We investigate quantum many-body systems where all low-energy states are entangled. As a tool for quantifying such systems, we introduce the concept of the entanglement gap, which is the difference in energy between the ground-state energy and the minimum energy that a separable (unentangled) state may attain. If the energy of the system lies within the entanglement gap, the state of the system is guaranteed to be entangled. We find Hamiltonians that have the largest possible entanglement gap; for a system consisting of two interacting spin-1/2 subsystems, the Heisenberg antiferromagnet is one such example. We also introduce a related concept, the entanglement-gap temperature: the temperature below which the thermal state is certainly entangled, as witnessed by its energy. We give an example of a bipartite Hamiltonian with an arbitrarily high entanglement-gap temperature for fixed total energy range. For bipartite spin lattices we prove a theorem demonstrating that the entanglement gap necessarily decreases as the coordination number is increased. We investigate frustrated lattices and quantum phase transitions as physical phenomena that affect the entanglement gap.
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…
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…
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.
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…
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.
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.
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…
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 …
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…
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…
