Entanglement distillation, an essential quantum information processing task, refers to the conversion from multiple copies of noisy entangled states to a smaller number of highly entangled states. In this paper, we study the non-asymptotic fundamental limits for entanglement distillation. We investigate the optimal tradeoff between the distillation rate, the number of prepared states, and the error tolerance. First, we derive the one-shot distillable entanglement under completely positive partial transpose preserving operations as a semidefinite program and demonstrate an exact characterization via the quantum hypothesis testing relative entropy. Second, we establish efficiently computable second-order estimations of the distillation rate for general quantum states. In particular, we provide explicit as well as approximate evaluations for various quantum states of practical interest, including pure states, mixture of Bell states, maximally correlated states, and isotropic states.

We derive several efficiently computable converse bounds for quantum communication over quantum channels in both the one-shot and asymptotic regime. First, we derive one-shot semidefinite programming (SDP) converse bounds on the amount of quantum information that can be transmitted over a single use of a quantum channel, which improve the previous bound from [Tomamichel/Berta/Renes, Nat. Commun. 7, 2016]. As applications, we study quantum communication over depolarizing channels and amplitude damping channels with finite resources. Second, we find an SDP-strong converse bound for the quantum capacity of an arbitrary quantum channel, which means the fidelity of any sequence of codes with a rate exceeding this bound will vanish exponentially fast as the number of channel uses increases. Furthermore, we prove that the SDP-strong converse bound improves the partial transposition bound introduced by Holevo and Werner. Third, we prove that this SDP strong converse bound is equal to the so-called max-Rains information, which is an analog to the Rains information introduced in [Tomamichel/Wilde/Winter, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 63:715, 2017]. Our SDP strong converse bound is weaker than the Rains information, but it is efficiently computable for general quantum channels.

It is NP-complete to find non-negative factors W and H with fixed rank r from a non-negative matrix X by minimizing ||X-WH^Τ ||^2. Although the separability assumption (all data points are in the conical hull of the extreme rows) enables polynomial-time algorithms, the computational cost is not affordable for big data. This paper investigates how the power of quantum computation can be capitalized to solve the non-negative matrix factorization with the separability assumption (SNMF) by devising a quantum algorithm based on the divide-and-conquer anchoring (DCA) scheme [Zhou et al., 2013]. The design of quantum DCA (QDCA) is challenging. In the divide step, the random projections in DCA is completed by a quantum algorithm for linear operations, which achieves the exponential speedup. We then devise a heuristic post-selection procedure which extracts the information of anchors stored in the quantum states efficiently. Under a plausible assumption, QDCA performs efficiently, achieves the quantum speedup, and is beneficial for high dimensional problems.

We explore the classical communication over quantum channels with one sender and two receivers, or with two senders and one receiver, in both one-shot and asymptotic regimes. First, for the quantum broadcast channel (QBC) and the quantum multi-access channel (QMAC), we study the classical communication assisted by no-signalling and positive-partial-transpose-preserving codes, and obtain efficiently computable one-shot bounds to assess the performance of classical communication. Second, we consider the asymptotic communication capability of communication over the QBC and QMAC. We derive an efficiently computable strong converse bound for the capacity region, which behaves better than the previous semidefinite programming strong converse bound for point-to-point channels. Third, we obtain a converse bound on the one-shot capacity region based on the hypothesis testing divergence between the given channel and a certain class of subchannels. As applications, we analyze the communication performance for some basic network channels, including the classical broadcast channels and a specific class of quantum broadcast channels.

Quantum Lovász number is a quantum generalization of the Lovász number in graph theory. It is the best known efficiently computable upper bound of the entanglement-assisted zero-error classical capacity of a quantum channel. However, it remains an intriguing open problem whether quantum entanglement can always enhance the zero-error capacity to achieve the quantum Lovász number. In this paper, by constructing a particular class of qutrit-to-qutrit channels, we show that there exists a strict gap between the entanglement-assisted zero-error capacity and the quantum Lovász number. Interestingly, for this class of quantum channels, the quantum generalization of fractional packing number is strictly larger than the zero-error capacity assisted with feedback or no-signaling correlations, which differs from the case of classical channels.

