Testing the equivalence to thermal states via extractable work under LOCC
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2601.14789 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 21 Jan 2026] Title:Testing the equivalence to thermal states via extractable work under LOCC Authors:Toshihiro Yada, Nobuyuki Yoshioka, Takahiro Sagawa View a PDF of the paper titled Testing the equivalence to thermal states via extractable work under LOCC, by Toshihiro Yada and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Understanding the thermal behavior of quantum many-body pure states is one of the most fundamental issues in quantum thermodynamics. It is widely known that typical pure states yield vanishing work, just as thermal states do, when one restricts to local operations that cannot access correlations among subsystems. However, it remains unclear whether this equivalence to thermal states persists under LOCC (local operations and classical communication), where classically accessible correlations can be exploited for work extraction. In this work, we establish criteria for determining whether many-body pure states remain equivalent to thermal states even under LOCC, and show that this thermal equivalence is governed by their multipartite quantum correlation structure. We show that states with asymptotically maximal multipartite entanglement, such as Haar-random states, cannot yield extensive work under LOCC, whereas some states with limited multipartite entanglement, such as constant-degree graph states, allow extensive work extraction despite being locally indistinguishable from thermal states. Thus, our work provides a refined operational notion of thermal equivalence beyond the traditional local regime, which is becoming increasingly important due to the recent expansion of experimentally accessible operations. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2601.14789 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2601.14789v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.14789 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Toshihiro Yada [view email] [v1] Wed, 21 Jan 2026 09:12:31 UTC (210 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Testing the equivalence to thermal states via extractable work under LOCC, by Toshihiro Yada and 2 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-01 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)