The quantum marginal problem asks whether a set of given density matrices are consistent, i.e., whether they can be the reduced density matrices of a global quantum state. Not many nontrivial analytic necessary (or sufficient) conditions are known for the problem in general. We propose a method to detect consistency of overlapping quantum marginals by considering the separability of some derived states. Our method works well for the $k$-symmetric extension problem in general and for the general overlapping marginal problems in some cases. Our work is, in some sense, the converse to the well-known $k$-symmetric extension criterion for separability.
The quantum marginal problem asks whether a set of given density matrices are consistent, i.e., whether they can be the reduced density matrices of a global quantum state. Not many nontrivial analytic necessary (or sufficient) conditions are known for the problem in general. We propose a method to detect consistency of overlapping quantum marginals by considering the separability of some derived states. Our method works well for the k-symmetric extension problem in general and for the general overlapping marginal problems in some cases. Our work is, in some sense, the converse to the well-known k-symmetric extension criterion for separability.
The spectral variant of the quantum marginal problem asks: Given prescribed spectra for a set of overlapping quantum marginals, does there exist a compatible joint state? The main idea of this work is a symmetry-reduced semidefinite programming hierarchy that detects when no such joint state exists. The hierarchy is complete, in the sense that it detects every incompatible set of spectra. The refutations it provides are dimension-free, certifying incompatibility in all local dimensions. The hierarchy also applies to the sums of Hermitian matrices problem, the compatibility of local unitary invariants, for certifying vanishing Kronecker coefficients, and to optimize over equivariant state polynomials.
We consider the entanglement marginal problem, which consists of deciding whether a number of reduced density matrices are compatible with an overall separable quantum state. To tackle this problem, we propose hierarchies of semidefinite programming relaxations of the set of quantum state marginals admitting a fully separable extension. We connect the completeness of each hierarchy to the resolution of an analog classical marginal problem and thus identify relevant experimental situations where the hierarchies are complete. For finitely many parties on a star configuration or a chain, we find that we can achieve an arbitrarily good approximation to the set of nearest-neighbour marginals of separable states with a time (space) complexity polynomial (linear) on the system size. Our results even extend to infinite systems, such as translation-invariant systems in 1D, as well as higher spatial dimensions with extra symmetries.
A bipartite state ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AB}$ is symmetric extendible if there exists a tripartite state ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AB{B}^{\ensuremath{'}}}$ whose AB and $A{B}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ marginal states are both identical to ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AB}$. Symmetric extendibility of bipartite states is of vital importance in quantum information because of its central role in separability tests, one-way distillation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs, one-way distillation of secure keys, quantum marginal problems, and antidegradable quantum channels. We establish a simple analytic characterization for symmetric extendibility of any two-qubit quantum state ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AB}$; specifically, $\mathrm{tr}({\ensuremath{\rho}}_{B}^{2})\ensuremath{\ge}\mathrm{tr}({\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AB}^{2})\ensuremath{-}4\sqrt{det{\ensuremath{\rho}}_{AB}}$. As a special case we solve the bosonic three-representability problem for the two-body reduced density matrix.
Abstract In this paper, we present a method to solve the quantum marginal problem for symmetric d -level systems. The method is built upon an efficient semi-definite program that uses the compatibility conditions of an m -body reduced density with a global n -body density matrix supported on the symmetric space. We illustrate the applicability of the method in central quantum information problems with several exemplary case studies. Namely, (i) a fast variational ansatz to optimize local Hamiltonians over symmetric states, (ii) a method to optimize symmetric, few-body Bell operators over symmetric states and (iii) a set of sufficient conditions to determine which symmetric states cannot be self-tested from few-body observables. As a by-product of our findings, we also provide a generic, analytical correspondence between arbitrary superpositions of n -qubit Dicke states and translationally-invariant diagonal matrix product states of bond dimension n .
The quantum marginal problem consists in deciding whether a given set of marginal reductions is compatible with the existence of a global quantum state or not. In this work, we formulate the problem from the perspective of dynamical systems theory and study its advantages with respect to the standard approach. The introduced formalism allows us to analytically determine global quantum states from a wide class of self-consistent marginal reductions in any multipartite scenario. In particular, we show that any self-consistent set of multipartite marginal reductions is compatible with the existence of a global quantum state, after passing through a depolarizing channel. This result reveals that the complexity associated to the marginal problem can be drastically reduced when restricting the attention to sufficiently mixed marginals. We also formulate the marginal problem in a compressed way, in the sense that the total number of scalar constraints is smaller than the one required by the standard approach. This fact suggests an exponential speedup in runtime when considering semi-definite programming techniques to solve it, in both classical and quantum algorithms. Finally, we reconstruct n-qubit quantum states from all the (kn) marginal reductions to k parties, generated from randomly chosen mixed states. Numerical simulations reveal that the fraction of cases where we can find a global state equals 1 when 5≤n≤12 and ⌊(n−1)/2⌋≤k≤n−1, where ⌊⋅⌋ denotes the floor function.
We investigate some basic scenarios in which a given set of bipartite quantum states may consistently arise as the set of reduced states of a global N-partite quantum state. Intuitively, we say that the multipartite state ``joins'' the underlying correlations. Determining whether, for a given set of states and a given joining structure, a compatible N-partite quantum state exists is known as the quantum marginal problem. We restrict to bipartite reduced states that belong to the paradigmatic classes of Werner and isotropic states in d dimensions and focus on two specific versions of the quantum marginal problem which we find to be tractable. The first is Alice-Bob, Alice-Charlie joining, with both pairs being in a Werner or isotropic state. The second is m-n sharability of a Werner state across N subsystems, which may be seen as a variant of the N-representability problem to the case where subsystems are partitioned into two groupings of m and n parties, respectively. By exploiting the symmetry properties that each class of states enjoys, we determine necessary and sufficient conditions for three-party joinability and 1-n sharability for arbitrary d. Our results explicitly show that although entanglement is required for sharing limitations to emerge, correlations beyond entanglement generally suffice to restrict joinability, and not all unentangled states necessarily obey the same limitations. The relationship between joinability and quantum cloning as well as implications for the joinability of arbitrary bipartite states are discussed.