When a quantum measurement can be implemented locally ... and when it cannot

Abstract

Local operations on subsystems and classical communication between parties (LOCC) constitute the most general protocols available on spatially separated quantum systems. Every LOCC protocol implements a separable generalized measurement -- a complete measurement for which every outcome corresponds to a tensor product of operators on individual subsystems -- but it is known that there exist separable measurements that cannot be implemented by LOCC. A longstanding problem in quantum information theory is to understand the difference between LOCC and the full set of separable measurements. In this paper, we show how to construct an LOCC protocol to implement an arbitrary separable measurement, except that with those measurements for which no LOCC protocol exists, the method shows explicitly that this is the case.