Exact Cost of Redistributing Multipartite Quantum States

Abstract

How correlated are two quantum systems from the perspective of a third? We answer this by providing an optimal “quantum state redistribution” protocol for multipartite product sources. Specifically, given an arbitrary quantum state of three systems, where Alice holds two and Bob holds one, we identify the cost, in terms of quantum communication and entanglement, for Alice to give one of her parts to Bob. The communication cost gives the first known operational interpretation to quantum conditional mutual information. The optimal procedure is self-dual under time reversal and is perfectly composable. This generalizes known protocols such as the state merging and fully quantum Slepian-Wolf protocols, from which almost every known protocol in quantum Shannon theory can be derived.