In the framework of the theory of open systems based on completely positive quantum dynamical semigroups, we give a description of the dynamics of entanglement for a system consisting of two uncoupled modes interacting with a thermal environment. Using Peres-Simon necessary and sufficient criterion of separability for two-mode Gaussian states, we describe the evolution of entanglement in terms of the covariance matrix for a Gaussian input state. We determine the asymptotic Gaussian maximally entangled mixed states (GMEMS) and their corresponding asymptotic maximal logarithmic negativity, which characterizes the degree of entanglement. Using the symplectic eigenvalues of the asymptotic covariance matrix, the expressions of von Neumann entropy and mutual information of asymptotic GMEMS are obtained.
For a class of mixed two -qubit states we show that it is not possible to discriminate between states violating or non - violating Bell - CHSH inequalities, knowing only their entanglement and mixedness. For a large set of possible values of these quantities, we construct pairs of states with the same entanglement and mixedness such that one state is violating but the other is non - violating Bell - CHSH inequality.
A relationship between a recently introduced multipartite entanglement measure, state mixedness, and spin-flip symmetry is established for any finite number of qubits. It is also shown that, within those classes of states invariant under the spin-flip transformation, there is a complementarity relation between multipartite entanglement and mixedness. A number of example classes of multiple-qubit systems are studied in light of this relationship.
The effects of mixedness and entanglement on the lower bound and tightness of the entropic uncertainty in the Heisenberg model with Dzyaloshinski-Moriya (DM) interaction have been investigated. It is found that the mixedness can reflect the essence of the entropic uncertainty better than the entanglement. Meanwhile, the uncertainty of measurement results will be reduced by the entanglement and improved by the mixedness.The entanglement can destroy the tightness of the uncertainty, while the tightness will be improved with the increasing of the mixedness. In addition, the tightness of the uncer…
Recently Munro, Nemoto and White (The Bell Inequality: A measure of Entanglement?, quant-ph/0102119) tried to indicate that the reason behind a state rho having higher amount of entanglement (as quantified by the entanglement of formation) than a state eta, but producing the same amount of Bell-violation, is due to the fact that the amount of mixedness (as quantified by the linearised entropy) in rho is higher than that in eta. We counter their argument with examples. We extend these considerations to the von Neumann entropy. Our results suggest that the reason as to why equal amount of Bell-v…
Entanglement and mixedness of a bipartite mixed state resource are crucial for the success of quantum teleportation. Upper bounds on measures of mixedness, namely, von Neumann entropy and linear entropy beyond which the bipartite state ceases to be useful for quantum teleportation are known in the literature. In this work, we generalize these bounds and obtain rank dependent upper bounds on von Nuemann entropy and linear entropy for an arbitrary bipartite mixed state resource. We observe that the upper bounds on measures of mixedness increase with increase in the rank. For two qubit mixed stat…
Quantification of entanglement against mixing is given for a system of coupled qubits under a phase damping channel. A family of pure initial joint states is defined, ranging from pure separable states to maximally entangled state. An ordering of entanglement measures is given for well defined initial state amount of entanglement.
It is shown that local distinguishability of orthogonal mixed states can be completely characterized by local distinguishability of their supports irrespective of entanglement and mixedness of the states. This leads to two kinds of upper bounds on the number of perfect LOCC distinguishable orthogonal mixed states. The first one depends only on pure-state entanglement within the supports of the states, and therefore may be easy to compute in many instances. The second bound is optimal in the sense that it optimizes the bounding quantities, not necessarily function of entanglement alone, over al…
We analytically exploit the two-mode Gaussian states nonunitary dynamics. We show that in the zero temperature limit, entanglement sudden death (ESD) will always occur for symmetric states (where initial single mode compression is $z_0$) provided the two mode squeezing $r_0$ satisfies $0 < r_0 < 1/2 \log (\cosh (2 z_0)).$ We also give the analytical expressions for the time of ESD. Finally, we show the relation between the single modes initial impurities and the initial entanglement, where we exhibit that the later is suppressed by the former.
