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arXiv:1003.4337 · Entropy

On Two-Distillable Werner States

Dragomir Ž. Djoković

Published Jun 2, 2016• 13 citations
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Abstract

We consider bipartite mixed states ρ in a d ⊗ d quantum system. We say that ρ is PPT if its partial transpose 1 ⊗ T ( ρ ) is positive semidefinite, and otherwise ρ is NPT. The well-known Werner states are divided into three types: (a) the separable states (the same as the PPT states); (b) the one-distillable states (necessarily NPT); and (c) the NPT states which are not one-distillable. We give several different formulations and provide further evidence for the validity of the conjecture that Werner states of type (c) are not two-distillable.

DOI
10.3390/e18060216

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Entanglement distillation is a fundamental task in quantum information theory. In this work, we prove that Werner states in arbitrary dimension are 222-copy distillable if and only if they are 111-copy distillable. This answers the longstanding open question of the 222-copy distillability of Werner states. This is an important step on determining whether every non-positive partial transpose (NPT) state is distillable, which remains one of the central open problems in the field of entanglement distillation.
The bipartite quantum states ρ, with rank strictly smaller than the maximum of the ranks of the reduced states ρ A and ρ B , are distillable by local operations and classical communication (Horodecki P, Smolin J A, Terhal B M and Thapliyal A V 2003 Theor. Comput. Sci. 292 589–96; 1999 arXiv:quant-ph/9910122). Our first main result is that this is also true for NPT states with rank equal to this maximum. (A state is PPT if the partial transpose of its density matrix is positive semidefinite, and otherwise it is NPT.) This was conjectured first in 1999 in the special case when the ranks of ρ A and ρ B are equal (see (Horodecki P, Smolin J A, Terhal B M and Thapliyal A V 2003 Theor. Comput. Sci. 292 589–96; 1999 arXiv:quant-ph/9910122). Our second main result provides a complete solution of the separability problem for bipartite states of rank 4. Namely, we show that such a state is separable if and only if it is PPT and its range contains at least one product state. We also prove that the so-called checkerboard states are distillable if and only if they are NPT.
We show that a bipartite quantum state of rank four is distillable if its partial transpose has at least one negative eigenvalue; that is, the state is a non-positive-partial transpose (NPT). For this purpose we prove that if the partial transpose of a two-qutrit NPT state has at least two non-positive eigenvalues, then the state is distillable. We further construct a parametrized two-qutrit NPT state of rank five which is not 1-distillable and show that it is not nnn-distillable for any given nnn when the parameter is sufficiently small. This state has the smallest rank among all 1-undistillable NPT states. We conjecture that the state is not distillable.
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Whether entanglement with a negative partial transpose (NPT) can be undistillable is a longstanding open problem. In the canonical family of DiVincenzo \textit{et al.}, the one-copy-undistillable region was conjectured to remain undistillable at all copy numbers. We refute this: in every dimension d≥3d\geq3d≥3, one vertex of this region is two-copy distillable, via an explicit Schmidt-rank-two tight-frame witness. The separation persists on an open set, while other states in the same region are provably two-copy undistillable. Twirling our counterexample into Werner form makes it two-copy undistillable, so this standard reduction can erase finite-copy distillability.