We investigate the classical communication over quantum channels when assisted by no-signaling and positive-partial-transpose-preserving (PPT) codes, for which both the optimal success probability of a given transmission rate and the one-shot E-error capacity are formalized as semidefinite programs (SDPs). Based on this, we obtain improved SDP finite blocklength converse bounds of general quantum channels for entanglement-assisted codes and unassisted codes. Furthermore, we derive two SDP strong converse bounds for the classical capacity of general quantum channels: for any code with a rate exceeding either of the two bounds of the channel, the success probability vanishes exponentially fast as the number of channel uses increases. In particular, applying our efficiently computable bounds, we derive an improved upper bound on the classical capacity of the amplitude damping channel. We also establish the strong converse property for the classical and private capacities of a new class of quantum channels. We finally study the zero-error setting and provide efficiently computable upper bounds on the one-shot zero-error capacity of a general quantum channel.

We study the classical communication over quantum channels when assisted by no-signalling (NS) and PPT-preserving (PPT) codes. We first show that both the optimal success probability of a given transmission rate and one-shot ϵ-error capacity can be formalized as semidefinite programs (SDPs) when assisted by NS or NS∩PPT codes. Based on this, we derive SDP finite blocklength converse bounds for general quantum channels, which also reduce to the converse bound of Polyanskiy, Poor, and Verdu for classical channels. Furthermore, we derive an SDP strong converse bound for the classical capacity of a general quantum channel: for any code with a rate exceeding this bound, the optimal success probability vanishes exponentially fast as the number of channel uses increases. In particular, applying our efficiently computable bound, we derive improved upper bounds to the classical capacity of the amplitude damping channels and also establish the strong converse property for a new class of quantum channels.

Motivated by the recent resolution of asymptotic quantum birkhoff conjecture (AQBC), we attempt to estimate the distance between a given unital quantum channel and the convex hull of unitary channels. We provide two lower bounds on this distance by employing techniques from quantum information and operator algebras, respectively. We then show how to apply these results to construct some explicit counterexamples to AQBC. We also point out an interesting connection between the Grothendieck's inequality and AQBC.

We find that the perfect distinguishability of two quantum operations by a parallel scheme depends only on an operator subspace generated from their Choi-Kraus operators. We further show that any operator subspace can be obtained from two quantum operations in such a way. This connection enables us to study the parallel distinguishability of operator subspaces directly without explicitly referring to the underlining quantum operations. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the parallel distinguishability of an operator subspace that is either one-dimensional or Hermitian. In both cases the condition is equivalent to the non-existence of positive definite operator in the subspace, and an optimal discrimination protocol is obtained. Finally, we provide more examples to show that the non-existence of positive definite operator is sufficient for many other cases, but in general it is only a necessary condition.

Recently the power of positive partial transpose preserving (PPTp) and no-signalling (NS) codes in quantum communication has been studied. We continue with this line of research and show that the NS/PPTp/NS∩PPTp codes assisted zero-error quantum capacity depends only on the non-commutative bipartite graph of the channel and the one-shot case can be computed efficiently by semidefinite programming (SDP). As an example, the activated PPTp codes assisted zero-error quantum capacity is carefully studied. We then present a general SDP upper bound QΓof quantum capacity and show it is always smaller than or equal to the “Partial transposition bound” introduced by Holevo and Werner, and the inequality could be strict. This upper bound is found to be additive, and thus is an upper bound of the potential PPTp assisted quantum capacity as well. We further demonstrate that QΓis strictly better than several previously known upper bounds for an explicit class of quantum channels. Finally, we show that QΓcan be used to bound the super-activation of quantum capacity.

