Extracting total correlations from a quantum system usually requires reconstructing its state, whereas many experiments access only a few measurement settings. A possible shortcut is to add the mutual informations obtained from complementary measurements; in dimensions above two, however, this procedure can count the same classical correlation twice. We establish that qubits are protected from such overcounting. For every two-qubit state, the correlations observed in two complementary local bases are bounded by the premeasurement quantum mutual information. The proof traces this protection to binary-entropy curvature on the Bloch ball and combines a qubit information-exclusion tradeoff with data processing under local dephasing. Consequently, two correlation tables give a tomography-free lower bound on total correlation. A score above one bit also certifies a quantitative one-way entanglement-distillation rate; when applied to the Choi state of a qubit channel, the same data lower bound its quantum capacity. The theorem therefore identifies both an operational use of complementarity and the trusted two-dimensional setting in which its correlation accounting is valid.
A quantum system of any fixed dimension can be prepared in a continuum of states, yet it cannot be used to transmit an unlimited amount of classical information. Similarly, the correlations observed between measurement outcomes on separate parts of a shared quantum system can be stronger than classical correlations, but they cannot transmit information. These fundamental limitations suggest that the statistics observed from quantum communication and quantum correlations may admit a simulation using a finite amount of classical communication. This expectation is confirmed in the smallest nontrivial quantum dimension, with two classical bits being necessary and sufficient to exactly simulate qubit communication and all correlations between qubits. Despite significant efforts during the previous decades, this remained the only solved case. Here we resolve both problems for every quantum dimension. The solution reveals an unexpected qualitative transition starting at dimension four: no finite amount of classical communication can exactly simulate ququart communication nor all quantum correlations of two entangled ququarts, even with unlimited shared randomness. One might have expected this transition, if it existed, to appear already for qutrits. Instead, we construct an explicit protocol that exactly simulates qutrit communication using $357$ classical bits, and consequently, all correlations of two entangled qutrits.
Carlos de Gois, Thyago S. R. Santos, Carlos Vieira· 0 citations
Identifying the entanglement structure of a many-body quantum state, namely how its constituents partition into unentangled blocks, is a central task in quantum information science, yet conventional tomography scales exponentially with system size. Here we introduce a scalable framework that recognizes large-scale entanglement structures directly from local correlation fingerprints. By choosing a representative local Pauli basis that satisfies a boundary-matching condition p_1 = p_R, the entire chain is read out in a single measurement configuration, keeping the measurement effort independent of system size. In noisy simulations, this single-basis protocol classifies GHZ-, W-, and cluster-type structures among 30 candidate partitions with a mean accuracy exceeding 95% for systems of up to 100 qubits. We further validate the protocol on a superconducting quantum processor, where it reliably classifies block structures for systems of up to 13 qubits before noise- and depth-induced degradation sets in at larger sizes. By mapping these failure modes explicitly, our results delineate the boundary of hardware-level scalability and point to a concrete strategy for characterizing entanglement structure on near-term quantum devices.
Observables in quantum mechanics are generally complementary, that is, they reveal mutually incompatible pieces of information about a given system. This property is not only a fundamental tenet of the quantum formalism, but also a key component in quantum cryptographic protocols. As such it has fuelled much research into finding sets of highly complementary observables. In its strongest form -- the one we consider in this work -- the information between complementary observables is not merely incompatible but mutually exclusive: maximal information about one observable implies no information about the other, and vice versa. Maximal sets of non-degenerate complementary observables are known to exist in systems of prime power dimension such as n-qubit systems. Here, we study complementarity of degenerate observables, specifically we prove that observables associated with the n-qubit Pauli group also exhibit complementarity under this restriction: first, we obtain a criterion for two such observables to be complementary and, second, we relate maximal sets of complementary observables with informational pure state complementarity equalities, further studied in two companion papers. Equivalently, these results can be formulated in terms of maximal complementary sets of (not necessarily maximal) Abelian subgroups of the Pauli group linking with (possibly coarse-grained) mutually unbiased bases. Finally, we prove that these complementarity sets entail strong entropic uncertainty relations.
