Computations in a distributed environment comprising a network of spatially separated nodes may require the exchange of classical and quantum information. The amount of classical communication may be reduced in such computations by using multipartite entanglement. Following the combinatorial approach developed in [25, 27], we study entanglement configurations over a set of nodes, where each entanglement configuration is a collection of multipartite entanglement (CAT or GHZ) states shared within different combinations of subsets of nodes. The main problem is to determine whether LOCC transformations can generate an entanglement configuration B from another entanglement configuration A, written as B < LOCC A. We characterize the resulting partial order introduced on unitarily equivalent classes of entanglement configurations due to LOCC transformations. This study includes the communication complexity of generating higher cardinality multipartite CAT states from smaller sized CAT state configurations. We also study classes of incomparable entanglement configurations where no pair (A, B) of configurations satisfies A < LOCC B. This leads us to investigate certain combinatorial properties of hypergraphs and hypertrees following initial results in [25, 27]. We study the unique reconstruction of vertex labelled r‐uniform hypertrees on n vertices, where r ⩽ n is a constant, and each hyperedge has the same number r, of vertices. We conclude by discussing several problems and open questions in the context of entanglement configurations.
Hoping to simplify the classification of pure entangled states of multi $(m)\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{e}$ quantum systems, we study exactly and asymptotically (in
n) reversible transformations among
nth tensor powers of such states (i.e.,
n copies of the state shared among the same
m parties) under local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC). For exact transformations, we show that two states whose marginal one-party entropies agree are either locally unitarily equivalent or else LOCC incomparable. In particular we show that two tripartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states are LOCC incomparable to three bipartite Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) states symmetrically shared among the three parties. Asymptotic transformations yield a simpler classification than exact transformations; for example, they allow all pure bipartite states to be characterized by a single parameter---their partial entropy---which may be interpreted as the number of EPR pairs asymptotically interconvertible to the state in question by LOCC transformations. We show that $m\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{e}$ pure states having an $m\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{w}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{y}$ Schmidt decomposition are similarly parametrizable, with the partial entropy across any nontrivial partition representing the number of standard quantum superposition or ``cat'' states $|{0}^{\ensuremath{\bigotimes}m}〉+|{1}^{\ensuremath{\bigotimes}m}〉$ asymptotically interconvertible to the state in question. For general $m\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{e}$ states, partial entropies across different partitions need not be equal, and since partial entropies are conserved by asymptotically reversible LOCC operations, a multicomponent entanglement measure is needed, with each scalar component representing a different kind of entanglement, not asymptotically interconvertible to the other kinds. In particular we show that the
m=4 cat state is not isentropic to, and therefore not asymptotically interconvertible to, any combination of bipartite and tripartite states shared among the four parties. Thus, although the
m=4 cat state can be prepared from bipartite EPR states, the preparation process is necessarily irreversible, and remains so even asymptotically. For each number of parties
m we define a minimal reversible entanglement generating set (MREGS) as a set of states of minimal cardinality sufficient to generate all $m\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{e}$ pure states by asymptotically reversible LOCC transformations. Partial entropy arguments provide lower bounds on the size of the MREGS, but for
m>2 we know no upper bounds. We briefly consider several generalizations of LOCC transformations, including transformations with some probability of failure, transformations with the catalytic assistance of states other than the states we are trying to transform, and asymptotic LOCC transformations supplemented by a negligible
[o(n)] amount of quantum communication.
