  The mutual information between a complex-valued channel input and its
complex-valued output is decomposed into four parts based on polar coordinates:
an amplitude term, a phase term, and two mixed terms. Numerical results for the
additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel with various inputs show that, at
high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the amplitude and phase terms dominate the
mixed terms. For the AWGN channel with a Gaussian input, analytical expressions
are derived for high SNR. The decomposition method is applied to partially
coherent channels and a property of such channels called "spectral loss" is
developed. Spectral loss occurs in nonlinear fiber-optic channels and it may be
one effect that needs to be taken into account to explain the behavior of the
capacity of nonlinear fiber-optic channels presented in recent studies.
