Physical properties of the Schur complement of local covariance matrices

Abstract

General properties of global covariance matrices representing bipartite Gaussian states can be decomposed into properties of local covariance matrices and their Schur complements. We demonstrate that given a bipartite Gaussian state $\rho_{12}$ described by a $4\times 4$ covariance matrix \textbf{V}, the Schur complement of a local covariance submatrix $\textbf{V}_1$ of it can be interpreted as a new covariance matrix representing a Gaussian operator of party 1 conditioned to local parity measurements on party 2. The connection with a partial parity measurement over a bipartite quantum state and the determination of the reduced Wigner function is given and an operational process of parity measurement is developed. Generalization of this procedure to a $n$-partite Gaussian state is given and it is demonstrated that the $n-1$ system state conditioned to a partial parity projection is given by a covariance matrix such as its $2 \times 2$ block elements are Schur complements of special local matrices.