Noisy quantum phase communication channels

Abstract

We address quantum phase channels, i.e communication schemes where information is encoded in the phase-shift imposed to a given signal, and analyze their performances in the presence of phase diffusion. We evaluate mutual information for coherent and phase-coherent signals, and for both ideal and realistic phase receivers. We show that coherent signals offer better performances than phase-coherent ones, and that realistic phase channels are effective ones in the relevant regime of low energy and large alphabets.