Quantifying entanglement when measurements are imperfect or restricted

Abstract

Motivated by the increasing ability of experimentalists to perform detector tomography, we consider how to incorporate the imperfections and restrictions of available measurements directly into the quantification of entanglement. Exploiting the idea that the recently introduced semiquantum nonlocal games as the gauge of the amount of entanglement in a state, we define an effective entanglement functional giving us effective entanglement when the measurement operators one has at their disposal are restricted by either fundamental considerations, such as superselection rules, or practical inability to conduct precise measurements. We show that effective entanglement is always reduced by restricting measurements. We define effective entanglement as the least amount of entanglement necessary to play all semiquantum nonlocal games at least as well with unrestricted measurements as with the more entangled original state and restricted measurements. We show that simple linear relationship between effective and conventional G-concurrence, generalization of concurrence, can be obtained when completely positive maps are used to describe measurement restrictions. We consider how typical measurement errors like photon loss and phase damping degrade effective entanglement in quantum optical experiments, as well as the impact of mass superselection rules on entanglement of massive indistinguishable particles. The flexibility of the effective entanglement formalism allows this single-particle entanglement to be calculated in the presence of a local Bose Einstein condensate reference frame with varying phase uncertainty, thereby interpolating between the complete breaking or strict application of the super-selection rule.