Maximally entangled mixed states are those states that, for a given mixedness, achieve the greatest possible entanglement. For two-qubit systems and for various combinations of entanglement and mixedness measures, the form of the corresponding maximally entangled mixed states is determined primarily analytically. As measures of entanglement, we consider entanglement of formation, relative entropy of entanglement, and negativity; as measures of mixedness, we consider linear and von Neumann entropies. We show that the forms of the maximally entangled mixed states can vary with the combination of…
We investigate the dynamical relations among entanglement, mixedness and nonlocality, quantifed by concurrence C, purity P and maximum of Bell function B, respectively, in a system of two qubits in a common structured reservoir. To this aim we introduce the C-P-B parameter space and analyze the time evolution of the point representative of the system state in such a space. The dynamical interplay among entanglement, mixedness and nonlocality strongly depends on the initial state of the system. For a two-excitation Bell state the representative point draws a multi-branch curve in the C-P-B spac…
The dynamics of mixedness and entanglement is examined by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for three coupled harmonic oscillator system with arbitrary time-dependent frequency and coupling constants parameters. We assume that part of oscillators is inaccessible and remaining oscillators accessible. We compute the dynamics of entanglement between inaccessible and accessible oscillators. In order to show the dynamics pictorially we introduce three quenched models. In the quenched models both mixedness and entanglement exhibit oscillatory behavior in time with multi-frequencies. It…
We study entanglement properties of all eigenstates of the Heisenberg XXX model, and find that the entanglement and mixedness for a pair of nearest-neighbor qubits are completely determined by the corresponding eigenenergies. Specifically, the negativity of the eigenenergy implies pairwise entanglement. From the relation between entanglement and eigenenergy, we obtain finite-size behaviors of the entanglement. We also study entanglement and mixedness versus energy in the quantum Heisenberg XY model.
We solve the eigenvalue problem of the five-qubit anisotropic Heisenberg model, without use of Bethe's Ansatz, and give analytical results for entanglement and mixedness of two nearest-neighbor qubits. The entanglement takes its maximum at Delta= (Delta>1) for the case of zero (finite) temperature with Delta being the anisotropic parameter. In contrast, the mixedness takes its minimum at Delta=1 (Delta>1) for the case of zero (finite) temperature.
We examine mixedness and entanglement of the chronology-respecting (CR) system with assuming that quantum mechanical closed timelike curves (CTCs) exist in nature and by introducing the qubit system and applying the general controlled operations between CR and CTC systems. We use the magnitude of Bloch vector as a measure of mixedness. While Deutschian-CTC (D-CTC) either preserves or decreases the magnitude, postselected-CTC (P-CTC) can increases it. Nonintuitively, even the completely mixed CR-qubit can be converted into a pure state after CTC-qubit travels around the P-CTC. It is also shown …
The dynamical map of entanglement and mixedness in four-qubit maximally entangled GHZ state paired with classical channels driven by fractional Gaussian noise is investigated. The qubit-channel coupling is assumed in four distinct ways: common, bipartite, tripartite, and independent local channel-qubit configurations comprising single, double, triple, or independent noisy sources. Using entanglement witness, negativity, purity and von Neumann entropy, except for the independent configuration, we show that indefinite entanglement and purity preservation may be simulated in multipartite GHZ-like…
We investigate the relationship between mixedness and entanglement for Gaussian states of continuous variable systems. We introduce generalized entropies based on Schatten $p$-norms to quantify the mixedness of a state, and derive their explicit expressions in terms of symplectic spectra. We compare the hierarchies of mixedness provided by such measures with the one provided by the purity (defined as ${\rm tr} \varrho^2$ for the state $\varrho$) for generic $n$-mode states. We then review the analysis proving the existence of both maximally and minimally entangled states at given global and ma…
