When Classical Correlations Certify Entanglement Recovery

Abstract

Entanglement and state distinguishability have long been central topics in quantum foundations. While each has developed into a rich subject in its own right, they can be connected through measurements in complementary bases. This connection provides insights into quantum and classical correlations and underlies many information-processing tasks, most notably quantum error correction (QEC). However, it has remained largely open whether the connection between entanglement and distinguishability extends to general measurements without assuming complementarity. We answer this question in the affirmative: the key is irreducibility induced by measurements, a much more relaxed condition than complementarity. Specifically, for POVMs satisfying an irreducibility condition, we establish a quantitative relation between the infidelity of one-sided local transformation into a maximally entangled state and the failure probability in state discrimination. We then characterize when both errors can vanish simultaneously. Our results have direct applications to entanglement distillation and QEC. Their errors can be certified by estimating classical input-output correlations from experimentally accessible local measurements, without requiring complementarity. The results also extend to quantum measurement theory. We derive novel trade-off relations that bridge two historically distinct approaches: information gain--irreversibility and observable noise--disturbance. Our connection between entanglement and distinguishability via irreducibility thus offers a common framework for entanglement distillation, QEC, and measurement trade-offs.