For systems consisting of distinguishable particles, there exists an agreed upon notion of entanglement which is fundamentally based on the possibility of addressing individually each one of the constituent parties. Instead, the indistinguishability of identical particles hinders their individual addressability and has prompted diverse, sometimes discordant definitions of entanglement. In the present review, we provide a comparative analysis of the relevant existing approaches, which is based on the characterization of bipartite entanglement in terms of the behaviour of correlation functions. Such a a point of view provides a fairly general setting where to discuss the presence of non-local effects; it is performed in the light of the following general consistency criteria: i) entanglement corresponds to non-local correlations and cannot be generated by local operations; ii) when, by "freezing" suitable degrees of freedom, identical particles can be effectively distinguished, their entanglement must reduce to the one that holds for distinguishable particles; iii) in absence of other quantum resources, only entanglement can outperform classical information protocols. These three requests provide a setting that allows to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of the existing approaches to indistinguishable particle entanglement and to contribute to the current understanding of such a crucial issue. Indeed, they can be classified into five different classes: four hinging on the notion of particle and one based on that of physical modes. We show that only the latter approach is consistent with all three criteria, each of the others indeed violating at least one of them.
Entanglement is one of the strongest quantum correlation, and is a key ingredient in fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics and a resource for quantum technologies. While entanglement theory is well settled for distinguishable particles, there are five inequivalent approaches to entanglement of indistinguishable particles. We analyse the different definitions of indistinguishable particle entanglement in the light of the locality notion. This notion is specified by two steps: i) the identification of subsystems by means of their local operators; ii) the requirement that entanglement represen…
We study the problem of witnessing entanglement among indistinguishable particles. For this purpose, we derive a set of equations which results in necessary and sufficient conditions for probing multipartite entanglement between arbitrary systems of Bosons or Fermions. The solution of these equations yields the construction of optimal entanglement witnesses for partial and full entanglement in discrete and continuous variable systems. Our approach unifies the verification of entanglement for distinguishable and indistinguishable particles. We provide general solutions for certain observables t…
We determine the degree of entanglement for two indistinguishable particles based on the two-qubit tensor product structure, which is a framework for emphasizing entanglement founded on observational quantities. Our theory connects canonical entanglement and entanglement based on occupation number for two fermions and for two bosons and shows that the degree of entanglement, based on linear entropy, is closely related to the correlation measure for both the bosonic and fermionic cases.
We present a general criterion for entanglement of N indistinguishable particles decomposed into arbitrary s subsystems based on the unambiguous measurability of correlation. Our argument provides a unified viewpoint on the entanglement of indistinguishable particles, which is still unsettled despite various proposals made mainly for the s = 2 case. Even though entanglement is defined only with reference to the measurement setup, we find that the so-called i.i.d. states form a special class of bosonic states which are universally separable.
We discuss particle entanglement in systems of indistinguishable bosons and fermions, in finite Hilbert spaces, with focus on operational measures of quantum correlations. We show how to use von Neumann entropy, Negativity and entanglement witnesses in these cases, proving interesting relations. We obtain analytic expressions to quantify quantum correlations in homogeneous D-dimensional Hamiltonian models with certain symmetries.