We study the relationship between the entanglement, mixedness and energy of two-qubit and two-mode Gaussian quantum states. We parametrize the set of allowed states of these two fundamentally different physical systems using measures of entanglement, mixedness and energy that allow us to compare and contrast the two systems using a phase diagram. This phase diagram enables one to clearly identify not only the physically allowed states, but the set of states connected under an arbitrary quantum operation. We pay particular attention to the maximally entangled mixed states (MEMS) of each system.…
The relation between the violation of the Bell-CHSH inequalities and entanglement properties of quantum states is not clear so one may consider the mixedness of the system to understand the entanglement properties better than the Bell-CHSH inequality. In this respect, we prove that if the mixedness of the state measured by the linear entropy is less than 2/3 but strictly greater than zero then the two qubit states are entangled. But if the linear entropy is greater or equal to 2/3 then the state may or may not be entangled. Further we show that our entanglement criterion detects larger set of …
In this work, we show that while all measures of mixedness may be used to witness entanglement, all such entangled states must have a negative partial transpose (NPT). Though computing the negativity of the partial transpose scales well at high dimension, it relies on knowing the complete quantum state, which does not. To address this, we compare different measures of mixedness over uniform ensembles of joint quantum states at varying dimension to gauge their relative success in witnessing entanglement. In doing so, we find that comparing joint and marginal purities is overwhelmingly more succ…
Beyond the simplest case of bipartite qubits, the composite Hilbert space of multipartite systems is largely unexplored. In order to explore such systems, it is important to derive analytic expressions for parameters which characterize the system's state space. Two such parameters are the degree of genuine multipartite entanglement and the degree of mixedness of the system's state. We explore these two parameters for an N-qubit system whose density matrix has an X form. We derive the class of states that has the maximum amount of genuine multipartite entanglement for a given amount of mixednes…
We analyze the effects of quantum correlations, such as entanglement and discord, on the efficiency of phase estimation by studying four quantum circuits that can be readily implemented using NMR techniques. These circuits define a standard strategy of repeated single-qubit measurements, a classical strategy where only classical correlations are allowed, and two quantum strategies where nonclassical correlations are allowed. In addition to counting space (number of qubits) and time (number of gates) requirements, we introduce mixedness as a key constraint of the experiment. We compare the effi…
We characterize violation of CHSH inequalities for mixed two-qubit states by their mixedness and entanglement. The class of states that have maximum degree of CHSH violation for a given linear entropy is also constructed.
A formalism for two-photon Stokes parameters is introduced to describe the polarization entanglement of photon pairs. This leads to the definition of a degree of two-photon polarization, which describes the extent to which the two photons act as a pair and not as two independent photons. This pair-wise polarization is complementary to the degree of polarization of the individual photons. The approach provided here has a number of advantages over the density matrix formalism: it allows the one- and two-photon features of the state to be separated and offers a visualization of the mixedness of t…
We investigate the dynamics of entanglement, uncertainty and mixedness by solving time dependent Schrödinger equation for two-dimensional harmonic oscillator with time dependent frequency and coupling parameter subject to a static magnetic field. We compute the purities (global/marginal) and then calculate explicitly the linear entropy $S_{L}$ as well as logarithmic negativity $\mathcal{N}$ using the symplectic parametrization of vacuum state. We introduce the spectral decomposition to diagonalize the marginal state and get the expression of von Neumann entropy $S_{von}$ and establish its link…
We classify the entanglement of two--mode Gaussian states according to their degree of total and partial mixedness. We derive exact bounds that determine maximally and minimally entangled states for fixed global and marginal purities. This characterization allows for an experimentally reliable estimate of continuous variable entanglement based on measurements of purity.
