Characterizing locally distinguishable orthogonal product states

Abstract

Bennett et al. \cite{BDF+99} identified a set of orthogonal {\em product} states in the $3\otimes 3$ Hilbert space such that reliably distinguishing those states requires non-local quantum operations. While more examples have been found for this counter-intuitive ``nonlocality without entanglement'' phenomenon, a complete and computationally verifiable characterization for all such sets of states remains unknown. In this Letter, we give such a characterization for the $3\otimes 3$ space.