Motivated by the Peres-Horodecki criterion and the realignment criterion we develop a more powerful method to identify entangled states for any bipartite system through a universal construction of the witness operator. The method also gives a new family of positive but non-completely positive maps of arbitrary high dimensions which provide a much better test than the witness operators themselves. Moreover, we find there are two types of positive maps that can detect 2xN and 4xN bound entangled states. Since entanglement witnesses are physical observables and may be measured locally our construction could be of great significance for future experiments.
An entanglement witness is an observable detecting entanglement for a subset of states. We present a framework that makes an entanglement witness twice as powerful due to the general existence of a second (lower) bound, in addition to the (upper) bound of the very definition. This second bound, if non-trivial, is violated by another subset of entangled states. Differently stated, we prove via the structural physical approximation that two witnesses can be compressed into a single one. Consequently, our framework shows that any entanglement witness can be upgraded to a witness $2.0$. The genera…
In this paper based on the notion of entanglement witness, a new measure of entanglement called floating entanglement witness measure is introduced which satisfies some of the usual properties of a good entanglement measure. By exploiting genetic algorithm, we introduce a classical algorithm that computes floating entanglement witness measure. This algorithm also provides a method for finding entanglement witness for a given entangled state.
Quantum entanglement lies at the heart of quantum mechanical and quantum information processing. Following the question who \emph{witnesses} entanglement witnesses, we show entangled states play as the role of super entanglement witnesses. We show separable states play the role of "super super entanglement witnesses" and "witness" other observables than entanglement witnesses. We show that there exists a hierarchy structure of witnesses and there exist "witnesses" everywhere. Furthermore, we show the properties and characterization of entangled states as super entanglement witnesses. By the ro…
The ultrafine entanglement witness, introduced in [F. Shahandeh, M. Ringbauer, J.C. Loredo, and T.C. Ralph, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{118}, 110502 (2017)], can seamlessly and easily improve any standard entanglement witness. In this paper, by combining the constraint and the test operators, we rotate the hyperplane determined by the test operator and improve further the original ultrafine entanglement witness. In particular, we present a series of new ultrafine entanglement witnesses, which not only can detect entangled states that the original ultrafine entanglement witnesses cannot detect, bu…
Motivated by Buscemi's semi-quantum nonlocal game [PRL 108, 200401(2012)], We propose an entanglement witness game, a quantum game based on entanglement witness. Similar as the semi-quantum nonlocal game, the existence of entanglement shared by the players is necessary and sufficient for obtaining a positive average payoff in our entanglement witness game. Two explicit examples are constructed to demonstrate how to play our entanglement witness game and its relations with the CHSH nonlocal game.
We study entanglement witness and present a construction of entanglement witnesses in terms of the symmetric informationally complete measurements (SIC-POVM). The capability of our witness is shown by some examples and it can be found this witness detects more entanglement than previous separability method given also by SIC-POVM. What's more, comparing with the dimension dependence of SIC-POVM, we also give the entanglement witnesses can be always constructed from general symmetric informationally complete measurements (GSIC-POVM).
We study entanglement witness and present a construction of entanglement witnesses in terms of the mutually unbiased measurements (MUMs). These witnesses include the entanglement witnesses constructed from mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) as a special case. Comparing with the dimension dependence of MUBs, the witnesses can be always constructed from a complete set of $d+1$ MUMs for any dimension $d$. We show that our witness can detect entanglement better than previous separability criterion given also by MUMs. And the approach can be experimentally implemented.
The entanglement witness is an important and experimentally applicable tool for entanglement detection. In this paper, we provide a nonlinear improvement of any entanglement witness for $2\otimes d$ quantum systems. Compared with any existing entanglement witness, the improved separability criterion only needs two more measurements on local observables. Detailed examples are employed to illustrate the efficiency of the nonlinear improvement for general, optimal and non-decomposable entanglement witnesses.
Entanglement witness is a Hermitian operator that is useful for detecting the genuine multipartite entanglement of mixed states. Nonlinear entanglement witnesses have the advantage of a wider detection range in the entangled region. We construct genuine entanglement witnesses for four qubits density matrices in the mutually unbiased basis. First, we find the convex feasible region with positive partial transpose states. Then, to reveal the entangled regions, we present some appropriate linear entanglement witnesses and, we find the envelope of this family of linear witnesses as a nonlinear wit…
We derive an experimentally observable lower bound on concurrence of mixed quantum states in terms of an entanglement witness, relating measurements on single states with those on two copies.
