Condition and capability of quantum state separation

Abstract

The linearity of quantum operations puts many fundamental constraints on the information processing tasks we can achieve on a quantum system whose state is not exactly known, just as we observe in quantum cloning and quantum discrimination. In this paper we show that in probabilistic manner, linearity is in fact the only one that restricts the physically realizable tasks. To be specific, if a system is prepared in a state secretly chosen from a linearly independent pure state set, then any quantum state separation can be physically realized with a positive probability. Furthermore, we derive a lower bound on the average failure probability of any quantum state separation.