We show how to design families of operational criteria that distinguish entangled from separable quantum states. The simplest of these tests corresponds to the well-known Peres-Horodecki positive partial transpose (PPT) criterion, and the more complicated tests are strictly stronger. The new criteria are tractable due to powerful computational and theoretical methods for the class of convex optimization problems known as semidefinite programs. We successfully applied the results to many low-dimensional states from the literature where the PPT test fails. As a byproduct of the criteria, we provide an explicit construction of the corresponding entanglement witnesses.
We demonstrate that one maximally entangled state is sufficient and necessary to distinguish a complete basis of maximally entangled states by local operation and classical communication.
A scheme to distinguish entangled two-photon-polarization states (ETP) from two independent entangled one-photon-polarization states (EOP) is proposed. Using this scheme, the experimental generation of ETP by parametric down-conversion is confirmed through the anti-correlations between three orthogonal two-photon-polarization states. The estimated fraction of ETP among the correlated photon pairs is 37% in the present experimental setup.
We present a general description of separable states in Quantum Mechanics. In particular, our result gives an easy proof that inseparabitity (or entanglement) is a pure quantum (noncommutative) notion. This implies that distinction between separability and inseparabitity has sense only for composite systems consisting of pure quantum subsystems. Moreover, we provide the unified characterization of pure-state entanglement and mixed-state entanglement.
We investigate optimal separable approximations (decompositions) of states rho of bipartite quantum systems A and B of arbitrary dimensions MxN following the lines of Ref. [M. Lewenstein and A. Sanpera, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 2261 (1998)]. Such approximations allow to represent in an optimal way any density operator as a sum of a separable state and an entangled state of a certain form. For two qubit systems (M=N=2) the best separable approximation has a form of a mixture of a separable state and a projector onto a pure entangled state. We formulate a necessary condition that the pure state in t…
Every entangled state can be perturbed, for instance by decoherence, and stay entangled. For a large class of pure entangled states, we show how large the perturbation can be. Our class includes all pure bipartite and all maximally entangled states. For an entangled state, E, the constucted neighborhood of entangled states is the region outside two parallel hyperplanes, which sandwich the set of all separable states. The states for which these neighborhoods are largest are the maximally entangled ones. As the number of particles, or the dimensions of the Hilbert spaces for two of the particles…
Hybrid entangled states, having entanglement between different degrees-of-freedom (DoF) of a particle pair, are of great interest for quantum information science and communication protocols. Among different DoFs, the hybrid entangled states encoded with polarization and orbital angular momentum (OAM) allow the generation of qubit-qudit entangled states, macroscopic entanglement with very high quanta of OAM and improvement in angular resolution in remote sensing. Till date, such hybrid entangled states are generated by using a high-fidelity polarization entangled state and subsequent imprinting…
According to usual definitions, entangled states cannot be given a separable decomposition in terms of products of local density operators. If we relax the requirement that the local density operators be positive, then an entangled quantum state may admit a separable decomposition in terms of more general sets of single-system operators. This form of separability can be used to construct classical models and simulation methods when only restricted set of measurements are available. With such motivations in mind, we ask what are the smallest such sets of local operators such that a pure biparti…
We investigate the detection of entanglement in $n$-partite quantum states. We obtain practical separability criteria to identify genuinely entangled and non-separable mixed quantum states. No numerical optimization or eigenvalue evaluation is needed, and our criteria can be evaluated by simple computations involving components of the density matrix. We provide examples in which our criteria perform better than all known separability criteria. Specifically, we are able to detect genuine $n$-partite entanglement which has previously not been identified. In addition, our criteria can be used in …
We discuss quantum random walk of two photons using linear optical elements. We analyze the quantum random walk using photons in a variety of quantum states including entangled states. We find that for photons initially in separable Fock states, the final state is entangled. For polarization entangled photons produced by type II downconverter, we calculate the joint probability of detecting two photons at a given site. We show the remarkable dependence of the two photon detection probability on the quantum nature of the state. In order to understand the quantum random walk, we present exact an…
We show that no entanglement is necessary to distribute entanglement; that is, two distant particles can be entangled by sending a third particle that is never entangled with the other two. Similarly, two particles can become entangled by continuous interaction with a highly mixed mediating particle that never itself becomes entangled. We also consider analogous properties of completely positive maps, in which the composition of two separable maps can create entanglement.