Hyper-hybrid entanglement for two indistinguishable bosons has been recently proposed by Li \textit{et al.} [Y. Li, M. Gessner, W. Li, and A. Smerzi, \href{https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.050404}{Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 050404 (2018)}]. In the current paper, we show that this entanglement exists for two indistinguishable fermions also. Next, we establish two {\em no-go} results: no hyper-hybrid entanglement for two {\em distinguishable} particles, and no unit fidelity quantum teleportation using {\em indistinguishable} particles. If either of these is possible, then the {\em no-signaling…
Two important results of quantum physics are the \textit{no-cloning} theorem and the \textit{monogamy of entanglement}. The former forbids the creation of an independent and identical copy of an arbitrary unknown quantum state and the latter restricts the shareability of quantum entanglement among multiple quantum systems. For distinguishable particles, one of these results imply the other. In this Letter, we show that in qubit systems with indistinguishable particles (where each particle cannot be addressed individually), a maximum violation of the monogamy of entanglement is possible by the …
We introduce geometric measures of entanglement for indistinguishable particles, which apply to mixed states, multipartite systems, and arbitrary dimensions. They are based on generalized (i.e., not necessarily finite) norms on the set of quantum states and lead to the first necessary and sufficient computational separability criterion in this general setting. The coherent approach developed in the paper allows us to compare, in particular, entanglement for fermionic and distinguishable particles: The entanglement measure for fermionic particles coincides with the corresponding entanglement me…
We extend the criteria for $k$-particle entanglement from the spin squeezing parameter presented in [A.S. Sørensen and K. Mølmer, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 86}, 4431 (2001)] to systems with a fluctating number of particles. We also discuss how other spin squeezing inequalities can be generalized to this situation. Further, we give an operational meaning to the bounds for cases where the individual particles cannot be addressed. As a by-product, this allows us to show that in spin squeezing experiments with cold gases the particles are typically distinguishable in practise. Our results justify the …
We elaborate the concept of entanglement for multipartite system with bosonic and fermionic constituents and its generalization to systems with arbitrary parastatistics. The entanglement is characterized in terms of generalized Segre maps, supplementing thus an algebraic approach to the problem by a more geometric point of view.
We provide a general framework which allows one to obtain the dynamics of $N$ noninteracting spatially indistinguishable particles locally coupled to separated environments. The approach is universal, being valid for both bosons and fermions and for any type of system-environment interaction. It is then applied to study the dynamics of two identical qubits under paradigmatic Markovian noises, such as phase damping, depolarizing and amplitude damping. We find that spatial indistinguishability of identical qubits is a controllable intrinsic property of the system which protects quantum entanglem…
The concept of entanglement in systems where the particles are indistinguishable has been the subject of much recent interest and controversy. In this paper we study the notion of entanglement of particles introduced by Wiseman and Vaccaro [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 097902 (2003)] in several specific physical systems, including some that occur in condensed matter physics. The entanglement of particles is relevant when the identical particles are itinerant and so not distinguished by their position as in spin models. We show that entanglement of particles can behave differently to other approaches t…
Using an operational definition we quantify the entanglement, $E_P$, between two parties who share an arbitrary pure state of $N$ indistinguishable particles. We show that $E_P \leq E_M$, where $E_M$ is the bipartite entanglement calculated from the mode-occupation representation. Unlike $E_M$, $E_P$ is {\em super-additive}. For example, $E_P =0$ for any single-particle state, but the state $\ket{1}\ket{1}$, where both modes are split between the two parties, has $E_P = 1/2$. We discuss how this relates to quantum correlations between particles, for both fermions and bosons.
There is a debate in course about the quantification of entanglement of indistinguishable particles and recently a new method due to Lo Franco and Compagno (LFC) [Sci. Rep. \textbf{6}, 20603 (2016)] appeared with the aim of settling the controversies of this debate. In this work we show that the LFC approach can be recovered using the second quantization formalism and a local single-particle basis to perform the trace over one particle state. The use of the second quantization formalism has the advantage of being well known in many-body physics. We also compare the LFC and second quantization …
