On the rank of extremal marginal states

Abstract

Let $\rho_1$ and $\rho_2$ be two states on $\mathbb{C}^{d_1}$ and $\mathbb{C}^{d_2}$ respectively. The marginal state space, denoted by $\mathcal{C}(\rho_1,\rho_2)$, is the set of all states $\rho$ on $\mathbb{C}^{d_1}\otimes \mathbb{C}^{d_2}$ with partial traces $\rho_1, \rho_2$. K. R. Parthasarathy established that if $\rho$ is an extreme point of $\mathcal{C}(\rho_1,\rho_2)$, then the rank of $\rho$ does not exceed $\sqrt{d_1^2+d_2^2-1}$. Rudolph posed a question regarding the tightness of this bound. In 2010, Ohno gave an affirmative answer by providing examples in low-dimensional matrix algebras $\mathbb{M}_3$ and $\mathbb{M}_4$. This article aims to provide a positive answer to the Rudolph question in various matrix algebras. Our approaches, to obtain the extremal marginal states with tight upper bound, are based on Choi-Jamio\l kowski isomorphism and tensor product of extreme points.