In this thesis we study the subset of quantum operations that can be implemented using only local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC). This restricted paradigm serves as a tool to study not only quantum correlations and other nonlocal quantum effects, but also resource transformations such as channel capacities. The mathematical structure of LOCC is complex and difficult to characterize. In the first part of this thesis we provide a precise description of LOCC and related operational classes in terms of quantum instruments. Our formalism captures both finite round protocols as well as those that utilize an unbounded number of communication rounds. This perspective allows us to measure the distance between two LOCC instruments and hence discuss the closure of LOCC in a rigorous way. While the set of LOCC is not topologically closed, we show that the operations that can be implemented using some fixed number rounds of communication constitute a compact subset of all quantum operations. We also exhibit a subset of LOCC measurements that is closed. Additionally we establish the existence of an open ball around the completely depolarizing map consisting entirely of LOCC implementable maps. In the second part of this thesis we focus on the task of discriminating states from some known set S by LOCC. Building on the work in the paper "Quantum nonlocality without entanglement", we provide a framework for lower bounding the error probability of any LOCC protocol aiming at discriminating the states from S. We apply our framework to an orthonormal product basis known as the domino states. This gives an alternative and simplified bound quantifying how well these states can be discriminated using LOCC. We generalize this result for similar bases in larger dimensions, as well as the "rotated" domino states, resolving a long-standing open question. These results give new examples of quantitative gaps between the classes of separable and LOCC operations. In the last part of this thesis, we ask what differentiates separable from LOCC operations. Both of these classes play a key role in the study of entanglement. Separable operations are known to be strictly more powerful than LOCC ones, but no simple explanation of this phenomenon is known. We show that, in the case of bipartite von Neumann measurements, the ability to interpolate is an operational principle that separates LOCC and separable operations.

In this thesis we study the subset of quantum operations that can be implemented using only local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC). This restricted paradigm serves as a tool to study not only quantum correlations and other nonlocal quantum effects, but also resource transformations such as channel capacities. The mathematical structure of LOCC is complex and difficult to characterize. In the first part of this thesis we provide a precise description of LOCC and related operational classes in terms of quantum instruments. Our formalism captures both finite round protocols as well as those that utilize an unbounded number of communication rounds. This perspective allows us to measure the distance between two LOCC instruments and hence discuss the closure of LOCC in a rigorous way. While the set of LOCC is not topologically closed, we show that the operations that can be implemented using some fixed number rounds of communication constitute a compact subset of all quantum operations. We also exhibit a subset of LOCC measurements that is closed. Additionally we establish the existence of an open ball around the completely depolarizing map consisting entirely of LOCC implementable maps. In the second part of this thesis we focus on the task of discriminating states from some known set S by LOCC. Building on the work in the paper "Quantum nonlocality without entanglement", we provide a framework for lower bounding the error probability of any LOCC protocol aiming at discriminating the states from S. We apply our framework to an orthonormal product basis known as the domino states. This gives an alternative and simplified bound quantifying how well these states can be discriminated using LOCC. We generalize this result for similar bases in larger dimensions, as well as the "rotated" domino states, resolving a long-standing open question. These results give new examples of quantitative gaps between the classes of separable and LOCC operations. In the last part of this thesis, we ask what differentiates separable from LOCC operations. Both of these classes play a key role in the study of entanglement. Separable operations are known to be strictly more powerful than LOCC ones, but no simple explanation of this phenomenon is known. We show that, in the case of bipartite von Neumann measurements, the ability to interpolate is an operational principle that separates LOCC and separable operations.

Superdense coding and quantum teleportation are two phenomena which were not possible without prior entanglement. In superdense coding, one sends n bits of information using n/2 qubits in the presence of shared entanglement. However, we show that n bits of information cannot be sent with less than n bits of communication in LOCC protocols even in the presence of prior entanglement. This is an interesting result which will be used in the rest of this thesis. Quantum teleportation uses prior entanglement and classical communication to send an unknown quantum state. Remote state preparation (RSP) is the same distributed task, but in the case that the sender knows the description of the state to be sent, completely. We study the communication complexity of approximate remote state preparation in which the goal is to prepare an approximation of the desired quantum state. Jain showed that the worst-case error communication complexity of RSP can be bounded from above in terms of the maximum possible information in an encoding [18]. He also showed that this quantity is a lower bound for communication complexity of exact remote state preparation [18]. In this thesis, we characterize the worst-case error and average-case error communication complexity of remote state preparation in terms of non-asymptotic information-theoretic quantities. We also utilize the bound we derived for the communication complexity of LOCC protocols in the first part of the thesis, to show that the average-case error communication complexity of RSP can be much smaller than the worst-case.

Quantum state discrimination is a fundamental problem in quantum information science. We investigate the optimal distinguishability of orthogonal two-qubit (bipartite) quantum states. The scenario consists of three parties: Alice, Bob, and Charlie. Charlie prepares one of two orthogonal states and sends one qubit to Alice and the other to Bob. Their goal is to correctly identify which state Charlie sent. In most state discrimination scenarios, it is assumed that Alice and Bob can freely communicate with one another so as to collectively agree on the best guess. In this research, we consider a more restricted setting where only one-way classical communication is possible from Alice to Bob. Under this setting, we study two figures of merit (i) Alice's optimal probability, $P$, of identifying the state , and (ii) Alice's optimal probability, $P^\perp$, of identifying the state along with helping Bob identify the state perfectly. We show that in general $P\neq P^\perp$ and we prove a theorem for when $P=P^\perp$. We also found that the maximum of $P-P^\perp$ can arbitrarily approach $1/2$.