Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Physical limits to communication.

Seth Lloyd1, Vittorio Giovannetti, Lorenzo Maccone

  • 1Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.

Physical Review Letters
|September 28, 2004
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Retrocausal Capacity of a Quantum Channel: Communicating through Noisy Closed Timelike Curves.

Physical review letters·2026
Same author

Quantum Stroboscopy for Time Measurements.

Physical review letters·2026
Same author

Exact Non-Markovian Master Equations: A Generalized Derivation for Gaussian Systems.

Physical review letters·2026
Same author

Learning quantum states of continuous-variable systems.

Nature physics·2025
Same author

Genuine Quantum Advantage in Anharmonic Bosonic Quantum Batteries.

Physical review letters·2025
Same author

Maximizing Free Energy Gain.

Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)·2025
Same journal

Erratum: Bacterial Turbulence at Compressible Fluid Interfaces [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 138301 (2026)].

Physical review letters·2026
Same journal

Unveiling Light-Quark Yukawa Flavor Structure via Dihadron Fragmentation at Lepton Colliders.

Physical review letters·2026
Same journal

Adaptable Route to Fast Coherent State Transport via Bang-Bang-Bang Protocols.

Physical review letters·2026
Same journal

Topological Transition and Emergence of Elasticity of Dislocation in Skyrmion Lattice: Beyond Kittel's Magnetic-Polar Analogy.

Physical review letters·2026
Same journal

Pound-Drever-Hall Method for Superconducting-Qubit Readout.

Physical review letters·2026
Same journal

Coupling a ^{73}Ge Nuclear Spin to an Electrostatically Defined Quantum Dot in Silicon.

Physical review letters·2026
See all related articles

Physics imposes ultimate limits on information transmission quantity per unit of power. These fundamental limits apply equally to information encoded using matter or massless fields, revealing universal principles in information theory.

Area of Science:

  • Information Theory
  • Physics
  • Quantum Mechanics

Background:

  • Understanding the physical constraints on information transmission is crucial for developing advanced communication technologies.
  • Previous research has explored limits based on energy and bandwidth, but a unified theory encompassing different encoding methods is needed.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the fundamental physical limits on the quantity of information transmissible for a given power level.
  • To determine if these limits differ for information encoded using matter versus massless fields.

Main Methods:

  • Theoretical analysis based on fundamental principles of physics.
  • Derivation of information capacity bounds under power constraints.

Main Results:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Identified ultimate physical limits on information transmission quantity constrained by power.
  • Demonstrated that these ultimate limits are identical for information encoded using both matter and massless fields.

Conclusions:

  • The physics of information transmission imposes universal ultimate limits irrespective of the encoding medium (matter or massless fields).
  • This finding has implications for the theoretical design of future communication systems and information processing.