  Quantum reading refers to the task of reading out classical information
stored in a read-only memory device. In any such protocol, the transmitter and
receiver are in the same physical location, and the goal of such a protocol is
to use these devices (modeled by independent quantum channels), coupled with a
quantum strategy, to read out as much information as possible from a memory
device, such as a CD or DVD. As a consequence of the physical setup of quantum
reading, the most natural and general definition for quantum reading capacity
should allow for an adaptive operation after each call to the channel, and this
is how we define quantum reading capacity in this paper. We also establish
several bounds on quantum reading capacity, and we introduce an
environment-parametrized memory cell with associated environment states,
delivering second-order and strong converse bounds for its quantum reading
capacity. We calculate the quantum reading capacities for some exemplary memory
cells, including a thermal memory cell, a qudit erasure memory cell, and a
qudit depolarizing memory cell. We finally provide an explicit example to
illustrate the advantage of using an adaptive strategy in the context of
zero-error quantum reading capacity.
