Advantage of Quantum Theory Over Non-classical Models of Communication

Quantum correlations provide dramatic advantage over the corresponding classical resources in several communication tasks. However a broad class of probabilistic theories exists that attributes greater success than quantum theory in many of these tasks by allowing supra-quantum correlations in space-like' and/or time-like’ paradigms. In this letter we propose a communication task involving three spatially separated parties where one party (verifier) aims to verify whether the bit strings possessed by the other two parties (terminals) are equal or not. We call this task {\it authentication with limited communication}, the restrictions on communication being: (i) the terminals cannot communicate with each other, but (ii) each of them can communicate with the verifier through single use of channels with limited capacity. Manifestly, classical resources are not sufficient for perfect success of this task. Moreover, it is also not possible to perform this task with certainty in several non-classical theories although they might possess stronger space-like' and/or time-like’ correlations. Surprisingly quantum resources can achieve the perfect winning strategy. The proposed task thus stands apart from all previously known communication tasks as it exhibits quantum advantage over other non-classical strategies.