Markus Frembs, Giovanni Natale, C. S. Wever et al.· 2 citations
Phenomena that slip beyond the grasp of our classical intuition reveal uniquely quantum effects that deepen our understanding of the physical world and enable advances in information processing, particularly in quantum communication and computation. One such phenomenon is quantum steering, whereby measurements performed by one party influence the conditional states of another when the two share an entangled quantum system. If the observed correlations cannot be explained by a local hidden state model, the state is said to be steerable. In this work, we investigate the typicality of this behavior: given a generic two-qubit state and $m$ Haar-random projective measurements, what is the probability of observing steering? We derive analytical expressions for the steering probability $\mathcal{P}_S$ of Werner states in two- and three-setting scenarios, the latter restricted to coplanar projective measurements on the Bloch sphere. For larger numbers of settings and various random states ensembles, we perform numerical analyses showing that $\mathcal{P}_S$ increases systematically with the number of measurements and substantially exceeds the corresponding probabilities associated with Bell nonlocality. Our results demonstrate that random states with minimal environmental coupling exhibit a high probability of steering for finite $m$ and approach genuine typicality, $\mathcal{P}_S=100\%$, as the number of settings increases. We provide a detailed characterization of $\mathcal{P}_S$ across different state ensembles and specific families, including Bell-diagonal and Werner states, identifying those with the greatest non-classical potential and highlighting their relevance for protocols in which steering serves as a key resource.
Gerard Anglès Munné, Paweł Cieśliński, Tamás Vértesi et al.· 0 citations
The complementary quantum correlations (CQC) relation bounds the sum of two classical mutual informations, obtained from local mutually unbiased measurements, by the quantum mutual information of the premeasurement state. We refute it. Separable rank-two counterexamples exist in every local dimension pair \(m\times n\) with \(m,n\ge3\), with closed-form excess at least \(1/(8m^2n^2)\) nats, and in every qubit--qudit pair \(2\times n\) with \(n\ge3\) except \(n=3,5\); every covered pair also admits full-rank separable counterexamples. We then analyse the two residual qubit--qudit dimensions. A dimension-free entropy envelope replaces the natural quadratic majorant and lowers the requirement for closing the equal-prior orthogonal two-ray family from a triangular-discrimination bound \(S\le8/3\) to \(S\le3.8265583\ldots\); the associated gate matrix has trace exactly two, so its spectral test collapses to a single eigenvalue-free scalar; and the exact identity \(X=1-4\operatorname{Var}(c)\) turns the prime-Fourier full-spark barrier into a variance bound. A \(128\)-bit interval cover then closes that family at \(2\times3\) with gap at least \(0.012021\) nats, and at \(2\times5\) an exact saturator attaining \(S=(14+2\sqrt5)/5\) refutes three competing routes. We also give a state-dependent corrected inequality that is universal, and show it is incomparable with CQC already at \(2\times2\). Finally we quantify why the original searches had essentially no power to find these states: the violating set is a sliver against the low-rank boundary, the witness lies \(7.3\) standard deviations below the Hilbert--Schmidt mean, the bases must be aligned to about nine degrees (\(\sim10^{-21}\) of frames), and extrapolating the sample minimum demands \(10^{10}\) to \(10^{18}\) samples against the \(10^7\) ever run.
Bell-state measurements are essential ingredients in many protocols for quantum information processing, ranging from quantum teleportation and dense coding to entanglement distribution in quantum networks. Their power relies on the fact that they are measurements in an entangled basis of a two-particle system and that the used Bell-state basis can be generated from a single Bell state by local unitary transformations. How can these measurements be generalized to more particles? We develop a general framework for this state-to-measurement problem: We introduce a hierarchy of classes of measurement bases, distinguished by the local transformations the parties may use for their generation from a single state. This leads to a generalization of the concept of maximally entangleable (or weighted hypergraph) states and the identification of a novel maximally entangled basis of four qubits, being a candidate for data-hiding tasks or distillation protocols. Finally, we prove that not all forms of entanglement can be encoded in an entire measurement basis.
Jef Pauwels, O. Gühne· 0 citations
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