Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2303.02553

Unextendible product bases from orthogonality graphs

Shi, Fei, Bai, Ge, Xiande Zhang, Qi Zhao, Giulio Chiribella

Published Mar 5, 2023• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Unextendible product bases (UPBs) play a key role in the study of quantum entanglement and nonlocality. A famous open question is whether there exist genuinely unextendible product bases (GUPBs), namely multipartite product bases that are unextendible with respect to every possible bipartition. Here we shed light on this question by providing a characterization of UPBs and GUPBs in terms of orthogonality graphs. Building on this connection, we develop a method for constructing UPBs in low dimensions, and we derive a lower bound on the size of any GUPB, significantly improving over the state of the art. Moreover, we show that every minimal GUPB saturating our bound must be associated to regular graphs. Finally, we discuss a possible path towards the construction of a minimal GUPB in a tripartite system of minimal local dimension.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2303.02553

Related papers

Graph-theoretic characterization of unextendible product bases

Fei Shi, Ge Bai, Xiande Zhang +2 more

Unextendible product bases (UPBs) play a key role in the study of quantum entanglement and nonlocality. Here we provide an equivalent characterization of UPBs in graph-theoretic terms. Different from previous graph-theoretic investigations of UPBs, which focused mostly on the orthogonality relations between different product states, our characterization includes a graph-theoretic reformulation of the unextendibility condition. Building on this characterization, we develop a constructive method for building UPBs in low dimensions and shed light on the open question of whether there exist genuinely unextendible product bases (GUPBs), that is, multipartite product bases that are unextendible with respect to every possible bipartition. We derive a lower bound on the size of any candidate GUPB, significantly improving over the state of the art. Moreover, we show that every minimal GUPB saturating our bound must be associated to regular graphs and discuss a possible path towards the construction of a minimal GUPB in a tripartite system of minimal local dimension. Finally, we apply our characterization to the problem of distinguishing UPB states under local operations and classical communication, deriving a necessary condition for reliable discrimination in the asymptotic limit.

Physical Review Research•Aug 31, 2023•4 citations

Negative result about the construction of genuinely entangled subspaces from unextendible product bases

Maciej Demianowicz

Unextendible product bases (UPBs) provide a versatile tool with various applications across different areas of quantum information theory. Their comprehensive characterization is thus of great importance and has been a subject of vital interest for over two decades now. An open question asks about the existence of UPBs, which are genuinely unextendible, i.e., they are not extendible even with biproduct vectors. In other words, the problem is to verify whether there exist genuinely entangled subspaces (GESs), subspaces composed solely of genuinely multiparty entangled states, complementary to UPBs. We solve this problem in the negative for many sizes of UPBs in different multipartite scenarios. In particular, in the all-important case of equal local dimensions, we show that there are always forbidden cardinalities for such UPBs, including the minimal ones corresponding to GESs of the maximal dimensions.

arXiv:2202.08356•Physical Review A•Jul 29, 2022•6 citations

Genuinely Unextendible Product Bases from Maximum Distance Separable Codes

Mao-Sheng Li

The existence of genuinely unextendible product bases (GUPBs), incomplete orthogonal sets of fully product states whose orthogonal complements contain no product vector across any bipartition, has remained an open problem. Here we construct GUPBs for any number $N\geq3$ of parties using classical maximum distance separable (MDS) codes. The MDS property imposes a rigidity on the induced product tiling across every bipartition; combined with Fourier mode deletion and a stopper state, this rigidity enforces genuine unextendibility. Consequently, the orthogonal complement of each GUPB is a genuinely entangled subspace whose normalized projector is invariant under partial transposition across every bipartition, yielding an explicit family of multipartite bound entangled states. We further construct GME witnesses that detect these states even though no fully decomposable witness can do so. Moreover, the resulting indistinguishability persists under arbitrary finite tensor powers and measurements separable across any bipartition. These results establish a direct connection between error-correcting codes and multipartite entanglement and provide an algebraic route to certifying genuinely multipartite bound entanglement.

quant-pharXiv:2608.09504•Aug 11, 2026•0 citations

The construction and local distinguishability of multiqubit unextendible product bases