Distributing multipartite entanglement is a prerequisite for scalable quantum networks. Networks restricted to local operations and shared randomness (LOSR) avoid the quantum-memory and latency costs associated with the real-time classical communication required by LOCC-based networks. However, when only bipartite sources are available, LOSR networks cannot prepare useful GHZ states. In earlier work, we conjectured that multipartite sources overcome this limitation and supported this claim with a single numerical example. In this work, we prove the conjecture for regular and uniform networks of arbitrary size. By identifying the hyperedges of the network with the coordinates of a linear code, we show that whenever the edges incident to each node form an information set, a fixed collection of local unitaries, namely the local decoders of the code, transforms the source state into an (N)-party GHZ state with fidelity (d^{m-M}), without requiring any classical communication. Here, (m) denotes the number of edges incident to each node and (M) the total number of edges in the network. For the complete ((N-1))-uniform hypergraph (K_N^{(N-1)}), this fidelity reduces to (1/d). We further prove that this value is optimal among all local-unitary strategies and exceeds the best fidelity achievable using only bipartite sources. For example, in the four-node case, the optimal fidelity is (1/2), compared with the bipartite bound of (1/8). These results demonstrate that multipartite sources, together with shared randomness, can replace real-time classical communication for entanglement distribution.
We develop graph theoretic methods for analysing maximally entangled pure states distributed between a number of different parties. We introduce a technique called {\it bicolored merging}, based on the monotonicity feature of entanglement measures, for determining combinatorial conditions that must be satisfied for any two distinct multiparticle states to be comparable under local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We present several results based on the possibility or impossibility of comparability of pure multipartite states. We show that there are exponentially many such entangled multipartite states among
n agents. Further, we discuss a new graph theoretic metric on a class of multi-partite states, and its implications.
Reversible state transformations under entanglement nonincreasing operations give rise to entanglement measures. It is well known that asymptotic local operations and classical communication (LOCC) are required to get a simple operational measure of bipartite pure state entanglement. For bipartite mixed states and multipartite pure states it is likely that a more powerful class of operations will be needed. To this end more powerful versions of state transformations (or reducibilities), namely, LOCCq (asymptotic LOCC with a sublinear amount of quantum communication) and CLOCC (asymptotic LOCC with catalysis) have been considered in the literature. In this paper we show that LOCCq state transformations are only as powerful as asymptotic LOCC state transformations for multipartite pure states. The basic tool we use is multipartite entanglement gambling: Any pure multipartite entangled state can be transformed to an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pair shared by some pair of parties and any irreducible m-party pure state
(m> 2) can be used to create any other state (pure or mixed) using LOCC. We consider applications of multipartite entanglement gambling to multipartite distillability and to characterizations of multipartite minimal entanglement generating sets. We briefly consider generalizations of this result to mixed states by defining the class of cat-distillable states, i.e., states from which cat states $(|{0}^{\ensuremath{\bigotimes}m}〉+|{1}^{\ensuremath{\bigotimes}m}〉)$ may be distilled.
Understanding multipartite entanglement is a key goal in quantum information. Entanglement in pure states can be characterized by considering transformations under local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC). However, it has been shown that, for $n\ensuremath{\ge}5$ parties, multipartite pure states are generically isolated, i.e., they can be neither reached nor transformed under LOCC. Nonetheless, in any real laboratory, one never deterministically transforms a pure initial state exactly to a pure target state. Instead, one transforms a mixed state near the initial state to an ensemble that is on average close to the target state. This motivates studying approximate LOCC transformations. After reviewing in detail the known results in the bipartite case, we present the gaps that remain open in the multipartite case. While the analysis of the multipartite setting is much more technically involved due to the existence of different stochastic LOCC (SLOCC) classes, certain features simplify in the approximate setting. In particular, we show that it is sufficient to consider pure initial states, that it is sufficient to consider LOCC protocols with finitely many rounds of communication, and that approximate transformations can be approximated by ensemble transformations within an SLOCC class. Then we formally define a hierarchy of different forms of approximate transformations that are relevant from a physical point of view. Whereas this hierarchy collapses in the bipartite case, we show that this is not the case for the multipartite setting, which is fundamentally richer. To wit, we show that optimal multipartite approximate transformations are not generally deterministic, that ensemble transformations within an SLOCC class can achieve a higher fidelity than deterministic transformations within an SLOCC class, and that there are approximate transformations with no deterministic transformations nearby.