arXiv subjects

Debbie Leung

Publications and source records attributed to Debbie Leung.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Counterexamples to additivity of minimum output $p$-R\'enyi entropy of quantum channels for $p>3/4$ and $0\leq p<1/4$

Additivity of minimum output entropies is a central problem in quantum information theory. Nonadditivity is known for every R\'enyi order $p>1$, at the von Neumann point $p=1$, and near $p=0$, while most of the interval $0 3/4$ or $0\leq p<1/4$, there exist finite-dimensional projection-induced quantum channels such that additivity of the minimum output $p$-R\'enyi entropy fails. The proof combines two correlated random-projection constructions: a product-conjugate Bell-state witness for $p>3/4$, and a transpose-complement rank-defect witness for $p<1/4$. Thus the unresolved part of $0<p<1$ is reduced to $[1/4,3/4]$. Our estimates also improve the output dimension threshold for additivity violation of minimum output von Neumann entropy, first established in Belinschi, Collins and Nechida.

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arXiv2026

Enhanced quantum capacity thresholds from symmetry

The quantum capacity captures the value of a quantum channel for transmitting quantum information, establishing the fundamental limits on quantum communication. In spite of its central role in quantum information theory, the quantum capacity of most channels is unknown, with wide gaps between the best upper and lower bounds. Even deciding whether a channel has nonzero capacity -- finding its capacity threshold -- is difficult. In this paper we report significant increases in the capacity thresholds of two prototypical noise models: the depolarizing channel and Pauli channels. In the case of the depolarizing channel, this is the first improvement in 18 years, giving a bigger increase beyond the hashing bound than all previous improvements combined. Our starting point is the representation theoretic framework recently proposed by Bhalerao and Leditzky (2025) to compute coherent information for special permutation invariant states. We generalize their framework to the full symmetric subspace, which allow us to optimize coherent information over rank two states in that space. A representation theoretic calculation shows that exponentially many Kraus operators of the channel annihilate the symmetric space, corresponding to a massive decrease in environment entropy for states on the symmetric space compared to the maximally mixed state. This explains the enhanced coherent information as a manifestation of degeneracy for the resulting codes.

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arXiv2026

On Error Thresholds for Pauli Channels: Some answers with many more questions

This paper focuses on error thresholds for Pauli channels. We numerically compute lower bounds for the thresholds using the analytic framework of coset weight enumerators pioneered by DiVincenzo, Shor and Smolin in 1998. In particular, we study potential non-additivity of a variety of small stabilizer codes and their concatenations, and report several new concatenated stabilizer codes of small length that show significant non-additivity. We also give a closed form expression of coset weight enumerators of concatenated phase and bit flip repetition codes. Using insights from this formalism, we estimate the threshold for concatenated repetition codes of large lengths. Finally, for several concatenations of small stabilizer codes we optimize for channels which lead to maximal non-additivity at the hashing point of the corresponding channel. We supplement these results with a discussion on the performance of various stabilizer codes from the perspective of the non-additivity and threshold problem. We report both positive and negative results, and highlight some counterintuitive observations, to support subsequent work on lower bounds for error thresholds.

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arXiv2025

Entanglement sharing schemes

We ask how quantum correlations can be distributed among many subsystems. To address this, we define entanglement sharing schemes (ESS) where certain pairs of subsystems allow entanglement to be recovered via local operations, while other pairs must not. ESS schemes come in two variants, one where the partner system with which entanglement should be prepared is known, and one where it is not. In the case of known partners, we fully characterize the access structures realizable for ESS when using stabilizer states, and construct efficient schemes for threshold access structures, and give a conjecture for the access structures realizable with general states. In the unknown partner case, we again give a complete characterization in the stabilizer setting, additionally give a complete characterization of the case where there are no restrictions on unauthorized pairs, and we prove a set of necessary conditions on general schemes which we conjecture are also sufficient. Finally, we give an application of the theory of entanglement sharing to resolve an open problem related to the distribution of entanglement in response to time-sensitive requests in quantum networks.

