Communication

We study the communication capabilities of a quantum channel under the most general channel model known as the one-shot model. Unlike classical channels that can only be used to transmit classical information (bits), a quantum channel can be used for transmission of classical information, quantum information (qubits) and simultaneous transmission of classical and quantum information. In this work, we investigate the one-shot capabilities of a quantum channel for simultaneously transmitting of bits and qubits. This problem was studied in the asymptotic regime for a memoryless channel and a regularized characterization of the capacity region was reported. It is known that the transmission of private classical information is closely related to the problem of quantum information transmission. We resort to this idea and find achievable and converse bounds on the simultaneous transmission of the public and private classical information. then by shifting the classical private rate to the quantum information rate, the obtained rate regions will be translated into rate regions of thThis in turn, leads to a rate region for simulttaneous transmission of classical and quantum information. In the case of asymptotic i.i.d. setting, our one-shot result is evaluated to the known results in the literature. Our main tools used in the achievability proofs are position-based decoding and convex-split lemma.

It is known that the maximum classical mutual information that can be achieved between measurements on a pair of quantum systems can drastically underestimate the quantum mutual information between those systems. In this article, we quantify this distinction between classical and quantum information by demonstrating that after removing a logarithmic-sized quantum system from one half of a pair of perfectly correlated bitstrings, even the most sensitive pair of measurements might only yield outcomes essentially independent of each other. This effect is a form of information locking but the definition we use is strictly stronger than those used previously. Moreover, we find that this property is generic, in the sense that it occurs when removing a random subsystem. As such, the effect might be relevant to statistical mechanics or black hole physics. Previous work on information locking had always assumed a uniform message. In this article, we assume only a min-entropy bound on the message and also explore the effect of entanglement. We find that classical information is strongly locked almost until it can be completely decoded. As a cryptographic application of these results, we exhibit a quantum key distribution protocol that is secure if the eavesdropper's information about the secret key is measured using the accessible information but in which leakage of even a logarithmic number of key bits compromises the secrecy of all the others.

Quantum secret sharing is an important way to achieve secure communications, which has critical applications in the field of information security for its physical properties. According to the perspective of the practical applications, improving the confidentiality and integrity of secret sharing schemes is a good method to increase the security and reliability of communications. In this paper, we propose a quantum secret sharing scheme based on generator matrix segmentation and the structural features of quantum graph states. The security of the secure secret sharing scheme is guaranteed by the pattern of transferring information by stabilizers, scalability of the information and new recovery strategy provided by the entanglement of the related graph states. It puts forward an effective solution to the problem of matrix cycle period, where some numbers without the primitive element cannot construct the generation matrix. First of all, the physical properties of quantum bits (qubits), such as uncertainty principle, no-cloning theorem and indistinguishability, not only optimize the classical schemes but also ensure the absolute safety of communication. Secondly, the application of matrix segmentation makes secret information has better scalability. It improves the coding diversity and the difficulty in deciphering. Thirdly, the favorable entanglement properties and mature experiment preparation techniques of graph states provide an approach to the practical applications. The superiority of the yielded graph states is described in graphical fashion with an elegant stabilizer. Fourthly, the shuffling operation can ensure the independence of the message among participants. Therefore, Eve can not obtain any useful information by measuring randomly. Two group-recovery protocols are proposed to show the secret recovering processing through rebuilding sub-secrets among legal cooperative participants. In the scheme design, the dealer extracts the classical secret information according to the corresponding principle between the classical and quantum information, and divides the classical secret through generated matrix which is produced with the primitive elements in finite domain satisfying the linear independence for any k column vectors. Then the dealer encodes information into graph states and distributes particles to the legal participants with unitary operations. Subsequently, the credible center obtains sub-secrets by the theory of graph states and the group recovery protocol. He can achieve the initial classical secret via the inverse algorithm of matrix segmentation. After getting the classical secret, he recovers quantum secret according to the relationship between classical information and quantum information. Theoretical analysis shows that this scheme can provide better security and scalability of the information. It is appropriate to realize the secret sharing in the quantum network communication to protect secrets from eavesdropping. Also, it can provide an approach to designing diverse and scalable quantum secure communication schemes based on quantum graph states, the algorithm of matrix segmentation, and group-recovery protocol.

