Simulating quantum correlations as a distributed sampling problem

It is known that quantum correlations exhibited by a maximally entangled qubit pair can be simulated with the help of shared randomness, supplemented with additional resources, such as communication, post-selection or non-local boxes. For instance, in the case of projective measurements, it is possible to solve this problem with protocols using one bit of communication or making one use of a non-local box. We show that this problem reduces to a distributed sampling problem. We give a new method to obtain samples from a biased distribution, starting with shared random variables following a uniform distribution, and use it to build distributed sampling protocols. This approach allows us to derive, in a simpler and unified way, many existing protocols for projective measurements, and extend them to positive operator value measurements. Moreover, this approach naturally leads to a local hidden variable model for Werner states.