The no-broadcasting theorem, a fundamental limitation on the communication of quantum information, holds that a physical process cannot broadcast copies of an unknown quantum state to two or more receivers. Recent work has explored ways of circumventing this limitation using "virtual" implementations of non-physical processes using measurement and data-processing on statistical samples of the unknown input. However, the statistical fluctuations of this data degrades the virtual copies so much that the protocol effectively depletes, rather than proliferate, the sample size -- thereby rendering it worse than the "naive" approach of splitting the given sample and sending a subsample to each receiver. In this work, we circumvent this flaw by allowing a small amount of systematic bias in the broadcast data, resulting in approximate virtual copies. We provide efficient semidefinite programs (SDP's) to determine the minimum sample size required to keep the approximation error below a desired threshold and vice versa. For reasonably small error values, we find approximate virtual broadcasting to be viable with sample sizes smaller than naive sample-splitting would demand. Along the way, we prove several symmetry-based simplifications to the problem, allowing optimal approximate broadcasting to be characterized in terms of the simple class of depolarizing channels.
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The no-broadcasting theorem, a fundamental limitation on the communication of quantum information, holds that a physical process cannot broadcast copies of an unknown quantum state to two or more receivers. Recent work has explored ways of circumventing this limitation using "virtual" implementations of non-physical processes using measurement and data-processing on statistical samples of the unknown input. However, the statistical fluctuations of this data degrades the virtual copies so much that the protocol effectively depletes, rather than proliferate, the sample size -- thereby rendering it worse than the "naive" approach of splitting the given sample and sending a subsample to each receiver. In this work, we circumvent this flaw by allowing a small amount of systematic bias in the broadcast data, resulting in approximate virtual copies. We provide efficient semidefinite programs (SDP's) to determine the minimum sample size required to keep the approximation error below a desired threshold and vice versa. For reasonably small error values, we find approximate virtual broadcasting to be viable with sample sizes smaller than naive sample-splitting would demand. Along the way, we prove several symmetry-based simplifications to the problem, allowing optimal approximate broadcasting to be characterized in terms of the simple class of depolarizing channels.
Quantum information cannot be broadcast-an intrinsic limitation imposed by quantum mechanics. However, recent advances in virtual operations offer new insights into the no-broadcasting theorem. Here, we focus on the practical utility and introduce sample efficiency as a fundamental constraint, requiring any practical broadcasting protocol perform no worse than the naive approach of direct preparation and distribution. We prove that no linear process-whether quantum or beyond-can simultaneously uphold sample efficiency, unitary covariance, permutation invariance, and classical consistency. This leads to a no-practical-broadcasting theorem, which places strict limits on the practical distribution of quantum information. By applying Schur-Weyl duality, we establish the uniqueness of the canonical 1-to-N virtual broadcasting map that satisfies the latter three conditions, provide its construction, and determine its sample complexity through semidefinite programming. Finally, we explore the interplay between virtual broadcasting and a quantum spacetime framework, known as the pseudodensity operator, showing that their correspondence holds only in the 1-to-2 case, underscoring the fundamental asymmetry between spatial and temporal statistics in the quantum world.
Incorporating sample efficiency, by requiring the number of states consumed by broadcasting does not exceed that of a naive prepare-and-distribute strategy, gives rise to the no practical quantum broadcasting theorem. To navigate this limitation, we introduce approximate and probabilistic virtual broadcasting and derive analytic expressions for their optimal sample complexity overheads. Allowing deviations at the receivers restores sample efficiency even in the 1-to-2 approximate setting, whereas probabilistic protocols obey a stronger no-go theorem that excludes all sample efficient 1-to-2 implementations for arbitrary dimension and success probability. Rather counterintuitive, this obstruction does not persist at larger receiver numbers: for qubit systems, practical 1-to-6 virtual broadcasting becomes attainable. These results elevate sample complexity from a technical constraint to a defining operational principle, opening an unexplored route to the efficient distribution of quantum information.
Virtual maps allow the simulation of quantum operations by combining physical processes with classical post-processing. Recent work on virtual unitary covariant broadcasting has shown, however, that such maps remain impractical for observable estimation tasks due to poor sample efficiency. Here we investigate whether relaxing the symmetry requirements can improve operational performance, focusing on virtual phase-covariant quantum broadcasting for qubits. We show that imposing phase-covariance, flip covariance, permutation invariance, and classical consistency fully determines the structure of the broadcasting map. Within this family, we identify the unique map that minimizes the simulation cost, and we prove that both the simulation cost and the distance to the closest CPTP map are strictly smaller than in the unitary covariant setting. We also demonstrate that the closest physical map is the optimal phase-covariant cloning channel, mirroring the relation between unitary covariant broadcasting and universal cloning. Despite these improvements, the resulting virtual broadcasting map remains sample-inefficient and is therefore still operationally impractical.
The quantum no-broadcasting theorem states that it is impossible to produce perfect copies of an arbitrary quantum state, even if the copies are allowed to be correlated. Here we show that, although quantum broadcasting cannot be achieved by any physical process, it can be achieved by a virtual process, described by a Hermitian-preserving trace-preserving map. This virtual process is canonical: it is the only map that broadcasts all quantum states, is covariant under unitary evolution, is invariant under permutations of the copies, and reduces to the classical broadcasting map when subjected to decoherence. We show that the optimal physical approximation to the canonical broadcasting map is the optimal universal quantum cloning, and we also show that virtual broadcasting can be achieved by a virtual measure-and-prepare protocol, where a virtual measurement is performed, and, depending on the outcomes, two copies of a virtual quantum state are generated. Finally, we use canonical virtual broadcasting to prove a uniqueness result for quantum states over time.
Quantum broadcasting is central to quantum information processing and characterizes the correlations within quantum states. Nonetheless, traditional quantum broadcasting encounters inherent limitations dictated by the principles of quantum mechanics. In a previous study, Parzygnat et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 110203 (2024)] introduced a canonical broadcasting quantum map that goes beyond the quantum no-broadcasting theorem through a virtual process. In this work, we generalize the concept of virtual broadcasting to unilocal broadcasting by incorporating a reference system and introduce protocols that can be approximated using physical operations with minimal cost. First, we propose a universal unilocal protocol enabling multiple parties to share the correlations of a target bipartite state, which is encoded in the expectation value for any observable. Second, we formalize the simulation cost of a virtual quantum broadcasting protocol into a semidefinite programming problem. Notably, we propose a specific protocol with optimal simulation cost for the two-broadcasting scenario, revealing an explicit relationship between simulation cost and the quantum system's dimension. Moreover, we establish upper and lower bounds on the simulation cost of the virtual n-broadcasting protocol and demonstrate the convergence of the lower bound to the upper bound as the quantum system's dimension increases.
The quantum no-broadcasting theorem states that it is fundamentally impossible to perfectly replicate an arbitrary quantum state, even if correlations between the copies are allowed. While quantum broadcasting cannot occur through any physical process, it can be achieved via postprocessing of experimental data using a process called virtual quantum broadcasting (VQB). In this work, we report the experimental implementation of a quantum circuit based on the linear combination of unitaries, integrated with a post-processing protocol, to realize VQB in a nuclear magnetic resonance system. VQB can be expressed as a linear combination of two channels: the universal cloner, which broadcasts the target quantum state, and the universal antisymmetrizer, which reduces broadcasting error. We implement both channels within the same circuit and demonstrate that the universal cloner is the closest physical map to VQB. In addition, we show how the universal antisymmetrizer can be utilized to mitigate imperfections in the cloner, enabling near-ideal fidelity. Our method is applicable to broadcasting quantum systems of any dimension.