We investigate the quantum phase transitions of the extended Hubbard model at half-filling with periodic boundary conditions employing the entanglement of particles, as opposed to the more traditional entanglement of modes. Our results show that the entanglement has either discontinuities or local minima at the critical points. We associate the discontinuities to first order transitions, and the minima to second order ones. Thus we show that the entanglement of particles can be used to derive the phase diagram, except for the subtle transitions between the phases SDW-BOW, and the superconducto…
We discuss a general notion of quantum correlations in fermionic or bosonic indistinguishable particles. Our approach is mainly based on the identification of the algebra of single-particle observables, which allows us to devise an activation protocol in which the \textit{quantumness of correlations} in the system leads to a unavoidable creation of entanglement with the measurement apparatus. Using the distillable entanglement, or the relative entropy of entanglement, as entanglement measure, we show that our approach is equivalent to the notion of minimal disturbance in a single-particle von …
Quantum mechanical entanglement is a resource for quantum computation, quantum teleportation, and quantum cryptography. The ability to quantify this resource correctly has thus become of great interest to those working in the field of quantum information theory. In this paper, we show that all existing entanglement measures but one fail important tests of fitness when applied to n particle, m site states of indistinguishable particles, where n,m>=2. The accepted method of measuring the entanglement of a bipartite system of distinguishable particles is to use the von Neumann entropy of the redu…
We analyze the concept of entanglement for multipartite system with bosonic and fermionic constituents and its generalization to systems with arbitrary parastatistics. We use the representation theory of symmetry groups to formulate a unified approach to this problem in terms of simple tensors with appropriate symmetry. For an arbitrary parastatistics, we define the S-rank generalizing the notion of the Schmidt rank. The S-rank, defined for all types of tensors, serves for distinguishing entanglement of pure states. In addition, for Bose and Fermi statistics, we construct an analog of the Jami…
The study of entanglement in systems composed of identical particles raises interesting challenges with far-reaching implications in both, our fundamental understanding of the physics of composite quantum systems, and our capability of exploiting quantum indistinguishability as a resource in quantum information theory. Impressive theoretical and experimental advances have been made in the last decades that bring us closer to a deeper comprehension and to a better control of entanglement. Yet, when it involves composites of indistinguishable quantum systems, the very meaning of entanglement, an…
We relate the notion of entanglement for quantum systems composed of two identical constituents to the impossibility of attributing a complete set of properties to both particles. This implies definite constraints on the mathematical form of the state vector associated with the whole system. We then analyze separately the cases of fermion and boson systems, and we show how the consideration of both the Slater-Schmidt number of the fermionic and bosonic analog of the Schmidt decomposition of the global state vector and the von Neumann entropy of the one-particle reduced density operators can su…
Here we discuss a particle-based approach to deal with systems of many identical quantum objects (particles) which never employs labels to mark them. We show that it avoids both methodological problems and drawbacks in the study of quantum correlations associated to the standard quantum mechanical treatment of identical particles. The core of this approach is represented by the multiparticle probability amplitude whose structure in terms of single-particle amplitudes we here derive by first principles. To characterise entanglement among the identical particles, this new method utilises the sam…
We give an elementary introduction to the notion of quantum entanglement between distinguishable parties and review a recent proposal about solid state quantum computation with spin-qubits in quantum dots. The indistinguishable character of the electrons whose spins realize the qubits gives rise to further entanglement-like quantum correlations. We summarize recent results concerning this type of quantum correlations of indistinguishable particles.
Unlike in the case of distinguishable particles, the concept of entanglement-- not to mention, nonlocality-- remains debated in case of indistinguishable particles. Here, we show that certain existing all-versus-nothing type of proofs of contextuality or nonlocality for distinguishable particles, based on a logical contradiction, may be carried over to indistinguishable particles.
