The optimal (pure state) ensemble length of a separable state, A, is the minimum number of (pure) product states needed in convex combination to construct A. We study the set of all separable states with optimal (pure state) ensemble length equal to k or fewer. Lower bounds on k are found below which these sets have measure 0 in the set of separable states. In the bipartite case and the multiparticle case where one of the particles has significantly more quantum numbers than the rest, the lower bound for non-pure state ensembles is sharp. A consequence of our results is that for all two particle systems, except possibly those with a qubit or those with a nine dimensional Hilbert space, and for all systems with more than two particles the optimal pure state ensemble length for a randomly picked separable state is with probability 1 greater than the state's rank. In bipartite systems with probability 1 it is greater than 1/4 the rank raised to the 3/2 power and in a system with p qubits with probability 1 it is greater than (2^2p)/(1+2p), which is almost the square of the rank.
We present a general method for constructing pure-product-state representations for density operators of $N$ quantum bits. If such a representation has nonnegative expansion coefficients, it provides an explicit separable ensemble for the density operator. We derive the condition for separability of a mixture of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state with the maximally mixed state.
A geometrical characterization of robustly separable (that is, remaining separable under sufficiently small variiations) mixed states of a bipartite quantum system is given. It is shown that the density matrix of any such state can be represented as a normal vector to a hypersurface in the Euclidean space of all self-adjoint operators in the state space of the whole system. The expression for this hypersurface is provided.
We describe a purely algebraic method for finding the best separable approximation to a mixed state of a composite 2x2 quantum system, consisting of a decomposition of the state into a linear combination of a mixed separable part and a pure entangled one. We prove that, in a generic case, the weight of the pure part in the decomposition equals the concurrence of the state.
It has been showed that two entangle pure states can violate the bilocal inequality in the entanglement-swapping network, vice versa. What happens for mixed states? Whether or not are there separable mixed states violating the bilocal inequality? In the work, we devote to finding the mixed Werner states which violate the bilocal inequality by Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithms. Finally, we shows that there are pairs of states, where one is separable and the other is entangled, can violate the bilocal inequality.
Absolutely separable states form a special subset of the set of all separable states, as they remain separable under any global unitary transformation unlike other separable states. In this work we consider the set of absolutely separable bipartite states and show that it is convex and compact in any arbitrary dimensional Hilbert space. Through a generic approach of construction of suitable hermitian operators we prove the completeness of the separation axiom for identifying any separable state that is not absolutely separable. We demonstrate the action of such witness operators in different q…
A density operator of a bipartite quantum system is called robustly separable if it has a neighborhood of separable operators. Given a bipartite density matrix, its property to be robustly separable is reduced, using the continuous ensemble method, to a finite number of numerical equations. The solution of this system exists for any robustly separable density operator and provides its representation by a continuous mixture of pure product states.
We study certain quantum states for which the PPT criterion is both sufficient and necessary for separability. A class of $n\times n$ bipartite mixed states is presented and the conditions of PPT for these states are derived. The separable pure state decompositions of these states are explicitly constructed when they are PPT.
Study of an N qubit mixed symmetric separable states is a long standing challenging problem as there exist no unique separability criterion. In this regard, we take up the N-qubit mixed symmetric separable states for a detailed study as these states are of experimental importance and offer elegant mathematical analysis since the dimension of the Hilbert space reduces from 2^N to N + 1. Since there exists a one to one correspondence between spin-j system and an N-qubit symmetric state, we employ Fano statistical tensor parameters for the parametrization of spin density matrix. Further, we use g…
We have investigated the dynamics of quantum discord and entanglement for two qubits subject to independent global transverse and/or longitudinal memoryless noisy classical fields. Global transverse and/or longitudinal random fields are found to drive the system to maximally discordant mixed separable steady states for suitable initial conditions. Moreover, two independent noises in the system are found to enhance both the steady state randomness and quantum discord in the absence of entanglement for some initial states.
