Locally indistinguishable generalized Bell states with one-way local operations and classical communication

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the indistinguishability of generalized Bell states (GBSs) by one-way local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We first introduce two sets, i.e., the difference set and the testing set, and show that the GBSs cannot always be distinguished by one-way LOCC if the testing set is a subset of the difference set of GBSs. Then we give a unified upper bound about indistinguishable GBSs by one-way LOCC. The newly derived bound is smaller than those presented in Zhang et al. [Phys. Rev. A 91, 012329 (2015)] and Wang et al. [Quantum Inf. Process. 15, 1661 (2016).]. More precisely, the minimum number of one-way locally indistinguishable GBSs is not more than $2\ensuremath{\lceil}\sqrt{d}\ensuremath{\rceil}+\ensuremath{\lceil}\frac{\sqrt{d}}{4}\ensuremath{\rceil}+1$.