Phase-insensitive Gaussian Channels Research Articles

Tight bounds for private communication over bosonic Gaussian channels based on teleportation simulation with optimal finite resources

Upper bounds for private communication over quantum channels can be derived by adopting channel simulation, protocol stretching, and relative entropy of entanglement. All these ingredients have led to single-letter upper bounds to the secret key capacity which can be directly computed over suitable resource states. For bosonic Gaussian channels, the tightest upper bounds have been derived by employing teleportation simulation over asymptotic resource states, namely the asymptotic Choi matrices of these channels. In this work, we adopt a different approach. We show that teleporting over an analytical class of finite-energy resource states allows us to closely approximate the ultimate bounds for increasing energy, so as to provide increasingly tight upper bounds to the secret-key capacity of one-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels. We then show that an optimization over the same class of resource states can be used to bound the maximum secret key rates that are achievable in a finite number of channel uses.

Activation and superactivation of single-mode Gaussian quantum channels

Activation of quantum capacity is a surprising phenomenon according to which the quantum capacity of a certain channel may increase by combining it with another channel with zero quantum capacity. Superactivation describes an even more particular occurrence, in which both channels have zero quantum capacity, but their composition has a nonvanishing one. We investigate these effects for all single-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels, which include thermal attenuators and amplifiers, assisted by a two-mode positive-partial-transpose channel. Our result shows that activation phenomena are special but not uncommon. We can reveal superactivation in a broad range of thermal attenuator channels, even when the transmissivity is quite low. This means that we can transmit quantum information reliably through very noisy Gaussian channels having zero quantum capacity. We further show that no superactivation is possible for entanglement-breaking Gaussian channels in physically relevant circumstances by proving the non-activation property of the coherent information of bosonic entanglement-breaking channels with finite input energy.

Finite-resource teleportation stretching for continuous-variable systems

We show how adaptive protocols of quantum and private communication through bosonic Gaussian channels can be simplifed into much easier block versions that involve resource states with finite energy. This is achieved by combining an adaptive-to-block reduction technique devised earlier, based on teleportation stretching and relative entropy of entanglement, with a recent finite-resource simulation of Gaussian channels. In this way, we derive weak converse upper bounds for the secret-key capacity of phase-insensitive Gaussian channels which approximate the optimal limit for infinite energy. Our results apply to both point-to-point and repeater-assisted private communications.

Bounding the energy-constrained quantum and private capacities of phase-insensitive bosonic Gaussian channels

We establish several upper bounds on the energy-constrained quantum and private capacities of all single-mode phase-insensitive bosonic Gaussian channels. The first upper bound, which we call the ‘data-processing bound,’ is the simplest and is obtained by decomposing a phase-insensitive channel as a pure-loss channel followed by a quantum-limited amplifier channel. We prove that the data-processing bound can be at most 1.45 bits larger than a known lower bound on these capacities of the phase-insensitive Gaussian channel. We discuss another data-processing upper bound as well. Two other upper bounds, which we call the ‘ε-degradable bound’ and the ‘ε-close-degradable bound,’ are established using the notion of approximate degradability along with energy constraints. We find a strong limitation on any potential superadditivity of the coherent information of any phase-insensitive Gaussian channel in the low-noise regime, as the data-processing bound is very near to a known lower bound in such cases. We also find improved achievable rates of private communication through bosonic thermal channels, by employing coding schemes that make use of displaced thermal states. We end by proving that an optimal Gaussian input state for the energy-constrained, generalized channel divergence of two particular Gaussian channels is the two-mode squeezed vacuum state that saturates the energy constraint. What remains open for several interesting channel divergences, such as the diamond norm or the Rényi channel divergence, is to determine whether, among all input states, a Gaussian state is optimal.

Coherent state coding approaches the capacity of non-Gaussian bosonic channels

The additivity problem asks if the use of entanglement can boost the information-carrying capacity of a given channel beyond what is achievable by coding with simple product states only. This has recently been shown not to be the case for phase-insensitive one-mode Gaussian channels, but remains unresolved in general. Here we consider two general classes of bosonic noise channels, which include phase-insensitive Gaussian channels as special cases: these are attenuators with general, potentially non-Gaussian environment states and classical noise channels with general probabilistic noise. We show that additivity violations, if existent, are rather minor for all these channels: the maximal gain in classical capacity is bounded by a constant independent of the input energy. Our proof shows that coding by simple classical modulation of coherent states is close to optimal.

