Quantum Encodings, Private Messages, and Communication Complexity

Abstract

We study the complexity of quantum decomposable randomized encodings (QDRE). We establish a bi-directional connection between the QDRE model and the communication complexity model of quantum private simultaneous message protocols (QPSM), where classical communication is free, and quantum communication is the primary complexity measure. We show the following upper and lower bounds. (1) For every quantum channel mapping $n$ to $m$ qubits, we give a QPSM protocol with quantum communication $m$, using exponential pre-shared entanglement. In particular, constant-output channels have $O(1)$ quantum communication, and classical-output channels require no quantum communication. (2) With $O(n)$ pre-shared entanglement, every one-qubit-output channel has an $O(n)$-quantum-communication QPSM protocol. Conversely, there exists a channel and a constant $c>0$ for which any protocol with at most $cn$ pre-shared entanglement requires $Ω(n)$ quantum communication. (3) In contrast, we identify a structured class of quantum channels, Clifford-induced channels, for which there exist QPSM protocols with $O(n)$ pre-shared entangled qubits and only $O(1)$ quantum communication complexity. Through our connection, we obtain analogous upper and lower bounds on the quantum encoding size of QDRE. Our results show that the amount of pre-shared entanglement plays a central role in quantum encoding size and quantum communication complexity.