When a quantum measurement can be implemented locally, and when it cannot

In the absence of quantum channels, local operations on subsystems and classical communication between parties (LOCC) constitute the most general protocols available on spatially separated quantum systems. Every LOCC protocol implements a separable quantum measurement, but it is known that there exist separable measurements that cannot be implemented by LOCC. A longstanding problem in quantum information theory is to understand the difference between LOCC and the full set of separable measurements. Toward this end, we show in this paper how to construct an LOCC protocol to implement an arbitrary separable measurement whenever such a protocol exists. In addition, given a measurement that cannot be implemented by LOCC within some fixed maximum number of rounds, the method shows explicitly that this is the case.