Upper bounds on secret-key agreement over lossy thermal bosonic channels

Upper bounds on the secret-key-agreement capacity of a quantum channel serve as a way to assess the performance of practical quantum-key-distribution protocols conducted over that channel. In particular, if a protocol employs a quantum repeater, achieving secret-key rates exceeding these upper bounds is evidence of having a working quantum repeater. In this paper, we extend a recent advance [Liuzzo-Scorpo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 120503 (2017)] in the theory of the teleportation simulation of single-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels such that it now applies to the relative entropy of entanglement measure. As a consequence of this extension, we find tighter upper bounds on the nonasymptotic secret-key-agreement capacity of the lossy thermal bosonic channel than were previously known. The lossy thermal bosonic channel serves as a more realistic model of communication than the pure-loss bosonic channel, because it can model the effects of eavesdropper tampering and imperfect detectors. An implication of our result is that the previously known upper bounds on the secret-key-agreement capacity of the thermal channel are too pessimistic for the practical finite-size regime in which the channel is used a finite number of times, and so it should now be somewhat easier to witness a working quantum repeater when using secret-key-agreement capacity upper bounds as a benchmark.

Optimal Continuous Variable Quantum Teleportation with Limited Resources.

Given a certain amount of entanglement available as a resource, what is the most efficient way to accomplish a quantum task? We address this question in the relevant case of continuous variable quantum teleportation protocols implemented using two-mode Gaussian states with a limited degree of entanglement and energy. We first characterize the class of single-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels that can be simulated via a Braunstein-Kimble protocol with nonunit gain and minimum shared entanglement, showing that infinite energy is not necessary apart from the special case of the quantum limited attenuator. We also find that apart from the identity, all phase-insensitive Gaussian channels can be simulated through a two-mode squeezed state with finite energy, albeit with a larger entanglement. We then consider the problem of teleporting single-mode coherent states with Gaussian-distributed displacement in phase space. Performing a geometrical optimization over phase-insensitive Gaussian channels, we determine the maximum average teleportation fidelity achievable with any finite entanglement and for any realistically finite variance of the input distribution.

Capacity of coherent-state adaptive decoders with interferometry and single-mode detectors

A class of Adaptive Decoders (AD's) for coherent-state sequences is studied, including in particular the most common technology for optical-signal processing, e.g., interferometers, coherent displacements and photon-counting detectors. More generally we consider AD's comprising adaptive procedures based on passive multi-mode Gaussian unitaries and arbitrary single-mode destructive measurements. For classical communication on quantum phase-insensitive Gaussian channels with a coherent-state encoding, we show that the AD's optimal information transmission rate is not greater than that of a single-mode decoder. Our result also implies that the ultimate classical capacity of quantum phase-insensitive Gaussian channels is unlikely to be achieved with the considered class of AD's.

Non-Markovianity Hierarchy of Gaussian Processes and Quantum Amplification.

We investigate the dynamics of Gaussian states of continuous variable systems under Gaussianity-preserving channels. We introduce a hierarchy of such evolutions encompassing Markovian and weakly and strongly non-Markovian processes and provide simple criteria to distinguish between the classes, based on the degree of positivity of intermediate Gaussian maps. We present an intuitive classification of all one-mode Gaussian channels according to their non-Markovianity degree and show that weak non-Markovianity has an operational significance, as it leads to a temporary phase-insensitive amplification of Gaussian inputs beyond the fundamental quantum limit. Explicit examples and applications are discussed.

Capacities of quantum amplifier channels

Quantum amplifier channels are at the core of several physical processes. Not only do they model the optical process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion, but the transformation corresponding to an amplifier channel also describes the physics of the dynamical Casimir effect in superconducting circuits, the Unruh effect, and Hawking radiation. Here we study the communication capabilities of quantum amplifier channels. Invoking a recently established minimum output-entropy theorem for single-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels, we determine capacities of quantum-limited amplifier channels in three different scenarios. First, we establish the capacities of quantum-limited amplifier channels for one of the most general communication tasks, characterized by the trade-off between classical communication, quantum communication, and entanglement generation or consumption. Second, we establish capacities of quantum-limited amplifier channels for the trade-off between public classical communication, private classical communication, and secret key generation. Third, we determine the capacity region for a broadcast channel induced by the quantum-limited amplifier channel, and we also show that a fully quantum strategy outperforms those achieved by classical coherent detection strategies. In all three scenarios, we find that the capacities significantly outperform communication rates achieved with a naive time-sharing strategy.

Gaussian benchmark for optical communication aiming towards ultimate capacity

We establish the fundamental limit of communication capacity within Gaussian schemes under phase-insensitive Gaussian channels, which employ multimode Gaussian states for encoding and collective Gaussian operations and measurements for decoding. We prove that this Gaussian capacity is additive, i.e., its upper bound occurs with separable encoding and separable receivers so that a single-mode communication suffices to achieve the largest capacity under Gaussian schemes. This rigorously characterizes the gap between the ultimate Holevo capacity and the capacity within Gaussian communication, showing that Gaussian regime is not sufficient to achieve the Holevo bound particularly in the low-photon regime. Furthermore the Gaussian benchmark established here can be used to critically assess the performance of non-Gaussian protocols for optical communication. We move on to identify non-Gaussian schemes to beat the Gaussian capacity and show that a non-Gaussian receiver recently implemented by Becerra et al. [Nat. Photon. 7, 147 (2013)] can achieve this aim with an appropriately chosen encoding strategy.