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Construction of channels which in every dimension anti-degrade the depolarizing channel

Quantum Physics 2026-05-18 v5

Abstract

We consider the depolarizing channel in dd dimension defined as Dx(ρ)=(1x)ρ+xtr(ρ)IdD_x(\rho)=(1-x)\rho+x\: \textit{tr}({\rho}) \frac{I}{d}, and explicitly find a quantum channel Nx{\cal N}_x which anti-degrades this, when x12x\geq\frac{1}{2}. This proves that the depolarizing channel DxD_x has zero capacity when x12x\geq\frac{1}{2}. As a corollary, this implies that any quantum channel when contaminated by white noise stronger than this value loses its capacity completely. Although by arguments based on symmetric-extendibiliy of the Choi matrix, it is known that the channel is anti-degradable when xd2(d+1)x\geq \frac{d}{2(d+1)}, the explicit form of the anti-degrading channel in this larger interval is not known. We also calculate in closed form the capacity of the complenetary channel Dxc{\cal D}_x^c in the region x12x\geq \frac{1}{2}. This adds to the existing list of quantum channels for which the quantum capacity has been calculated in closed form.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.05733,
  title  = {Construction of channels which in every dimension anti-degrade the depolarizing channel},
  author = {Shayan Roofeh and Vahid Karimipour},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.05733},
  year   = {2026}
}

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Accepted for Publication in Quantum Information Processing