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arXiv:0905.0778

General theory of detection and optimality

Gniewomir Sarbicki

Published May 6, 2009• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A general formulation of the problem of detection for a pair of two cones is presented. The special case is the detection of entangled states by entanglement witnesses. Having defined what means "to detect", one can identify the subset of elements, which detect optimally. I will present the properties of this set for a general pair of cones. In particular, I prove the generalization of the theorem of Lewenstein, Krauss, Cirac, Horodecki. The entanglement witness $W$ is optimall if the set of product vectors $\{ϕ\otimes ψ: \langle ϕ\otimes ψ| W | ϕ\otimes ψ\rangle = 0\}$ spans the whole Hilbert space of a system. There exist optimall entangled witness, which do not fullfill this property. It is closely related to some geometrical properties of the boundary of the set of entanglement witnesses and it is possible to say something more about location of such extraordinary states.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.0905.0778

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A general formulation of the problem of detection for a pair of two cones is presented. The special case is the detection of entangled states by entanglement witnesses. Having defined what means "to detect", one can identify the subset of elements, which detect optimally. I will present the properties of this set for a general pair of cones. In particular, I prove the generalization of the theorem of Lewenstein, Krauss, Cirac, Horodecki. The entanglement witness WWW is optimall if the set of product vectors {ϕ⊗ψ:⟨ϕ⊗ψ∣W∣ϕ⊗ψ⟩=0}\{ϕ\otimes ψ: \langle ϕ\otimes ψ| W | ϕ\otimes ψ\rangle = 0\}{ϕ⊗ψ:⟨ϕ⊗ψ∣W∣ϕ⊗ψ⟩=0} spans the whole Hilbert space of a system. There exist optimall entangled witness, which do not fullfill this property. It is closely related to some geometrical properties of the boundary of the set of entanglement witnesses and it is possible to say something more about location of such extraordinary states.
We focus on determining the separability of an unknown bipartite quantum state $\ensuremath{\rho}$ by invoking a sufficiently large subset of all possible entanglement witnesses given the expected value of each element of a set of mutually orthogonal observables. We review the concept of an entanglement witness from the geometrical point of view and use this geometry to show that the set of separable states is not a polytope and to characterize the class of entanglement witnesses (observables) that detect entangled states on opposite sides of the set of separable states. All this serves to motivate a classical algorithm which, given the expected values of a subset of an orthogonal basis of observables of an otherwise unknown quantum state, searches for an entanglement witness in the span of the subset of observables. The idea of such an algorithm, which is an efficient reduction of the quantum separability problem to a global optimization problem, was introduced by [Ioannou et al., Phys. Rev. A 70, 060303(R)], where it was shown to be an improvement on the naive approach for the quantum separability problem (exhaustive search for a decomposition of the given state into a convex combination of separable states). The last section of the paper discusses in more generality such algorithms, which, in our case, assume a subroutine that computes the global maximum of a real function of several variables. Despite this, we anticipate that such algorithms will perform sufficiently well on small instances that they will render a feasible test for separability in some cases of interest (e.g., in $3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}3$ dimensional systems).
Constructing optimal entanglement witnesses for arbitrary quantum systems remains a formidable challenge, hindered by the structural complexity of high-dimensional quantum state spaces. In this work, we overcome this barrier by introducing a unified framework for constructing geometrically optimal witnesses capable of identifying arbitrary entanglement structures. By leveraging the geometric properties of a target quantum state relative to a specific entanglement structure in Hilbert-Schmidt space, these witnesses are constructed in an efficient and effective manner. Among all nontrivial witnesses, they provide maximal distinguishability between the target state and the set of states without the desired entanglement structure. As a result, our approach enables the universal detection of bipartite, multipartite, and high-dimensional entanglement. To demonstrate its experimental feasibility, we apply the framework to a four-qubit nuclear spin quantum system. Compared to existing methods, our approach offers enhanced noise robustness, broader detection universality, and improved construction efficiency, providing a powerful and versatile tool for advancing the characterization and understanding of entanglement in quantum systems.
