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arXiv:0808.1052 · Physical Review A

Structural approximations to positive maps and entanglement-breaking channels

Jarosław K. Korbicz, Mafalda L. Almeida, Joonwoo Bae, Maciej Lewenstein, Antonio Acín

Published Dec 8, 2008• 81 citations
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Abstract

Structural approximations to positive, but not completely positive maps are approximate physical realizations of these nonphysical maps. They find applications in the design of direct entanglement-detection methods. We show that many of these approximations, in the relevant case of optimal positive maps, define an entanglement breaking channel and, consequently, can be implemented via a measurement and state-preparation protocol. We also show how our findings can be useful for the design of better and simpler direct entanglement detection methods.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.78.062105

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Structural approximations to positive, but not completely positive maps are approximate physical realizations of these nonphysical maps. They find applications in the design of direct entanglement-detection methods. We show that many of these approximations, in the relevant case of optimal positive maps, define an entanglement breaking channel and, consequently, can be implemented via a measurement and state-preparation protocol. We also show how our findings can be useful for the design of better and simpler direct entanglement detection methods.
In quantum information processing it may be possible to have efficient computation and secure communication beyond the limitations of classical systems. In a fundamental point of view, however, evolution of quantum systems by the laws of quantum mechanics is more restrictive than classical systems, identified to a specific form of dynamics, that is, unitary transformations and, consequently, positive and completely positive maps to subsystems. This also characterizes classes of disallowed transformations on quantum systems, among which positive but not completely maps are of particular interest as they characterize entangled states, a general resource in quantum information processing. Structural physical approximation offers a systematic way of approximating those non-physical maps, positive but not completely positive maps, with quantum channels. Since it has been proposed as a method of detecting entangled states, it has stimulated fundamental problems on classifications of positive maps and the structure of Hermitian operators and quantum states, as well as on quantum measurement such as quantum design in quantum information theory. It has developed efficient and feasible methods of directly detecting entangled states in practice, for which proof-of-principle experimental demonstrations have also been performed with photonic qubit states. Here, we present a comprehensive review on quantum information processing with structural physical approximations and the related progress. The review mainly focuses on properties of structural physical approximations and their applications toward practical information applications.
Very recently, a conjecture saying that the so-called structural physical approximations (SPAs) to optimal positive maps (optimal entanglement witnesses) give entanglement breaking (EB) maps (separable states) has been posed (Korbicz et al 2008 Phys. Rev. A 78 062105). The main purpose of this contribution is to explore this subject. First, we extend the set of entanglement witnesses supporting the conjecture. Then, we ask whether SPAs constructed from other than the depolarizing channel maps also lead to EB maps and show that in general this is not the case. On the other hand, we prove an interesting fact that for any positive map Λ, there exists an EB channel Φ such that the SPA of Λ constructed with the aid of Φ is again an EB channel. Finally, we ask similar questions in the case of continuous variable systems. We provide a simple way of constructing SPA and prove that in the case of the transposition map it gives the EB channel.
The structural physical approximation (SPA) to a positive map is considered to be one of the most important methods to detect entanglement in the real physical world. We first show that an arbitrary entanglement witness (EW) WWW can be constructed from a separable density matrix $\ensuremath{\sigma}$ in the form of $W=\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{-}{c}_{\ensuremath{\sigma}}I$, where ${c}_{\ensuremath{\sigma}}$ is a non-negative number and III is the identity matrix. Following the general form of EWs from separable states, we show a sufficient condition and a sufficient and necessary condition in low dimensions of that SPAs to positive maps do not define entanglement-breaking channels. We show that either the SPA of an EW or the SPA of the partial transposition of the EW in low dimensions is an entanglement-breaking channel. We give sufficient conditions of violating the SPA conjecture [Phys. Rev. A 78, 062105 (2008)]. Our results indicate that the SPA conjecture is independent of whether or not positive maps are optimal.
In this paper, we present a characterization of optimal entanglement witnesses in terms of positive maps and then provide a general method of checking optimality of entanglement witnesses. Applying it, we obtain indecomposable optimal witnesses that have no spanning property. These also provide examples that support a recent conjecture saying that the so-called structural physical approximations to optimal positive maps (optimal entanglement witnesses) give entanglement breaking maps (separable states).
Abstract The problem of entanglement detection is a long standing problem in quantum information theory. One of the primary procedures of detecting entanglement is to find the suitable positive but non-completely positive maps. Here we try to give a generic prescription to construct a positive map that can be useful for such scenarios. We study a class of positive maps arising from Lindblad structures. We show that two famous positive maps viz. transposition, reduction map and Choi map can be obtained as a special case of a class of positive maps having Lindblad structure. Generalizing the transposition map to a one parameter family we have used it to detect genuine multipartite entanglement. Finally being motivated by the negativity of entanglement, we have defined a similar measure for genuine multipartite entanglement.