TY - JOUR
T1 - Information capacity of a single photon
AU - Rohde, Peter P.
AU - Fitzsimons, Joseph F.
AU - Gilchrist, Alexei
N1 - Rohde, P. P., Fitzsimons, J. F., & Gilchrist, A. (2013). Information capacity of a single photon. Physical Review A, 88(2), 022310. Copyright (2013) by the American Physical Society. The original article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.88.022310
PY - 2013/8/9
Y1 - 2013/8/9
N2 - Quantum states of light are the obvious choice for communicating quantum information. To date, encoding information into the polarization states of single photons has been widely used as these states form a natural closed two-state qubit. However, photons are able to encode much more - in principle, infinite - information via the continuous spatiotemporal degrees of freedom. Here we consider the information capacity of an optical quantum channel, such as an optical fiber, where a spectrally encoded single photon is the means of communication. We use the Holevo bound to calculate an upper bound on the channel capacity, and relate this to the spectral encoding basis and the spectral properties of the channel. Further, we derive analytic bounds on the capacity of such channels, and, in the case of a symmetric two-state encoding, calculate the exact capacity of the corresponding channel.
AB - Quantum states of light are the obvious choice for communicating quantum information. To date, encoding information into the polarization states of single photons has been widely used as these states form a natural closed two-state qubit. However, photons are able to encode much more - in principle, infinite - information via the continuous spatiotemporal degrees of freedom. Here we consider the information capacity of an optical quantum channel, such as an optical fiber, where a spectrally encoded single photon is the means of communication. We use the Holevo bound to calculate an upper bound on the channel capacity, and relate this to the spectral encoding basis and the spectral properties of the channel. Further, we derive analytic bounds on the capacity of such channels, and, in the case of a symmetric two-state encoding, calculate the exact capacity of the corresponding channel.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84884842436&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevA.88.022310
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevA.88.022310
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84884842436
SN - 1050-2947
VL - 88
SP - 1
EP - 6
JO - Physical Review A - Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
JF - Physical Review A - Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
IS - 2
M1 - 022310
ER -