We report a controllable method for producing mixed two-photon states via Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion with a two-type-I crystal geometry. By using variable polarization rotators (VPRs), one obtains mixed states of various purities and degrees of entanglement depending on the parameters of the VPRs. The generated states are characterized by quantum state tomography. The experimental results are found to be in good agreement with the theory. The method can be easily implemented for various experiments which require the generation of states with controllable degrees of entanglement or …
We develop a theory of a quantifier of bipartite Gaussian entanglement called Gaussian intrinsic entanglement (GIE) which was proposed recently in [L. Mišta {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 117}, 240505 (2016)]. The GIE provides a compromise between computable and physically meaningful entanglement quantifiers and so far it was calculated for two-mode Gaussian states including all symmetric partial minimum-uncertainty states, weakly mixed asymmetric squeezed thermal states with partial minimum uncertainty, and weakly mixed symmetric squeezed thermal states. We improve the method of derivati…
We consider entanglement swapping with general mixed two-mode Gaussian states and calculate the optimal gains for a broad class of such states including those states most relevant in communication scenarios. We show that for this class of states, entanglement swapping adds no additional mixedness, that is the ensemble average output state has the same purity as the input states. This implies that, by using intermediate entanglement swapping steps, it is, in principle, possible to distribute entangled two-mode Gaussian states of higher purity as compared to direct transmission. We then apply th…
Quantum entanglement of pure states of a bipartite system is defined as the amount of local or marginal ({\em i.e.}referring to the subsystems) entropy. For mixed states this identification vanishes, since the global loss of information about the state makes it impossible to distinguish between quantum and classical correlations. Here we show how the joint knowledge of the global and marginal degrees of information of a quantum state, quantified by the purities or in general by information entropies, provides an accurate characterization of its entanglement. In particular, for Gaussian states …
We present a mathematical formulation of old teleportation protocol (original teleportation protocol introduced by Bennett et.al.) for mixed states and study in detail the role of mixedness of the two qubit quantum channel in a teleportation protocol. We show that maximally entangled mixed state described by the density matrix of rank-4 will be useful as a two qubit teleportation channel to teleport a single qubit mixed state when the teleportation channel parameter p1 greater than 0.5. Also we discuss the case when p1 less than equal to 0.5.
We study two different decoherence modes for entangled qubits by considering a Liouville - von Neumann master equation. Mode A is determined by projection operators onto the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian and mode B by projectors onto rotated states. We present solutions for general and for Bell diagonal states and calculate for the later the mixedness and the amount of entanglement given by the concurrence. We propose a realization of the decoherence modes within neutron interferometry by applying fluctuating magnetic fields. An experimental test of the Kraus operator decomposition describing…
We derive two complementarity relations that constrain the individual and bipartite properties that may simultaneously exist in a multi-qubit system. The first expression, valid for an arbitrary pure state of n qubits, demonstrates that the degree to which single particle properties are possessed by an individual member of the system is limited by the bipartite entanglement that exists between that qubit and the remainder of the system. This result implies that the phenomenon of entanglement sharing is one specific consequence of complementarity. The second expression, which holds for an arbit…
We discuss the concept of how entanglement changes with respect to different factorizations of the total algebra which describes the quantum states. Depending on the considered factorization a quantum state appears either entangled or separable. For pure states we always can switch unitarily between separability and entanglement, however, for mixed states a minimal amount of mixedness is needed. We discuss our general statements in detail for the familiar case of qubits, the GHZ states, Werner states and Gisin states, emphasizing their geometric features. As theorists we use and play with this…
We develop theoretical and numerical tools for the quantification of entanglement in systems with continuous degrees of freedom. Continuous variable entanglement swapping is introduced and based on this idea we develop methods of entanglement purification for continuous variable systems. The success of these entanglement purification methods is then assessed using these tools.
We give a protocol and criteria for demonstrating unconditional teleportation of continuous-variable entanglement (i.e., entanglement swapping). The initial entangled states are produced with squeezed light and linear optics. We show that any nonzero entanglement (any nonzero squeezing) in both of two entanglement sources is sufficient for entanglement swapping to occur. In fact, realization of continuous-variable entanglement swapping is possible using only {\it two} single-mode squeezed states.