We extend the relation between absolutely maximally entangled (AME) states and quantum maximum distance separable (QMDS) codes by constructing whole families of QMDS codes from their parent AME states. We introduce a reduction-friendly form for the generator set of the stabilizer representation of an AME state, from which the stabilizer form for children codes, all QMDS, can be obtained. We then relate this to optimal codes for one-way quantum repeaters, by minimizing the short-term infrastructure cost as well as the long-term running cost of such quantum repeaters. We establish that AME state…
We use the linear programming algorithm introduced by Akulin et al. [V. M. Akulin, G. A. Kabatiansky, and A. Mandilara, Phys. Rev. A 92, 042322 (2015)] to perform best separable approximation on two-qutrit random density matrices. We combine the numerical results with theoretical methods in order to generate random representative families of positive partial transposed bound entangled (BE) states and analyze their properties. Our results are disclosing that for the two-qutrit system the BE states have negligible volume and that these form tiny `islands' sporadically distributed over the surfac…
We compare the classification as entangled or separable of Bell diagonal bipartite qudits with positive partial transposition (PPT) and their properties for different dimensions. For dimension $d \geq 3$, a form of entanglement exists that is hard to detect and called bound entanglement due to the fact that such entangled states cannot be used for entanglement distillation. Up to this date, no efficient solution is known to differentiate bound entangled from separable states. We address and compare this problem named separability problem for a family of bipartite Bell diagonal qudits with spec…
Modern applications in quantum computation and quantum communication require the precise characterization of quantum states and quantum channels. In practice, this means that one has to determine the quantum capacity of a physical system in terms of measurable quantities. Witnesses, if properly constructed, succeed in performing this task. We derive a method that is capable to compute witnesses for identifying deterministic evolutions and measurement-induced collapse processes. At the same time, applying the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism, it uncovers the entanglement characteristics of biparti…
With a probability of success of $95 \%$ we solve the separability problem for Bell diagonal qutrit states with positive partial transposition (PPT). The separability problem, i.e. distinguishing separable and entangled states, generally lacks an efficient solution due to the existence of bound entangled states. In contrast to free entangled states that can be used for entanglement distillation via local operations and classical communication, these states cannot be detected by the Peres-Horodecki criterion or PPT criterion. We analyze a large family of bipartite qutrit states that can be sepa…
The maximal overlap with the fully separable state for the multipartite entangled pure state with translational invariance is studied explicitly by some exact and numerical evaluations, focusing on the one-dimensional qubit system and some representative types of translational invariance. The results show that the translational invariance of the multipartite state could have an intrinsic effect on the determinations of the maximal overlap and the nearest fully separable state for multipartite entangled states. Furthermore a hierarchy of the basic entangled states with translational invariance …
It was shown that two distant particles can be entangled by sending a third particle never entangled with the other two [T. S. Cubitt et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 037902 (2003)]. In this paper, we investigate a class of three-qubit separable states to distribute entanglement by the same way, and calculate the maximal amount of entanglement which two particles of separable states in the class can have after applying the way.
We discuss the use of the Gilbert algorithm to tailor entanglement witnesses for unextendibleproduct basis bound entangled states (UPB BE states). The method relies on the fact that an optimalentanglement witness is given by a plane perpendicular to a line between the reference state, entanglementof which is to be witnessed, and its closest separable state (CSS). The Gilbert algorithm finds anapproximation of CSS. In this article, we investigate if this approximation can be good enough toyield a valid entanglement witness. We compare witnesses found with Gilbert algorithm and those givenby Ban…
By introducing a quantitative `degree of commutativity' in terms of the angle between spin-observables we present two tight quantitative trade-off relations in the case of two qubits: First, for entangled states, between the degree of commutativity of local observables and the maximal amount of violation of the Bell inequality: if both local angles increase from zero to π/2 (i.e., the degree of local commutativity decreases), the maximum violation of the Bell inequality increases. Secondly, a converse trade-off relation holds for separable states: if both local angles approach π/2 the maximal …
We characterize the boundary of the convex compact set of absolutely separable states, referred as {\bf AS}, that cannot be transformed to entangled states by global unitary operators, in $2\otimes d$ Hilbert space. However, we show that the absolutely separable states of rank-$(2d-1)$ are extreme points of such sets. We then discuss conditions to examine if a given full-rank absolutely separable state is an interior point or a boundary point of {\bf AS}. Moreover, we construct two-qubit absolutely separable states which are boundary points but not extreme points of {\bf AS} and prove the exis…
We derive Bohm's trajectories from Bell's beables for arbitrary bipartite systems composed by dissipative noninteracting harmonic oscillators at finite temperature. As an application of our result, we calculate the Bohmian trajectories of particles described by a generalized Werner state, comparing the trajectories when the sate is either separable or entangled. We show that qualitative differences appear in the trajectories for entangled states as compared with those for separable states.