Using one channel to simulate another exactly with the aid of quantum no-signalling correlations has been studied recently. The one-shot no-signalling assisted classical zero-error simulation cost of non-commutative bipartite graphs has been formulated as semidefinite programms [Duan and Winter, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 62, 891 (2016)]. Before our work, it was unknown whether the one-shot (or asymptotic) no-signalling assisted zero-error classical simulation cost for general non-commutative graphs is multiplicative (resp. additive) or not. In this paper we address these issues and give a general sufficient condition for the multiplicativity of the one-shot simulation cost and the additivity of the asymptotic simulation cost of non-commutative bipartite graphs, which include all known cases such as extremal graphs and classical-quantum graphs. Applying this condition, we exhibit a large class of so-called cheapest-full-rank graphs whose asymptotic zero-error simulation cost is given by the one-shot simulation cost. Finally, we disprove the multiplicativity of one-shot simulation cost by explicitly constructing a special class of qubit-qutrit non-commutative bipartite graphs.

We study the one-shot zero-error classical capacity of a quantum channel assisted by quantum no-signalling correlations, and the reverse problem of exact simulation of a prescribed channel by a noiseless classical one. Quantum no-signalling correlations are viewed as two-input and two-output completely positive and trace preserving maps with linear constraints enforcing that the device cannot signal. Both problems lead to simple semidefinite programmes (SDPs) that depend only on the Choi-Kraus (operator) space of the channel. In particular, we show that the zero-error classical simulation cost is precisely the conditional min-entropy of the Choi-Jamiołkowski matrix of the given channel. The zero-error classical capacity is given by a similar-looking but different SDP; the asymptotic zero-error classical capacity is the regularization of this SDP, and in general, we do not know of any simple form. Interestingly, however, for the class of classical-quantum channels, we show that the asymptotic capacity is given by a much simpler SDP, which coincides with a semidefinite generalization of the fractional packing number suggested earlier by Aram Harrow. This finally results in an operational interpretation of the celebrated Lovász ϑ function of a graph as the zero-error classical capacity of the graph assisted by quantum no-signalling correlations, the first information theoretic interpretation of the Lovász number.

We initiate the study of zero-error communication via quantum channels when the receiver and the sender have at their disposal a noiseless feedback channel of unlimited quantum capacity, generalizing Shannon's zero-error communication theory with instantaneous feedback. We first show that this capacity is only a function of the linear span of Choi-Kraus operators of the channel, which generalizes the bipartite equivocation graph of a classical channel, and which we dub non-commutative bipartite graph. Then, we go on to show that the feedback-assisted capacity is non-zero (allowing for a constant amount of activating noiseless communication) if and only if the non-commutative bipartite graph is non-trivial, and give a number of equivalent characterizations. This result involves a far-reaching extension of the conclusive exclusion of quantum states. We then present an upper bound on the feedback-assisted zero-error capacity, motivated by a conjecture originally made by Shannon and proved later by Ahlswede. We demonstrate that this bound to have many good properties, including being additive and given by a minimax formula. We also prove a coding theorem showing that this quantity is the entanglement-assisted capacity against an adversarially chosen channel from the set of all channels with the same Choi-Kraus span, which can also be interpreted as the feedback-assisted unambiguous capacity. The proof relies on a generalization of the Postselection Lemma (de Finetti reduction) that allows to reflect additional constraints, and which we believe to be of independent interest. This capacity is a relaxation of the feedback-assisted zero-error capacity; however, we have to leave open the question of whether they coincide in general. We illustrate our ideas with a number of examples, including classical-quantum channels and Weyl diagonal channels, and close with an extensive discussion of open questions.

In this paper, we consider the conditions under which a given ensemble of two-qubit states can be optimally distinguished by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We begin by completing the perfect distinguishability problem of two-qubit ensembles-both for separable operations and LOCC-by providing necessary and sufficient conditions for the perfect discrimination of one pure and one mixed state. Then, for the well-known task of minimum error discrimination, it is shown that almost all two-qubit ensembles consisting of three pure states cannot be optimally discriminated using LOCC. This is surprising considering that any two pure states can be distinguished optimally by LOCC. Special attention is given to ensembles that lack entanglement, and we prove an easy sufficient condition for when a set of three product states cannot be optimally distinguished by LOCC, thus providing new examples of the phenomenon known as non-locality without entanglement. We next consider an example of N parties who each share the same state but who are ignorant of its identity. The state is drawn from the rotationally invariant trine ensemble, and we establish a tight connection between the N-copy ensemble and Shor's lifted single-copy ensemble. For any finite N, we prove that optimal identification of the states cannot be achieved by LOCC; however, as N→∞, LOCC can indeed discriminate the states optimally. This is the first result of its kind. Finally, we turn to the task of unambiguous discrimination and derive new lower bounds on the LOCC inconclusive probability for symmetric states. When applied to the double trine ensemble, this leads to a rather different distinguishability character than when the minimum error probability is considered.