Entanglement detection and estimation are fundamental in quantum information science. Compared with discrete-variable states, for which lots of efficient entanglement detection criteria and lower bounds of entanglement measures have been proposed, the continuous-variable entanglement is much less understood. Here we shall present a family of entanglement witnesses based on continuous-variable local orthogonal observables (CVLOOs) to detect and estimate entanglement of Gaussian and non-Gaussian states, especially for bound entangled states. By choosing an optimal set of CVLOOs our entanglement …
Entanglement is a crucial resource in quantum information theory. We investigate the use of different forms of entangled states in continuous variable quantum teleportation, specifically the use of a finite-basis entanglement resource. We also consider the continuous variable teleportation of finite-basis states, such as qubits, and present results that point to the possibility of an efficient conditional scheme for continuous variable teleportation of such states with near-unit fidelity using finite-basis entanglement.
This article discusses entanglement between two subsystems, one with discrete degrees of freedom and the other with continuous degrees of freedom. The overlap integral between continuous variable wave functions emerges as an important parameter to characterize this kind entanglement. ``Beam-like'' entanglement and ``shape-like'' entanglement are contrasted. One example of this kind of entanglement is between between the spin degrees of freedom and the momentum degrees of freedom for a non-relativistic particle. This intraparticle entanglement is Galilean invariant.
We theoretically show that bright six-partite continuous-variable entanglement can be generated using cascaded four-wave mixing effects of third-order nonlinearity atomic systems above threshold. The six-partite continuous-variable entanglement among the six cavity fields with different frequencies is analyzed by applying optimized inseparability criteria proposed by Van Loock and Furusawa.
Starting from arbitrary Hilbert spaces, we reduce the problem to verify entanglement of any bipartite quantum state to finite dimensional subspaces. Hence, entanglement is a finite dimensional property. A generalization for multipartite quantum states is also given.
We present a model to realize quantum feedback control of continuous variable entanglement. It consists of two interacting bosonic modes subject to amplitude damping and achieving entangled Gaussian steady state. The possibility to greatly improve the degree of entanglement by means of Markovian (direct) feedback is then shown.
We suggest an experimentally realizable scheme to test entanglement of a mixed Gaussian continuous variable state. We find that the entanglement condition is simplified for the family of Gaussian states which are relevant to experimental realization. The entanglement condition is then shown to be directly related to joint homodyne measurements. We show how robust the proposed test of entanglement is against imperfect detection efficiency.
We explore the possibility of entanglement detection in continuous variable systems by entanglement witnesses based on covariance matrices, constructible from random homodyne measurements. We propose new linear constraints characterizing the entanglement witnesses based on second moments, and use them in a semidefinite program providing the optimal entanglement test for given random measurements. We test the method on the class of squeezed vacuum states and study the efficiency of entanglement detection in general unknown covariance matrices.
We introduce a multi-mode squeezing coefficient to characterize entanglement in $N$-partite continuous-variable systems. The coefficient relates to the squeezing of collective observables in the $2N$-dimensional phase space and can be readily extracted from the covariance matrix. Simple extensions further permit to reveal entanglement within specific partitions of a multipartite system. Applications with nonlinear observables allow for the detection of non-Gaussian entanglement.
We investigate how entanglement can be transferred between continuous variable and qubit systems. We find that a two-mode squeezed vacuum state and a continuous variable Werner state can be converted to the product states of infinitive number of two-qubit states while keeping the entanglement. The reverse process is also possible.
We propose the definition of the geometric measure of entanglement for continuous variable states. On the basis of this definition we examine entanglement of the graph states obtained as a result of action of a unitary operator on the ground state of a system of $N$ noninteracting harmonic oscillators. We find that the entanglement of a harmonic oscillator with other ones is defined by the value of its vertex degree.
