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arXiv:quant-ph/0003040 · Physical Review Letters

Unified Approach to Quantum Capacities: Towards Quantum Noisy Coding Theorem

Michał Horodecki, Paweł Horodecki, Ryszard Horodecki

Published Jul 10, 2000• 63 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Based on a unified approach to all kinds of quantum capacities we show that the rate of quantum information transmission is bounded by the maximal attainable rate of coherent information. Moreover, we show that if for any bipartite state the one-way distillable entanglement is no less than coherent information, then one obtains Shannon-like formulas for all the capacities. The inequality also implies that the decrease of distillable entanglement due to the mixing process does not exceed that of the corresponding loss of information about a system.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.85.433

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Based on a unified approach to all kinds of quantum capacities we show that the rate of quantum information transmission is bounded by the maximal attainable rate of coherent information. Moreover, we show that if for any bipartite state the one-way distillable entanglement is no less than coherent information, then one obtains Shannon-like formulas for all the capacities. The inequality also implies that the decrease of distillable entanglement due to the mixing process does not exceed that of the corresponding loss of information about a system.
We derive an upper bound on the one-way distillable entanglement of bipartite quantum states. To this end, we revisit the notion of degradable, conjugate degradable, and antidegrad-able bipartite quantum states [1]. We prove that for degradable and conjugate degradable states the one-way distillable entanglement is equal to the coherent information, and thus given by a single-letter formula. Furthermore, it is well-known that the one-way distillable entanglement of antidegradable states is zero. We use these results to derive an upper bound for arbitrary bipartite quantum states, which is based on a convex decomposition of a bipartite state into degradable and antidegradable states. This upper bound is always at least as good an upper bound as the entanglement of formation. Applying our bound to the qubit depolarizing channel, we obtain an upper bound on its quantum capacity that is strictly better than previously known bounds in the high noise regime. We also transfer the concept of approximate degradability [2] to quantum states and show that this yields another easily computable upper bound on the one-way distillable entanglement. Moreover, both methods of obtaining upper bounds on the one-way distillable entanglement can be combined into a generalized one.
Entanglement distillation from noisy bipartite states and reliable quantum communication over noisy channels are fundamental tasks in quantum information theory. Yet existing coding schemes typically require prior knowledge of the underlying state or channel, or assume independent or weakly correlated quantum information sources. Here, using Schur-Weyl duality, we establish a universal quantum error-correction principle that overcomes these limitations. We show that the irreducible permutation spaces arising from the local Schur-Weyl decomposition of multiple copies of an unknown bipartite mixed state form maximally entangled quantum code spaces whose error structure is governed entirely by representation theory. Correcting these symmetry-resolved errors yields protocols for entanglement distillation and quantum communication that achieve coherent-information rates with exponentially vanishing error and optimal second-order corrections, even in the case of almost i.i.d. resources. Our approach also provides sharp finite-copy guarantees that are worst-case optimal at every finite block length, including in the sample-efficient regime, where the number of copies scales only polynomially with the number of qubits. Together, these results establish Schur-Weyl duality as a general mechanism for universal, robust, and optimal quantum coding, unifying entanglement distillation, quantum error correction, and quantum communication within a common representation-theoretic framework.
The quantum capacity of a noisy quantum channel determines the maximal rate at which we can code reliably over asymptotically many uses of the channel, and it characterizes the channel's ultimate ability to transmit quantum information coherently. In this paper, we derive single-letter upper bounds on the quantum and private capacities of quantum channels. The quantum capacity of a quantum channel is always no larger than the quantum capacity of its extended channels, since the extensions of the channel can be considered as assistance from the environment. By optimizing the parametrized extended channels with specific structures such as the flag structure, we obtain new upper bounds on the quantum capacity of the original quantum channel. Furthermore, we extend our approach to estimating the fundamental limits of private communication and one-way entanglement distillation. As notable applications, we establish improved upper bounds to the quantum and private capacities for fundamental quantum channels of interest in quantum information, some of which are also the sources of noise in superconducting quantum computing. In particular, our upper bounds on the quantum capacities of the depolarizing channel and the generalized amplitude damping channel are strictly better than previously best-known bounds for certain regimes.
Quantum capacities are fundamental quantities that are notoriously hard to compute and can exhibit surprising properties such as superadditivity. Thus a vast amount of literature is devoted to finding close and computable bounds on these capacities. We add a new viewpoint by giving operationally motivated bounds on several capacities, including the quantum capacity and private capacity of a channel and the one-way distillable entanglement and private key of a bipartite state. Our bounds themselves are generally given by certain capacities of the complementary channel or state. As a tool to obtain these bounds we discuss partial orders on quantum channels, such as the less noisy and the more capable order. Our bounds help to further understand the interplay between different capacities and give operational limitations on superadditivity properties and the difference between capacities. They can also be used as a new approach towards numerically bounding capacities, as discussed with some examples.
The quantum capacity theorem is one of the most important theorems in quantum Shannon theory. It is a fundamentally “quantum” theorem in that it demonstrates that a fundamentally quantum information quantity, the coherent information, is an achievable rate for quantum communication over a quantum channel. The fact that the coherent information does not have a strong analog in classical Shannon theory truly separates the quantum and classical theories of information. The no-cloning theorem (Section 3.5.4) provides the intuition behind the quantum capacity theorem. The goal of any quantum communication protocol is for Alice to establish quantum correlations with the receiver Bob. We know well now that every quantum channel has an isometric extension, so that we can think of another receiver, the environment Eve, who is at a second output port of a larger unitary evolution. Were Eve able to learn anything about the quantum information that Alice is attempting to transmit to Bob, then Bob could not be retrieving this information—otherwise, they would violate the no-cloning theorem. Thus, Alice should figure out some subspace of the channel input where she can place her quantum information such that only Bob has access to it, while Eve does not. That the dimensionality of this subspace is exponential in the coherent information is perhaps then unsurprising in light of the above no-cloning reasoning. The coherent information is an entropy difference H ( B ) -H ( E )—a measure of the amount of quantum correlations that Alice can establish with Bob less the amount that Eve can gain. We proved achievability of the coherent information for quantum data transmission in Corollary 22.2.1, but the roundabout path that we followed to prove achievability there perhaps does not give much insight into the structure of a quantum code that achieves the coherent information. Our approach in this chapter is different and should shed more light on this structure. Specifically, we show how to make coherent versions of the private classical codes from the previous chapter.