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arXiv2025

Efficiently Computable Limits on EPR Pair Generation in Quantum Broadcast Channels

We investigate the generation of EPR pairs between three observers in a general causally structured setting, where communication occurs via a noisy quantum broadcast channel. The most general quantum codes for this setup take the form of tripartite quantum channels. Since the receivers are constrained by causal ordering, additional temporal relationships naturally emerge between the parties. These causal constraints enforce intrinsic no-signalling conditions on any tripartite operation, ensuring that it constitutes a physically realizable quantum code for a quantum broadcast channel. We analyze these constraints and, more broadly, characterize the most general quantum codes for communication over such channels. We examine the capabilities of codes that are fully no-signalling among the three parties, positive partial transpose (PPT)-preserving, or both, and derive simple semidefinite programs to compute the achievable entanglement fidelity. We then establish a hierarchy of semidefinite programming converse bounds -- both weak and strong -- for the capacity of quantum broadcast channels for EPR pair generation, in both one-shot and asymptotic regimes. Notably, in the special case of a point-to-point channel, our strong converse bound recovers and strengthens existing results. Finally, we demonstrate how the PPT-preserving codes we develop can be leveraged to construct PPT-preserving entanglement combing schemes, and vice versa.

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arXiv2025

Quantum Reverse Shannon Theorem Revisited

Reverse Shannon theorems concern the use of noiseless channels to simulate noisy ones. This is dual to the usual noisy channel coding problem, where a noisy (classical or quantum) channel is used to simulate a noiseless one. The Quantum Reverse Shannon Theorem is extensively studied by Bennett and co-authors in [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, 2014]. They present two distinct theorems, each tailored to classical and quantum channel simulations respectively, explaining the fact that these theorems remain incomparable due to the fundamentally different nature of correlations they address. The authors leave as an open question the challenge of formulating a unified theorem that could encompass the principles of both and unify them. We unify these two theorems into a single, comprehensive theorem, extending it to the most general case by considering correlations with a general mixed-state reference system. Furthermore, we unify feedback and non-feedback theorems by simulating a general side information system at the encoder side.

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arXiv2025

Streaming quantum state purification for general mixed states

Given multiple copies of a mixed quantum state with an unknown, nondegenerate principal eigenspace, quantum state purification is the task of recovering a quantum state that is closer to the principal eigenstate. A streaming protocol relying on recursive swap tests has been proposed and analysed for noisy depolarized states with arbitrary dimension and noise level. Here, we show that the same algorithm applies much more broadly, enabling the purification of arbitrary mixed states with a nondegenerate principal eigenvalue. We demonstrate this through two approaches. In the first approach, we show that, given the largest two eigenvalues, the depolarized noise is the most difficult noise to purify for the recursive swap tests, thus the desirable bounds on performance and cost follow from prior work. In the second approach, we provide a new and direct analysis for the performance of purification using recursive swap tests for the more general noise. We also derive simple lower bounds on the sample complexity, showing that the recursive swap test algorithm attains optimal sample complexity (up to a constant factor) in the low-noise regime.

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arXiv2025

Fault-tolerant Preparation of Distant Logical Bell Pair -- with application in the magic square game

Measures of quantum nonlocality traditionally assume perfect local computation. In real experiments, however, each computational primitive is imperfect. Fault-tolerant techniques enable arbitrarily accurate quantum computation but do not necessarily preserve optimized measures of nonlocality. We examine the impact of low noise on quantum nonlocality in nonlocal games, where even small imperfections can disproportionately increase entanglement consumption. Focusing on the fault-tolerant magic square game, we optimize the tradeoff between noisy entanglement consumption and deficit in the game value. We introduce an interface circuit and logical entanglement purification protocol (EPP) to efficiently translate states between physical and logical qubits and purify noisy logical Bell pair, reducing Bell pair consumption. Our analytical and numerical results, particularly for the $[[7^k,1,3^k]]$ concatenated Steane code, demonstrate exponential Bell pair savings and a higher noise threshold. We establish theoretical lower bounds for local noise threshold of $4.70\times10^{-4}$ and an initial Bell pair infidelity threshold of $18.3\%$. Our framework is adaptable to various quantum error-correcting codes (QECCs) and experimental platforms. This work not only advances fault-tolerant nonlocal games but also inspires further research on interfacing different QECCs, fostering modular quantum architectures and the quantum internet.

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arXiv2024

Conditional disclosure of secrets with quantum resources

The conditional disclosure of secrets (CDS) primitive is among the simplest cryptographic settings in which to study the relationship between communication, randomness, and security. CDS involves two parties, Alice and Bob, who do not communicate but who wish to reveal a secret $z$ to a referee if and only if a Boolean function $f$ has $f(x,y)=1$. Alice knows $x,z$, Bob knows $y$, and the referee knows $x,y$. Recently, a quantum analogue of this primitive called CDQS was defined and related to $f$-routing, a task studied in the context of quantum position-verification. CDQS has the same inputs, outputs, and communication pattern as CDS but allows the use of shared entanglement and quantum messages. We initiate the systematic study of CDQS, with the aim of better understanding the relationship between privacy and quantum resources in the information theoretic setting. We begin by looking for quantum analogues of results already established in the classical CDS literature. Doing so we establish a number of basic properties of CDQS, including lower bounds on entanglement and communication stated in terms of measures of communication complexity. Because of the close relationship to the $f$-routing position-verification scheme, our results have relevance to the security of these schemes.

