# The classical communication cost of entanglement manipulation: Is entanglement an inter-convertible resource?

## Abstract

Entanglement bits or “ebits” have been proposed as a quantitative measure of a fundamental resource in quantum information processing. For such an interpretation to be valid, it is important to show that the same number of ebits in different forms or concentrations are inter-convertible in the asymptotic limit. Here we draw attention to a very important but hitherto unnoticed aspect of entanglement manipulation — the classical communication cost. We construct an explicit procedure which demonstrates that for bi-partite pure states, in the asymptotic limit, entanglement can be concentrated or diluted with vanishing classical communication cost. Entanglement of bi-partite pure states is thus established as a truly inter-convertible resource.

During the last couple of years the study of quantum non-locality (entanglement) has undergone a substantial transformation. It has become clear that entanglement is a most important aspect of quantum mechanics, which plays a fundamental role in quantum information processing (including teleportation , dense coding , and communication complexity ). It is now customary to regard entanglement as a fungible resource, i.e., a resource which can be transformed from one form to another, can be created, stored or consumed for accomplishing useful tasks. It is however the aim of this paper to draw attention to an important and hitherto ignored aspect of entanglement manipulation which has to be clarified before one can regard entanglement as a completely fungible property. The problem is the classical information cost of entanglement manipulation.

Consider the most famous use of entanglement, namely teleportation. As Bennett et al.  have shown, entanglement can be used to communicate unknown quantum states from one place to another; this task can be achieved even though neither the transmitter nor the receiver are able to find out the state to be transmitted.

The basic equation of teleportation is

$$1\mathrm{singlet}teleports1\mathrm{qubit}.$$
(1)   
Equation (1) already contains a large degree of abstraction. In the original description of teleportation it was shown how a singlet can teleport “an unknown state of a quantum system which lives in a 2-dimensional Hilbert space” (for concreteness, states of a spin 1/2 particle). In Eq. (1) however, instead of states of a spin 1/2 particle we wrote “qubit”, where by qubit we understand the quantum information which can be encoded in one spin 1/2 particle. This information need not be originally encoded in one spin 1/2 particle. It could, for example, be distributed among many spins. Indeed, as Schumacher and others showed  quantum information can be efficiently manipulated — compressed or diluted essentially without losses, similarly to classical information. Thus it makes sense to talk about “the quantum information which could be compressed into a spin 1/2 particle”.

The question is whether we could replace the left-hand side of Eq. (1) by a similar abstract quantity. That is, we would like to be able to say something like

$$1\mathrm{ebit}teleports1\mathrm{qubit},$$
(2)   
where 1 ebit describes any quantum system which contains entanglement equivalent to that of a singlet.

As a matter of fact, Eq. (2) is in common use. The point is that, at least for pure states, there are efficient ways in which entanglement can be manipulated, and arbitrary states can be transformed — essentially without losses — into singlets . Indeed, suppose that two distant observers, Alice and Bob, initially share a large number $`n`$ of pairs of particles, each pair in the same arbitrary state $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$. Then, by performing suitable local operations and by communicating classically to each other, Alice and Bob can obtain from these $`n`$ copies of the state $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ some number $`k`$ of pairs, each pair in a singlet state. The action is “essentially without losses” since Alice and Bob can transform the $`k`$ singlets back into $`n`$ $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$s. (The actions are reversible in the asymptotic limit of large $`n`$; the requirement of the asymptotic limit for reversibility is similar to that in compressing classical and quantum information.) The quantity of entanglement of an arbitrary state, measured in ebits, is simply $`k/n`$, the number of singlets which can be obtained reversibly from each pair of particles in the original state $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ .

However, an important element is missing. While during concentrating and diluting entanglement by the efficient methods described in , entanglement is not lost, Alice and Bob might have to communicate classically to each other. They have thus to pay the price of exchanging some bits of classical communication.

The classical communication cost of entanglement manipulation is a largely ignored problem. Indeed, the general attitude is that entanglement is “expensive” while classical communication is “cheap”, and all the effort is generally directed only to preserving entanglement by all means. However, to claim that entanglement is truly a fungible resource, one must also consider the classical communication cost of entanglement manipulation.

