Parrondo's paradox and superactivation of classical and quantum capacity of communication channels with memory

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates superactivation phenomena in classical and quantum communication channels with memory, using Parrondo's paradox to show how channels with zero capacity can combine to achieve positive capacity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel superactivation-like effect for channels with memory, utilizing a single family of erasure channels without the usual requirements for superactivation.

Findings

Superactivation-like effect observed for classical and quantum capacities.

Memory channels can exhibit capacity activation without multiple channel families.

Entangled inputs enable capacity increase in channels with memory.

Abstract

There exist memoryless zero-capacity quantum channels that when used jointly result in the channel with positive capacity. This phenomenon is called superactivation. Making use of Parrondo's paradox, we exhibit examples of superactivation-like effect for the capacity of classical communication channels as well as quantum and private capacity of quantum channels with memory. There are several ingredients necessary for superactivation of quantum capacity to occur in memoryless case. The first one is the requirement for the quantum channels which are amenable for superactivation to come from two distinct families - binding entanglement channels and erasure channels. The second one is the ability to utilize inputs which are entangled across the uses of the channels. Our construction uses a single family of erasure channels with classical memory to achieve the same superactivation-like effect for quantum capacity without any of the ingredients above.