Quantum Capacity Bounds of Gaussian Thermal Loss Channels and Achievable Rates With Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill Codes

Abstract

Gaussian loss channels are of particular importance since they model realistic optical communication channels. Except for special cases, quantum capacity of Gaussian loss channels is not yet known completely. In this paper, we provide improved upper bounds of Gaussian loss channel capacity, both in the energy-constrained and unconstrained scenarios. We briefly review the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) codes and discuss their experimental implementation. We then prove, in the energy-unconstrained case, that the GKP codes achieve the quantum capacity of Gaussian loss channels up to at most a constant gap from the improved upper bound. In the energy-constrained case, we formulate a biconvex encoding and decoding optimization problem to maximize the entanglement fidelity. The biconvex optimization is solved by an alternating semidefinite programming (SDP) method and we report that, starting from random initial codes, our numerical optimization yields GKP codes as the optimal encoding in a practically relevant regime.