Causal limit on quantum communication

Abstract

The capacity of a channel is known to be equivalent to the highest rate at which it can generate entanglement. Analogous to entanglement, the notion of a causality measure characterises the temporal aspect of quantum correlations. Despite holding an equally fundamental role in physics, temporal quantum correlations have yet to find their operational significance in quantum communication. Here we uncover a connection between quantum causality and channel capacity. We show the amount of temporal correlations between two ends of the noisy quantum channel, as quantified by a causality measure, implies a general upper bound on its channel capacity. The expression of this new bound is simpler to evaluate than most previously known bounds. We demonstrate the utility of this bound by applying it to a class of shifted depolarizing channels, which results in improvement over previously calculated bounds for this class of channels.