The classical communication cost of entanglement manipulation has in fact implications for teleportation. Indeed, Eq. (1) which describes the original teleportation is rather incomplete. The complete statement is that

$$1\mathrm{singlet}+\mathrm{communicating}2\mathrm{classical}\mathrm{bits}teleports1\mathrm{qubit}.$$
(3)   
Obviously, the more abstract equivalent of this equation, namely

$$1\mathrm{ebit}+\mathrm{communicating}2\mathrm{classical}\mathrm{bits}teleports1\mathrm{qubit},$$
(4)   
or, following Bennett’s notation,

$$1\mathrm{ebit}+2\mathrm{bits}1\mathrm{qubit},$$
(5)   
would not be valid if during transforming the original supply of entanglement (in some arbitrary form) into singlets required for teleportation, Alice and Bob had to exchange supplementary bits of classical information.

For teleportation the matter seems to be rather academic. It is the entanglement which has the fundamental role, while the classical bits are, to a large extent, secondary — in the absence of entanglement, no matter how many classical bits Alice and Bob exchange, teleportation would be impossible. However, for other quantum communication tasks, the classical communication cost is highly relevant. Consider for example the “dense coding” communication method . As Bennett and Wiesner showed, when Alice and Bob share a singlet, Alice can communicate to Bob two classical bits by sending a single qubit. The basic equation is thus

$$1\mathrm{singlet}+\mathrm{communicating}1\mathrm{qubit}communicates2\mathrm{classical}\mathrm{bits},$$
(6)   
whose mathematical abstraction is

$$1\mathrm{ebit}+1\mathrm{qubit}2\mathrm{bits}.$$
(7)   
In dense coding the main goal is to enhance the ability of performing classical communication by using entanglement. However, if in the process of transforming the original supply of arbitrary entanglement into singlet form we had to use a lot of classical communication, this would defeat the objective of the entire exercise.

In the present paper we show that for bi-partite pure states, (in the asymptotic limit) entanglement can be transformed — concentrated and diluted — in a reversible manner with zero classical communication cost. Hence, the notion of “ebit” is completely justified. In other words, it doesn’t matter in which form entanglement is supplied; all that matters is the total quantity of entanglement. Provided that they have the same von Neumann entropy, both singlets and partially entangled states have the same power to achieve any task in quantum information processing (in the asymptotic limit).

In order to establish entanglement as a fungible resource, we have to show that both entanglement concentration (transforming arbitrary states into singlets) and entanglement dilution (transforming singlets into arbitrary states) can be done without any classical communication cost. The first task is easy — the original entanglement concentration method presented in  proceeds without any classical communication between the parties. In other words, the classical communication cost of the procedure is identically equal to zero. The rest of this paper is devoted to studying entanglement dilution. We will show that, although diluting entanglement may require classical communication, the amount of communication can be made to vanish in the asymptotic limit.

The standard entanglement dilution scheme  requires a significant amount of classical communication (two classical bits per ebit). Therefore, it fails to demonstrate the complete inter-convertibility of entanglement. To establish entanglement as a truly fungible resource, we present a new entanglement dilution scheme which conserves entanglement and requires an asymptotically vanishing amount of classical communication. To construct our scheme, we first prove the following.

Lemma: Suppose Alice and Bob share $`n`$ singlets. Let $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ be the state of a bi-partite system AB where each system has a $`2^n`$ dimensional Hilbert space, and let the Schmidt coefficients  of $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ be $`2^r`$-fold degenerate. Then, there is a procedure by which Alice and Bob can prepare $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ shared between them such that only $`2(nr)`$ bits of classical communication and local operations are needed.

Proof: With the $`2^r`$-fold degeneracy in Schmidt coefficients, $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ can be factorized into a direct product of $`r`$ singlets and a residual state, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, whose Schmidt decomposition contains only $`2^{nr}`$ terms, i.e., up to bi-local unitary transformations,

$$\mathrm{\Pi }=\mathrm{\Phi }^r\mathrm{\Gamma },$$
(8)   
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ denotes a singlet state. Since Alice and Bob initially share singlets $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, there is no need to teleport the $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$s. To share $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ non-locally, Alice only needs to teleport the subsystem $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ to Bob. Alice and Bob can then apply bi-local unitary transformations to their state to recover $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$. (We do not know if such local computations can be done efficiently, but this is unimportant here.) Since the dimension of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is only $`2^{nr}`$, only $`2(nr)`$ bits are needed for its teleportation.

Remark. Compared with a direct teleportation of the whole state $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$, the above procedure provides a saving of $`2r`$ classical bits of communication because of the $`2^r`$-fold degeneracy of Schmidt coefficients.

The crux of this Letter is the following theorem.

