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arXiv:0909.5152 · Physical Review Letters

Local Unitary Equivalence of Multipartite Pure States

Barbara Kraus

Published Jan 14, 2010• 134 citations
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Abstract

Necessary and sufficient conditions for the equivalence of arbitrary n-qubit pure quantum states under local unitary (LU) operations are derived. First, an easily computable standard form for multipartite states is introduced. Two generic states are shown to be LU equivalent iff their standard forms coincide. The LU-equivalence problem for nongeneric states is solved by presenting a systematic method to determine the LU operators (if they exist) which interconvert the two states.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.104.020504

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Necessary and sufficient conditions for the equivalence of arbitrary n-qubit pure quantum states under local unitary (LU) operations are derived. First, an easily computable standard form for multipartite states is introduced. Two generic states are shown to be LU equivalent iff their standard forms coincide. The LU-equivalence problem for nongeneric states is solved by presenting a systematic method to determine the LU operators (if they exist) which interconvert the two states.
The necessary and sufficient conditions for the equivalence of arbitrary nnn-qubit pure quantum states under local unitary (LU) operations derived in [B. Kraus, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 020504 (2010)] are used to determine the different LU-equivalence classes of up to five-qubit states. Due to this classification new parameters characterizing multipartite entanglement are found and their physical interpretation is given. Moreover, the method is used to derive examples of two nnn-qubit states (with n>2n>2n>2 arbitrary) which have the properties that all the entropies of any subsystem coincide; however, the states are neither LU equivalent nor can be mapped into each other by general local operations and classical communication.
We derive the necessary and sufficient conditions for the local unitary (LU) equivalence of two general (pure or mixed) nnn-qubit states and determine the local unitary operators connecting them. Almost all relevant information is contained in the one-qubit reduced matrices of the multiqubit states under investigation. Our technique relies on identifying ab initio all local symmetries and the corresponding local cyclic unitary operators. To derive the above conditions we use the reference forms of the multiqubit states whose definition requires the diagonalization of the one-qubit reduced matrices. Based on those conditions, we propose a straightforward protocol to decide whether or not two nnn-qubit states are LU equivalent.
Local unitary (LU) equivalent states are crucial for understanding the structure of quantum entanglement. We investigate the LU equivalence based on the LU Bargmann invariants (LUBIs). We consider for which states the LUBIs are sufficient to ensure the LU equivalence. We focus on a class of multipartite states with complete local commutativity, called CLC states. We first show that for multipartite CLC states, all the LUBIs are sufficient to ensure the local permutation equivalence, if their single-party marginals are diagonal and non-degenerate. By virtue of the fact that the CLC property remains unchanged under local operations, we verify that the LUBIs are also sufficient to ensure the LU equivalence of multipartite CLC states whose single-party marginals are non-degenerate. Furthermore, when the single-party marginals are degenerate, we propose concrete examples of two-qudit and three-qubit systems, showing that there are states which share all the LUBIs but are not LU equivalent.
Local unitary equivalence is an important ingredient for quantifying and classifying entanglement. Verifying whether or not two quantum states are local unitary equivalent is a crucial problem, where only the case of multipartite pure states is solved. For mixed states, however, the verification of local unitary equivalence is still a challenging problem. In this paper, based on the coefficient matrices of generalized Bloch representations of quantum states, we find a variety of local unitary invariants for arbitrary-dimensional bipartite quantum states. These invariants are operational and can be used as necessary conditions for verifying the local unitary equivalence of two quantum states. Furthermore, we extend the construction to the arbitrary-dimensional multipartite case. We finally apply these invariants to estimate concurrence, a vital entanglement measure, showing the practicability of local unitary invariants in characterizing entanglement.
We study the local unitary equivalence for two and three-qubit mixed states by investigating the invariants under local unitary transformations. For two-qubit system, we prove that the determination of the local unitary equivalence of 2-qubits states only needs 14 or less invariants for arbitrary two-qubit states. Using the same method, we construct invariants for three-qubit mixed states. We prove that these invariants are sufficient to guarantee the LU equivalence of certain kind of three-qubit states. Also, we make a comparison with earlier works.
Local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC) play a fundamental role in the resource-theoretic formulation of entanglement theory inducing an operationally meaningful ordering in the set of entangled states. The particular class within LOCC of local unitary (LU) transformations is obviously closed under inversion. Thus, LU-equivalent states are interconvertible by LOCC and have therefore the same entanglement. For this reason LU-equivalence has been thoroughly studied in the context of entanglement theory. However, as I note here with a simple example, the converse is not true: there exist entangled states that are interconvertible by LOCC but which are not LU-equivalent. This motivates studying under which conditions LOCC interconvertibility is characterized by LU-equivalence. I provide a sufficient condition for this to hold. When one considers multipartite states with full entanglement dimensionality (as quantified by the Schmidt number vector) LOCC interconvertibility can only hold under LU-equivalence.