This paper addresses the following main question: Do we have a theoretical understanding of entanglement applicable to a full variety of physical settings? It is clear that not only the assumption of distinguishability, but also the few-subsystem scenario, are too narrow to embrace all possible physical settings. In particular, the need to go beyond the traditional subsystem-based framework becomes manifest when one tries to apply the conventional concept of entanglement to the physics of matter, since the constituents of a quantum many-body system are indistinguishable particles. We shall discuss here a notion of generalized entanglement, which can be applied to any operator language (fermions, bosons, spins, etc.) used to describe a physical system and which includes the conventional entanglement settings introduced to date in a unified fashion. This is realized by noticing that entanglement is an observer-dependent concept, whose properties are determined by the expectations of a distinguished set of observables without reference to a preferred subsystem decomposition, i.e., it depends on the physically relevant point of view. This viewpoint depends in turn upon the relationship between different sets of observables that determine our ability to control the system of interest. Indeed, the extent to which entanglement is present depends on the observables used to measure a system and describe its states. This represents a most conspicuous advantage as will be highlighted by the condensed-matter application we will discuss.
Abstract We study properties of entangled systems in the (mainly non-relativistic) second quantization formalism. This is then applied to interacting and non-interacting bosons and fermions and the differences between the two are discussed. We present a general formalism to show how entanglement changes with the change of modes of the system. This is illustrated with examples such as the Bose condensation and the Unruh effect. It is then shown that a non-interacting collection of fermions at zero temperature can be entangled in spin, providing that their distances do not exceed the inverse Fermi wavenumber. Beyond this distance all bipartite entanglement vanishes, although classical correlations still persist. We compute the entanglement of formation as well as the mutual information for two spin-correlated electrons as a function of their distance. The analogous, non-interacting collection of bosons displays no entanglement in the internal degrees of freedom. We show how to generalize our analysis of the entanglement in the internal degrees of freedom to an arbitrary number of particles.
We study properties of entangled systems in the (mainly non-relativistic) second quantization formalism. This is then applied to interacting and non-interacting bosons and fermions and the differences between the two are discussed. We present a general formalism to show how entanglement changes with the change of modes of the system. This is illustrated with examples such as the Bose condensation and the Unruh effect. It is then shown that a non-interacting collection of fermions at zero temperature can be entangled in spin providing that their distances do not exceed the inverse Fermi wavenumber. Beyond this distance all bipartite entanglement vanishes, although classical correlations still persist. We compute the entanglement of formation as well as the mutual information for two spin-correlated electrons as a function of their distance. The analogous non-interacting collection of bosons displays no entanglement in the internal degrees of freedom. We show how to generalize our analysis of the entanglement in the internal degrees of freedom to an arbitrary number of particles.
We address the question of description of qubit system in a formalism based on the nilpotent commuting variables. In this formalism qubits exhibit properties of composite objects being subject of the Pauli exclusion principle, but otherwise behaving boson-like. They are not fundamental particles. In such an approach the classical limit yields the nilpotent mechanics. Using the space of
η-wavefunctions, generalized Schrödinger equation etc. we study properties of pure qubit systems and also properties of some composed, hybrid models: fermion-qubit, boson-qubit. The fermion-qubit system can be truly supersymmetric, with both SUSY partners having identical spectra. It is new and very interesting that SUSY transformations relate here only nilpotent object. The
η-eigenfunctions for the qubit-qubit system give the set of Bloch vectors as a natural basis. Then the
η-formalism is applied to the description of the pure state entanglement. Nilpotent commuting variables were firstly used in this context in [A. Mandilara, et. al., Phys. Rev. A \textbf{74}, 022331 (2006)], we generalize and extend approach presented there. Our main tool for study the entanglement or separability of states are Wronskians of
η-functions. The known invariants and entanglement monotones for systems of
n=2,3,4 qubits are expressed in terms of the Wronskians. This approach gives criteria for separability of states and insight into the flavor of entanglement of the system and simplifies description.
We present a notion of generalized entanglement which goes beyond the conventional definition based on quantum subsystems. This is accomplished by directly defining entanglement as a property of quantum states relative to a distinguished set of observables singled out by Physics. While recovering standard entanglement as a special case, our notion allows for substantially broader generality and flexibility, being applicable, in particular, to situations where existing tools are not directly useful.