We develop an approach of quantifying entanglement in mixed quantum states by the optimal entanglement witness operator. We identify the convex set of mixed states for which a single witness provides the exact value of an entanglement measure, and show that the convexity, properties, and symmetries of entanglement or of a target state considerably fix the form of the optimal witness. This greatly reduces difficulty in computing and experimentally determining entanglement measures. As an example, we show how to experimentally quantify bound entanglement in four-qubit noisy Smolin states and thr…
We study the optimal entanglement witness with respect to multiqubits W-states. We show such entanglement witnesses can be used to distinguish genuine entangled states, different biseparable states and fully separable states.
We introduce a feasible method of constructing the entanglement witness that detects the genuine entanglement of a given pure multiqubit state. We illustrate our method in the scenario of constructing the witnesses for the multiqubit states that are broadly theoretically and experimentally investigated. It is shown that our method can construct the effective witnesses for experiments. We also investigate the entanglement detection of symmetric states and mixed states.
Teleportation witnesses are hermitian operators which can identify useful entanglement for quantum teleportation. Here we provide a systematic method to construct teleportation witnesses from entanglement witnesses corresponding to general qudit systems. The witnesses so constructed are shown to be optimal for qubit and qutrit systems, and therefore detect the largest set of states useful for teleportation within a given class. We demonstrate the action of the witness pertaining to different classes of states in qubits and qutrits. Decomposition of the witness in terms of spin operators facili…
We show that each entanglement witness detecting given bipartite entangled state provides an estimation of its concurrence. We illustrate our result with several well known examples of entanglement witnesses and compare the corresponding estimation of concurrence with other estimations provided by the trace norm of partial transposition and realignment.
There always exists an entanglement witness for every entangled quantum state. Negativity of the expectation value of an entanglement witness operator guarantees entanglement of the corresponding state, given that the measurement devices involved are perfect, i.e., the performed measurements actually constitute the witness operator for the state under consideration. In a realistic situation, there are two possible ways of measurements to drive the process away from the ideal one. Firstly, wrong measurements may be performed, and secondly, while the measurement operators are implemented correct…
The entanglement witness and the entropy uncertainty are investigated by using the pseudomode theory for the open two-atom system under the quantum Zeno effect. The results show that, only when the two spectrums satisfy strong coupling with the atom, the time of entanglement witness can be prolonged and the lower bound of the entropic uncertainty can be reduced, and the entanglement can be witnessed many times. We also gave the corresponding physical explanation by the non-Markovianity. The Zeno effect not only can very effectively prolong the time of entanglement witness and reduce the lower …
We propose a method to witness entanglement between two continuous-variable systems in a Gaussian state. Its key ingredient is a local lossy state transfer from the original spatially separated systems onto two spatially separated qubits. The qubits are initially in a pure product state, therefore by detecting entanglement between the qubits we witness entanglement between the two original systems. This method greatly simplifies entanglement witnessing in complex systems.
Entanglement witnesses are observables which when measured, detect entanglement in a measured composed system. It is shown what kind of relations between eigenvectors of an observable should be fulfilled, to allow an observable to be an entanglement witness. Some restrictions on the signature of entaglement witnesses, based on an algebraic-geometrical theorem will be given. The set of entanglement witnesses is linearly isomorphic to the set of maps between matrix algebras which are positive, but not completely positive. A translation of the results to the language of positive maps is also give…
In this paper, we discuss extremal extensions of entanglement witnesses based on Choi's map. The constructions are based on a generalization of the Choi map due to Osaka, from which we construct entanglement witnesses. These extremal extensions are powerful in terms of their capacity to detect entanglement of positive under partial transpose (PPT) entangled states and lead to unearthing of entanglement of new PPT states. We also use the Cholesky-like decomposition to construct entangled states which are revealed by these extremal entanglement witnesses.
Quantum mechanics predicts the existence of correlations between composite systems -- multipartite entanglement (ME) -- that, while puzzling our physical intuition, enable technologies not accessible in a classical world. Notwithstanding, there is still no efficient general method to theoretically quantify and experimentally detect ME. Here we propose a novel paradigm based on the measurement of the statistical response of a quantum systems to a collective parametric evolution. As a major difference with respect to current approaches based on the implementation of entanglement witness operator…
An entanglement witness approach to quantum coherent state key distribution and a system for its practical implementation are described. In this approach, eavesdropping can be detected by a change in sign of either of two witness functions, an entanglement witness S or an eavesdropping witness W. The effects of loss and eavesdropping on system operation are evaluated as a function of distance. Although the eavesdropping witness W does not directly witness entanglement for the system, its behavior remains related to that of the true entanglement witness S. Furthermore, W is easier to implement …
We describe an entanglement witness for $N$-qubit mixed states based on the properties of $N$-point correlation functions. Depending on the degree of violation, this witness can guarantee that no more than $M$ qubits are separable from the rest of the state for any $M\leq N$, or that there is some genuine $M$-party or greater multipartite entanglement present. We illustrate the use our criterion by investigating the existence of entanglement in thermal stabilizer states, where we demonstrate that the witness is capable of witnessing bound-entangled states. Intriguingly, this entanglement can b…
In this paper we introduce a criterion for the characterization of Entanglement Witness for multipartite quantum systems. Our approach is based on the characterization of the "tangent space" to the set of pure product states.