Yize Sun, Lin Chen

An important problem in quantum information is to construct multiqubit unextendible product bases (UPBs). By using the unextendible orthogonal matrices, we construct a 7-qubit UPB of size 11. It solves an open problem in [Quantum Information Processing 19:185 (2020)]. Next, we graph-theoretically show that the UPB is locally indistinguishable in the bipartite systems of two qubits and five qubits, respectively. It turns out that the UPB corresponds to a complete graph with 11 vertices constructed by three sorts of nonisomorphic graphs. Taking the graphs as product vectors, we show that they are in three different orbits up to local unitary equivalence. Moreover, we also present the number of sorts of nonisomorphic graphs of complete graphs of some known UPBs and their orbits.

arXiv:2102.11553•Feb 23, 2021•1 citation

Strong quantum nonlocality for unextendible product bases in heterogeneous systems

Fei Shi, Mao-Sheng Li, Lin Chen +1 more

Abstract A set of multipartite orthogonal product states is strongly nonlocal if it is locally irreducible in every bipartition, which shows the phenomenon of strong quantum nonlocality without entanglement. It is known that unextendible product bases (UPBs) can show the phenomenon of quantum nonlocality without entanglement. Thus it is interesting to investigate the strong quantum nonlocality for UPBs. Most of the UPBs with the minimum size cannot demonstrate strong quantum nonlocality. In this paper, we construct a series of UPBs with different large sizes in d A ⊗ d B ⊗ d C and d A ⊗ d B ⊗ d C ⊗ d D for d A , d B , d C , d D ⩾ 3, and we also show that these UPBs have strong quantum nonlocality, which answers an open question given by Halder et al (2019 Phys. Rev. Lett. 122 040403) and Yuan et al (2020 Phys. Rev. A 102 042228) for any possible three and four-partite systems. Furthermore, we propose an entanglement-assisted protocol to locally discriminate the UPB in 3 ⊗ 3 ⊗ 4, and it consumes less entanglement resource than the teleportation-based protocol. Our results build the connection between strong quantum nonlocality and UPBs.

arXiv:2201.00085•Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical•Nov 22, 2021•27 citations

Systematic construction of multiqubit unextendible product bases

Caohan Cheng, Lin Chen

The construction of multiqubit unextendible product bases (UPBs) has been a long-standing problem. We give a systematic construction of multiqubit UPBs by studying their unextendible orthogonal matrices (UOMs) with graph-theoretic methods. Row decompositions of small UOMs produce the main intervals. Com- pletion graphs settle the remaining small UPB sizes, except for one size obtained from a good column structure. Nonexistence of the other UPB sizes follows from counts of fibres and row pairs. The computer is used only for a few finite UOM checks, whose exact tests are stated in the certificate appendix. These arguments determine the complete multiqubit UPB size spectrum in every dimension.

