arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Jens Siewert.
We present an overview of the quantitative theory of single-copy entanglement in finite-dimensional quantum systems. In particular we emphasize the point of view that different entanglement measures quantify different types of resources which leads to a natural interdependence of entanglement classification and quantification. Apart from the theoretical basis, we outline various methods for obtaining quantitative results on arbitrary mixed states.
A striking result from nonrelativistic quantum mechanics is the monogamy of entanglement, which states that a particle can be maximally entangled only with one other party, not with several ones. While there is the exact quantitative relation for three qubits and also several inequalities describing monogamy properties it is not clear to what extent exact monogamy relations are a general feature of quantum mechanics. We prove that in all many-qubit systems there exist strict monogamy laws for quantum correlations. They come about through the curious relation between the nonrelativistic quantum mechanics of qubits and Minkowski space. We elucidate the origin of entanglement monogamy from this symmetry perspective and provide recipes to construct new families of such equalities.
The quantitative assessment of the entanglement in multipartite quantum states is, apart from its fundamental importance, a practical problem. Recently there has been significant progress in developing new methods to determine certain entanglement measures. In particular, there is a method---in principle, analytical---to compute a certified lower bound for the three-tangle. The purpose of this work is to provide a manual for the implementation of this approach and to explicitly discuss several analytically solvable cases in order to gauge the numerical tools. Moreover, we derive a simple analytical bound for the mixed state three-tangle.
It is common knowledge that coupling to a heat bath, in general, tends to reduce the entanglement in a quantum system. In recent years, increasing interest has been devoted to the opposite situation where thermal or specifically tailored environments may stabilize or even generate entanglement. We prove the universality of this phenomenon for multipartite entanglement in the frame of an exactly solvable dephasing model. We show by evaluating analytical lower bounds for the appropriate entanglement measures that a common thermal environment can dynamically generate all entanglement classes of three qubits for almost any initial product state. For sufficiently weak dissipation this entanglement may persist up to arbitrarily large times.
Along with the vast progress in experimental quantum technologies there is an increasing demand for the quantification of entanglement between three or more quantum systems. Theory still does not provide adequate tools for this purpose. The objective is, besides the quest for exact results, to develop operational methods that allow for efficient entanglement quantification. Here we put forward an analytical approach that serves both these goals. We provide a simple procedure to quantify Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger--type multipartite entanglement in arbitrary three-qubit states. For two qubits this method is equivalent to Wootters' seminal result [Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 2245 (1998)]. It establishes a close link between entanglement quantification and entanglement detection by witnesses, and can be generalised both to higher dimensions and to more than three parties.
Among all entanglement measures negativity arguably is the best known and most popular tool to quantify bipartite quantum correlations. It is easily computed for arbitrary states of a composite system and can therefore be applied to discuss entanglement in an ample variety of situations. However, its direct physical meaning has not been pointed out yet. We show that the negativity can be viewed as an estimator of how many degrees of freedom of two subsystems are entangled. As it is possible to give lower bounds for the negativity even in a device-independent setting, it is the appropriate quantity to certify quantumness of both parties in a bipartite system and to determine the minimum number of dimensions that contribute to the quantum correlations.
The first characterization of mixed-state entanglement was achieved for two-qubit states in Werner's seminal work [Phys. Rev. A 40, 4277 (1989)]. A physically important extension of this result concerns mixtures of a pure entangled state (such as the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger [GHZ] state) and the completely unpolarized state. These mixed states serve as benchmark for the robustness of entanglement. They share the same symmetries as the GHZ state. We call such states GHZ-symmetric. Despite significant progress their multipartite entanglement properties have remained an open problem. Here we give a complete description of the entanglement in the family of three-qubit GHZ-symmetric states and, in particular, of the three-qubit generalized Werner states. Our method relies on the appropriate parameterization of the states and on the invariance of entanglement properties under general local operations. An immediate application of our results is the definition of a symmetrization witness for the entanglement class of arbitrary three-qubit states.
A relevant problem regarding entanglement measures is the following: Given an arbitrary mixed state, how does a measure for multipartite entanglement change if general local operations are applied to the state? This question is nontrivial as the normalization of the states has to be taken into account. Here we answer it for pure-state entanglement measures which are invariant under determinant 1 local operations and homogeneous in the state coefficients, and their convex-roof extension which quantifies mixed-state entanglement. Our analysis allows to enlarge the set of mixed states for which these important measures can be calculated exactly. In particular, our results hint at a distinguished role of entanglement measures which have homogeneous degree 2 in the state coefficients.
Characterization and quantification of multipartite entanglement is one of the challenges in state-of-the-art experiments in quantum information processing. According to theory, this is achieved via entanglement monotones, that is, functions that do not increase under stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC). Typically such monotones include the wave function and its time-reversal (antilinear-operator formalism) or they are based on not completely positive maps (e.g., partial transpose). Therefore, they are not directly accessible to experimental observations. We show how entanglement monotones derived from polynomial local SL$(2,\CC)$ invariants can be re-written in terms of expectation values of observables. Consequently, the amount of entanglement---of specific SLOCC classes---in a given state can be extracted from the measurement of correlation functions of local operators.