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arXiv2023

Streaming quantum state purification

Quantum state purification is the task of recovering a nearly pure copy of an unknown pure quantum state using multiple noisy copies of the state. This basic task has applications to quantum communication over noisy channels and quantum computation with imperfect devices, but has only been studied previously for the case of qubits. We derive an efficient purification procedure based on the swap test for qudits of any dimension, starting with any initial error parameter. Treating the initial error parameter and the dimension as constants, we show that our procedure has sample complexity asymptotically optimal in the final error parameter. Our protocol has a simple recursive structure that can be applied when the states are provided one at a time in a streaming fashion, requiring only a small quantum memory to implement.

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arXiv2022

Rate-Distortion Theory for Mixed States

This paper is concerned with quantum data compression of asymptotically many independent and identically distributed copies of ensembles of mixed quantum states. The encoder has access to a side information system. The figure of merit is per-copy or local error criterion. Rate-distortion theory studies the trade-off between the compression rate and the per-copy error. The optimal trade-off can be characterized by the rate-distortion function, which is the best rate given a certain distortion. In this paper, we derive the rate-distortion function of mixed-state compression. The rate-distortion functions in the entanglement-assisted and unassisted scenarios are in terms of a single-letter mutual information quantity and the regularized entanglement of purification, respectively. For the general setting where the consumption of both communication and entanglement are considered, we present the full qubit-entanglement rate region. Our compression scheme covers both blind and visible compression models (and other models in between) depending on the structure of the side information system.

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arXiv2022

Rate Reduction of Blind Quantum Data Compression with Local Approximations Based on Unstable Structure of Quantum States

In this paper, we propose a new protocol for a data compression task, blind quantum data compression, with finite local approximations. The rate of blind data compression is susceptible to approximations even when the approximations are diminutive. This instability originates from the sensitivity of a structure of quantum states against approximations, which makes the analysis of blind compression in the presence of approximations intractable. In this paper, we constructed a protocol that takes advantage of the instability to reduce the compression rate substantially. Our protocol shows a significant reduction in rate for specific examples we examined. Moreover, we apply our methods to diagonal states, and propose two types of approximation methods in this special case. We perform numerical experiments and observe that one of these two approximation methods performs significantly better than the other. Thus, our analysis makes a first step toward general investigation of blind quantum data compression with the allowance of approximations towards further investigation of approximation-rate trade-off of blind quantum data compression.

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arXiv2022

Generic nonadditivity of quantum capacity in simple channels

Determining capacities of quantum channels is a fundamental question in quantum information theory. Despite having rigorous coding theorems quantifying the flow of information across quantum channels, their capacities are poorly understood due to super-additivity effects. Studying these phenomena is important for deepening our understanding of quantum information, yet simple and clean examples of super-additive channels are scarce. Here we study a family of channels called platypus channels. Its simplest member, a qutrit channel, is shown to display super-additivity of coherent information when used jointly with a variety of qubit channels. Higher-dimensional family members display super-additivity of quantum capacity together with an erasure channel. Subject to the "spin-alignment conjecture" introduced in the companion paper [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 69(6), pp. 3825-3849, 2023; arXiv:2202.08380], our results on super-additivity of quantum capacity extend to lower-dimensional channels as well as larger parameter ranges. In particular, super-additivity occurs between two weakly additive channels each with large capacity on their own, in stark contrast to previous results. Remarkably, a single, novel transmission strategy achieves super-additivity in all examples. Our results show that super-additivity is much more prevalent than previously thought. It can occur across a wide variety of channels, even when both participating channels have large quantum capacity.

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arXiv2022

The platypus of the quantum channel zoo

Understanding quantum channels and the strange behavior of their capacities is a key objective of quantum information theory. Here we study a remarkably simple, low-dimensional, single-parameter family of quantum channels with exotic quantum information-theoretic features. As the simplest example from this family, we focus on a qutrit-to-qutrit channel that is intuitively obtained by hybridizing together a simple degradable channel and a completely useless qubit channel. Such hybridizing makes this channel's capacities behave in a variety of interesting ways. For instance, the private and classical capacity of this channel coincide and can be explicitly calculated, even though the channel does not belong to any class for which the underlying information quantities are known to be additive. Moreover, the quantum capacity of the channel can be computed explicitly, given a clear and compelling conjecture is true. This "spin alignment conjecture," which may be of independent interest, is proved in certain special cases and additional numerical evidence for its validity is provided. Finally, we generalize the qutrit channel in two ways, and the resulting channels and their capacities display similarly rich behavior. In the companion paper [Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 200801 (2023); arXiv:2202.08377], we further show that the qutrit channel demonstrates superadditivity when transmitting quantum information jointly with a variety of assisting channels, in a manner unknown before.