The distribution of entanglement between macroscopically separated parties represents a crucial protocol for future quantum information networks. Surprisingly, it has been theoretically shown that two distant systems can be entangled by sending a third mediating system that is not entangled with either of them. Such a possibility seems to contradict the intuition that to distribute entanglement, the transmitted system always needs to be entangled with the sender. Here, we experimentally distribute entanglement by exchanging a subsystem and successfully prove that this subsystem is not entangle…
Entangled states are undoubtedly an integral part of various quantum information processing tasks. On the other hand, absolutely separable states which cannot be made entangled under any global unitary operations are useless from the resource theoretic perspective, and hence identifying non-absolutely separable states can be an important issue for designing quantum technologies. Here we report that nonlinear witness operators provide significant improvements in detecting non-absolutely separable states over their linear analogs, by invoking examples of states in various dimensions. We also add…
Classifying states as entangled or separable is a highly challenging task, while it is also one of the foundations of quantum information processing theory. This task is higly nontrivial even for relatively simple cases, such as two-qutrit Bell-diagonal states, i.e., mixture of nine mutually orthogonal maximally entangled states. In this article we apply the Gilbert algorithm to revise previously obtained results for this class. In particular we use ``cartography of entanglement'' to argue that most states left in [Hiesmayr, B. C. {\em Scientific Reports} {\bf 11}, 19739 (2021)] as unknown to …
The problem of of how many entangled or, respectively, separable states there are in the set of all quantum states is investigated. We study to what extent the choice of a measure in the space of density matrices describing N--dimensional quantum systems affects the results obtained. We demonstrate that the link between the purity of the mixed states and the probability of entanglement is not sensitive to the measure chosen. Since the criterion of partial transposition is not sufficient to distinguish all separable states for N > 6, we develop an efficient algorithm to calculate numerically th…
The robustness of entanglement results of Vidal and Tarrach considered the problem whereby an entangled state is mixed with a separable state so that the overall state becomes non-entangled. In general it is known that there are also cases when entangled states are mixed with other entangled states and where the sum is separable. In this paper, we treat the more general case where entangled states can be mixed with any states so that the resulting mixture is unentangled. It is found that entangled pure states for this generalized case have the same robustness as the restricted case of Vidal an…
It is shown in a recent preprint [arXiv:2001.10008] that the central spin model with XX-type qubit-bath coupling is integrable for a central spin $s_0=1/2$. Two types of eigenstates, separable states (dark states) and entangled states (bright states) between the central spin and the bath spins, are manifested. In this work, we show by using an operator product state approach that the XX central spin model with central spin $s_0>1/2$ and inhomogeneous coupling is partially solvable. That is, a subset of the eigenstates are obtained by the operator product state ansatz. These are the separable s…
One of the fundamental concepts of quantum information theory is that of entanglement purification; that is, the transformation of a partially entangled state into a smaller-dimensional, more completely entangled state. Of particular interest are protocols for entanglement purification (EPPs) that alternate purely local operations with one- or two-way classical communication. In the present work, we consider a more general, but simpler, class of transformations, called separable superoperators. Since every EPP is a separable superoperator, bounds on separable superoperators apply as well to EP…
In this paper we show an explicit construction of multipartite class of entangled states with the PPT (Positive Partial Transposition) property in every cut. We investigate properties of this class of states focusing on the trace distance from the set of separable states. We provide an explicit sub-class of the multipartite entangled PPT states which are arbitrary far from the set of separable states. We argue, that in the multipartite case the mentioned distance increases with dimension of the local Hilbert space. In our construction is we do not have to use many copies of initial state livin…
