arXiv:0707.4020
Geometric interpretation of the von Neumann entropy
David C. M. Ostapchuk, Gina Passante, R. Kobes, G. Kunstatter
Abstract
In the standard geometric approach to a measure of entanglement of a pure state, $\sin^2\theta$ is used, where $\theta$ is the angle between the state to the closest separable state of products of normalized qubit states. We consider here a generalization of this notion to separable states consisting of products of unnormalized states of different dimension. In so doing, the entanglement measure $\sin^2\theta$ is found to have an interpretation as the distance between the state to the closest separable state. We also find the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the reduced density matrices arising in the von Neumann entropy are given by, respectively, the norm and components of a particular separable state in this framework.