Entanglement witnesses (EWs) constitute one of the most important entanglement detectors in quantum systems. Nevertheless, their complete characterization, in particular with respect to the notion of optimality, is still missing, even in the decomposable case. Here we show that for any qubit–qunit decomposable EW (DEW) W , the three statements are equivalent: (i) the set of product vectors obeying ⟨ e , f | W | e , f ⟩ = 0 spans the corresponding Hilbert space, (ii) W is optimal, and (iii) W = Q Γ , with Q denoting a positive operator supported on a completely entangled subspace (CES) and Γ standing for the partial transposition. While implications (i)⇒(ii) and (ii)⇒(iii) are known, here we prove that (iii) implies (i). This is a consequence of a more general fact saying that product vectors orthogonal to any CES in span after partial conjugation the whole space. On the other hand, already in the case of the Hilbert space, there exist DEWs for which (iii) does not imply (i). Consequently, either (i) does not imply (ii) or (ii) does not imply (iii), and the above transparent characterization, obeyed by qubit–qunit DEWs, does not hold in general.
We examine various notions related to the optimality for entanglement witnesses arising from Choi-type positive linear maps. We found examples of optimal entanglement witnesses which are nondecomposable but are not ``nondecomposable optimal entanglement witnesses'' in the sense of Lewenstein, Kraus, Cirac, and Horodecki [Phys. Rev. A 62, 052310 (2000)]. We suggest using the terms PPTES witness and optimal PPTES witness in place of ``nondecomposable entanglement witness'' and ``nondecomposable optimal entanglement witnesses'' in order to avoid possible confusion. Here, PPTES refers entangled states with positive partial transposes. We also found examples of nonextremal optimal entanglement witnesses which are indecomposable.
We study extremal entanglement witnesses on a bipartite quantum system. We define the cone of witnesses as the dual of the set of separable density matrices, thus Tr Ωρ≥0\textrm{Tr}\,Ωρ\geq 0TrΩρ≥0 when ΩΩΩ is a witness and ρρρ a pure product state, ρ=ψψ†ρ=ψψ^{\dagger}ρ=ψψ† with ψ=ϕ⊗χψ=ϕ\otimesχψ=ϕ⊗χ. The set of witnesses of unit trace is a compact convex set, defined by its extremal points. The expectation value f(ϕ,χ)=Tr Ωρf(ϕ,χ)=\mathrm{Tr}\,Ωρf(ϕ,χ)=TrΩρ as a function of ϕϕϕ and χχχ is a nonnegative biquadratic form. Every zero of f(ϕ,χ)f(ϕ,χ)f(ϕ,χ) imposes real-linear constraints on fff and ΩΩΩ. The Hessian matrix at the zero must be nonnegative. Its eigenvectors with zero eigenvalue, if any, we call Hessian zeros. A zero of f(ϕ,χ)f(ϕ,χ)f(ϕ,χ) is quadratic if it has no Hessian zeros, otherwise it is quartic. We call a witness quadratic if it has only quadratic zeros, and quartic otherwise. We prove that a witness is extremal if and only if no other witness has the same, or a larger, set of zeros and Hessian zeros. A quadratic extremal witness has a minimum number of isolated zeros depending on dimensions. If a witness is not extremal, the constraints defined by its zeros and Hessian zeros determine all directions in which to search for witnesses having more zeros or Hessian zeros. A finite number of iterated searches in random directions lead to an extremal witness which is usually quadratic with the minimum number of zeros. We discuss some topics related to extremal witnesses, in particular the relation between the facial structures of the dual sets of witnesses and separable states. We discuss the relation between extremality and optimality of witnesses, and a conjecture of separability of the structural physical approximation (SPA) of an optimal witness. We discuss how to treat the entanglement witnesses on a complex Hilbert space as witnesses on a real Hilbert space.
This thesis deals with methods of the detection of entanglement.After recalling some facts and definitions concerning entanglement and separability, we investigate two methods of the detection of entanglement.In the first part of this thesis we consider so-called entanglement witnesses, mainly in view of the detection of multipartite entanglement.Entanglement witnesses are observables for which a negative expectation value indicates entanglement.We first present a simple method to construct these witnesses.Since witnesses are nonlocal observables, they are not easy to measure in a real experiment.However, as we will show, one can circumvent this problem by decomposing the witness into several local observables which can be measured separately.We calculate the local decompositions for several interesting witnesses for two, three and four qubits.Local decompositions can be optimized in the number of measurement settings which are needed for an experimental implementation.We present a method to prove that a given local decomposition is optimal and discuss with this the optimality of our decompositions.Then we present another method of designing witnesses which are by construction measurable with local measurements.Finally, we shortly report on experiments where some of the witnesses derived in this part have been used to detect three-and four-partite entanglement of polarized photons.The second part of this thesis deals with separability criteria which are written in terms of uncertainty relations.There are two different formulations of uncertainty relations since one can measure the uncertainty of an observable by its variance as well as by entropic quantities.We show that both formulations are useful tools for the derivation of separability criteria for finite-dimensional systems and investigate the resulting criteria.Our results in this part exhibit also some more fundamental properties of entanglement: We show how known separability criteria for infinitedimensional systems can be translated to finite-dimensional systems.Furthermore, we prove that any entropic uncertainty relation on one part of the system gives rise to a separability criterion on the composite system.