We study the distinguishability of bipartite quantum states by positive operator-valued measures with positive partial transpose (PPT POVMs). The contributions of this paper include: 1) we give a negative answer to an open problem of showing a limitation of a previous known method for detecting nondistinguishability; 2) we show that a maximally entangled state and its orthogonal complement, no matter how many copies are supplied, cannot be distinguished by the PPT POVMs, even unambiguously. This result is much stronger than the previous known ones; and 3) we study the entanglement cost of distinguishing quantum states. It is proved that √{2/3}|00〉+√{1/3}|11〉 is sufficient and necessary for distinguishing three Bell states by the PPT POVMs. An upper bound of entanglement cost of distinguishing a d ⊗ d pure state and its orthogonal complement is obtained for separable operations. Based on this bound, we are able to construct two orthogonal quantum states, which cannot be distinguished unambiguously by separable POVMs, but finite copies would make them perfectly distinguishable by local operations and classical communication. We further observe that a two-qubit maximally entangled state is always enough for distinguishing a d ⊗ d pure state and its orthogonal complement by the PPT POVMs, no matter the value of d. In sharp contrast, an entangled state with Schmidt number at least d is always needed for distinguishing such two states by separable POVMs. As an application, we show that the entanglement cost of distinguishing a d ⊗ d maximally entangled state and its orthogonal complement must be a maximally entangled state for d=2, which implies that teleportation is optimal, and in general, it could be chosen as O(logd/d).

We study the quantum channel version of Shannon's zero-error capacity problem. Motivated by recent progress on this question, we propose to consider a certain subspace of operators (so-called operator systems) as the quantum generalization of the adjacency matrix, in terms of which the zero-error capacity of a quantum channel, as well as the quantum and entanglement-assisted zero-error capacities can be formulated, and for which we show some new basic properties. Most importantly, we define a quantum version of Lovász' famous ϑ function on general operator systems, as the norm-completion (or stabilization) of a “naive” generalization of ϑ. We go on to show that this function upper bounds the number of entanglement-assisted zero-error messages, that it is given by a semidefinite program, whose dual we write down explicitly, and that it is multiplicative with respect to the tensor product of operator systems (corresponding to the tensor product of channels). We explore various other properties of the new quantity, which reduces to Lovász' original ϑ in the classical case, give several applications, and propose to study the operator systems associated with channels as “noncommutative graphs,” using the language of Hilbert modules.

Quantum cryptographic systems have been commercially available, with a striking advantage over classical systems that their security and ability to detect the presence of eavesdropping are provable based on the principles of quantum mechanics. On the other hand, quantum protocol designers may commit more faults than classical protocol designers since human intuition is poorly adapted to the quantum world. To offer formal techniques for modeling and verification of quantum protocols, several quantum extensions of process algebra have been proposed. An important issue in quantum process algebra is to discover a quantum generalization of bisimulation preserved by various process constructs, in particular, parallel composition, where one of the major differences between classical and quantum systems, namely quantum entanglement, is present. Quite a few versions of bisimulation have been defined for quantum processes in the literature, but in the best case they are only proved to be preserved by parallel composition of purely quantum processes where no classical communication is involved. Many quantum cryptographic protocols, however, employ the LOCC (Local Operations and Classical Communication) scheme, where classical communication must be explicitly specified. So, a notion of bisimulation preserved by parallel composition in the circumstance of both classical and quantum communication is crucial for process algebra approach to verification of quantum cryptographic protocols. In this article we introduce novel notions of strong bisimulation and weak bisimulation for quantum processes, and prove that they are congruent with respect to various process algebra combinators including parallel composition even when both classical and quantum communication are present. We also establish some basic algebraic laws for these bisimulations. In particular, we show the uniqueness of the solutions to recursive equations of quantum processes, which proves useful in verifying complex quantum protocols. To capture the idea that a quantum process approximately implements its specification, and provide techniques and tools for approximate reasoning, a quantified version of strong bisimulation, which defines for each pair of quantum processes a bisimulation-based distance characterizing the extent to which they are strongly bisimilar, is also introduced.