Entanglement, the essential resource in quantum information processing, should be witnessed in many tasks such as quantum computing and quantum communication. The conventional entanglement witness method, relying on an idealized implementation of measurements, could wrongly conclude a separable state to be entangled due to imperfect detections. Inspired by the idea of a time-shift attack, we construct an attack on the conventional entanglement witness process and demonstrate that a separable state can be falsely identified to be entangled. To close such detection loopholes, based on a recently…
We demonstrate that non-linear entanglement witnesses can be made particularly useful for entanglement detection in hyper-entangled or multilevel states. We test this idea experimentally on the platform of linear optics using a hyper-entangled state of two photons. Instead of several simultaneous copies of two-photon entangled states, one can directly measure the witness on single copy of a hyper-entangled state. Our results indicate that hyper-entanglement can be used for quick entanglement detection and it provides a practical testbed for experiments with non-linear entanglement witnesses.
Second-order interference and Hanbury-Brown and Twiss type experiments can provide an operational framework for the construction of witness operators that can test classical and nonclassical properties of a Gaussian squeezed state (GSS), and provide entanglement witness operators to study the separability properties of correlated Gaussian squeezed sates.
We construct three-qubit entanglement witnesses with relatively simple structures. Despite their simplicity, these witnesses are capable of detecting a number of bound entangled states more effectively. To illustrate this, two families of bound entangled three-qubit states, introduced by Kay [Phys. Rev. A 83, 020303 (2011)] and Kye [J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 48, 235303 (2015)], are considered and it is shown that these witnesses are able to detect the entanglement of all states in the families.
An entanglement witness is an observable with the property that a negative expectation value signals the presence of entanglement. The question arises how a witness can be improved if the expectation value of a second observable is known, and methods for doing this have recently been discussed as so-called ultrafine entanglement witnesses. We present several results on the characterization of entanglement given the expectation values of two observables. First, we explain that this problem can naturally be tackled with the method of the Legendre transformation, leading even to a quantification …
The controlled generation of entangled states and their subsequent detection are integral aspects of quantum information science. In this work, we analyse the application of nonlinear witnesses to the verification of entanglement, and we demonstrate experimentally that nonlinear witnesses perform significantly better than linear witnesses. Specifically, we demonstrate that a single non- linear entanglement witness is able to determine to a high degree of certainty that a mixed state containing orbital angular momentum (OAM) entanglement of specific forms is entangled for any relative phase and…
We present the experimental detection of genuine multipartite entanglement using entanglement witness operators. To this aim we introduce a canonical way of constructing and decomposing witness operators so that they can be directly implemented with present technology. We apply this method to three- and four-qubit entangled states of polarized photons, giving experimental evidence that the considered states contain true multipartite entanglement.
We show that if the ground state entanglement exceeds the total entropy of a given system, then this system is in an entangled state. This is a universal entanglement witness that applies to any physical system and yields a temperature below which we are certain to find some entanglement. Our witness is then applied to generic bosonic and fermionic many body systems to derive the corresponding "critical" temperatures that have a very broad validity.
We present an explicit construction of entanglement witnesses for depolarized states in arbitrary finite dimension. For infinite dimension we generalize the construction to twin-beams perturbed by Gaussian noises in the phase and in the amplitude of the field. We show that entanglement detection for all these families of states requires only three local measurements. The explicit form of the corresponding set of local observables (quorom) needed for entanglement witness is derived.
We consider a possible detector-efficiency loophole in experiments that detect entanglement via the local measurement of witness operators. Here, only local properties of the detectors are known. We derive a general threshold for the detector efficiencies which guarantees that a negative expectation value of a witness is due to entanglement, rather than to erroneous detectors. This threshold depends on the local decomposition of the witness and its measured expectation value. For two-qubit witnesses we find the local operator decomposition that is optimal with respect to closing the loophole.
