We investigate the quantum capacity of noisy quantum channels which can be represented by coupling a system to an effectively small environment. A capacity formula is derived for all cases where both system and environment are two dimensional---including all extremal qubit channels. Similarly, for channels acting on higher-dimensional systems we show that the capacity can be determined if the channel arises from a sufficiently small coupling to a qubit environment. Extensions to instances of channels with larger environment are provided and it is shown that bounds on the capacity with unconstrained environment can be obtained from decompositions into channels with small environment.
We investigate the quantum capacity of noisy quantum channels which can be represented by coupling a system to an effectively small environment. A capacity formula is derived for all cases where both system and environment are two dimensional---including all extremal qubit channels. Similarly, for channels acting on higher-dimensional systems we show that the capacity can be determined if the channel arises from a sufficiently small coupling to a qubit environment. Extensions to instances of channels with larger environment are provided and it is shown that bounds on the capacity with unconstrained environment can be obtained from decompositions into channels with small environment.
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.
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 great 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.
We introduce potential capacities of quantum channels in an operational way and provide upper bounds for these quantities, which quantify the ultimate limit of usefulness of a channel for a given task in the best possible context. Unfortunately, except for a few isolated cases, potential capacities seem to be as hard to compute as their plain analogues. We thus study upper bounds on some potential capacities. For the classical capacity, we give an upper bound in terms of the entanglement of formation. To establish a bound for the quantum and private capacity, we first lift the channel to a Hadamard channel and then prove that the quantum and private capacity of a Hadamard channel is strongly additive, implying that for these channels, potential and plain capacity are equal. Employing these upper bounds, we show that if a channel is noisy, however close it is to the noiseless channel, then it cannot be activated into the noiseless channel by any other contextual channel; this conclusion holds for all the three capacities. We also discuss the so-called environment-assisted quantum capacity, because we are able to characterize its potential version.
The task of determining whether a given quantum channel has positive capacity to transmit quantum information is a fundamental open problem in quantum information theory. In general, the coherent information needs to be computed for an unbounded number of copies of a channel in order to detect a positive value of its quantum capacity. However, in this paper, we show that the coherent information of a single copy of a randomly selected channel is positive almost surely if the channel's output space is larger than its environment. Hence, in this case, a single copy of the channel typically suffices to determine positivity of its quantum capacity. Put differently, channels with zero coherent information have measure zero in the subset of channels for which the output space is larger than the environment. On the other hand, if the environment is larger than the channel's output space, identical results hold for the channel's complement.
Two classes of quantum channels, which we call more capable and less noisy, are introduced. The more capable class consists of channels such that the quantum capacities of the complementary channels to the environments are zero. The less noisy class consists of channels such that the private capacities of the complementary channels to the environment are zero. For the more capable class, it is clarified that the private capacity and quantum capacity coincide. For the less noisy class, it is clarified that the private capacity and quantum capacity can be single letter characterized.
Quantum capacity quantifies the amount of quantum information that can be transmitted by a quantum channel with an arbitrary small probability of error. Mathematically, the quantum capacity is given by an asymptotic formula involving the one-shot quantum capacity of the associated channel, which, due to purely quantum effects such as superadditivity of one-shot quantum capacity, is rarely computable. The one-shot quantum capacity is mathematically characterized in terms of optimizing an entropic quantity referred to as coherent information over all possible input states of a channel, the computation of which also tends to be intractable due to the difficulty of optimizing the coherent information. In this work, we develop perturbative methods for analyzing the behavior of coherent information of a quantum channel with respect to small perturbations of the input state. By doing so, we are able to derive three general criteria for determining whether an input state yields suboptimal coherent information. We then show how our criteria yield sufficient conditions for superadditivity of one-shot quantum capacity, and also for detecting a positive gap between one-shot private capacity and one-shot quantum capacity. The utility of our criteria is illustrated through examples, which yield new results regarding the one-shot quantum capacity of qubit depolarizing channels, Pauli channels and dephrasure channels.