Exact entanglement cost of quantum states and channels under PPT-preserving operations

Abstract

This paper establishes single-letter formulas for the exact entanglement cost of simulating quantum channels under free quantum operations that completely preserve positivity of the partial transpose (PPT). First, we introduce the $κ$-entanglement measure for point-to-point quantum channels, based on the idea of the $κ$-entanglement of bipartite states, and we establish several fundamental properties for it, including amortization collapse, monotonicity under PPT superchannels, additivity, normalization, faithfulness, and non-convexity. Second, we introduce and solve the exact entanglement cost for simulating quantum channels in both the parallel and sequential settings, along with the assistance of free PPT-preserving operations. In particular, we establish that the entanglement cost in both cases is given by the same single-letter formula, the $κ$-entanglement measure of a quantum channel. We further show that this cost is equal to the largest $κ$-entanglement that can be shared or generated by the sender and receiver of the channel. This formula is calculable by a semidefinite program, thus allowing for an efficiently computable solution for general quantum channels. Noting that the sequential regime is more powerful than the parallel regime, another notable implication of our result is that both regimes have the same power for exact quantum channel simulation, when PPT superchannels are free. For several basic Gaussian quantum channels, we show that the exact entanglement cost is given by the Holevo--Werner formula [Holevo and Werner, Phys. Rev. A 63, 032312 (2001)], giving an operational meaning of the Holevo-Werner quantity for these channels.