Local Distinguishability of Multipartite Unitary Operations

Abstract

We show that any two different unitary operations acting on an arbitrary multipartite quantum system can be perfectly distinguishable by local operations and classical communication when a finite number of runs is allowed. We then directly extend this result into the case when the number of unitary operations to be discriminated is more than two. Intuitively, our result means that the lost identity of a nonlocal (entangled) unitary operation can be recovered locally, without any use of entanglement or joint quantum operations.