arXiv subjects

Jos Uffink

Publications and source records attributed to Jos Uffink.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2008

Partial separability and entanglement criteria for multiqubit quantum states

We explore the subtle relationships between partial separability and entanglement of subsystems in multiqubit quantum states and give experimentally accessible conditions that distinguish between various classes and levels of partial separability in a hierarchical order. These conditions take the form of bounds on the correlations of locally orthogonal observables. Violations of such inequalities give strong sufficient criteria for various forms of partial inseparability and multiqubit entanglement. The strength of these criteria is illustrated by showing that they are stronger than several other well-known entanglement criteria (the fidelity criterion, violation of Mermin-type separability inequalities, the Laskowski-Żukowski criterion and the Dür-Cirac criterion), and also by showing their great noise robustness for a variety of multiqubit states, including N-qubit GHZ states and Dicke states. Furthermore, for N greater than or equal to 3 they can detect bound entangled states. For all these states, the required number of measurement settings for implementation of the entanglement criteria is shown to be only N+1. If one chooses the familiar Pauli matrices as single-qubit observables, the inequalities take the form of bounds on the anti-diagonal matrix elements of a state in terms of its diagonal matrix elements.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2007

Local commutativity versus Bell inequality violation for entangled states and versus non-violation for separable states

By introducing a quantitative `degree of commutativity' in terms of the angle between spin-observables we present two tight quantitative trade-off relations in the case of two qubits: First, for entangled states, between the degree of commutativity of local observables and the maximal amount of violation of the Bell inequality: if both local angles increase from zero to π/2 (i.e., the degree of local commutativity decreases), the maximum violation of the Bell inequality increases. Secondly, a converse trade-off relation holds for separable states: if both local angles approach π/2 the maximal value obtainable for the correlations in the Bell inequality decreases and thus the non-violation increases. As expected, the extremes of these relations are found in the case of anti-commuting local observables where respectively the bounds of 2\sqrt{2} and \sqrt{2} hold for the expectation of the Bell operator. The trade-off relations show that non-commmutativity gives ``a more than classical result" for entangled states, whereas "a less than classical result" is obtained for separable states. The experimental relevance of the trade-off relation for separable states is that it provides an experimental test for two qubit entanglement. Its advantages are twofold: in comparison to violations of Bell inequalities it is a stronger criterion and in comparison to entanglement witnesses it needs to make less strong assumptions about the observables implemented in the experiment.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2005

Addendum to "Sufficient conditions for three-particle entanglement and their tests in recent experiments"

A recent paper [M. Seevinck and J. Uffink, Phys. Rev. A 65, 012107 (2002)] presented a bound for the three-qubit Mermin inequality such that the violation of this bound indicates genuine three-qubit entanglement. We show that this bound can be improved for a specific choice of observables. In particular, if spin observables corresponding to orthogonal directions are measured at the qubits (e.g., X and Y spin coordinates) then the bound is the same as the bound for states with a local hidden variable model. As a consequence, it can straightforwardly be shown that in the experiment described by J.-W. Pan et al. [Nature 403, 515 (2000)] genuine three-qubit entanglement was detected.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2002

Quadratic Bell inequalities as tests for multipartite entanglement

This letter presents quantum mechanical inequalities which distinguish, for systems of $N$ spin-$\half$ particles ($N>2$), between fully entangled states and states in which at most $N-1$ particles are entangled. These inequalities are stronger than those obtained by Gisin and Bechmann-Pasquinucci [Phys.\ Lett. A {\bf 246}, 1 (1998)] and by Seevinck and Svetlichny [quant-ph/0201046].

quant-ph↗

arXiv2002

Sufficient conditions for three-particle entanglement and their tests in recent experiments

We point out a loophole problem in some recent experimental claims to produce three-particle entanglement. The problem consists in the question whether mixtures of two-particle entangled states might suffice to explain the experimental data. In an attempt to close this loophole, we review two sufficient conditions that distinguish between N-particle states in which all N particles are entangled to each other and states in which only M particles are entangled (with M<N). It is shown that three recent experiments to obtain three-particle entangled states (Bouwmeester et al., Pan et al., and Rauschenbeutel et al.) do not meet these conditions. We conclude that the question whether these experiments provide confirmation of three-particle entanglement remains unresolved. We also propose modifications of the experiments that would make such confirmation feasible.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2001

Bluff your way in the second law of thermodynamics

The aim of this article is to analyze the relation between the second law of thermodynamics and the so-called arrow of time. For this purpose, a number of different aspects in this arrow of time are distinguished, in particular those of time-(a)symmetry and of (ir)reversibility. Next I review versions of the second law in the work of Carnot, Clausius, Kelvin, Planck, Gibbs, Carathéodory and Lieb and Yngvason, and investigate their connection with these aspects of the arrow of time. It is shown that this connection varies a great deal along with these formulations of the second law. According to the famous formulation by Planck, the second law expresses the irreversibility of natural processes. But in many other formulations irreversibility or even time-asymmetry plays no role. I therefore argue for the view that the second law has nothing to do with the arrow of time. Key words: thermodynamics, second law, irreversibility, time-asymmetry, arrow of time.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv1999

Interference and Distinguishability in Quantum Mechanics

Quantitative measures are introduced for the indistinguishability $U$ of two quantum states in a given measurement and the amount of interference $I$ observable in this measurement. It is shown that these measures obey an inequality $U\geq I$ which can be seen as an exact formulation of Bohr's claim that one cannot distinguish between two possible paths of a particle while maintaining an interference phenomenon. This formulation is applied to a neutron interferometer experiment of Badurek e.a. It is shown that the formulation is stronger than an argument based on an uncertainty relation for phase and photon number considered by these authors.

quant-ph↗

arXiv1999

How to protect the interpretation of the wave function against protective measurements

A new type of procedures, called protective measurements, has been proposed by Aharonov, Anandan and Vaidman. These authors argue that a protective measurement allows the determination of arbitrary observables of a single quantum system and claim that this favors a realistic interpretation of the quantum state. This paper proves that only observables that commute with the system's Hamiltonian can be measured protectively. It is argued that this restriction saves the coherence of alternative interpretations.

quant-ph↗