We show that for an m-partite quantum system, there is a ball of radius 2^{-(m/2-1)} in Frobenius norm, centered at the identity matrix, of separable (unentangled) positive semidefinite matrices. This can be used to derive an epsilon below which mixtures of epsilon of any density matrix with 1 - epsilon of the maximally mixed state will be separable. The epsilon thus obtained is exponentially better (in the number of systems) than existing results. This gives a number of qubits below which NMR with standard pseudopure-state preparation techniques can access only unentangled states; with parame…
We present a practical scheme for the decomposition of a bipartite mixed state into a sum of direct products of local density matrices, using the technique developed in Li and Qiao (Sci. Rep. 8: 1442, 2018). In the scheme, the correlation matrix which characterizes the bipartite entanglement is first decomposed into two matrices composed of the Bloch vectors of local states. Then we show that the symmetries of Bloch vectors are consistent with that of the correlation matrix, and the magnitudes of the local Bloch vectors are lower bounded by the correlation matrix. Concrete examples for the sep…
We obtain a new lower bound on the radius of the largest ball of separable unnormalized states around the identity matrix for a 3-qubit system. This also enables us to improve the corresponding lower bounds for multi-qubit systems. These bounds are approximately 5% better than the previously known ones. As a by-product, we compute the radius of the largest ball that fits into the triple projective tensor product of the unit ball in R^3.
We introduce an operational procedure to determine, with arbitrary probability and accuracy, optimal entanglement witness for every multipartite entangled state. This method provides an operational criterion for separability which is asymptotically necessary and sufficient. Our results are also generalized to detect all different types of multipartite entanglement.
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…
The separable mixed 2-qubit X-states are classified in accordance with degeneracies in the spectrum of density matrices. It is shown that there are four classes of separable X-states, among them: one 4D family, a pair of 2D family and a single, zero-dimensional maximally mixed state.
Let M be the set of mixed states and S the set of separable states of the two-qubit system, and G = SU(2) x SU(2) the group of local unitary transformations (ignoring the overall phase factor). We compute the multigraded Poincare series for the algebra of G-invariant polynomial functions on the affine space of all Hermitian operators of trace 1. We check that this series is consistent with the list of invariants computed by Makhlin. By using the recent result of Augusiak et al., we show that the boundary of S decomposes naturally into two pieces. We prove that the part of this boundary which i…
It is shown that the outcomes of measurements on systems in separable mixed states can be partitioned, via subsequent measurements on a disentangled extraneous system, into subensembles that display the statistics of entangled states. This motivates the introduction of the concept of "counterfactual" entanglement, which can be associated with all separable mixed states including those that are factorable. This type of entanglement gives rise to a new kind of postselection-induced Bell inequality violation. The significance of counterfactual entanglement, and its physical implications, are asse…
In this paper, we treat an asymptotic hypothesis testing (or state discrimination with asymmetric treatment of errors) between an arbitrary fixed bipartite pure state and the completely mixed state by one-way LOCC, two-way LOCC, and separable POVMs. As a result, we derive single-letterized formulas for the Stein's lemma type of optimal error exponents under one-way LOCC, two-way LOCC and separable POVMs, the Chernoff bounds under one-way LOCC POVMs and separable POVMs, and the Hoeffding bounds under one-way LOCC POVMs in the whole region of a parameter and under separable POVMs on a restricted…
We define a negative entanglement measure for separable states which shows that how much entanglement one should compensate the unentangled state at least for changing it into an entangled state. For two-qubit systems and some special classes of states in higher-dimensional systems, the explicit formula and the lower bounds for the negative entanglement measure have been presented, and it always vanishes for bipartite separable pure states. The negative entanglement measure can be used as a useful quantity to describe the entanglement dynamics and the quantum phase transition. In the transvers…
For manipulations of multipartite quantum systems, it was well known that all local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC) constitute a proper subset of the class of separable operations. Recently, Gheorghiu and Griffiths found that LOCC and general separable operations are equally powerful for transformations between bipartite pure states. In this letter we extend this comparison to mixed states and show that in general separable operations are strictly stronger than LOCC when transforming a mixed state to a pure entangled state. A remarkable consequence of our finding is the e…
The arguments of Cohen [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 60}, 80 (1999)] against the `ignorance interpretation' of mixed states are questioned. The physical arguments are shown to be inconsistent and the supporting example illustrates the opposite of the original statement. The operational difference between two possible definitions of mixed states is exposed and the inadequacy of one of them is stressed.
