title: Quantum advantage in transmitting a permutation.
abstract: We describe a quantum scheme to "color code" a set of objects in order to record which one is which. In the classical case, N distinct colors are required to color code N objects. We show that, in the quantum case, only N/e distinct "colors" are required, where e approximately 2.718 28 is Euler's constant. If the number of colors is less than optimal, the objects may still be correctly distinguished with some success probability less than 1. We show that the success probability of the quantum scheme is better than the corresponding classical one and is information-theoretically optimal.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Von Korff
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kempe