Higher dimensional communication complexity problems: classical protocols vs quantum ones based on Bell's Theorem or prepare-transmit-measure schemes

Abstract

Communication complexity problems (CCPs) are tasks in which separated parties attempt to compute a function whose inputs are distributed among the parties. Their communication is limited so that not all inputs can be sent. We show that broad classes of Bell inequalities can be mapped to CCPs and that a quantum violation of a Bell inequality is a necessary and sufficient condition for an enhancement of the related CCP beyond its classical limitation. However, one can implement CCPs by transmitting a quantum system, encoding no more information than is allowed in the CCP, and extract information by performing measurements. We show that for a large class of Bell inequalities, the improvement of the CCP associated to a quantum violation of a Bell inequality can be no greater than the improvement obtained from quantum prepare-transmit-measure strategies.