We prove continuity of distillable entanglement, the optimal asymptotic rate at which copies of a bipartite state can be converted into maximally entangled pairs by local operations and classical communication (LOCC) with vanishing error. We establish an explicit asymptotic continuity bound that holds for arbitrary bipartite states and depends logarithmically on the system dimension. This bound has the same structure as known continuity bounds for conditional entropy, entanglement cost, and relative entropy of entanglement. Our proof constructs an explicit LOCC protocol that converts either of two arbitrary bipartite states into the other at an ebit cost that vanishes as their trace distance tends to zero.
We prove continuity of distillable entanglement, the optimal asymptotic rate at which copies of a bipartite state can be converted into maximally entangled pairs by local operations and classical communication (LOCC) with vanishing error. We establish an explicit asymptotic continuity bound that holds for arbitrary bipartite states and depends logarithmically on the system dimension. This bound has the same structure as known continuity bounds for conditional entropy, entanglement cost, and relative entropy of entanglement. Our proof constructs an explicit LOCC protocol that converts either of two arbitrary bipartite states into the other at an ebit cost that vanishes as their trace distance tends to zero.
We present a universal entanglement distillation protocol that asymptotically achieves the distillable entanglement of any unknown bipartite state in a fixed finite dimension. That is, its ebit yield attains every rate below the optimum that would be available if the state were known, with vanishing trace-distance error. Our approach combines tomography by local operations and classical communication with an adaptive distillation routine, using a local robustness lemma to control finite-sample estimation errors. We also characterize worst-case distillation from a family of states: the optimal uniform rate is the minimum distillable entanglement on the family's closure. These results show that ignorance of the state need not incur an asymptotic rate penalty.
We consider distillation of ebits between a specified pair of subsystems from pure tripartite states by local operations and classical communication. It is known that, allowing an asymptotically vanishing error, the maximal rate is the minimum of the von Neumann entropies of the two corresponding marginals, and under asymptotic stochastic local operations and classical communication the maximal rate is given by a minimization over a one-parameter family of entanglement measures. In this paper, we determine the direct and strong converse error exponents, and the optimal rate for deterministic transformations.
The one-way distillable entanglement is a central operational measure of bipartite entanglement, quantifying the optimal rate at which maximally entangled pairs can be extracted by one-way LOCC. Despite its importance, it is notoriously hard to compute, since it is defined by a regularized optimization over many copies and adaptive one-way protocols. At present, single-letter formulas are only known for (conjugate) degradable and PPT states. More generally, it has remained unclear when one-way distillable entanglement can still be additive beyond degradability and PPT settings, and how such additivity relates to additivity questions of quantum capacity of channels.
In this paper, we address this gap by identifying three explicit families of non-degradable and non-PPT states whose one-way distillable entanglement is nevertheless single-letter. First, we introduce two weakened degradability-type conditions--regularized less-noisy and informationally degradable--and prove that each guarantees additivity and hence a single-letter formula. Second, we show a stability result for orthogonally flagged mixtures: when one component has orthogonal support on Alice's system and zero one-way distillable entanglement, the mixture remains single-letter, even though degradability is typically lost under such mixing. Finally, we propose a generalized spin-alignment principle for entropy minimization in tensor-product settings, which we establish in several key cases, including a complete Rényi-2 result. As an application, we obtain additivity results for generalized direct-sum channels and their corresponding Choi states.
Computing the exact rate at which entanglement can be distilled from noisy quantum states is one of the longest-standing questions in quantum information. We give an exact solution for entanglement distillation under the set of dually non-entangling (DNE) operations—a relaxation of the typically considered local operations and classical communication, comprising all channels which preserve the sets of separable states and measurements. We show that the DNE distillable entanglement coincides with a modified version of the regularised relative entropy of entanglement in which the arguments are measured with a separable measurement. Ours is only the second known regularised formula for the distillable entanglement under any class of free operations in entanglement theory, after that given by Devetak and Winter for (one-way) local operations and classical communication. An immediate consequence of our finding is that, under DNE, entanglement can be distilled from any entangled state. As our second main result, we construct a general upper bound on the DNE distillable entanglement, using which we prove that the separably measured relative entropy of entanglement can be strictly smaller than the regularisation of the standard relative entropy of entanglement, solving an open problem posed by Li and Winter. Finally, we study also the reverse task of entanglement dilution and show that the restriction to DNE operations does not change the entanglement cost when compared with the larger class of non-entangling operations. This implies a strong form of irreversiblility of entanglement theory under DNE operations: even when asymptotically vanishing amounts of entanglement may be generated, entangled states cannot be converted reversibly. Computing how much entanglement can be extracted from imperfect quantum states is a long-standing problem in quantum resource theory. Here, Lami and Regula move away from the usual case in which the operations considered free to implement are local operations and classical communication, and find instead a solution for the case of dually non-entangling operations.
Distillable entanglement---the maximum rate of Bell states extractable from the given noisy entangled states via local operations and classical communication (LOCC)---has been a central quantity to characterize the operational value of entangled states. However, this operational meaning had been known to be valid only under a crucial assumption: both parties know the description of the input state and can choose the protocol tailored to it, which does not necessarily reflect the natural operational setting. Here, we show that the distillable entanglement is the fundamental operational quantity even without this assumption. We present a universal LOCC protocol---whose description does not depend on the input state and thus works universally for any input---that achieves the distillable entanglement of an arbitrary unknown input state. Our result therefore lifts the distillable entanglement to a robust notion of an operationally meaningful quantity and clarifies that input-state knowledge is not necessary to achieve the optimal rate of entanglement distillation. Our protocol is based on state merging for compound states, together with the uniform convergence property of the finite-block quantity toward distillable entanglement.
The manipulation of quantum entanglement is fundamentally irreversible: some mixed entangled states require pure entanglement for their preparation, although no pure entanglement can be recovered from them by local operations and classical communication. This irreversibility is known to persist even under the maximal class of operations that do not generate entanglement, revealing a fundamental distinction between entanglement theory and thermodynamics. We construct cases for which any attempt to restore reversibility necessarily incurs an error that increases exponentially with the number of copies. Technically, we demonstrate a strict separation between the exponential strong-converse distillable entanglement and the exponential strong-converse entanglement cost. Our result resolves a conjecture posed by Lami and Regula (Nat. Phys. 19, 184-189 (2023)) and strengthens it by showing that the irreversibility of entanglement persists even at the level of polynomially (in the number of copies) growing error. We further derive a semidefinite-programming lower bound on the exponential strong-converse cost under non-entangling operations. Finally, for the class of completely PPT-preserving operations, we construct analytically solvable families of antisymmetric states exhibiting the exponential strong-converse irreversibility. Remarkably, to our knowledge, no analogous separation between exponential strong converse cost and the analogous distillable entanglement is currently known even under the more restrictive class of LOCC operations.