Characterization of nonsignaling bipartite correlations corresponding to quantum states

Abstract

Characterizing quantum correlations from physical principles is a central problem in the field of quantum information theory. Entanglement breaks bounds on correlations put forth by Bell's theorem, thus challenging the notion of local causality as a physical principle. A natural relaxation is to study no-signalling as a constraint on joint probability distributions. It was shown that, when considered with respect to so-called locally quantum observables, bipartite nonsignalling correlations never exceed their quantum counterparts; still, such correlations generally do not derive from quantum states. This leaves open the search for additional principles which identify quantum states within the larger set of (collections of) nonsignalling joint probability distributions over locally quantum observables. Here, we suggest a natural generalization of no-signalling in the form of no-disturbance to dilated systems. We prove that nonsignalling joint probability distributions satisfying this extension correspond with bipartite quantum states up to a choice of time orientation in subsystems.