Classical information capacity of a quantum channel

Abstract

We consider the transmission of classical information over a quantum channel. The channel is defined by an ``alphabet'' of quantum states, e.g., certain photon polarizations, together with a specified set of probabilities with which these states must be sent. If the receiver is restricted to making separate measurements on the received ``letter'' states, then the Kholevo theorem implies that the amount of information transmitted per letter cannot be greater than the von Neumann entropy H of the letter ensemble. In fact the actual amount of transmitted information will usually be significantly less than H. We show, however, that if the sender uses a block coding scheme consisting of a choice of code words that respects the a priori probabilities of the letter states, and the receiver distinguishes whole words rather than individual letters, then the information transmitted per letter can be made arbitrarily close to H and never exceeds H. This provides a precise information-theoretic interpretation of von Neumann entropy in quantum mechanics. We apply this result to ``superdense'' coding, and we consider its extension to noisy channels. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.