We construct faces of the convex set of all $2\otimes 4$ bipartite separable states, which are affinely isomorphic to the simplex $Δ_{9}$ with ten extreme points. Every interior point of these faces is a separable state which has a unique decomposition into 10 product states, even though ranks of the state and its partial transpose are 5 and 7, respectively. We also note that the number 10 is greater than $2\times 4$, to disprove a conjecture on the lengths of qubit-qudit separable states. This face is inscribed in the corresponding face of the convex set of all PPT states so that sub-simplice…
We consider a statistical mixture of two identical harmonic oscillators which is characterized by four parameters, namely, the concentrations (x and y) of diagonal and nondiagonal bipartite states, and their associated thermal-like noises (T/a and T, respectively). The fully random mixture of two spins 1/2 as well as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) state are recovered as particular instances. By using the conditional nonextensive entropy as introduced by Abe and Rajagopal, we calculate the separable-entangled frontier. Although this procedure is known to provide a necessary but in general no…
Following recent work of Beigi and Shor, we investigate PPT states that are "heavily entangled." We first exploit volumetric methods to show that in a randomly chosen direction, there are PPT states whose distance in trace norm from separable states is (asymptotically) at least 1/4. We then provide explicit examples of PPT states which are nearly as far from separable ones as possible. To obtain a distance of 2-ε from the separable states, we need a dimension of 2^{poly(\log(1/ε))}, as opposed to 2^{poly(1/ε)} given by the construction of Beigi and Shor. We do so by exploiting the so called {\…
Bipartite quantum states are classified into three categories: separable states, bound entangled states, and free entangled states. It is of great importance to characterize these families of states for the development of quantum information science. In this paper, I show that the separable states and the bound entangled states have a common spectral property. More precisely, I prove that for undistillable -- separable and bound entangled -- states, the eigenvalue vector of the global system is majorized by that of the local system. This result constitutes a new sufficient condition for distil…
In the framework of the theory of open systems based on completely positive quantum dynamical semigroups, we give a description of the continuous-variable entanglement for a system consisting of two noninteracting modes embedded in a thermal environment. By using the Peres-Simon necessary and sufficient criterion for separability of two-mode Gaussian states, we describe the evolution of entanglement in terms of the covariance matrix for Gaussian input states. For all values of the temperature of the thermal reservoir, an initial separable Gaussian state remains separable for all times. In the …
We consider a class of entangled states of a quantum system (S) and a second system (A) where pure states of the former are correlated with mixed states of the latter, and work out the entanglement measure with reference to the nearest separable state. Such `pure-mixed' entanglement is expected when the system S interacts with a macroscopic measuring apparatus in a quantum measurement, where the quantum correlation is destroyed in the process of environment-induced decoherence whereafter only the classical correlation between S and A remains, the latter being large compared to the former. We p…
Geometric properties of the set of quantum entangled states are investigated. We propose an explicit method to compute the dimension of local orbits for any mixed state of the general K x M problem and characterize the set of effectively different states (which cannot be related by local transformations). Thus we generalize earlier results obtained for the simplest 2 x 2 system, which lead to a stratification of the 6D set of N=4 pure states. We define the concept of absolutely separable states, for which all globally equivalent states are separable.
We construct a set of PPT (positive partial transpose) states and show that these PPT states are not separable, thus present a class of bound entangled quantum states.