We study the quantum channel version of Shannon's zero-error capacity problem. Motivated by recent progress on this question, we propose to consider a certain linear space operators as the quantum generalisation of the adjacency matrix, in terms of which the plain, quantum and entanglement-assisted capacity can be formulated, and for which we show some new basic properties. Most importantly, we define a quantum version of Lovász' famous υ function, as the norm-completion (or stabilisation) of a “naive” generalisation of υ. We go on to show that this function upper bounds the number of entanglement-assisted zero-error messages, that it is given by a semidefinite programme, whose dual we write down explicitly, and that it is multiplicative with respect to the natural (strong) graph product. We explore various other properties of the new quantity, which reduces to Lovász' original υ in the classical case, give several applications, and propose to study the linear spaces of operators associated to channels as “non-commutative graphs”, using the language of operator systems and Hilbert modules.

Quantum cryptographic systems have been commercially available, with a striking advantage over classical systems that their security and ability to detect the presence of eavesdropping are provable based on the principles of quantum mechanics. On the other hand, quantum protocol designers may commit much more faults than classical protocol designers since human intuition is much better adapted to the classical world than the quantum world. To offer formal techniques for modeling and verification of quantum protocols, several quantum extensions of process algebra have been proposed. One of the most serious issues in quantum process algebra is to discover a quantum generalization of the notion of bisimulation, which lies in a central position in process algebra, preserved by parallel composition in the presence of quantum entanglement, which has no counterpart in classical computation. Quite a few versions of bisimulation have been defined for quantum processes in the literature, but in the best case they are only proved to be preserved by parallel composition of purely quantum processes where no classical communications are involved.

We construct new families of multi-error-correcting quantum codes for the amplitude damping channel. Our key observation is that, with proper encoding, two uses of the amplitude damping channel simulate a quantum erasure channel. This allows us to use concatenated codes with quantum erasure-correcting codes as outer codes for correcting multiple amplitude damping errors. Our new codes are degenerate stabilizer codes and have parameters which are better than the amplitude damping codes obtained by any previously known construction.

In this paper, we study the distinguishability of multipartite quantum states by separable operations. We first present a necessary and sufficient condition for a finite set of orthogonal quantum states to be distinguishable by separable operations. An analytical version of this condition is derived for the case of(D-1) pure states, whereDis the total dimension of the state space under consideration. A number of interesting consequences of this result are then carefully investigated. Remarkably, we show there exists a large class of 2 otimes 2 separable operations not being realizable by local operations and classical communication. Before our work, only a class of 3 otimes 3 nonlocal separable operations was known [Bennett , Phys. Rev. A 59, 1070 (1999)]. We also show that any basis of the orthogonal complement of a multipartite pure state is indistinguishable by separable operations if and only if this state cannot be a superposition of one or two orthogonal product states, i.e., has an orthogonal Schmidt number not less than three, thus generalize the recent work about indistinguishable bipartite subspaces [Watrous, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 080505 (2005)]. Notably, we obtain an explicit construction of indistinguishable subspaces of dimension 7 (or 6) by considering a composite quantum system consisting of two qutrits (resp., three qubits), which is slightly better than the previously known indistinguishable bipartite subspace with dimension 8.

