Ke Li

A new protocol for quantum broadcast channels based on the fully quantum Slepian-Wolf protocol is presented. The protocol yields an achievable rate region for entanglement-assisted transmission of quantum information through a quantum broadcast channel that can be considered the quantum analogue of Marton's region for classical broadcast channels. The protocol can be adapted to yield achievable rate regions for unassisted quantum communication and for entanglement-assisted classical communication; in the case of unassisted transmission, the region we obtain has no independent constraint on the sum rate, only on the individual transmission rates. Regularized versions of all three rate regions are provably optimal.

Recently there has been considerable activity on the subject of the additivity of various quantum channel capacities. Here, we construct a family of channels with a sharply bounded classical and, hence, private capacity. On the other hand, their quantum capacity when combined with a zero private (and zero quantum) capacity erasure channel becomes larger than the previous classical capacity. As a consequence, we can conclude for the first time that the classical private capacity is nonadditive. In fact, in our construction even the quantum capacity of the tensor product of two channels can be greater than the sum of their individual classical private capacities. We show that this violation occurs quite generically: every channel can be embedded into our construction, and a violation occurs whenever the given channel has a larger entanglement-assisted quantum capacity than (unassisted) classical capacity.

Recently there has been considerable activity on the subject of additivity of various quantum channel capacities. Here, we construct a family of channels with sharply bounded classical, hence private capacity. On the other hand, their quantum capacity when combined with a zero private (and zero quantum) capacity erasure channel, becomes larger than the previous classical capacity. As a consequence, we can conclude for the first time that the classical private capacity is non-additive. In fact, in our construction even the quantum capacity of the tensor product of two channels can be greater than the sum of their individual classical private capacities. We show that this violation occurs quite generically: every channel can be embedded into our construction, and a violation occurs whenever the given channel has larger entanglement assisted quantum capacity than (unassisted) classical capacity.