It is shown that the enhanced (nonlinear) realignment criterion is equivalent to the family of linear criteria based on correlation tensor. These criteria generalize the original (linear) realignment criterium and give rise to the family of entanglement witnesses. An appropriate limiting procedure is proposed which leads to a novel class of witnesses which are as powerful as the enhanced realignment criterion.
We propose to use Stokes parameter as an entanglement witness for correlated EPR mixed states of light. Such states can be generated with a beam splitter acting on two mixed squeezed states of light. Stokes witness operators are closely related to the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss interference and can be used to test entanglement in balanced homodyne experiments involving fluctuations of quantum quadratures of the electric field.
We describe a generic way to improve a given linear entanglement witness by a quadratic, nonlinear term. This method can be iterated, leading to a whole sequence of nonlinear witnesses, which become stronger in each step of the iteration. We show how to optimize this iteration with respect to a given state, and prove that in the limit of the iteration the nonlinear witness detects all states that can be detected by the positive map corresponding to the original linear witness.
The problem of demonstrating entanglement is central to quantum information processing applications. Resorting to standard entanglement witnesses requires one to perfectly trust the implementation of the measurements to be performed on the entangled state, which may be an unjustified assumption. Inspired by the recent work of F. Buscemi [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 200401 (2012)], we introduce the concept of Measurement-Device-Independent Entanglement Witnesses (MDI-EWs), which allow one to demonstrate entanglement of all entangled quantum states with untrusted measurement apparatuses. We show how t…
We propose a set of linear quantum entanglement witnesses constituted by local quantum-mechanical observables with each two possible measurement outcomes. These witnesses detect all the entangled resources which give rise to a better fidelity than separable states in quantum teleportation and present both sufficient and necessary conditions in experimentally detecting the useful resources for quantum teleportation.
We present an analysis of the properties and characteristics of weakly optimal entanglement witnesses, that is witnesses whose expectation value vanishes on at least one product vector. Any weakly optimal entanglement witness can be written as the form of $W^{wopt}=σ-c_σ^{max} I$, where $c_σ^{max}$ is a non-negative number and $I$ is the identity matrix. We show the relation between the weakly optimal witness $W^{wopt}$ and the eigenvalues of the separable states $σ$. Further we give an application of weakly optimal witnesses for constructing entanglement witnesses in a larger Hilbert space by…
Entanglement, while being critical in many quantum applications, is difficult to characterize experimentally. While entanglement witnesses based on the fidelity to the target entangled state are efficient detectors of entanglement, they in general underestimate the amount of entanglement due to errors during state preparation and measurement. Therefore, to detect entanglement more robustly in the presence of such control errors, we introduce a 'subspace' witness that detects a broader class of entangled states with strictly larger violation than the conventional state-fidelity witness at the c…
Entanglement witnesses (EW) allow the detection of entanglement in a quantum system, from the measurement of some few observables. They do not require the complete determination of the quantum state, which is regarded as a main advantage. On this paper it is experimentally analyzed an entanglement witness recently proposed in the context of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) experiments to test it in some Bell-diagonal states. We also propose some optimal entanglement witness for Bell-diagonal states. The efficiency of the two types of EW's are compared to a measure of entanglement with tomograp…
In this paper we provide an operational method to detect multipartite entanglement in ensemble-based quantum computing. This method is based on the concept of entanglement witness. We decompose the entanglement witness for each class of multipartite entanglement into nonlocal operations in addition to local measurements. Individual single qubit measurements are performed simultaneously, hence complete detection of entanglement is performed in a single run experiment. This approach is particularly important for experiments where it is operationally difficult to prepare several copies of an unkn…
We propose a theoretical scheme to witness quantum entanglement via the geometric phase in an impurity-doped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), which is a micro-macro quantum system consisting of two Rydberg impurity qubits and the BEC. We calculate the geometric phase of the impurity qubits in the presence of the initial micro-micro and micro-macro entanglement, respectively. It is demonstrated that the geometric phase of the impurity qubits can witness not only inter-qubit micro-micro entanglement, but also qubit-BEC micro-macro entanglement. Our work provide a new insight to witness micro-micr…
We construct entanglement witnesses with regard to the geometric structure of the Hilbert--Schmidt space and investigate the geometry of entanglement. In particular, for a two--parameter family of two--qutrit states that are part of the magic simplex we calculate the Hilbert--Schmidt measure of entanglement. We present a method to detect bound entanglement which is illustrated for a three--parameter family of states. In this way we discover new regions of bound entangled states. Furthermore we outline how to use our method to distinguish entangled from separable states.
