Classical communication through quantum causal structures

Quantum mechanics allows operations to be in indefinite causal order, leading to advantages in computational and communication tasks. However, basic notions such as communication capacity have not yet been formalized. In light of this, through the process matrix formalism, we formulate different classical capacities for a bipartite quantum process. For one-way communication, we find that general quantum processes satisfy a generalization of the Holevo bound, i.e., we can send, at most, one bit per qubit. The result also holds for processes with indefinite causal order and with shared entanglement between the sender and the receiver. We further extend known bounds to classical channel capacities, showing that general processes cannot outperform causally separable ones. Next, we study bidirectional communication through a causally separable process. Our result shows that a bidirectional protocol cannot exceed the limit of a one-way communication protocol. Finally, we generalize this result to a multiparty broadcast communication protocol through a definite ordered process.

Automated summary

Quantum mechanics allows operations to be in indefinite causal order, leading to advantages in computational and communication tasks. Through the process matrix formalism, different classical capacities for a bipartite quantum process are formulated, showing a generalization of the Holevo bound. Bidirectional communication cannot exceed the limit of a one-way communication protocol in causally separable processes.