We show that a positive homogeneous function that is invariant under determinant-1 stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC) transformations defines an N-qubit entanglement monotone if and only if the homogeneous degree is not larger than four. In particular this implies that any power larger than one of the well-known N-tangle (N > 2) is not an entanglement monotone anymore. We then describe a common basis and formalism for the N-tangle and other known invariant polynomials of degree four. This allows us to elucidate the relation of the four-qubit invariants defined by Luque and Thibon [Phys. Rev. A67, 042303 (2003)] and the reduced two-qubit density matrices of the states under consideration. Finally we prove that an analogous statement holds for any multi-partite system with even number of qudits.
Recently, a new type of symmetry for three-qubit quantum states was introduced, the so-called Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) symmetry. It includes the operations which leave the three-qubit standard GHZ state unchanged. This symmetry is powerful as it yields families of mixed states that are, on the one hand, complex enough from the physics point of view and, on the other hand, simple enough mathematically so that their properties can be characterized analytically. We show that by using the properties of GHZ-symmetric states it is straightforward to derive optimal witnesses for three-qubit entanglement.
It is well known that the transport properties of single-electron transistors with a superconducting island and normal-conducting leads (NSN SET) may depend on whether or not there is a single quasiparticle on the island. This parity effect has pronounced consequences for the linear transport properties. Here we analyze the thermopower of NSN SET with and without parity effect, for entirely realistic values of device parameters. Besides a marked dependence of the thermopower on the superconducting gap $Δ$ we observe an enhancement in the parity regime which is accompanied by a dramatic increase of the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT. The latter can be explained within a simple re-interpretation of ZT in terms of averages and variances of transport energies.
It is well known that the number of entanglement classes in SLOCC (stochastic local operations and classical communication) classifications increases with the number of qubits and is already infinite for four qubits. Bearing in mind the rapid evolution of experimental technology, criteria for explicitly discriminating and classifying pure states of four and more qubits are highly desirable and therefore in the focus of intense theoretical research. In this article we develop a general criterion for the discrimination of pure N-partite entangled states in terms of polynomial SL(d,C) invariants. By means of this criterion, existing SLOCC classifications of four-qubit entanglement are reproduced. Based on this we propose a polynomial classification scheme in which families are identified through 'tangle patterns', thus bringing together qualitative and quantitative description of entanglement.
We discuss the possibility to interpret the residual entanglement for more than three qubits in terms of distributed multipartite entanglement, or, in other words, possible extensions of the Coffman-Kundu-Wootters monogamy equality to higher qubit numbers. Existing knowledge on entanglement in multipartite systems puts narrow constraints on the form of such extensions. We study various examples for families of pure four-qubit states for which the characterization of three-qubit and four-qubit entanglement in terms of polynomial invariants is known. These examples indicate that, although families with such extensions do exist, a generalized monogamy equality cannot be found along those lines.
The rapid experimental progress in the field of superconducting nanocircuits gives rise to an increasing quest for advanced quantum-control techniques for these macroscopically coherent systems. Here we demonstrate theoretically that stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), a well-established method in quantum optics, should be possible with the quantronium setup of a Cooper-pair box. We find the parameters which optimize the procedure and show how the scheme appears to be robust against decoherence and should be realizable even with the existing technology.
We give a complete solution for the three-tangle of mixed three-qubit states composed of a generalized GHZ state, a|000>+b|111>, and a generalized W state, c|001>+d|010>+f|100>. Using the methods introduced by Lohmayer et al. we provide explicit expressions for the mixed-state three-tangle and the corresponding optimal decompositions for this more general case. Moreover, as a special case we obtain a general solution for a family of states consisting of a generalized GHZ state and an orthogonal product state.
We discuss aspects of the convex-roof extension of multipartite entanglement measures, that is, $SL(2,\CC)$ invariant tangles. We highlight two key concepts that contain valuable information about the tangle of a density matrix: the {\em zero-polytope} is a convex set of density matrices with vanishing tangle whereas the {\em convex characteristic curve} readily provides a non-trivial lower bound for the convex roof and serves as a tool for constructing the convex roof outside the zero-polytope. Both concepts are derived from the tangle for superpositions of the eigenstates of the density matrix. We illustrate their application by considering examples of density matrices for two-qubit and three-qubit states of rank 2, thereby pointing out both the power and the limitations of the concepts.
We provide a complete analysis of mixed three-qubit states composed of a GHZ state and a W state orthogonal to the former. We present optimal decompositions and convex roofs for the three-tangle. Further, we provide an analytical method to decide whether or not an arbitrary rank-2 state of three qubits has vanishing three-tangle. These results highlight intriguing differences compared to the properties of two-qubit mixed states, and may serve as a quantitative reference for future studies of entanglement in multipartite mixed states. By studying the Coffman-Kundu-Wootters inequality we find that, while the amounts of inequivalent entanglement types strictly add up for pure states, this ``monogamy'' can be lifted for mixed states by virtue of vanishing tangle measures.