Revisiting the optimal detection of quantum information

In 1991, Peres and Wootters wrote a seminal paper on the nonlocal processing of quantum information [Phys. Rev. Lett. 66, 1119 (1991)]. We return to their classic problem and solve it in various contexts. Specifically, for discriminating the 'double tri

Relating the Resource Theories of Entanglement and Quantum Coherence

© 2016 American Physical Society. Quantum coherence and quantum entanglement represent two fundamental features of nonclassical systems that can each be characterized within an operational resource theory. In this Letter, we unify the resource theories of entanglement and coherence by studying their combined behavior in the operational setting of local incoherent operations and classical communication (LIOCC). Specifically, we analyze the coherence and entanglement trade-offs in the tasks of state formation and resource distillation. For pure states we identify the minimum coherence-entanglement resources needed to generate a given state, and we introduce a new LIOCC monotone that completely characterizes a state's optimal rate of bipartite coherence distillation. This result allows us to precisely quantify the difference in operational powers between global incoherent operations, LIOCC, and local incoherent operations without classical communication. Finally, a bipartite mixed state is shown to have distillable entanglement if and only if entanglement can be distilled by LIOCC, and we strengthen the well-known Horodecki criterion for distillability

Entanglement and coherence in quantum state merging

Understanding the resource consumption in distributed scenarios is one of the main goals of quantum information theory. A prominent example for such a scenario is the task of quantum state merging where two parties aim to merge their parts of a tripartite quantum state. In standard quantum state merging, entanglement is considered as an expensive resource, while local quantum operations can be performed at no additional cost. However, recent developments show that some local operations could be more expensive than others: it is reasonable to distinguish between local incoherent operations and local operations which can create coherence. This idea leads us to the task of incoherent quantum state merging, where one of the parties has free access to local incoherent operations only. In this case the resources of the process are quantified by pairs of entanglement and coherence. Here, we develop tools for studying this process, and apply them to several relevant scenarios. While quantum state merging can lead to a gain of entanglement, our results imply that no merging procedure can gain entanglement and coherence at the same time. We also provide a general lower bound on the entanglement-coherence sum, and show that the bound is tight for all pure states. Our results also lead to an incoherent version of Schumacher compression: in this case the compression rate is equal to the von Neumann entropy of the diagonal elements of the corresponding quantum state.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure. Lemma 5 in Appendix D of the previous version was not correct. This did not affect the results of the main tex

The Conditional Common Information in Classical and Quantum Secret Key Distillation

© 2018 IEEE. In this paper, we consider two extensions of the Gács-Körner common information to three variables, the conditional common information (cCI) and the coarse-grained conditional common information (ccCI). Both quantities are shown to be useful technical tools in the study of classical and quantum resource transformations. In particular, the ccCI is shown to have an operational interpretation as the optimal rate of secret key extraction from an eavesdropped classical source pXYZ when Alice (X) and Bob (Y) are unable to communicate but share common randomness with the eavesdropper Eve (Z). Moving to the quantum setting, we consider two different ways of generating a tripartite quantum state from classical correlations pXYZ : 1) coherent encodings ∑xyz√pxyz|xyz〉 and 2) incoherent encodings ∑xyzpxyz|xyz〉〈xyz|. We study how well can Alice and Bob extract secret key from these quantum sources using quantum operations compared with the extraction of key from the underlying classical sources pXYZ using classical operations. While the power of quantum mechanics increases Alice and Bob's ability to generate shared randomness, it also equips Eve with a greater arsenal of eavesdropping attacks. Therefore, it is not obvious who gains the greatest advantage for distilling secret key when replacing a classical source with a quantum one. We first demonstrate that the classical key rate of pXYZ is equivalent to the quantum key rate for an incoherent quantum encoding of the distribution. For coherent encodings, we next show that the classical and quantum rates are generally incomparable, and in fact, their difference can be arbitrarily large in either direction. Finally, we introduce a "zoo" of entangled tripartite states all characterized by the conditional common information of their encoded probability distributions. Remarkably, for these states almost all entanglement measures, such as Alice and Bob's entanglement cost, squashed entanglement, and relative entropy of entanglement, can be sharply bounded or even exactly expressed in terms of the conditional common information. In the latter case, we thus present a rare instance in which the various entropic entanglement measures of a quantum state can be explicitly calculated

Simple bounds for one-shot pure-state distillation in general resource theories

© 2020 American Physical Society. We present bounds for distilling many copies of a pure state from an arbitrary initial state in a general quantum resource theory. Our bounds apply to operations that are able to generate no more than a δ amount of resource, where δ≥0 is a given parameter. To maximize applicability of our upper bound, we assume little structure on the set of free states under consideration besides a weak form of superadditivity of the function Gmin(ρ), which measures the overlap between ρ and the set of free states. Our bounds are given in terms of this function and the robustness of resource. Known results in coherence and entanglement theory are reproduced in this more general framework

The Parametric Symmetry and Numbers of the Entangled Class of 2 \times M \times N System

We present in the work two intriguing results in the entanglement classification of pure and true tripartite entangled state of $2\times M\times N$ under stochastic local operation and classical communication. (i) the internal symmetric properties of the nonlocal parameters in the continuous entangled class; (ii) the analytic expression for the total numbers of the true and pure entangled class $2\times M \times N$ states. These properties help people to know more of the nature of the $2\times M\times N$ entangled system.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Assisted distillation of quantum coherence

We introduce and study the task of assisted coherence distillation. This task arises naturally in bipartite systems where both parties work together to generate the maximal possible coherence on one of the subsystems. Only incoherent operations are allowed on the target system, while general local quantum operations are permitted on the other; this is an operational paradigm that we call local quantum-incoherent operations and classical communication. We show that the asymptotic rate of assisted coherence distillation for pure states is equal to the coherence of assistance, an analog of the entanglement of assistance, whose properties we characterize. Our findings imply a novel interpretation of the von Neumann entropy: it quantifies the maximum amount of extra quantum coherence a system can gain when receiving assistance from a collaborative party. Our results are generalized to coherence localization in a multipartite setting and possible applications are discussed

Entanglement distribution and quantum discord

Establishing entanglement between distant parties is one of the most important problems of quantum technology, since long-distance entanglement is an essential part of such fundamental tasks as quantum cryptography or quantum teleportation. In this lecture we review basic properties of entanglement and quantum discord, and discuss recent results on entanglement distribution and the role of quantum discord therein. We also review entanglement distribution with separable states, and discuss important problems which still remain open. One such open problem is a possible advantage of indirect entanglement distribution, when compared to direct distribution protocols.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, contribution to "Lectures on general quantum correlations and their applications", edited by Felipe Fanchini, Diogo Soares-Pinto, and Gerardo Adess