We study the possible difference between the quantum and the private capacities of a quantum channel in the zero-error setting. For a family of channels introduced by arXiv:1312.4989, we demonstrate an extreme difference: the zero-error quantum capacity is zero, whereas the zero-error private capacity is maximum given the quantum output dimension.
Privacy lies at the fundament of quantum mechanics. A coherently transmitted quantum state is inherently private. Remarkably, coherent quantum communication is not a prerequisite for privacy: there are quantum channels that are too noisy to transmit any quantum information reliably that can nevertheless send private classical information. Here, we ask how much private classical information a channel can transmit if it has little quantum capacity. We present a class of channels N_d with input dimension d^2, quantum capacity Q(N_d) <= 1, and private capacity P(N_d) = log d. These channels asymptotically saturate an interesting inequality P(N) <= (log d_A + Q(N))/2 for any channel N with input dimension d_A, and capture the essence of privacy stripped of the confounding influence of coherence.
We prove an achievability result for privacy amplification and decoupling in terms of the sandwiched Renyi entropy of order $alpha in (1,2]$; this extends previous results which worked for $alpha=2$. The fact that this proof works for $alpha$ close to 1 means that we can bypass the smooth min-entropy in the many applications where the bound comes from the fully quantum AEP or entropy accumulation, and carry out the whole proof using the Renyi entropy, thereby easily obtaining an error exponent for the final task. This effectively replaces smoothing, which is a difficult high-dimensional optimization problem, by an optimization problem over a single real parameter $alpha$.
We define a new query measure we call quantum distinguishing complexity, denoted QD(f) for a Boolean function f. Unlike a quantum query algorithm, which must output a state close to |0> on a 0-input and a state close to |1> on a 1-input, a quantum distinguishing algorithm can output any state, as long as the output states for any 0-input and 1-input are distinguishable. Using this measure, we establish a new relationship in query complexity: For all total functions f, Q_0(f)=O~(Q(f)^5), where Q_0(f) and Q(f) denote the zero-error and bounded-error quantum query complexity of f respectively, improving on the previously known sixth power relationship. We also define a query measure based on quantum statistical zero-knowledge proofs, QSZK(f), which is at most Q(f). We show that QD(f) in fact lower bounds QSZK(f) and not just Q(f). QD(f) also upper bounds the (positive-weights) adversary bound, which yields the following relationships for all f: Q(f) >= QSZK(f) >= QS(f) = Omega(Adv(f)). This sheds some light on why the adversary bound proves suboptimal bounds for problems like Collision and Set Equality, which have low QSZK complexity. Lastly, we show implications for lifting theorems in communication complexity. We show that a general lifting theorem for either zero-error quantum query complexity or for QSZK would imply a general lifting theorem for bounded-error quantum query complexity.
Based on the resource theory for quantifying the coherence of quantum channels, we introduce a new coherence quantifier for quantum channels via maximum relative entropy. We prove that the maximum relative entropy for coherence of quantum channels is directly related to the maximally coherent channels under a particular class of superoperations, which results in an operational interpretation of the maximum relative entropy for coherence of quantum channels. We also introduce the conception of sub-superchannels and sub-superchannel discrimination. For any quantum channels, we show that the advantage of quantum channels in sub-superchannel discrimination can be exactly characterized by the maximum relative entropy of coherence for quantum channels. Similar to the maximum relative entropy of coherence for channels, the robustness of coherence for quantum channels has also been investigated. We show that the maximum relative entropy of coherence for channels provides new operational interpretations of robustness of coherence for quantum channels and illustrates the equivalence of the dephasing-covariant superchannels, incoherent superchannels, and strictly incoherent superchannels in these two operational tasks.
Given one or more uses of a classical channel, only a certain number of messages can be transmitted with zero probability of error. The study of this number and its asymptotic behaviour constitutes the field of classical zero-error information theory, the quantum generalisation of which has started to develop recently. We show that, given a single use of certain classical channels, entangled states of a system shared by the sender and receiver can be used to increase the number of (classical) messages which can be sent with no chance of error. In particular, we show how to construct such a channel based on any proof of the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem. This is a new example of the use of quantum effects to improve the performance of a classical task. We investigate the connection between this phenomenon and that of ``pseudo-telepathy games. The use of generalised non-signalling correlations to assist in this task is also considered. In this case, a particularly elegant theory results and, remarkably, it is sometimes possible to transmit information with zero-error using a channel with no unassisted zero-error capacity.