quant-pharXiv:2609.14788•Sep 15, 2026•0 citations
Unextendible product bases (UPBs) play a key role in the study of quantum entanglement and nonlocality. A famous open question is whether there exist genuinely unextendible product bases (GUPBs), namely multipartite product bases that are unextendible with respect to every possible bipartition. Here we shed light on this question by providing a characterization of UPBs and GUPBs in terms of orthogonality graphs. Building on this connection, we develop a method for constructing UPBs in low dimensions, and we derive a lower bound on the size of any GUPB, significantly improving over the state of the art. Moreover, we show that every minimal GUPB saturating our bound must be associated to regular graphs. Finally, we discuss a possible path towards the construction of a minimal GUPB in a tripartite system of minimal local dimension.
Unextendible product bases (UPBs) play a key role in the study of quantum entanglement and nonlocality. Here we provide an equivalent characterization of UPBs in graph-theoretic terms. Different from previous graph-theoretic investigations of UPBs, which focused mostly on the orthogonality relations between different product states, our characterization includes a graph-theoretic reformulation of the unextendibility condition. Building on this characterization, we develop a constructive method for building UPBs in low dimensions and shed light on the open question of whether there exist genuinely unextendible product bases (GUPBs), that is, multipartite product bases that are unextendible with respect to every possible bipartition. We derive a lower bound on the size of any candidate GUPB, significantly improving over the state of the art. Moreover, we show that every minimal GUPB saturating our bound must be associated to regular graphs and discuss a possible path towards the construction of a minimal GUPB in a tripartite system of minimal local dimension. Finally, we apply our characterization to the problem of distinguishing UPB states under local operations and classical communication, deriving a necessary condition for reliable discrimination in the asymptotic limit.
Unextendible product bases (UPBs) provide a versatile tool with various applications across different areas of quantum information theory. Their comprehensive characterization is thus of great importance and has been a subject of vital interest for over two decades now. An open question asks about the existence of UPBs, which are genuinely unextendible, i.e., they are not extendible even with biproduct vectors. In other words, the problem is to verify whether there exist genuinely entangled subspaces (GESs), subspaces composed solely of genuinely multiparty entangled states, complementary to UPBs. We solve this problem in the negative for many sizes of UPBs in different multipartite scenarios. In particular, in the all-important case of equal local dimensions, we show that there are always forbidden cardinalities for such UPBs, including the minimal ones corresponding to GESs of the maximal dimensions.
The existence of genuinely unextendible product bases (GUPBs), incomplete orthogonal sets of fully product states whose orthogonal complements contain no product vector across any bipartition, has remained an open problem. Here we construct GUPBs for any number N≥3N\geq3N≥3 of parties using classical maximum distance separable (MDS) codes. The MDS property imposes a rigidity on the induced product tiling across every bipartition; combined with Fourier mode deletion and a stopper state, this rigidity enforces genuine unextendibility. Consequently, the orthogonal complement of each GUPB is a genuinely entangled subspace whose normalized projector is invariant under partial transposition across every bipartition, yielding an explicit family of multipartite bound entangled states. We further construct GME witnesses that detect these states even though no fully decomposable witness can do so. Moreover, the resulting indistinguishability persists under arbitrary finite tensor powers and measurements separable across any bipartition. These results establish a direct connection between error-correcting codes and multipartite entanglement and provide an algebraic route to certifying genuinely multipartite bound entanglement.
An important problem in quantum information is to construct multiqubit unextendible product bases (UPBs). By using the unextendible orthogonal matrices, we construct a 7-qubit UPB of size 11. It solves an open problem in [Quantum Information Processing 19:185 (2020)]. Next, we graph-theoretically show that the UPB is locally indistinguishable in the bipartite systems of two qubits and five qubits, respectively. It turns out that the UPB corresponds to a complete graph with 11 vertices constructed by three sorts of nonisomorphic graphs. Taking the graphs as product vectors, we show that they are in three different orbits up to local unitary equivalence. Moreover, we also present the number of sorts of nonisomorphic graphs of complete graphs of some known UPBs and their orbits.
Abstract A set of multipartite orthogonal product states is strongly nonlocal if it is locally irreducible in every bipartition, which shows the phenomenon of strong quantum nonlocality without entanglement. It is known that unextendible product bases (UPBs) can show the phenomenon of quantum nonlocality without entanglement. Thus it is interesting to investigate the strong quantum nonlocality for UPBs. Most of the UPBs with the minimum size cannot demonstrate strong quantum nonlocality. In this paper, we construct a series of UPBs with different large sizes in d A ⊗ d B ⊗ d C and d A ⊗ d B ⊗ d C ⊗ d D for d A , d B , d C , d D ⩾ 3, and we also show that these UPBs have strong quantum nonlocality, which answers an open question given by Halder et al (2019 Phys. Rev. Lett. 122 040403) and Yuan et al (2020 Phys. Rev. A 102 042228) for any possible three and four-partite systems. Furthermore, we propose an entanglement-assisted protocol to locally discriminate the UPB in 3 ⊗ 3 ⊗ 4, and it consumes less entanglement resource than the teleportation-based protocol. Our results build the connection between strong quantum nonlocality and UPBs.
The construction of multiqubit unextendible product bases (UPBs) has been a long-standing problem. We give a systematic construction of multiqubit UPBs by studying their unextendible orthogonal matrices (UOMs) with graph-theoretic methods. Row decompositions of small UOMs produce the main intervals. Com- pletion graphs settle the remaining small UPB sizes, except for one size obtained from a good column structure. Nonexistence of the other UPB sizes follows from counts of fibres and row pairs. The computer is used only for a few finite UOM checks, whose exact tests are stated in the certificate appendix. These arguments determine the complete multiqubit UPB size spectrum in every dimension.