We study efficient quantum error correction schemes for the fully correlated channel on an n-qubit system with error operators that assume the form \(\sigma _x^{\otimes n}\), \(\sigma _y^{\otimes n}\), \(\sigma _z^{\otimes n}\). Previous schemes are improved to facilitate implementation. In particular, when n is odd and equals \(2k+1\), we describe a quantum error correction scheme using one arbitrary qubit \(\sigma \) to protect the data state \(\rho \) in a 2k-qubit system. The encoding operation \(\sigma \otimes \rho \mapsto \Phi (\sigma \otimes \rho )\) only requires 3k CNOT gates (each with one control bit and one target bit). After the encoded state \(\Phi (\sigma \otimes \rho )\) goes through the channel, we can apply the inverse operation \(\Phi ^{-1}\) to produce \({\tilde{\sigma }} \otimes \rho \) so that a partial trace operation can recover \(\rho \). When n is even and equals \(2k+2\), we describe a hybrid quantum error correction scheme using any one of the two classical bits \(\sigma \in \{|ij{\rangle }{\langle }ij|: i, j \in \{0,1\}\}\) to protect a 2k-qubit state \(\rho \) and two classical bits. The encoding operation \(\sigma \otimes \rho \mapsto \Phi (\sigma \otimes \rho )\) can be done by \(3k+2\) CNOT gates and a single-qubit Hadamard gate. After the encoded state \(\Phi (\sigma \otimes \rho )\) goes through the channel, we can apply the inverse operation \(\Phi ^{-1}\) to produce \(\sigma \otimes \rho \) so that a perfect protection of the two classical bits \(\sigma \) and the 2k-qubit state is achieved. If one uses an arbitrary two-qubit state \(\sigma \), the same scheme will protect 2k-qubit states. The scheme was implemented using MATLAB, Mathematica, Python and the IBM’s quantum computing framework qiskit.

Physical systems contain information which can be divided between classical and quantum information. Classical information is locally accessible and allows one to perform tasks such as physical work, while quantum information allows one to perform tasks such as teleportation. It is shown that these two kinds of information are complementarity in the sense that two parties can either gain access to the quantum information, or to the classical information but not both. This complementarity has a form very similar to the complementarities usually encountered in quantum mechanics. For pure states, the entanglement plays the role of Planck's constant. We also find another class of complementarity relations which applies to operators, and is induced when two parties can only perform local operations and communicate classical. In order to formalize this notion we define the restricted commutator. Observables such as the parity and phase of two qubits commute, but their restricted commutator is non-zero. It is also found that complementarity is pure in the sense that can be ''decoupled'' from the uncertainty principle.

This chapter unifies all of the channel coding theorems that we have studied in this book. One of the most general information-processing tasks that a sender and receiver can accomplish is to transmit classical and quantum information and generate entanglement with many independent uses of a quantum channel and with the assistance of classical communication, quantum communication, and shared entanglement.1 The resulting rates for communication are net rates that give the generation rate of a resource less its consumption rate. Since we have three resources, all achievable rates are rate triples ( C,Q,E ) that lie in a three-dimensional capacity region, where C is the net rate of classical communication, Q is the net rate of quantum communication, and E is the net rate of entanglement consumption/generation. The capacity theorem for this general scenario is known as the quantum dynamic capacity theorem, and it is the main theorem that we prove in this chapter. All of the rates given in the channel coding theorems of previous chapters are special points in this three-dimensional capacity region. The proof of the quantum dynamic capacity theorem comes in two parts: the direct coding theorem and the converse theorem. The direct coding theorem demonstrates that the strategy for achieving any point in the three-dimensional capacity region is remarkably simple: we just combine the protocol from Corollary 22.5.2 for entanglement-assisted classical and quantum communication with the three unit protocols of teleportation, super-dense coding, and entanglement distribution. The interpretation of the achievable rate region is that it is the unit resource capacity region from Chapter 8 translated along the points achievable with the protocol from Corollary 22.5.2. In the proof of the converse theorem, we analyze the most general protocol that can consume and generate classical communication, quantum communication, and entanglement along with the consumption of many independent uses of a quantum channel, and we show that the net rates for such a protocol are bounded by the regularization of the achievable rate region.

