Transmission of Classical Information Over Noisy Quantum Channels–A Spectrum Approach

Based upon the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem of Nyquist-Callen-Welton and the spectrum balancing relationship of Kubo-Martin-Schwinger for operator-valued stochastic noise processes, a two-parameter Quantum Noise-Energy Spectral Density (QN-ESD) is constructed and Fourier-Laplace transformed to obtain its associated Quantum Noise-Autocorrelation Function (QN-ACF). By means of a Taylor series expansion, the quantum thermal noise correlations are linked to Number Theory’s Reimann-Zeta function. From this perspective, a panoply of spectral components and their QN correlations are characterized for three disjoint regions located across the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS). The second-moment characterizations and frequency boundaries for each region are specified as a function of two frequency dependent design parameters, viz., a normalized temperature dependent frequency and a quantum receiver cutoff frequency. These boundaries define where the quadrature noise correlation projections of the QN-ESD become noticeably asymmetric-in-frequency. For the operator-valued white quantum noise region, various communication system performance metrics are characterized and their limits are presented and compared via interconnecting parameter relations to their classical communications (CC) counterparts. These metrics include Shannon’s non-additive, but regularized, zero-error capacity in bits/photon-pair, bits/photon, bits/channel-use and bits/sec, the spectral efficiency in bits/sec/Hz and the error-correcting code rate. For long coded messages, Shannon’s capacity quadrature approaches $2 \pi \sqrt {5} / \ln (2) \approx 20$ bits/photon-pair or (10 bits/photon) while for single-photon per channel use transmission it approaches 3 bits/photon-pair. Results are graphically illustrated for the quantum noise spectral density, quantum noise correlations, Shannon’s $\widehat {I}$ - $\widetilde {Q}$ capacities and spectral efficiency.