We introduce an algebra qCCS of pure quantum processes in which communications by moving quantum states physically are allowed and computations are modeled by super-operators, but no classical data is explicitly involved. An operational semantics of qCCS is presented in terms of (nonprobabilistic) labeled transition systems. Strong bisimulation between processes modeled in qCCS is defined, and its fundamental algebraic properties are established, including uniqueness of the solutions of recursive equations. To model sequential computation in qCCS, a reduction relation between processes is defined. By combining reduction relation and strong bisimulation we introduce the notion of strong reduction-bisimulation, which is a device for observing interaction of computation and communication in quantum systems. Finally, a notion of strong approximate bisimulation (equivalently, strong bisimulation distance) and its reduction counterpart are introduced. It is proved that both approximate bisimilarity and approximate reduction-bisimilarity are preserved by various constructors of quantum processes. This provides us with a formal tool for observing robustness of quantum processes against inaccuracy in the implementation of its elementary gates.

The efficiency of parameter estimation of quantum channels is studied in this paper. We introduce the concept of programmable parameters to the theory of estimation. It is found that programmable parameters obey the standard quantum limit strictly; hence, no speedup is possible in its estimation. We also construct a class of nonunitary quantum channels whose parameter can be estimated in a way that the standard quantum limit is broken. The study of estimation of general quantum channels also enables an investigation of the effect of noises on quantum estimation.

Modeling and reasoning about concurrent quantum systems is very important for both distributed quantum computing and quantum protocol verification. As a consequence, a general framework formally describing communication and concurrency in complex quantum systems is necessary. For this purpose, we propose a model named qCCS. It is a natural quantum extension of classical value-passing CCS which can deal with input and output of quantum states, and unitary transformations and measurements on quantum systems. The operational semantics of qCCS is given in terms of probabilistic labeled transition system. This semantics has many different features compared with the proposals in the available literature in order to describe the input and output of quantum systems which are possibly correlated with other components. Based on this operational semantics, the notions of strong probabilistic bisimulation and weak probabilistic bisimulation between quantum processes are introduced. Furthermore, some properties of these two probabilistic bisimulations, such as congruence under various combinators, are examined.

Suppose Alice and Bob try to transform an entangled state shared between them into another one by local operations and classical communications. Then in general a certain amount of entanglement contained in the initial state will decrease in the process of transformation. However, an interesting phenomenon called partial entanglement recovery shows that it is possible to recover some amount of entanglement by adding another entangled state and transforming the two entangled states collectively. In this paper, we are mainly concerned with the feasibility of partial entanglement recovery. The basic problem we address is whether a given state is useful in recovering entanglement lost in a specified transformation. In the case where the source and target states of the original transformation satisfy the strict majorization relation, a necessary and sufficient condition for partial entanglement recovery is obtained. For the general case we give two sufficient conditions. We also give an efficient algorithm for the feasibility of partial entanglement recovery in polynomial time. As applications, we establish some interesting connections between partial entanglement recovery and the generation of maximally entangled states, quantum catalysis, mutual catalysis, and multiple-copy entanglement transformation.

We are concerned with catalyst-assisted probabilistic entanglement transformations. A necessary and sufficient condition is presented under which there exist partial catalysts that can increase the maximal transforming probability of a given entanglement transformation. We also design an algorithm which leads to an efficient method for finding the most economical partial catalysts with minimal dimension. The mathematical structure of catalyst-assisted probabilistic transformation is carefully investigated.

Without additional resources, it is often impossible to transform one entangled quantum state into another with local quantum operations and classical communication. Jonathan and Plenio (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 83, p. 3566, 1999) presented an interesting example showing that the presence of another state, called a catalyst, enables such a transformation without changing the catalyst. They also pointed out that in general it is very hard to find an analytical condition under which a catalyst exists. In this paper, we study the existence of catalysts for two incomparable quantum states. For the simplest case of 2/spl times/2 catalysts for transformations from one 4/spl times/4 state to another, a necessary and sufficient condition for existence is found. For the general case, we give an efficient polynomial time algorithm to decide whether a k/spl times/k catalyst exists for two n/spl times/n incomparable states, where k is treated as a constant.