The ability to transfer information securely is essential in the modern world we live in. While the field of cryptography has long researched ways to do this, events over the last couple of years have brought the issues of secure information transfer squarely into the public eye. As a consequence, security and cryptography have quickly become issues of social and political importance, sparking debates about the values of privacy and the role of government. An essential ingredient of modern cryptography is the generation of randomness: cryptographic techniques are built on the premise that one has access to random bits. It is well known, however, that computers cannot produce algorithmically random sequences – that is, sequences with maximal algorithmic information content – but are doomed to produce 'pseudorandomness'. This lack of randomness can be, and has been, exploited to compromise security, see [4]. The active field of quantum information theory has proposed approaches to provide supposedly 'unbreakable' security by exploiting various quantum phenomena. This security unfortunately relies on assumptions about the nature of quantum measurements and their ability to generate random bits. Anton Zeilinger summarises this by postulating that the simplest quantum systems, qubit, can hold only one bit of classical information [6]. This foundational principle is in line with a wider paradigm shift to view quantum information as an extension of classical information, but it is nonetheless unsatisfying to simply postulate this principle, given its importance in determining the practical advantages of quantum information theory. In order to understand better how quantum mechanics can help generate meaningful information, we instead look to relate the outcomes of quantum measurements to formal properties of the system based on more fundamental assumptions. Indeed, we have shown that a) some of the postulated properties of quantum information follow from the formal structure of the theory and b) a purely formal notion of information within a quantum world can generate, via measurement, meaningful and useful information in the macroscopic world (for example, in cryptography). The indeterminism of quantum measurements can be formalised via the notion of value indefiniteness. To explain this concept, let us consider an arbitrary quantum system and ask whether the outcome of a measurement of any observable quantity A (such as the energy of the system, its angular momentum (spin), etc.) is determined prior to the measurement. If this is the case, then we say the observable is value definite with value v(A); otherwise, the observable is value indefinite and v(A) is undefined. Mathematically, one can reduce all observable quantities to so-called projection observables, which can only take the values 0 or 1. Thus, the question of whether the outcome of several measurements can be simultaneously determined in advance can be rephrased in terms of the information 'carried' by a particular system in a definite quantum state. Classically, one expects that all quantities are determined in advance, and hence all observables are value definite. Quantum mechanically, however, the belief is that this is not the case, and the information content of quantum systems is limited. Formulating carefully the notion of value indefiniteness allows us to formalise the notion of (quantum) indeterminism; however, this doesn't help clarify whether quantum systems are indeed value indefinite or not. Staying in this formal framework, the Kochen-Specker theorem [5] provides a first positive result, showing that at least some observables must be value indefinite if one makes the assumption known as non-contextuality, which states that any definite values that exist must be independent of other compatible measurements that may or may not be performed on the system. Under the same assumption, this theorem can be strengthened to show that only one single observable can have the definite value 1 (see [2]). Furthermore, only observables that can be measured simultaneously with this single one can have the definite value 0; the rest must all be value indefinite. Since the preparation of a system involves precisely ensuring that, usually via measurement, the system is in a definite state with respect to some desired observable, this result shows that no other incompatible observable can be value definite. That is, preparing a system in a definite state by making the 'preparation' observable value definite specifies completely the information content of the quantum system. This is an example of syntactical quantum information acquiring meaning at the level of the quantum itself. Can the syntactical information at the level of the quantum generate meaning outside the quantum, that is, at the macroscopic level? The results cited above hold in the Hilbert-space framework of quantum mechanics and are formulated only in terms of a syntactical notion of information. Their real importance becomes evident when one interprets them in the context of quantum measurements. Specifically, if we prepare a quantum system in a known state, they allow us to 'locate' observables which we can measure, but which are value indefinite; that is, observables whose measurement results are not specified by any pre-existing property of the quantum system. Furthermore, with respect to a mathematical model of unpredictability which we developed in [3], the results of these measurements can be shown to be absolutely unpredictable. In this way we get a mathematical explanation and justification of the largely accepted intuition that quantum mechanics is inherently unpredictable, and that this unpredictability arises from the phenomenon of indefiniteness within the quantum world. Furthermore, if one considers a hypothetical infinite sequence generated by the repeated measurement of a quantum value indefinite observable, one can prove that these sequences must be strongly incomputable, technically 'bi-immune' [1]. Such sequences cannot be generated by any Turing machine or classical computer, showing that value indefiniteness leads to a clear classical/quantum split in a purely algorithmic context. Importantly, bi-immunity is a property of observed, macroscopic quantities, quite separate from the quantum framework in which the value indefiniteness is formalised. This form of macroscopic meaning created from the lack of syntactic information is precisely the scenario that quantum random number generators try to create, and which is essential for the development and certification of quantum cryptographic systems. The fact that the macroscopic information created goes beyond anything classically obtainable serves as a valuable practical resource, outside of and removed from the quantum formalism. To conclude, quantum information creates meaning within the quantum and via measure- ment, the lack of information within the quantum, creates meaning and valuable information at the macroscopic level. Acknowledgments The second author thanks Prof. S. Marcus for useful conversations on quantum information theory. This work was supported in part by Marie Curie FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IRSES Grant RANPHYS. References and Notes Abbott, A.A.; Calude, C.S.; Svozil, K. Strong Kochen-Specker theorem and incomputability of quantum randomness. Physical Review A 2012, 86, 062109. Abbott, A.A.; Calude, C.S.; Svozil, K. Value-indefinite observables are almost everywhere. Physical Review A 2013, 89, 032109. Abbott, A.A.; Calude, C.S.; Svozil, K. On the unpredictability of individual quantum measurement outcomes. CDMTCS Research Report 2014, 458. Calude, C.S. Quantum randomness & cryptology. CyberTalk 2013, 3, 42–43. Kochen, S.; Specker, E. The problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics. Journal of Mathematics and Mechanics 1967, 17, 59–87. Zeilinger, A. A foundational principle for quantum mechanics. Foundations of Physics 1999, 29(4),631–643.