Entanglement of multipartite systems is studied based on exchange symmetry under the permutation group S_N. With the observation that symmetric property under the exchange of two constituent states and their separability are intimately linked, we show that anti-symmetric (fermionic) states are necessarily globally entangled, while symmetric (bosonic) states are either globally entangled or fully separable and possess essentially identical states in all the constituent systems. It is also shown that there cannot exist a fully separable state which is orthogonal to all symmetric states, and that…
In this review we discuss intriguing properties of apparently classical optical fields, that go beyond purely classical context and allow us to speak about quantum characteristics of such fields and about their applications in quantum technologies. We briefly define the genuinely quantum concepts of entanglement and steering. We then move to the boarder line between classical and quantum world introducing quantum discord, a more general concept of quantum coherence, and finally a controversial notion of classical entanglement. To unveil the quantum aspects of often classically perceived system…
Entanglement is known to be a relative notion, defined with respect to the choice of physical observables to be measured (i.e., the measurement setup used). This implies that, in general, the same state can be both separable and entangled for different measurement setups, but this does not exclude the existence of states which are separable (or entangled) for all possible setups. We show that for systems of bosonic particles there indeed exist such universally separable states: they are i.i.d. pure states. In contrast, there is no such state for fermionic systems with a few exceptional cases. …
We study the distinguishability of bipartite quantum states by Positive Operator-Valued Measures with positive partial transpose (PPT POVMs). The contributions of this paper include: (1). We give a negative answer to an open problem of [M. Horodecki $et. al$, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 047902(2003)] showing a limitation of their method for detecting nondistinguishability. (2). We show that a maximally entangled state and its orthogonal complement, no matter how many copies are supplied, can not be distinguished by PPT POVMs, even unambiguously. This result is much stronger than the previous known on…
A lower bound on the amount of noise that must be added to a GHZ-like entangled state to make it separable (also called the random robustness) is found using the transposition condition. The bound is applicable to arbitrary numbers of subsystems, and dimensions of Hilbert space, and is shown to be exact for qubits. The new bound is compared to previous such bounds on this quantity, and found to be stronger in all cases. It implies that increasing the number of subsystems, rather than increasing their Hilbert space dimension is a more effective way of increasing entanglement. An explicit decomp…
In early days of quantum theory it was believed that the results of measurements performed on two distant physical systems should be uncorrelated thus their quantum state should be separable it means described by a simple tensor product of the individual local state vectors or a tensor product of individual local density operators. It was shown many years ago by EPR that two systems which interacted in the past and separated afterwards had to be described in most cases by particular non-separable states which are called entangled. It was noticed by Zanardi et al. that a Hilbert space of possib…
We obtain the necessary and sufficient separability and distillability conditions of mixtures of a maximally entangled state and the completely separable state in relativistic setting. In an inertial frame we study the entanglement under Wigner rotations induced by Lorentz transformations. We also investigate the mixed state entanglement of scalar and Dirac fields as seen by two relatively accelerated observers. For scalar field we show that in infinite acceleration limit the state has no longer distillable entanglement. For dirac field the entanglement in the infinite acceleration limit is fi…
We consider a Quantum Computer with n quantum-bits (`qubits'), where each qubit is coupled independently to an environment affecting the state in a dephasing or depolarizing way. For mixed states we suggest a quantification for the property of showing {\it quantum} uncertainty on the macroscopic level. We illustrate in which sense a large parameter can be seen as an indicator for large entanglement and give hypersurfaces enclosing the set of separable states. Using methods of the classical theory of maximum likelihood estimation we prove that this parameter is decreasing with 1/\sqrt{n} for al…
We consider bipartite entangled states that cannot outperform separable states in any linear interferometer. Then, we show that these states can still be more useful metrologically than separable states if several copies of the state are provided or an ancilla is added to the quantum system. We present a general method to find the local Hamiltonian for which a given quantum state performs the best compared to separable states. We obtain analytically the optimal Hamiltonian for some quantum states with a high symmetry. We show that all bipartite entangled pure states outperform separable states…
A natural measure in the space of density matrices describing N-dimensional quantum systems is proposed. We study the probability P that a quantum state chosen randomly with respect to the natural measure is not entangled (is separable). We find analytical lower and upper bounds for this quantity. Numerical calculations give P = 0.632 for N=4 and P=0.384 for N=6, and indicate that P decreases exponentially with N. Analysis of a conditional measure of separability under the condition of fixed purity shows a clear dualism between purity and separability: entanglement is typical for pure states, …
The long-standing problem of finding a closed formula for the relative entropy of entanglement (REE) for two qubits is addressed. A compact-form solution to the inverse problem, which characterizes an entangled state for a given closest separable state, is obtained. Analysis of the formula for a large class of entangled states strongly suggests that a compact analytical solution of the original problem, which corresponds to finding the closest separable state for a given entangled state, can be given only in some special cases. A few applications of the compact-form formula are given to show a…
In this paper, we show that an arbitrary separable state can be the output of a certain entanglement-breaking channel corresponding exactly to the input of a maximally entangled state. A necessary and sufficient separability criterion and some sufficient separability criteria from entanglement-breaking channels are given.
We show that the possible ensembles produced when a separable operation acts on a single pure bipartite entangled state are completely characterized by a majorization condition, a collection of inequalities for Schmidt coefficients, which is identical to that already known for the particular case of local operations and classical communication (LOCC). As a consequence, various known results for LOCC, including some involving monotonicity of entanglement, can be extended to the class of all separable operations.
