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arXiv:0811.3739 · Physical Review Letters

Nonlocal Entanglement Transformations Achievable by Separable Operations

Eric Chitambar, Runyao Duan

Published Sep 8, 2009• 43 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The weird phenomenon of "quantum nonlocality without entanglement" means that local quantum operations assisted by classical communication constitute a proper subset of the class of separable quantum operations. Despite considerable recent advances, little is known to what extent the class of separable operations differs from local quantum operations and classical communication. In this Letter we show that separable operations are generally stronger than local quantum operations and classical communication when distilling a mixed state into a pure entangled state and thus confirm the existence of entanglement monotones that can increase under separable operations. Our finding can also be interpreted as confirming the ability of separable operations to enhance the entanglement of mixed states relative to certain measures, a sensible but important fact that has never been rigorously proven before.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.103.110502

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The weird phenomenon of "quantum nonlocality without entanglement" means that local quantum operations assisted by classical communication constitute a proper subset of the class of separable quantum operations. Despite considerable recent advances, little is known to what extent the class of separable operations differs from local quantum operations and classical communication. In this Letter we show that separable operations are generally stronger than local quantum operations and classical communication when distilling a mixed state into a pure entangled state and thus confirm the existence of entanglement monotones that can increase under separable operations. Our finding can also be interpreted as confirming the ability of separable operations to enhance the entanglement of mixed states relative to certain measures, a sensible but important fact that has never been rigorously proven before.
Quantum entanglement is fundamentally related to the operational setting of local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC). A more general class of operations known as separable operations (SEP) is often employed to approximate LOCC, but the exact difference between LOCC and SEP is unknown. In this letter, we compare the two classes in performing particular tripartite to bipartite entanglement conversions and report a gap as large as 12.5% between SEP and LOCC, which is the first known appreciable gap between the classes. Our results rely on constructing a computable entanglement monotone with a clear operational meaning that, unlike all other such monotones previously studied, is not monotonic under SEP. Finally, we prove the curious fact that convergent sequences of LOCC protocols need not be LOCC feasible in the limit.
Entanglement plays an important role in quantum computation and information. We can only manipulate an entangled quantum state shared among several distant parties by local operations with classical communication (LOCC). Thus, it is of great importance to characterize the conditions by which we can determine whether one pure quantum state can be transformed to another pure state by LOCC. It is well known that separable operations and LOCC are not equivalent. Dozens of results have illustrated this difference. Little do we know about this difference despite these recent results. It is shown in this paper that if the initial state $|\ensuremath{\psi}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ and final state $|\ensuremath{\phi}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ are genuine tripartite pure states in the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) class then $|\ensuremath{\psi}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ can be transformed to $|\ensuremath{\phi}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ by separable operations if and only if $|\ensuremath{\psi}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ can be transformed to $|\ensuremath{\phi}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ by deterministic LOCC. That is, SEP equals LOCC on tripartite GHZ states.
Phenomena induced by the existence of entanglement, such as nonlocal correlations, exhibit characteristic properties of quantum mechanics distinguishing from classical theories. When entanglement is accompanied by classical communication, it enhances the power of quantum operations jointly performed by two spatially separated parties. Such a power has been analyzed by the gap between the performances of joint quantum operations implementable by local operations at each party connected by classical communication with and without the assistance of entanglement. In this work, we present a formulation for joint quantum operations connected by classical communication beyond special relativistic causal order but without entanglement and still within quantum mechanics. Using the formulation, we show that entanglement-assisting classical communication necessary for implementing a class of joint quantum operations called separable operations can be interpreted to simulate ``classical communication'' that does not respect causal order. Our results reveal a counterintuitive aspect of entanglement related to space-time.
Abstract We study the task of entanglement distillation in the one-shot setting under different classes of quantum operations which extend the set of local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Establishing a general formalism which allows for a straightforward comparison of their exact achievable performance, we relate the fidelity of distillation under these classes of operations with a family of entanglement monotones and the rates of distillation with a class of smoothed entropic quantities based on the hypothesis testing relative entropy. We then characterise exactly the one-shot distillable entanglement of several classes of quantum states and reveal many simplifications in their manipulation. We show in particular that the ε-error one-shot distillable entanglement of any pure state is the same under all sets of operations ranging from one-way LOCC to separability-preserving operations or operations preserving the set of states with positive partial transpose, and can be computed exactly as a quadratically constrained linear program. We establish similar operational equivalences in the distillation of isotropic and maximally correlated states, reducing the computation of the relevant quantities to linear or semidefinite programs. We also show that all considered sets of operations achieve the same performance in environment-assisted entanglement distillation from any state.
Quantum separable operations are defined as those that cannot produce entanglement from separable states, and it is known that they strictly surpass local operations and classical communication (LOCC) in a number of tasks, which is sometimes referred to as "quantum nonlocality without entanglement." Here we consider a task with such a gap regarding the trade-off between state discrimination and preservation of entanglement. We show that this task along with the gap has an analogue in a purely classical setup, indicating that the quantum properties are not essential in the existence of a nonzero gap between the separable operations and LOCC.
Departing from the usual paradigm of local operations and classical communication adopted in entanglement theory, here we study the interconversion of quantum states by means of local operations and shared randomness. A set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of such a transformation between two given quantum states is given in terms of the payoff they yield in a suitable class of nonlocal games. It is shown that, as a consequence of our result, such a class of nonlocal games is able to witness quantum entanglement, however weak, and reveal nonlocality in any entangled quantum state. An example illustrating this fact is provided.