Theorem: In the large $`N`$ limit, $`N`$ copies of any pure bi-partite state $`\psi `$ can be approximated with a fidelity  arbitrarily close to $`1`$ by a state that has $`D=2^d=2^{[NSO(\sqrt{N})]}`$ degeneracies in its Schmidt decomposition where $`S`$ is the von Neumann entropy of a subsystem of $`\psi `$. In other words, given any $`ϵ>0`$, for a sufficiently large $`N`$, we have

$$\psi ^N=\mathrm{\Phi }^d\mathrm{\Delta }+u_2$$
(9)   
where $`d=[NSO(\sqrt{N})]`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is an un-normalized residual state whose Schmidt decomposition contains $`2^{O(\sqrt{N})}`$ terms, and $`u_2<ϵ`$.

Remark: When combined with the Lemma, the Theorem implies that Alice and Bob can perform entanglement dilution from $`N`$ copies of $`\psi `$ to $`NS`$ singlets using an asymptotically vanishing number, namely $`O(\sqrt{N}/N)=O(1/\sqrt{N})`$ of classical bits of communication per ebit. This establishes the main result of this Letter.

Proof of the Theorem: The idea of the proof is simple. We would like to decompose the state $`\psi ^N`$ into two pieces, $`\psi ^N=u_1+u_2`$ such that the dominant piece, $`u_1`$ has a large degree of degeneracy in its Schmidt coefficients as required in the Theorem, while $`u_2`$ is small.

While the idea of our proof is general, it is best understood by considering the special case when $`\psi =a|00+b|11`$. Consider the Schmidt coefficients of $`\psi ^N`$. They have the form $`a^kb^{Nk}`$ and are, in general, highly degenerate — the coefficient $`a^kb^{Nk}`$ appears $`\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{N}{k}\right)`$ times.

The first step of our proof is to note that we can divide the different values of $`k`$ into two classes — “typical” and “atypical”. For a “typical” value of $`k`$, $`\mathrm{log}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{N}{k}\right)`$ lies between $`NS(\psi )O(\sqrt{N})`$ and $`NS(\psi )+O(\sqrt{N})`$, say between $`NS(\psi )10\sqrt{N}`$ and $`NS(\psi )+10\sqrt{N}`$. (The actual coefficient of the $`\sqrt{N}`$ term will depend on the value of $`ϵ`$ used in the Theorem. Here, we simply take it to be $`10`$ to illustrate the basic idea of the proof.) All other values of $`k`$ are “atypical”. It is well-known that, compared to the measure of the typical set, the overall measure of the atypical set is very small. (i.e. the norm of the projection of $`\psi ^N`$ on the Hilbert subspace spanned by the atypical terms in the Schmidt decomposition is small). We shall include all the atypical terms in $`u_2`$.

Let us now concentrate on the typical terms. According to the requirement of the theorem, all terms in $`u_1=\mathrm{\Phi }^d\mathrm{\Delta }`$ are degenerate and their degeneracies have a common factor of the order of $`2^d=2^{[NSO(\sqrt{N})]}`$. If the degrees of degeneracy of the typical terms all had a common factor of the order of $`2^{[NSO(\sqrt{N})]}`$, we could include all these terms in $`u_1`$, and the proof would be complete. Unfortunately, although indeed each term in the typical set has a degeneracy of the order $`2^{[NSO(\sqrt{N})]}`$, when one varies $`k`$ over the typical set, the various values of $`\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{N}{k}\right)`$ do not have a large common factor. To deal with this problem we “coarse-grain” the number of terms of Schmidt decomposition grouping them in bins of say $`2^{NS(\psi )20\sqrt{N}}`$. More concretely, for each $`k`$ in the typical set, let the number of full bins $`n_k`$ be such that

$$n_k2^{NS(\psi )20\sqrt{N}}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{N}{k}\right)<(n_k+1)2^{NS(\psi )20\sqrt{N}}.$$
(10)   
We simply keep only $`n_k2^{NS(\psi )20\sqrt{N}}`$ out of the original $`\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{N}{k}\right)`$ terms in $`u_1`$ and put the remaining $`\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{N}{k}\right)n_k2^{NS(\psi )20\sqrt{N}}<2^{NS(\psi )20\sqrt{N}}`$ terms in $`u_2`$. Now $`n_k`$ is at least of the order $`2^{10\sqrt{N}}`$ and is, therefore, very large. Consider $`u_1`$. The degeneracies of its Schmidt coefficients are multiples of $`2^{NS(\psi )20\sqrt{N}}`$, hence we can write $`u_1=\mathrm{\Phi }^d\mathrm{\Delta }`$ where $`d=NS(\psi )20\sqrt{N}`$.