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arXiv2021

Incompressibility of classical distributions

In blind compression of quantum states, a sender Alice is given a specimen of a quantum state $ρ$ drawn from a known ensemble (but without knowing what $ρ$ is), and she transmits sufficient quantum data to a receiver Bob so that he can decode a near perfect specimen of $ρ$. For many such states drawn iid from the ensemble, the asymptotically achievable rate is the number of qubits required to be transmitted per state. The Holevo information is a lower bound for the achievable rate, and is attained for pure state ensembles, or in the related scenario of entanglement-assisted visible compression of mixed states wherein Alice knows what state is drawn. In this paper, we prove a general and robust lower bound on the achievable rate for ensembles of classical states, which holds even in the least demanding setting when Alice and Bob share free entanglement and a constant per-copy error is allowed. We apply the bound to a specific ensemble of only two states and prove a near-maximal separation (saturating the dimension bound in leading order) between the best achievable rate and the Holevo information for constant error. This also implies that the ensemble is incompressible -- compression does not reduce the communication cost by much. Since the states are classical, the observed incompressibility is not fundamentally quantum mechanical. We lower bound the difference between the achievable rate and the Holevo information in terms of quantitative limitations to clone the specimen or to distinguish the two classical states.

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arXiv2021

Fault-tolerant quantum error correction using error weight parities

In quantum error correction using imperfect primitives, errors of high weight arising from a few faults are major concerns since they might not be correctable by the quantum error correcting code. Fortunately, some errors of different weights are logically equivalent and the same correction procedure is applicable to all equivalent errors, thus correcting high-weight errors is sometimes possible. In this work, we introduce a technique called weight parity error correction (WPEC) which can correct Pauli error of any weight in some stabilizer codes provided that the parity of the weight of the error is known. We show that the technique is applicable to concatenated codes constructed from the [[7,1,3]] Steane code or the [[23,1,7]] Golay code. We also provide a fault-tolerant error correction protocol using WPEC for the [[49,1,9]] concatenated Steane code which can correct up to 3 faults and requires only 2 ancillas.

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arXiv2021

Achieving fault tolerance on capped color codes with few ancillas

Attaining fault tolerance while maintaining low overhead is one of the main challenges in a practical implementation of quantum circuits. One major technique that can overcome this problem is the flag technique, in which high-weight errors arising from a few faults can be detected by a few ancillas and distinguished using subsequent syndrome measurements. The technique can be further improved using the fact that for some families of codes, errors of any weight are logically equivalent if they have the same syndrome and weight parity, as previously shown in [Phys. Rev. A 104, 042410 (2021)]. In this work, we develop a notion of distinguishable fault set which captures both concepts of flags and weight parities, and extend the use of weight parities in error correction from [Phys. Rev. A 104, 042410 (2021)] to families of capped and recursive capped color codes. We also develop fault-tolerant protocols for error correction, measurement, state preparation, and logical T gate implementation via code switching, which are sufficient for performing fault-tolerant Clifford computation on a capped color code, and performing fault-tolerant universal quantum computation on a recursive capped color code. Our protocols for a capped or a recursive capped color code of any distance require only 2 ancillas, assuming that the ancillas can be reused. The concept of distinguishable fault set also leads to a generalization of the definitions of fault-tolerant gadgets proposed by Aliferis, Gottesman, and Preskill.

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arXiv2020

A three-player coherent state embezzlement game

We introduce a three-player nonlocal game, with a finite number of classical questions and answers, such that the optimal success probability of $1$ in the game can only be achieved in the limit of strategies using arbitrarily high-dimensional entangled states. Precisely, there exists a constant $0 <c\leq 1$ such that to succeed with probability $1-\varepsilon$ in the game it is necessary to use an entangled state of at least $Ω(\varepsilon^{-c})$ qubits, and it is sufficient to use a state of at most $O(\varepsilon^{-1})$ qubits. The game is based on the coherent state exchange game of Leung et al. (CJTCS 2013). In our game, the task of the quantum verifier is delegated to a third player by a classical referee. Our results complement those of Slofstra (arXiv:1703.08618) and Dykema et al. (arXiv:1709.05032), who obtained two-player games with similar (though quantitatively weaker) properties based on the representation theory of finitely presented groups and $C^*$-algebras respectively.

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