Explicit Construction of Optimal Witnesses for Input-Output Correlations Attainable by Quantum Channels

Given a quantum channel — that is, a completely positive trace-preserving linear map — as the only communication resource available between two parties, we consider the problem of characterizing the set of classical noisy channels that can be obtained from it by means of suitable classical-quantum encodings and quantum-classical decodings, respectively, on the sender’s and the receiver’s side. We consider various classes of linear witnesses and compute their optimum values in closed form for several classes of quantum channels. The witnesses that we consider here are formulated as communication games, in which Alice’s aim is to exploit a single use of a given quantum channel to help Bob guess some information she has received from an external referee.