We address routing of classical and quantum information over quantum network and show how to exploit chirality (directionality) to achieve nearly optimal and robust transport. In particular, we prove how continuous-time chiral quantum walks over a minimal graph are able to model directional transfer of information over a network. At first, we show how classical information, encoded onto an excitation localized at one vertex of a simple graph, may be sent to any other chosen location with nearly unit fidelity by tuning a single phase. Then, we prove that high-fidelity transport is also possible for coherent superpositions of states, i.e., for routing of quantum information. Furthermore, we show that by tuning the phase parameter, one obtains universal quantum routing, i.e., independent on the input state. In our scheme, chirality is governed by a single phase, and the routing probability is robust against fluctuations of this parameter. Finally, we address characterization of quantum routers and show how to exploit the self-energies of the graph to achieve high precision in estimating the phase parameter.

The utility of a five-qubit entangled state for quantum teleportation, quantum state sharing and superdense coding is investigated. The state can be utilized for perfect teleportation and quantum state sharing of an arbitrary single- and two-qubit state. The capacity of superdense coding of the state reaches the "Holevo bound", which means that five classical bits can be transmitted by sending three qubits. The preparation of the five-qubit state and detection of the multipartite states in cavity QED are discussed. The distinct advantage of the feasible cavity QED technology that we use is insensitive to the thermal field and the cavity decay.

The Symmetries of Quantum and Classical Information. The Ressurected “Ether" of Quantum Information

Here it is shown that quantum systems can be understood as information processors. Information and entropy are related quantities but also different, since the first is formal whilst the second is dynamical. Both quantum and classical information acquisition are a three-step process that needs a processor, a regulator, and a decider.

