Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-5-2014

Abstract

We prove that several known upper bounds on the classical capacity of thermal and additive noise bosonic channels are actually strong converse rates. Our results strengthen the interpretation of these upper bounds, in the sense that we now know that the probability of correctly decoding a classical message rapidly converges to 0 in the limit of many channel uses if the communication rate exceeds these upper bounds. In order for these theorems to hold, we need to impose a maximum photon number constraint on the states input to the channel (the strong converse property need not hold if there is only a mean photon number constraint). Our first theorem demonstrates that Koenig and Smith's upper bound on the classical capacity of the thermal bosonic channel is a strong converse rate, and we prove this result by utilizing the structural decomposition of a thermal channel into a pure-loss channel followed by an amplifier channel. Our second theorem demonstrates that Giovannetti et al.'s upper bound on the classical capacity of a thermal bosonic channel corresponds to a strong converse rate, and we prove this result by relating the success probability to the rate, the effective dimension of the output space, and the purity of the channel as measured by the Rényi collision entropy. Finally, we use similar techniques to prove that similar previously known upper bounds on the classical capacity of an additive noise bosonic channel correspond to strong converse rates. © 2014 American Physical Society.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Physical Review A - Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

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