We provide a method to construct entanglement criteria for arbitrary multipartite systems of discrete or continuous variables and hybrid combinations of both. While any set of local operators generates a sufficient condition for entanglement of arbitrary quantum states, a suitable set leads to a necessary and sufficient criterion for pure states. The criteria are readily implementable with existing technology and reveal entanglement that remains undetected by the respective state-of-the-art methods for discrete and continuous variables.
We present several entanglement conditions in order to detect bound entangled states in continuous variable systems. Specifically, Werner and Wolf [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 3658 (2001)] and Horodecki and Lewenstein [Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2657 (2000)] have proposed examples of bound entangled Gaussian state and bound entangled non-Gaussian state, respectively, of which entanglement can be detected by using our entanglement conditions.
The cavity-optomechanical radiation pressure interaction provides the means to create entanglement between a mechanical oscillator and an electromagnetic field interacting with it. Here we show how we can utilize this entanglement within the framework of time-continuous quantum control, in order to engineer the quantum state of the mechanical system. Specifically, we analyze how to prepare a low-entropy mechanical state by (measurement-based) feedback cooling operated in the blue detuned regime, the creation of bipartite mechanical entanglement via time-continuous entanglement swapping, and pr…
We study a proposal of generating macroscopic continuous-variable entanglement with two coupled waveguides respectively carrying optical damping and optical gain. Moreover, a squeezing element is added into one or both waveguides. We show that quantum noise effect existing in the process is essential to the degree of the generated entanglement. It will totally eliminate the entanglement in the setup of adding the squeezing element into the waveguide filled with optical damping material, but will not completely damp the entanglement to zero in the other configurations of having the squeezing el…
We propose a method to improve the performance of two entanglement-based continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocols using noiseless linear amplifiers. The two entanglement-based schemes consist of an entanglement distribution protocol with an untrusted source and an entanglement swapping protocol with an untrusted relay. Simulation results show that the noiseless linear amplifiers can improve the performance of these two protocols, in terms of maximal transmission distances, when we consider small amounts of entanglement, as typical in realistic setups.
We demonstrate the principle of one-sided device-independent continuous variable (CV) quantum information. In situations of no trust, we show by enactment how the use of standard CV entanglement criteria can mislead Charlie into thinking Alice and Bob share entanglement, when the data is actually generated classically using a Local Hidden Variable theory based on the Wigner function. We distinguish between criteria that demonstrate CV entanglement, and criteria that demonstrate the CV Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering paradox. We show that the latter, but not the former, are necessarily o…
We report the experimental transformation of quadrature entanglement between two optical beams into continuous variable polarization entanglement. We extend the inseparability criterion proposed by Duan, et al. [Duan00] to polarization states and use it to quantify the entanglement between the three Stokes operators of the beams. We propose an extension to this scheme utilizing two quadrature entangled pairs for which all three Stokes operators between a pair of beams are entangled.
We discuss how continous-variable quantum states such as coherent states and two-mode squeezed states can be encoded in phase-reference independent ways.
We observed continuous-variable entanglement between the bright beams emitted above threshold by an ultrastable optical parametric oscillator, classically phase-locked at a frequency difference of 161.8273240(5) MHz. The amplitude-difference squeezing is -3 dB and the phase-sum one is -1.35 dB. Besides proving entanglement in a new physical system, the phase-locked OPO, such unprecedented frequency-difference stability paves the way for transferring entanglement between different optical frequencies and densely implementing continuous-variable quantum information in the frequency domain.
Inspired by the discrete-variable pairwise entanglement, in this work, we in theory analyze the continuous-variable pairwise entanglement between microwave modes based on a hybrid optoelectromechanical system, where the multi-pair microwave superconducting circuits simutaneously interact with each other via a mechanical resonator, which forms a Fabry-Pérot cavity along with a standing mirror. With experimentally reachable parameter settings, wanted entanglement can be acheived when the pair number up to 10, and more is also available, which has the potential to be useful in quantum technologie…
