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No-go theorem for heralded exact one-way key distillation

Quantum Physics 2026-03-11 v2 Information Theory math.IT

Abstract

The heralded exact one-way distillable secret key is equal to the largest expected rate at which perfect secret key bits can be probabilistically distilled from a bipartite state by means of local operations and one-way classical communication. Here we define the set of super two-extendible states and prove that an arbitrary state in this set cannot be used for heralded exact one-way secret-key distillation. This broad class of states includes both erased states and all full-rank states. Comparing the heralded exact one-way distillable secret key with the more commonly studied approximate one-way distillable secret key, our results demonstrate an extreme gap between them for many states of interest, with the approximate one-way distillable secret key being much larger. Our findings naturally extend to heralded exact one-way entanglement distillation, with similar conclusions.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.01392,
  title  = {No-go theorem for heralded exact one-way key distillation},
  author = {Vishal Singh and Mark M. Wilde},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.01392},
  year   = {2026}
}

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5+15 pages