
The achievement of three programme participants during their time at INI was to obtain and prove the correctness of quantum counterparts to the Shannon formula.
They proved that for a broad class of Bosonic Gaussian channels, the capacity is optimised when the transmitted signal is in a coherent state, that is the quantum state with the lowest possible uncertainty. Ironically, but as has happened in the proof of countless mathematical theorems, this breakthrough came about as a direct result of a push by these individuals to find a counter example to the problem.