Multipartite quantum correlations and local recoverability

TL;DR

This paper links multipartite quantum correlations to local recoverability, showing that certain quantum discord measures vanish for approximately recoverable states and establishing the faithfulness of CEMI as an entanglement measure.

Contribution

It demonstrates that MSQ discord is nearly zero iff the state is locally recoverable and proves CEMI's faithfulness, advancing understanding of multipartite quantum correlations.

Findings

MSQ discord near zero implies approximate local recoverability.

CEMI vanishes iff the state is fully separable.

Provides an operational interpretation of MSQ discord.

Abstract

Characterizing genuine multipartite quantum correlations in quantum physical systems has historically been a challenging problem in quantum information theory. More recently however, the total correlation or multipartite information measure has been helpful in accomplishing this goal, especially with the multipartite symmetric quantum (MSQ) discord [Piani et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 090502, 2008] and the conditional entanglement of multipartite information (CEMI) [Yang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 140501, 2008]. Here we apply a recent and significant improvement of strong subadditivity of quantum entropy [Fawzi and Renner, arXiv:1410.0664] in order to develop these quantities further. In particular, we prove that the MSQ discord is nearly equal to zero if and only if the multipartite state for which it is evaluated is approximately locally recoverable after performing measurements on each of its systems. Furthermore, we prove that the CEMI is a faithful entanglement measure, i.e., it vanishes if and only if the multipartite state for which it is evaluated is a fully separable state. Along the way we provide an operational interpretation of the MSQ discord in terms of the partial state distribution protocol, which in turn, as a special case, gives an interpretation for the original discord quantity. Finally, we prove an inequality that could potentially improve upon the Fawzi-Renner inequality in the multipartite context, but it remains an open question to determine whether this is so.