Classical information capacity of a class of quantum channels

Abstract

We consider the additivity of the minimal output entropy and the classical information capacity of a class of quantum channels. For this class of channels the norm of the output is maximized for the output being a normalized projection. We prove the additivity of the minimal output Renyi entropies with entropic parameters contained in [0, 2], generalizing an argument by Alicki and Fannes, and present a number of examples in detail. In order to relate these results to the classical information capacity, we introduce a weak form of covariance of a channel. We then identify several instances of weakly covariant channels for which we can infer the additivity of the classical information capacity. Both additivity results apply to the case of an arbitrary number of different channels. Finally, we relate the obtained results to instances of bi-partite quantum states for which the entanglement cost can be calculated.