Consider many instances of an arbitrary quadripartite pure state of four quantum systems ABCD. Alice holds the AC part of each state, Bob holds B, while D represents all other parties correlated with ABC. Alice is required to redistribute the C systems to Bob while asymptotically preserving the overall purity. We prove that this is possible using Q qubits of communication and E ebits of shared entanglement between Alice and Bob, provided that Q geq I(C;D|B)/2 and Q+E geq H(C|B), proving the optimality of the Luo-Devetak outer bound. The optimal qubit rate provides the first known operational interpretation of quantum conditional mutual information. We also show how our protocol leads to a fully operational proof of strong subadditivity and uncover a general organizing principle, in analogy to thermodynamics, that underlies the optimal rates.
تحميل البحث