Capability of local operations and classical communication to distinguish bipartite unitary operations

Abstract

The problem behind this paper is, if the number of queries to unitary operations is fixed, say $k$, then when do local operations and classical communication (LOCC) suffice for optimally distinguishing bipartite unitary operations? We consider the above problem for two-qubit unitary operations in the case of $k=1$, showing that for two two-qubit entangling unitary operations without local parties, LOCC achieves the same distinguishability as the global operations. Specifically, we obtain: (i) if such two unitary operations are perfectly distinguishable by global operations, then they are perfectly distinguishable by LOCC too, and (ii) if they are not perfectly distinguishable by global operations, then LOCC can achieve the same optimal discrimination probability as the global operations.