We introduce an explicit construction for a key distribution protocol in the Quantum Computational Timelock (QCT) security model, where one assumes that computationally secure encryption may only be broken after a time much longer than the coherence time of available quantum memories.Taking advantage of the QCT assumptions, we build a key distribution protocol called HM-QCT from the Hidden Matching problem for which there exists an exponential gap in one-way communication complexity between classical and quantum strategies.We establish that the security of HM-QCT against arbitrary i.i.d. attacks can be reduced to the difficulty of solving the underlying Hidden Matching problem with classical information. Legitimate users, on the other hand, can use quantum communication, which gives them the possibility of sending multiple copies of the same quantum state while retaining an information advantage. This leads to an everlasting secure key distribution scheme over n bosonic modes. Such a level of security is unattainable with purely classical techniques. Remarkably, the scheme remains secure with up to O(nlog⁡(n)) input photons for each channel use, extending the functionalities and potentially outperforming QKD rates by several orders of magnitudes.

The progress of quantum computing and quantum information science (QIS) will be largely reliant on an emerging workforce prepared to enter the QIS industry. As a relatively new field, opportunities for teachers and youth to engage with QIS have historically been limited. Quantum Computing, Mathematics, and Physics (QCaMP) is a summer camp designed to address this gap. QCaMP serves both teachers and high school students, providing an entry point into the growing field and introducing participants to core quantum concepts. During the teacher camp, we offer a framework for educators to integrate QIS into their own classrooms. The student camp focuses on building a foundational understanding of QIS while highlighting its practical applications and relevance to everyday life. In this talk, I will focus on how we introduce application-based topics using a hands-on, experiential approach that enhances student engagement and comprehension. I will highlight our approach to teaching Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). We begin by introducing classical cryptography methods, such as the Caesar cipher, through interactive activities in which students write and exchange encrypted messages. We then use “coin boxes” to guide students through the BB84 protocol, offering a tactile and intuitive way to learn a quantum cryptographic method. The camp culminates in student projects, where participants demonstrate their understanding of chosen QIS topics. In the QKD project, for example, students successfully designed and conducted a BB84-based experiment and presented their findings through posters, showcasing their conceptual growth and understanding.

In this paper, we introduce an authenticable quantum secret sharing protocol by utilizing unitary diagonal operator and quantum SUM gate. Here, dealer distributes quantum and classical information simultaneously to participants. The cheat-detection mechanism is designed to identify and expose any malicious actions by participants. During this process, each subsequent participant can detect and recognize deceptive behaviour from dishonest members. To ensure that only legitimate participants are involved in the protocol, we introduce an identity authentication mechanism, where the dealer and each participant share a pair of secret PIN sequences. The implementation of the proposed scheme on the IBM quantum platform (restricted to d = 2) demonstrates its operational correctness and feasibility. Noise-aware simulations under realistic NISQ conditions show that, although performance degrades with increasing noise, the correct outcome remains dominant, indicating robust behaviour in the presence of decoherence, gate errors, and measurement imperfections. Additionally, a complementary analysis is performed under different noise environments, including dit-flip noise, d-phase-flip noise, and depolarizing noise. The obtained results indicate that the efficiency of the proposed protocol decreases with increasing channel noise parameter, with distinct performance variations observed across all the noise models. Furthermore, this work takes into account the situation in which at least t out of the n participants can use the Lagrange interpolation to recover the secret classical and quantum information. The security analysis demonstrates that the proposed protocol is resilient to intercept-resend, collusion, entangle-measure, forgery and denial attacks.

We investigate the usefulness of a recently introduced five-qubit state by Brown et al. [I. D. K. Brown, S. Stepney, A. Sudbery, and S. L. Braunstein, J. Phys. A 38, 1119 (2005)] for quantum teleportation, quantum-state sharing, and superdense coding. It is shown that this state can be utilized for perfect teleportation of arbitrary single and two-qubit systems. We devise various schemes for quantum-state sharing of an arbitrary single- and two-particle state via cooperative teleportation. We later show that this state can be used for superdense coding as well. It is found that five classical bits can be sent by sending only three quantum bits.