Super dense coding over bit flip channel

April 9, 2014

0.1 Preparation
Let Alice and Bob initially prepare a joint quantum state namely
1
|+ i = (|00i + |11i)
2

0.2 Encoding
Let Alice perform unitary operations on her part of the qubit. For an intial
joint quantum state , this is represented as

i = (i I)(i I)

Alice chooses among {I, 1 , 2 , 3 } to respectively transmit {00, 01, 10, 11}. Let
Alice choose these encodings with equal probability (= 41 ) to give various joint
density matrices

00 : I
0 = (I I) |+ i h+ | (I I)
0 = |+ i h+ |
1 1
0 = (|00i + |11i) (h00| + h11|)
2 2
1
0 = (|00i h00| + |00i h11| + |11i h00| + |11i h11|)
2
1
0 = (|0i h0| |0i h0| + |0i h1| |0i h1| + |1i h0| |1i h0| + |1i h1| |1i h1|
2
01 : 1
1 = (1 I) |+ i h+ | (1 I)
1 = | + i h + |
1 1
1 = (|01i + |10i) (h01| + h10|)
2 2
1
1 = (|01i h01| + |10i h10| + |01i h10| + |10i h01|)
2
1
1 = (|0i h0| |1i h1| + |1i h1| |0i h0| + |0i h1| |1i h0| + |1i h0| |0i h1|
2

1
 10 : 2
2 = (2 I) |+ i h+ | (2 I)
2 = | i h |
1 1
2 = (|01i |10i) (h01| h10|)
2 2
1
2 = (|01i h01| + |10i h10| |01i h10| |10i h01|)
2
1
2 = (|0i h0| |1i h1| + |1i h1| |0i h0| |0i h1| |1i h0| |1i h0| |0i h1|
2
11 : 3
3 = (3 I) |+ i h+ | (3 I)
3 = | i h |
1 1
3 = (|00i |11i) (h00| h11|)
2 2
1
3 = (|00i h00| |00i h11| |11i h00| + |11i h11|)
2
1
3 = (|0i h0| |0i h0| |0i h1| |0i h1| |1i h0| |1i h0| + |1i h1| |1i h1|
2

0.3 Alices qubit goes through the bit flip channel

The action of the bit flip channel on any state is given by

N () = pX X + (1 p)

Since we have the channel that acts only on the Alices part of joint quantum
system, the analysis can be done by writing the initial joint density matrix AB
as X
AB = A
k k
B

And therefore X
(N I)(AB ) = N (A B
k ) k
k

Now, we do the analysis by substituting i for AB in the above equation to

get final joint quantum system
3
X
AB = (N I)(i )
i=0

Holevo capacity, in which case becomes

3 3
X 1
X1

= S (N I)( i S (N I)(i ) (1)
i=0
4 i=0
4
3 3
X 1
X 1

=S (N I)(i ) S (N I)(i ) (2)
i=0
4 i=0
4

2
Now we derive the expression for the final joint quantum state by analysing
what is the effect of the channel on each i

1p 0 0 1p
1 0 p p 0
(N I)(0 ) =
2 0 p p 0
1p 0 0 1p

p 0 0 p
1 0 1 p 1p 0
(N I)(1 ) =
2 0 1 p 1p 0
p 0 0 p

p 0 0 p
1 0 1 p (1 p) 0
(N I)(2 ) =
2 0 (1 p) 1p 0
p 0 0 p

1p 0 0 (1 p)
1 0 p p 0
(N I)(3 ) =
2 0 p p 0
(1 p) 0 0 1p
It can be easily checked that
3
X
(N I)(i ) = I
i=0

Therefore the first term in equation (2) becomes

I
S( ) = log(4) = 2
4
Suprisingly the second term in equation (2) is also easy to analyse, giving

S((N I)(i )) = h(p) i

This is because each of the matrices (N I)(i ) have two zero eigen values, p
and 1 p as the non zero eigen values.

Here h(p) is the binary entropy function with argument p, the bit flipping prob-
ability. Therefore the Holevo capacity comes to a nice compact expression

= 2 h(p)