Relativistic Quantum Communication: Energy cost and channel capacities

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the energy costs and capacities of relativistic quantum communication channels in curved spacetime, showing that communication can be achieved without additional energy expenditure under certain conditions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the extra energy cost for quantum communication in relativistic settings can vanish, enabling energy-efficient information transfer with pre-existing qubits.

Findings

Energy cost for communication can be zero if qubits are pre-established.

Channel capacities depend on spacetime geometry and observer motion.

Energy contributions include particle creation, switching energy, and communication process energy.

Abstract

We consider the communication of classical and quantum information between two arbitrary observers in asymptotically flat spacetimes (possibly containing black holes) and investigate what is the energy cost for such information transmission. By means of localized two-level quantum systems, sender and receiver can use a quantum scalar field as a communication channel. As we have already shown in a previous paper, such a channel has non-vanishing classical capacity as well as entanglement-assisted classical and quantum capacities. Here we will show that the change in the expectation value of the energy of the system during the communication process can be separated in: (i) a contribution coming from the particle creation due to the change of the spacetime, (ii) a contribution associated with the energy needed to switch-on/off each qubit, and {\bf (iii)} a term which comes from the communication process itself. For the quantum channel considered here, we show that the extra energy cost needed for communication vanishes. As a result, if one has already created a system of qubits for some specific task (e.g., quantum computation) one can also reliably convey information between its parts with no extra energy cost. We conclude the paper by illustrating the form of the channel capacities and energy contributions in two paradigmatic cases in Minkowski spacetime: (1) sender and receiver in inertial motion and (2) sender in inertial motion while the receiver is uniformly accelerated.