Improving Zero-Error Classical Communication with Entanglement

Toby S. Cubitt, Debbie Leung, William Matthews, Andreas Winter
2010 Physical Review Letters  
Given one or more uses of a classical channel, only a certain number of messages can be transmitted with zero probability of error. The study of this number and its asymptotic behaviour constitutes the field of classical zero-error information theory, the quantum generalisation of which has started to develop recently. We show that, given a single use of certain classical channels, entangled states of a system shared by the sender and receiver can be used to increase the number of (classical)
more » ... ssages which can be sent with no chance of error. In particular, we show how to construct such a channel based on any proof of the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem. This is a new example of the use of quantum effects to improve the performance of a classical task. We investigate the connection between this phenomenon and that of "pseudo-telepathy" games. The use of generalised non-signalling correlations to assist in this task is also considered. In this case, a particularly elegant theory results and, remarkably, it is sometimes possible to transmit information with zero-error using a channel with no unassisted zero-error capacity.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.104.230503 pmid:20867220 fatcat:vc2pdmzb5jhirjb6ulcclthn2q