The development of scalable sources of non-classical light is fundamental to unlock the technological potential of quantum photonics\cite{Kimble:Nat2008}. Among the systems under investigation, semiconductor quantum dots are currently emerging as near-optimal sources of indistinguishable single photons. However, their performances as sources of entangled-photon pairs are in comparison still modest. Experiments on conventional Stranski-Krastanow InGaAs quantum dots have reported non-optimal levels of entanglement and indistinguishability of the emitted photons. For applications such as entangle…
In this paper, we construct $2n-1$ locally indistinguishable orthogonal product states in $\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^{4}~(n>4)$ and $\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^{5}~(n\geq 5)$ respectively. Moreover, a set of locally indistinguishable orthogonal product states with $2(n+2l)-8$ elements in $\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^{2l}~(n\geq 2l>4)$ and a class of locally indistinguishable orthogonal product states with $2(n+2k+1)-7$ elements in $\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^{2k+1}~(n\geq 2k+1>5)$ are also constructed respectively. These classes of quantum states are then shown to be distinguishabl…
The cascade-emitted biphotons generated from the alkali metal atomic ensembles are an excellent entanglement resource which enables long-distance quantum communication. The communication of quantum information between distant locations can be realized by utilizing the low-loss telecom bandwidth in the upper transition of the cascaded photons in a fiber-based quantum network. Meanwhile, the infrared photon from the lower transition of this highly directional and frequency-correlated biphoton can be created under the four-wave mixing process and can be stored locally as a collective spin wave. H…
We study special relativistic effects on the entanglement between either spins or momenta of composite quantum systems of two spin-1/2 massive particles, either indistinguishable or distinguishable, in inertial reference frames in relative motion. For the case of indistinguishable particles, we consider a balanced scenario where the momenta of the pair are well-defined but not maximally entangled in the rest frame while the spins of the pair are described by a one-parameter ($η$) family of entangled bipartite states. For the case of distinguishable particles, we consider an unbalanced scenario…
An axiomatics for indistinguishability of elementary particles in terms of hidden variables is presented in a manner which depart from the standard approaches usually given to hidden variables. Quantum distribution functions are also discussed and some related lines of work are suggested.
We analyze in a critical way the mathematical treatment of a quantum teleportation experiment performed with photon particles, showing that a symmetrization operation over both the polarization and spatial degrees of freedom of all the particles involved is necessary in order to reproduce correctly the observed experimental data.
We extend a procedure exploiting spatial indistinguishability of identical particles to recover the spoiled entanglement between two qubits interacting with Markovian noisy environments. Here, the spatially localized operations and classical communication (sLOCC) operational framework is used to activate the entanglement restoration from the indistinguishable constituents. We consider the realistic scenario where noise acts for the whole duration of the process. Three standard types of noises are considered: a phase damping, a depolarizing, and an amplitude damping channel. Within this general…
In this article, we discuss the identity and indistinguishability of quantum systems and the consequent need to introduce an extra postulate in Quantum Mechanics to correctly describe situations involving indistinguishable particles. This is, for electrons, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, or in general, the Symmetrization Postulate. Then, we introduce fermions and bosons and the distributions respectively describing their statistical behaviour in indistinguishable situations. Following that, we discuss the spin-statistics connection, as well as alternative statistics and experimental evidence f…
Several convenient formulae for the entanglement of two indistinguishable delocalised spin-1/2 particles are introduced. This generalizes the standard formula for concurrence, valid only in the limit of localised or distinguishable particles. Several illustrative examples are given.
In contrast to conventional, dynamical entanglement, in which particles with definite identity have uncertain properties, in so-called statistical entanglement, which arises between indistinguishable particles because of quantum symmetry rules, even particle identities are uncertain. The Bell and Kochen-Specker theorems imply that quantum properties either lack realism or possess it with a caveat of contextuality or nonlocality. In the matter of identity of multi-particle states of indistinguishable particles, these contrasting ontological attitudes are mirrored by the "bundle" vs. haecceity v…
The standard quantum theory has not taken into account the size of quantum particles, the latter being implicitly treated as material points. The recent interference experiments of Zeilinger [3] with large molecules like fullerenes and the thought experiments of Bozic et al [7] with asymmetrical Young slits make it possible today to take into account the particle size. We present here a complete study of this phenomenon where our simulations show differences between the particles density after the slits and the modulus square of the wave function. Then we propose a crucial experiment that allo…
