Polar codes in network quantum information theory

Abstract

Polar coding is a method for communication over noisy classical channels which is provably capacity-achieving and has an efficient encoding and decoding. Recently, this method has been generalized to the realm of quantum information processing, for tasks such as classical communication, private classical communication, and quantum communication. In the present work, we apply the polar coding method to network quantum information theory, by making use of recent advances for related classical tasks. In particular, we consider problems such as the compound multiple access channel and the quantum interference channel. The main result of our work is that it is possible to achieve the best known inner bounds on the achievable rate regions for these tasks, without requiring a so-called quantum simultaneous decoder. Thus, our work paves the way for developing network quantum information theory further without requiring a quantum simultaneous decoder.