For finite-dimensional bipartite quantum systems, we find the exact size of the largest balls, in spectral $l_p$ norms for $1 \le p \le \infty$, of separable (unentangled) matrices around the identity matrix. This implies a simple and intutively meaningful geometrical sufficient condition for separability of bipartite density matrices: that their purity $\tr ρ^2$ not be too large. Theoretical and experimental applications of these results include algorithmic problems such as computing whether or not a state is entangled, and practical ones such as obtaining information about the existence or n…
Two families of bipartite mixed quantum states are studied for which it is proved that the number of members in the optimal-decomposition ensemble --- the ensemble realizing the entanglement of formation --- is greater than the rank of the mixed state. We find examples for which the number of states in this optimal ensemble can be larger than the rank by an arbitrarily large factor. In one case the proof relies on the fact that the partial transpose of the mixed state has zero eigenvalues; in the other case the result arises from the properties of product bases that are completable only by emb…
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…
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…
We consider the problem of optimal asymptotically faithful compression for ensembles of mixed quantum states. Although the optimal rate is unknown, we prove upper and lower bounds and describe a series of illustrative examples of compression of mixed states. We also discuss a classical analogue of the problem.
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.
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 present one-shot compression protocols that optimally encode ensembles of $N$ identically prepared mixed states into $O(\log N)$ qubits. In contrast to the case of pure-state ensembles, we find that the number of encoding qubits drops down discontinuously as soon as a nonzero error is tolerated and the spectrum of the states is known with sufficient precision. For qubit ensembles, this feature leads to a 25% saving of memory space. Our compression protocols can be implemented efficiently on a quantum computer.
To determine whether a given multipartite quantum state is separable with respect to some partition we construct a family of entanglement measures R_m. This is done utilizing generalized concurrences as building blocks which are defined by flipping of M constituents and indicate states that are separable with regard to bipartitions when vanishing. Further, we provide an analytically computable lower bound for R_m via a simple ordering relation of the convex roof extension. Using the derived lower bound, we illustrate the effect of the isotropic noise on a family of four-qubit mixed states for …
We introduce algebriac sets in the products of complex projective spaces for multipartite mixed states, which are independent of their eigenvalues and only measure the "position" of their eigenvectors, as their non-local invariants (ie. remaining invariant after local untary transformations). These invariants are naturally arised from the physical consideration of checking multipartite mixed states by measuring them with multipartite separable pure states. The algebraic sets have to be the sum of linear subspaces if the multipartite mixed state is separable, and thus we give a new separability…
We provide a rate distortion interpretation of the problem of quantum data compression of ensembles of mixed states with commuting density operators. There are two versions of this problem. In the visible case the sequence of states is available to the encoder and in the blind or hidden case the encoder may access only a sequence of measurements. We find the exact optimal compression rates for both the visible and hidden cases. Our analysis includes the scenario in which asymptotic reconstruction is imperfect.
We study the stability of NPT property of an arbitrary pure entangled state under the mixture of arbitrary pure separable states. For bipartite pure states with Schmidt number $n$ $(n>1)$ which is NPT, we show that this state is still NPT when it is mixed with no more than $\frac{n(n-1)}{2}-1$ arbitrary pure separable states. This result is generalized to multipartite case.
A unifying framework for identifying distance and holonomy for decompositions of density operators is introduced. Parallelity between quantum ensembles is defined by minimizing this distance over allowed decompositions. The minimum is a property of a pair of states and coincides with the Bures distance. The parallelity condition imposes a connection (rule for parallel transport) that results in the Uhlmann holonomy for sequences of density operators. A distance and holonomy for spectral decompositions of density operators is identified as a sub-group restriction of the full decomposition freed…
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.
This paper present a geometric diagram of a separable state: If a mixed state $σ$ is separable, there are $2^{nS(σ)}$ linearly independant product vectors which span the same Hilbert space as the $2^{nS(σ)}$ ``likely'' strings of $σ^{\otimes n}$ do. This diagram results in a criterion for separability which is strictly stronger than the inorder criterion in [M.A. Nielsen and J. Kempe, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5184 (2001)]. This means that the number of product bases of states of a system has close link to the nonlocality of the system.
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…
The question of the generation of random mixed states is discussed, aiming for the computation of probabilistic characteristics of composite finite dimensional quantum systems. Particularly, we consider the generation of the random Hilbert-Schmidt and Bures ensembles of qubit and qutrit pairs and compute the corresponding probabilities to find a separable state among the states of a fixed rank.
The computable measure of the mixed-state entanglement, the negativity, is shown to admit a clear geometrical interpretation, when applied to Schmidt-correlated (SC) states: the negativity of a SC state equals a distance of the state from a pertinent separable state. As a consequence, a SC state is separable if and only if its negativity vanishes. Another remarkable consequence is that the negativity of a SC can be estimated "at a glance" on the density matrix. These results are generalized to mixtures of SC states, which emerge in certain quantum-dynamical settings.
