Abstract

Quantum information theory is plagued by the problem of regularisations, which require the evaluation of formidable asymptotic quantities. This makes it computationally intractable to gain a precise quantitative understanding of the ultimate efficiency of key operational tasks such as entanglement manipulation. Here we consider the problem of computing the asymptotic entanglement cost of preparing noisy quantum states under quantum operations with positive partial transpose (PPT). A previously claimed solution to this problem [Wang/Wilde, PRL 125 (4):040502 (2020)] is shown to be incorrect. We construct instead an alternative solution in the form of two hierarchies of semi-definite programs that converge to the true asymptotic value of the entanglement cost from above and from below. Our main result establishes that this convergence happens exponentially fast, thus yielding an efficient algorithm that approximates the cost up to an additive error ε in time poly(D,log(1/ε)), where D is the underlying Hilbert space dimension. To our knowledge, this is the first time that an asymptotic entanglement measure is shown to be efficiently computable despite no closed-form formula being available. I will conclude the talk by presenting some intriguing open questions suggested by our work.