Standard communication systems have transmission spectra that characterize their ability to perform frequency multiplexing over a finite bandwidth. Realistic quantum signals in quantum communication systems like transducers are inherently limited in time due to intrinsic decoherence and finite latency, which hinders the direct implementation of frequency-multiplexed encoding. We investigate quantum channel capacities for bandwidth-and-time-limited channels to establish the optimal communication strategy in a realistic setting. For pure-loss bosonic channels, we derive analytical solutions of the optimal encoding and decoding modes for Lorentzian and box transmission spectra, along with numerical solutions for various other transmissions. Our findings reveal a general feature of sequential activation of quantum channels as the input signal duration increases, as well as the existence of optimal signal length for scenarios where only a limited number of channels are in use.

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• Quantum channels
• Quantum communication
• Quantum networks