It is shown that quantum systems of identical particles can be treated as if they were different when they are in well differentiated states. This simplifying assumption allows the consideration of quantum systems isolated from the rest of the universe and justifies many intuitive statements about identical systems. However, it is shown that this simplification may lead to wrong results in the calculation of the entropy. Keywords: quantum mechanics, identical systems, entropy
Consider an arbitrary local quantum field theory with a gap or an arbitrary gapless free theory. We consider states in such a theory, that describe two entangled particles localized in disjoint regions of space. We show that in such a state, to leading order, Rényi entropies of spatial regions, containing only one of the particles are same as their quantum mechanical counterparts, after subtraction of vacuum contribution. Subleading corrections depend on overlap of wave functions. These results suggest that Von Neumann entropy of a spatial region, after subtraction of vacuum contribution, can …
Geometric quantifier of the incompatibility of single-particle property attribution in indistinguishable boson systems
Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba（科尔多瓦国立大学数学、天文学、物理与计算学院）；Instituto de Física Enrique Gaviola, CONICET - UNC（恩里克·加维亚拉物理研究所，阿根廷国家科学研究委员会-科尔多瓦国立大学）；Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México（墨西哥国立自治大学物理研究所）；Universidad Nacional de Hurlingham (UNAHUR)（乌尔辛汉姆国立大学）
We study different notions of quantum correlations in multipartite systems of distinguishable and indistinguishable particles. Based on the definition of quantum coherence for a single particle, we consider two possible extensions of this concept to the many-particle scenario and determine the influence of the exchange symmetry. Moreover, we characterize the relation of multiparticle coherence to the entanglement of the compound quantum system. To support our general treatment with examples, we consider the quantum correlations of a collection of qudits. The impact of local and global quantum …
We present an investigation of many-particle quantum walks in systems of non-interacting distinguishable particles. Along with a redistribution of the many-particle density profile we show that the collective evolution of the many-particle system resembles the single-particle quantum walk evolution when the number of steps is greater than the number of particles in the system. For non-uniform initial states we show that the quantum walks can be effectively used to separate the basis states of the particle in position space and grouping like state together. We also discuss a two-particle quantu…
We establish a mathematically rigorous, general and quantitative framework to describe currents of non- (or weakly) interacting, indistinguishable particles driven far from equilibrium. We derive tight upper and lower bounds for the achievable fermionic and bosonic steady state current, respectively, which can serve as benchmarks for special cases of interacting many-particle dynamics. For fermionic currents, we identify a symmetry-induced enhancement mechanism in parameter regimes where the coupling between system and reservoirs is weak. This mechanism is broadly applicable provided the inter…
We show that for fermion states, measurements of any two finite outcome particle quantum numbers (e.g.\ spin) are not constrained by a minimum total uncertainty. We begin by defining uncertainties in terms of the outputs of a measurement apparatus. This allows us to compare uncertainties between multi-particle states of distinguishable and indistinguishable particles. Entropic uncertainty relations are derived for both distinguishable and indistinguishable particles. We then derive upper bounds on the minimum total uncertainty for bosons and fermions. These upper bounds apply to any pair of pa…
We introduce a framework for the construction of completely positive maps for subsystems of indistinguishable fermionic particles. In this scenario, the initial global state is always correlated, and it is not possible to tell system and environment apart. Nonetheless, a reduced map in the operator sum representation is possible for some sets of states where the only non-classical correlation present is exchange.
We evaluate the degree of quantum correlation between two fermions (bosons) subject to continuous time quantum walks in a one-dimensional ring lattice with periodic boundary conditions. In our approach, no particle-particle interaction is considered. We show that the interference effects due to exchange symmetry can result into the appearance of non-classical correlations. The role played onto the appearance of quantum correlations by the quantum statistics of the particles, the boundary conditions, and the partition of the system is widely investigated. Quantum correlations also been investig…
Anyons in one spatial dimension can be defined by correctly identifying the configuration space of indistinguishable particles and imposing Robin boundary conditions. This allows an interpolation between the bosonic and fermionic limits. In this paper, we study the quantum entanglement between two one-dimensional anyons on a real line as a function of their statistics.
We propose an entanglement concentration scheme which uses only the effects of quantum statistics of indistinguishable particles. This establishes the fact that useful quantum information processing can be accomplished by quantum statistics alone. Due to the basis independence of statistical effects, our protocol requires less knowledge of the initial state than most entanglement concentration schemes. Moreover, no explicit controlled operation is required at any stage.
A definition of detailed balance tailored to a system of indistinguishable fermions is suggested and studied using an entangled fermionic state. This is done in analogy to a known characterization of standard quantum detailed balance with respect to a reversing operation.
