Distillation protocols that involve local distinguishing: Composing upper and lower bounds on locally accessible information

Abstract

We find a universal lower bound on locally accessible information for arbitrary bipartite quantum ensembles, when one of the parties is two-dimensional. In higher dimensions and in higher number of parties, the lower bound is on accessible information by separable operations. We show that for any given density matrix (of arbitrary number of parties and dimensions), there exists an ensemble, the ''Scrooge ensemble'', which averages to the given density matrix and whose locally accessible information saturates the lower bound. Moreover, we use this lower bound along with a previously obtained upper bound to obtain bounds on the yield of singlets in distillation protocols that involve local distinguishing.