We show how to detect entangled, bound entangled, and separable bipartite quantum states of arbitrary dimension and mixedness using geometric entanglement witnesses. These witnesses are constructed using properties of the Hilbert-Schmidt geometry and can be shifted along parameterized lines. The involved conditions are simplified using Bloch decompositions of operators and states. As an example we determine the three different types of states for a family of two-qutrit states that is part of the "magic simplex", i.e. the set of Bell-state mixtures of arbitrary dimension.
We demonstrate a general procedure to construct entanglement witnesses for any entangled state. This procedure is based on the trace inequality and a general form of entanglement witnesses, which is in the form $W=ρ-c_ρ I$, where $ρ$ is a density matrix, $c_ρ$ is a non-negative number related to $ρ$, and $I$ is the identity matrix. The general form of entanglement witnesses is deduced from Choi-Jamiołkowski isomorphism, that can be reinterpreted as that all quantum states can be obtained by a maximally quantum entangled state pass through certain completely positive maps. Furthermore, we provi…
We investigate the issue of finding common entanglement witness for certain class of states and extend this study to the case of Schmidt number witnesses. We also introduce the notion of common decomposable and non-decomposable witness operators which is specially useful for constructing a common witness where one of the entangled states is with a positive partial transpose. Our approach is illustrated with the help of suitable examples of qutrit systems.
Single-photon entanglement is one of the primary resources for quantum networks, including quantum repeater architectures. Such entanglement can be revealed with only local homodyne measurements through the entanglement witness presented in [Morin et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 130401 (2013)]. Here, we provide an extended analysis of this witness by introducing analytical bounds and by reporting measurements confirming its great robustness with regard to losses. This study highlights the potential of optical hybrid methods, where discrete entanglement is characterized through continuous-variable…
The separability problem is formulated in terms of a characterization of a single entanglement witness. More specifically, we show that any (in general multipartite) state \varrho is separable if and only if a specially constructed entanglement witness W_{\varrho} is weakly optimal, i.e., its expectation value vanishes on at least one product vector. Interestingly, the witness can always be chosen to be decomposable. Our result changes the conceptual aspect of the separability problem and rises some questions about properties of positive maps.
We introduce informationally complete measurements whose outcomes are entanglement witnesses and so answer the question of how many witnesses need to be measured to decide whether an arbitrary state is entangled or not: as many as the dimension of the state space. The optimized witness-based measurement can provide exponential improvement with respect to witness efficiency in high-dimensional Hilbert spaces, at the price of a reduction in the tomographic efficiency. We describe a systematic construction, and illustrate the matter at the example of two qubits.
Bell inequalities, considered within quantum mechanics, can be regarded as non-optimal witness operators. We discuss the relationship between such Bell witnesses and general entanglement witnesses in detail for the Bell inequality derived by Clauser, Horne, Shimony, and Holt (CHSH). We derive bounds on how much an optimal witness has to be shifted by adding the identity operator to make it positive on all states admitting a local hidden variable model. In the opposite direction, we obtain tight bounds for the maximal proportion of the identity operator that can be subtracted from such a CHSH w…
We study the separability of symmetric bipartite quantum states and show that a single correlation measurement is sufficient to detect the entanglement of any bipartite symmetric state with a non-positive partial transpose. We also discuss entanglement conditions and entanglement witnesses for states with a positive partial transpose.
Whether entanglement in a state can be detected, distilled, and quantified without full state reconstruction is a fundamental open problem. We demonstrate a new scheme encompassing these three tasks for arbitrary two-qubit entanglement, by constructing the optimal entanglement witness for polarization-entangled mixed-state photon pairs without full state reconstruction. With better efficiency than quantum state tomography, the entanglement is maximally distilled by newly developed tunable polarization filters, and quantified by the expectation value of the witness, which equals the concurrence…
In a recent paper, we vindicated a general entanglement-based witness of non-classicality in hybrid quantum systems. Our vindication refutes a counterexample to the witness, proposed by Hall and Reginatto. These authors recently commented further, claiming to expose "a huge number of errors and misconceptions" in it. However, their comment contains no refutation of our arguments, nor does it expose any error or misconception in them. But it does include a number of misconceptions about the witness of non-classicality. Here we respond to those.
We derive a general framework that connects every positive map with a corresponding witness for partial separability in multipartite quantum systems. We show that many previous approaches were intimately connected to the witnesses derived from partial transposition and that such criteria can easily be outperformed in higher dimensions by non-decomposable maps. As an exemplary case we present a witness that is capable of detecting genuine multipartite entanglement in bound entangled states.
