel to inform the decoder of a quantum source about the lengths of codewords. In this paper we analyze their codes and present: 1) a sufficient and necessary condition for the existence of such codes for given lists of lengths of codes; 2) a characterization of the optimal compression rate for their codes. However our main contribution is a more efficient way to use the classical channel. We propose a more general coding scheme. It turned out that the optimal compression can always be achieved by a code obtained by this scheme. A von Neumann entropy lower bound to rates of our codes and a necessary and sufficient condition to achieve the bound are obtained. The gap between this lower bound and the compression rates is also well analyzed. For a special family of quantum sources we provide a sharper lower bound in terms of Shannon entropy. Finally, we propose some problems for further research.
Consider a source of pure quantum states with density matrix ρ and von Neumann entropy S . It is known that the quantum information of the source may be faithfully compressed to 5 qubits/signal (asymptotically for long sequences) and that this limit is optimal if we demand high fidelity for long strings of signals. The usual method for achieving this compression, based on the typical subspace of the source, requires knowledge of the density matrix. We describe a new “universal” compression scheme which does not even require knowledge of ρ. More precisely, suppose that the source is known to have von Neumann entropy less than some given bound S 0 but is otherwise completely unspecified. Our method will faithfully compress the quantum information of any such source to S 0 qubits/signal. It is known that S is always less than or equal to the Shannon entropy H of the prior distribution of the source. According to Shannon’s theorem, H provides the limit for compression of classical signals, so one may ask the question: what is the physical origin of the extra compression available in the quantum case compared to the classical case (where the prior probabilities are the same)? One may suggest that this effect is a consequence of possible non-orthogonality of signal states. However we demonstrate that it is possible to make each pair of signal states of a source more parallel (keeping the prior probabilities the same) while increasing the von Neumann entropy. This casts doubt on the conventional wisdom that overlap of quantum states is a measure of their (non-)distinguishability. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Based on the concept of many-letter theory a general characterization of quantum codes using the Kraus representation is given. Compression codes are defined by their property of decreasing the average information content of a given a priori message ensemble. Lossless quantum codes, in contrast to lossy codes, provide the retrieval of the original input states with perfect fidelity. A general lossless coding scheme is given that translates between two quantum alphabets. It is shown that this scheme is never compressive. Furthermore, a lossless quantum coding scheme, analog to the classical Huffman scheme but different from the Braunstein scheme, is implemented, which provides optimal compression. Motivated by the concept of lossless quantum compression, an observable is defined that measures the amount of compressible quantum information contained in a particular message with respect to a given \\emph{a priori} message ensemble. The average of this observable yields the von Neumann entropy, which is finally established as the amount of compressible quantum information of any message ensemble, confirming its commonly assigned meaning.
One of the fundamental tasks in classical information theory is the compression of information. Given access to many uses of a noiseless classical channel, what is the best that a sender and receiver can make of this resource for compressed data transmission? Shannon's compression theorem demonstrates that the Shannon entropy is the fundamental limit for the compression rate in the IID setting (recall the development in Section 13.4). That is, if one compresses at a rate above the Shannon entropy, then it is possible to recover the compressed data perfectly in the asymptotic limit, and otherwise, it is not possible to do so. This theorem establishes the prominent role of the entropy in Shannon's theory of information. In the quantum world, it very well could be that one day a sender and a receiver would have many uses of a noiseless quantum channel available, and the sender could use this resource to transmit compressed quantum information. But what exactly does this mean in the quantum setting? A simple model of a quantum information source is an ensemble of quantum states { pX(x) , ∣ψ x ⟩}, i.e., the source outputs the state ∣ψ x ⟩ with probability pX(x) , and the states {∣ψ x ⟩} do not necessarily have to form an orthonormal basis. Let us suppose for the moment that the classical data x is available as well, even though this might not necessarily be the case in practice. A naive strategy for compressing this quantum information source would be to ignore the quantum states coming out, handle the classical data instead, and exploit Shannon's compression protocol from Section 13.4.
The general scheme of data compression using the quantum noiseless coding theorem of Schumacher is dicussed for general quantum sources. When the Hilbert space of the quantum source is decomposable into orthogonal subspaces, one can first perform classical data compression before performing the quantum data compression for individual subspaces. For minimizing the resource in quantum coding, a general parameterization of the dimensions in the Jozsa-Schumacher quantum data compression scheme is presented.