Quantum capacity of a class of compound channels

In this paper we address the issue of universal or robust communication over quantum channels. Specifically, we consider a memoryless communication scenario with channel uncertainty which is an analog of the compound channel in classical information theory. We determine the quantum capacity of finite compound channels and arbitrary compound channels with an informed decoder. Our approach in the finite case is based on the observation that perfect channel knowledge at the decoder does not increase the capacity of finite quantum compound channels. As a consequence, we obtain a coding theorem for finite quantum averaged channels, the simplest class of channels with long-term memory. The extension of these results to quantum compound channels with uninformed encoder and decoder and infinitely many constituents remains an open problem.