We give improved upper bounds on the radius of the largest ball of separable states of an m-qubit system around the maximally mixed state. The ratio between the upper bound and the best known lower bound (Hildebrand, quant.ph/0601201) thus shrinks to a constant c = \sqrt{34/27} ~ 1.122, as opposed to a term of order \sqrt{m\log m} for the best upper bound known previously (Aubrun and Szarek, quant.ph/0503221). We give concrete examples of separable states on the boundary to entanglement which realize these upper bounds. As a by-product, we compute the radii of the largest balls that fit into t…
We consider the problem of compression of the quantum information carried by ensemble of mixed states. We prove that for arbitrary coding schemes the least number of qubits needed to convey the signal states asymptotically faithfully is bounded from below by the Holevo function $S(\varrho)-\sum_ip_iS(\varrho_i)$. We also show that a compression protocol can be composed with another one, provided that the latter offers perfect transmission. Such a compound protocol is applied to the case of binary source. It is conjectured to reach the obtained bound. Finally, we point out that in the case of m…
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…
We reduce the question whether a given quantum mixed state is separable or entangled to the problem of existence of a certain full family of commuting normal matrices whose matrix elements are partially determined by components of the pure states constituting a decomposition of the considered mixture. The method reproduces many known entanglement and/or separability criteria, and provides yet another geometrical characterization of mixed separable states.
The geometric measure of entanglement of a pure state, defined by its distance to the set of pure separable states, is extended to multipartite mixed states. We characterize the nearest disentangled mixed state to a given mixed state with respect to this measure by a system of equations. The entanglement eigenvalue for a mixed state is introduced. For a given mixed state, we show that its nearest disentangled mixed state is associated with its entanglement eigenvalue.
From the consideration of measuring bipartite mixed states by separable pure states, we introduce algebraic sets in complex projective spaces for bipartite mixed states as the degenerating locus of the measurement. These algebraic sets are independent of the eigenvalues and only measure the "position" of eigenvectors of bipartite mixed states. They are nonlocal invariants ie., remaining invariant after local unitary transformations. The algebraic sets have to be the sum of the linear subspaces if the mixed states are separable, and thus we give a "eigenvalue-free" criterion of separability.Bas…
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, …
Explicit separable density matrices, for mixed two qubits states, are derived by the use of Hilbert Schmidt decompositions and Peres Horodecki criterion. A strongly separable two qubits mixed state is defined by multiplications of two density matrices given with pure states while weakly separable two qubits state is defined by multiplications of two density matrices which includes non-pure states. We find the sufficient and necessary condition for separability of two-qubits density matrices and show that under this condition the two-qubit density matrices are strongly separable.
The present methods for obtaining the optimal Lewenestein- Sanpera decomposition of a mixed state are difficult to handle analytically. We provide a simple analytical expression for the optimal Lewenstein-Sanpera decomposition by using semidefinite programming. Specially, we obtain the optimal Lewenstein-Sanpera decomposition for some examples such as: Bell decomposable state, Iso-concurrence state, generic two qubit state in Wootters's basis, $2\otimes 3$ Bell decomposable state, $d\otimes d$ Werner and isotropic states, a one parameter $3\otimes 3$ state and finally multi partite isotropic s…
The separability detecting problem of mixed states is one of the fundamental problems in quantum information theory. In the last 20 years, almost all methods are based on the sufficient or necessary conditions for entanglement. However, in this paper, we only need one algorithm to solve the problem. We propose a tensor optimization method to check whether an $m$-partite quantum mixed state is separable or not and give a decomposition for it if it is. We first convert the separability discrimination problem of mixed states to the positive Hermitian decomposition problem of Hermitian tensors. Th…
We study the quantum dynamics of a non-interacting spin ensemble under the effect of a reservoir by applying the framework of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian operators. Theoretically, the two-level model describes the quantum spin system and the Bloch vector to establish the dynamical evolution. Experimentally, phosphorous ($^{31}$P) nuclei with spin $I=1/2$ are used to represent the two-level system and the magnetization evolution is measured and used to compare with the theoretical prediction. At room temperature, the composite dynamics of the radio-frequency pulse plus field inhomogeneities (…
We present a formula that determines the optimal number of qubits per message that allows asymptotically faithful compression of the quantum information carried by an ensemble of mixed states. The set of mixed states determines a decomposition of the Hilbert space into the redundant part and the irreducible part. After removing the redundancy, the optimal compression rate is shown to be given by the von Neumann entropy of the reduced ensemble.
