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arXiv:1909.10440 · Physical Review A

Locally distinguishing quantum states with limited classical communication

Saronath Halder, Chirag Srivastava

Published May 7, 2020• 14 citations
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Abstract

We consider different settings of the task to distinguish pure orthogonal quantum states under local operations and a limited amount of classical communication. In the first setting, the spatially separated parties are allowed to perform only local projective measurements without any classical communication during the measurements. Under such a restricted class of operations, if the states are indistinguishable, then within a second group of settings, the parties are allowed to use an additional resource for the distinguishing. The additional resource is either a pure entangled state or multiple identical copies of the given states. Comparisons between these two types of resources are also done in certain cases. Both probabilistic discrimination and perfect discrimination of the states are considered for the second group of settings. Within a third setting, the parties perform local projective measurements with a restriction on the availability of classical communication during the measurements. But in this setting the parties are allowed to use a maximally entangled state as a resource.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.101.052313

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We consider different settings of the task to distinguish pure orthogonal quantum states under local operations and a limited amount of classical communication. In the first setting, the spatially separated parties are allowed to perform only local projective measurements without any classical communication during the measurements. Under such a restricted class of operations, if the states are indistinguishable, then within a second group of settings, the parties are allowed to use an additional resource for the distinguishing. The additional resource is either a pure entangled state or multiple identical copies of the given states. Comparisons between these two types of resources are also done in certain cases. Both probabilistic discrimination and perfect discrimination of the states are considered for the second group of settings. Within a third setting, the parties perform local projective measurements with a restriction on the availability of classical communication during the measurements. But in this setting the parties are allowed to use a maximally entangled state as a resource.
In this paper, we consider the conditions under which a given ensemble of two-qubit states can be optimally distinguished by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We begin by completing the perfect distinguishability problem of two-qubit ensembles-both for separable operations and LOCC-by providing necessary and sufficient conditions for the perfect discrimination of one pure and one mixed state. Then, for the well-known task of minimum error discrimination, it is shown that almost all two-qubit ensembles consisting of three pure states cannot be optimally discriminated using LOCC. This is surprising considering that any two pure states can be distinguished optimally by LOCC. Special attention is given to ensembles that lack entanglement, and we prove an easy sufficient condition for when a set of three product states cannot be optimally distinguished by LOCC, thus providing new examples of the phenomenon known as non-locality without entanglement. We next consider an example of N parties who each share the same state but who are ignorant of its identity. The state is drawn from the rotationally invariant trine ensemble, and we establish a tight connection between the N-copy ensemble and Shor's lifted single-copy ensemble. For any finite N, we prove that optimal identification of the states cannot be achieved by LOCC; however, as N→∞, LOCC can indeed discriminate the states optimally. This is the first result of its kind. Finally, we turn to the task of unambiguous discrimination and derive new lower bounds on the LOCC inconclusive probability for symmetric states. When applied to the double trine ensemble, this leads to a rather different distinguishability character than when the minimum error probability is considered.
Any two orthogonal quantum states can be perfectly distinguished via local operations and classical communication (LOCC), yet whether all orthogonal multipartite pairs incur an identical operational cost remains an open question. Here, we address the resource consumption required for local state discrimination across multipartite pair of states. We demonstrate that distinct pairs of orthogonal multipartite maximally entangled states require unequal amounts of quantum resources to achieve local distinguishability. Extending our framework beyond individual pairs, we analyze larger sets of both locally distinguishable and indistinguishable multipartite orthogonal states, revealing a nontrivial hierarchy in their entanglement consumption. These results show that the resource cost of LOCC discrimination is state-dependent, providing insight into the fine-grained structure of multipartite nonlocality.
In this work, we construct small sets of bipartite orthogonal pure states that cannot be perfectly distinguished by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We mention that not all the states within the constructed sets are necessarily entangled. However, such a set contains at least one entangled state which cannot be conclusively identified by LOCC (with nonzero probability). Then, we show that the states of any such set can be perfectly distinguished by LOCC using a minimal-dimensional entangled resource state. Clearly, here the entangled resource state provides an advantage irrespective of the dimension of the given set. Using this result, we also prove that any pure entangled state is useful as a resource to distinguish the states of any present set unambiguously with nonzero probability under LOCC. These sets exist in all two-qudit Hilbert spaces. Furthermore, it is possible to decrease the average entanglement content of such a set or to increase the cardinality of the set without changing certain properties of the same.
It is known that many sets of orthogonal quantum states, which cannot be distinguished perfectly by local operations and classical communication (LOCC), have been constructed. However, these discussions have left the following open question: How many entanglement resources are necessary and/or sufficient for this task to be possible with LOCC? In this paper, we present a local discrimination protocol which uses entanglement more efficiently than teleportation to distinguish one class of orthogonal product states in 3⊗3⊗3. Then, we generalize it for 3⊗3⊗...⊗3 quantum systems which has 3n parties. For the open question, our results offer rather general insight into why entanglement is useful for such tasks, and present a better understanding of the relationship between entanglement and nonlocality.
We study the discrimination of a pair of orthogonal quantum states in the many-copy setting. This is not a problem when arbitrary quantum measurements are allowed, as then the states can be distinguished perfectly even with one copy. However, it becomes highly nontrivial when we consider states of a multipartite system and locality constraints are imposed. We hence focus on the restricted families of measurements such as local operation and classical communication (LOCC), separable operations (SEP), and the positive-partial-transpose operations (PPT) in this paper. We first study asymptotic discrimination of an arbitrary multipartite entangled pure state against its orthogonal complement using LOCC/SEP/PPT measurements. We prove that the incurred optimal average error probability always decays exponentially in the number of copies, by proving upper and lower bounds on the exponent. In the special case of discriminating a maximally entangled state against its orthogonal complement, we determine the explicit expression for the optimal average error probability, thus establishing the associated Chernoff exponent. Our technique is based on the idea of using PPT operations to approximate LOCC. Then, we show an infinite asymptotic separation between SEP and PPT operations by providing a pair of states constructed from an unextendible product basis (UPB): they can be distinguished perfectly by PPT measurements, while the optimal error probability using SEP measurements admits an exponential lower bound. On the technical side, we prove this result by providing a quantitative version of the well-known statement that the tensor product of UPBs is UPB.
For general quantum systems, many sets of locally indistinguishable orthogonal quantum states have been constructed so far. However, it is interesting how much entanglement resources are sufficient and/or necessary to distinguish these states by local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Here we first present a method to locally distinguish a set of orthogonal product states in $5\ensuremath{\bigotimes}5$ by using two copies of $2\ensuremath{\bigotimes}2$ maximally entangled states. Then we generalize the distinguishing method for a class of orthogonal product states in $d\ensuremath{\bigotimes}d$ (ddd is odd). Furthermore, for a class of nonlocality of orthogonal product states in $d\ensuremath{\bigotimes}d$ ($d\ensuremath{\ge}5$), we prove that these states can be distinguished by LOCC with two copies of $2\ensuremath{\bigotimes}2$ maximally entangled states. Finally, for some multipartite orthogonal product states, we also present a similar method to locally distinguish these states with multiple copies of $2\ensuremath{\bigotimes}2$ maximally entangled states. These results also reveal the phenomenon of less nonlocality with more entanglement.