No-go theorems for quantum resource purification II: new approach and channel theory

Abstract: It has been recently shown that there exist universal fundamental limits to the accuracy and efficiency of the transformation from noisy resource states to pure ones (e.g.,~distillation) in any well-behaved quantum resource theory [Fang/Liu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 060405 (2020)]. Here, we develop a novel and powerful method for analyzing the limitations on quantum resource purification, which not only leads to improved bounds that rule out exact purification for a broader range of noisy states and are tight in certain cases, but also enable us to establish a robust no-purification theory for quantum channel (dynamical) resources. More specifically, we employ the new method to derive universal bounds on the error and cost of transforming generic noisy channels (where multiple instances can be used adaptively, in contrast to the state theory) to some unitary resource channel under any free channel-to-channel map. We address several cases of practical interest in more concrete terms, and discuss the connections and applications of our general results to distillation, quantum error correction, quantum Shannon theory, and quantum circuit synthesis.