Let us now summarize. By construction, the state $`u_1`$ is of the form $`\mathrm{\Phi }^d\mathrm{\Delta }`$. The norm $`u_2`$ is very small for two reasons: 1) the contribution to $`u_2`$ from the atypical set is small and 2) for each $`k`$ in the typical set, its contribution to $`u_1`$ is at least $`n_k`$ times its contribution to $`u_2`$ where $`n_k`$ is very large. Consequently, $`\varphi ^N=u_1+u_2=\mathrm{\Phi }^d\mathrm{\Delta }+u_2`$ where $`d=[NSO(\sqrt{N})]`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is an un-normalized residual state of $`2^{O(\sqrt{N})}`$ dimensions, and $`u_2`$ is very small. Q.E.D.

In conclusion, we have shown that entanglement dilution from $`N[S(\psi )+\delta ]`$ singlets to $`N`$ pairs of a bi-partite pure state $`\psi `$ can be done with only $`O(\sqrt{N})`$ bits of classical communication. So the number of classical bit per ebit needed is $`O(\frac{1}{\sqrt{N}})`$, which vanishes asymptotically. In other words, states with the same amount of bi-partite entanglement are inter-convertible to one another in the asymptotic limit (with vanishing amount of classical bits of communication per ebit). Therefore, entanglement bits or “ebits” can be regarded as a universal quantum resource, as originally proposed by Bennett and others.

The above discussion has been done for the case of pairs of two spin 1/2 particles in pure states. The generalization to pure states of pairs of higher spin particles is immediate. However, generalization towards multi-particle entanglement and/or density matrices is problematic.

In the case of pure-state multi-party entanglement, not only do we not know about the classical communication cost of transforming entangled states from a form into another, but it is also not yet clear whether there exists a reversible procedure which can transform (in asymptotical limit) $`n`$ copies of an arbitrary multi-party pure state $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ into some standard entangled state (or set of states ). In fact, it is not even clear what the standard entangled states should be. The existence of such a procedure is, however, quite probable.

The case of density matrices is even more complicated. Here, even in the simplest case of pairs of spin 1/2 particles, it is probable that reversible transformations do not exist at all. That is, although arbitrary entangled density matrices can be prepared from singlets, and then singlets can be reconstructed from the density matrices, the number $`k_{in}`$ of spins necessary to create $`n`$ copies of an arbitrary density matrix is probably always larger than the number $`k_{out}`$ of spins which can be obtained from the $`n`$ density matrices. (Following the terminology of , the entanglement of formation is larger than the entanglement of distillation). If indeed this is the case, it is then probable that these transformations require non-negligible classical communication. Actually, a reasonable conjecture is that there exists a very close connection (possibly a sort of conservation relation) between the amount of irreversibility in the transformation singlets $``$ density matrices $``$ singlets and the amount of classical communication needed for this process.

Finally, we would like to add some more general remarks. If we restrict the actions one is allowed to perform on the entangled states, entanglement might no longer be inter-convertible. For example, if we do not allow collective processing but insist that each pair of entangled particles should be processed separately, then entanglement is not inter-convertible anymore. Indeed, while one could still produce singlets from partially entangled states such as $`\alpha |1|1+\beta |2|2`$ by using the procustean method , this action is not reversible (that is, the overall probability of success for the chain of actions initial state $``$ singlet $``$ initial state is less than 1).

Thus entanglement is a fungible resource only when no restrictions are placed on the allowed entanglement manipulation procedures. This raises the question of what exactly do we mean by the “unrestricted” set of actions? The usual paradigm  of manipulating entanglement is that of “collective local actions + classical communication”, and the basic statement is that:

“Entanglement cannot increase by collective local actions and classical communications.”

However, in the light of the new effects discovered by R., P., and M. Horodecki, that is, the existence of bound entanglement  and especially the possibility of activating bound entanglement  this paradigm might turn out to be insufficient. And, indeed, it is very restrictive. After all, why not allow also quantum communication? It is true that quantum communication does not conserve entanglement and permits creation of entanglement out of nothing. However, there is no reason why such non-conservation could not be easily kept under control. We would thus suggest the paradigm of “collective local actions + classical communication+ quantum communication”, and the basic statement that

“By local actions, classical communications and $`N`$ qubits of quantum communication, entanglement cannot increase by more than $`N`$ e-bits.”

Acknoledgements We would like to thank C. H. Bennett, D. Gottesman, and R. F. Werner for helpful discussions. Part of this work was completed during the 1997 Elsag-Bailey – I.S.I. Foundation research meeting on quantum computation.