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arXiv:1106.1208 · Physical Review A

Entanglement monotones for W -type states

Eric Chitambar, Wei Cui, Hoi‐Kwong Lo

Published Jun 19, 2012• 14 citations
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Abstract

In this article, we extend recent results concerning random-pair Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen distillation and the operational gap between separable operations (SEPs) and local operations with classical communication (LOCC). In particular, we consider the problem of obtaining bipartite maximal entanglement from an $N$-qubit $W$-class state (i.e., that of the form $\sqrt{{x}_{0}}|00\ensuremath{\cdots}0\ensuremath{\rangle}+\sqrt{{x}_{1}}|10\ensuremath{\cdots}0\ensuremath{\rangle}+\ensuremath{\cdots}+\sqrt{{x}_{n}}|00\ensuremath{\cdots}1\ensuremath{\rangle}$) when the target pairs are a priori unspecified. We show that when ${x}_{0}=0$, the optimal probabilities for SEPs can be computed using semidefinite programming. On the other hand, to bound the optimal probabilities achievable by LOCC, we introduce entanglement monotones defined on the $N$-qubit $W$ class of states. The LOCC monotones we construct can be increased by SEPs, and in terms of transformation success probability, we are able to quantify a gap as large as 37$%$ between the two classes. Additionally, we demonstrate transformations ${\ensuremath{\rho}}^{\ensuremath{\bigotimes}n}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{\ensuremath{\bigotimes}n}$ that are feasible by SEP for any $n$ but impossible by LOCC.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.85.062316

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Quantum entanglement is fundamentally related to the operational setting of local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC). A more general class of operations known as separable operations (SEP) is often employed to approximate LOCC, but the exact difference between LOCC and SEP is unknown. In this letter, we compare the two classes in performing particular tripartite to bipartite entanglement conversions and report a gap as large as 12.5% between SEP and LOCC, which is the first known appreciable gap between the classes. Our results rely on constructing a computable entanglement monotone with a clear operational meaning that, unlike all other such monotones previously studied, is not monotonic under SEP. Finally, we prove the curious fact that convergent sequences of LOCC protocols need not be LOCC feasible in the limit.
Entanglement is one of the fundamental features of quantum information science.\nThough bipartite entanglement has been analyzed thoroughly in theory and shown to\nbe an important resource in quantum computation and communication protocols, the\ntheory of entanglement shared between more than two parties, which is called multipartite\nentanglement, is still not complete. Specifically, the classification of multipartite\nentanglement and the transformation property between different multipartite states by\nlocal operators and classical communications (LOCC) are two fundamental questions in\nthe theory of multipartite entanglement.\nIn this thesis, we present results related to the LOCC transformation between multipartite\nentangled states. Firstly, we investigate the bounds on the LOCC transformation\nprobability between multipartite states, especially the GHZ class states. By analyzing\nthe involvement of 3-tangle and other entanglement measures under weak two-outcome\nmeasurement, we derive explicit upper and lower bound on the transformation probability\nbetween GHZ class states. After that, we also analyze the transformation between\nN-party W type states, which is a special class of multipartite entangled states that\nhas an explicit unique expression and a set of analytical entanglement monotones. We\npresent a necessary and sufficient condition for a known upper bound of transformation\nprobability between two N-party W type states to be achieved.\nWe also further investigate a novel entanglement transformation protocol, the random\ndistillation, which transforms multipartite entanglement into bipartite entanglement\nii\nshared by a non-deterministic pair of parties. We find upper bounds for the random distillation\nprotocol for general N-party W type states and find the condition for the upper\nbounds to be achieved. What is surprising is that the upper bounds correspond to entanglement\nmonotones that can be increased by Separable Operators (SEP), which gives\nthe first set of analytical entanglement monotones that can be increased by SEP.\nFinally, we investigate the idea of a new class of multipartite entangled states, the\nAbsolutely Maximal Entangled (AME) states, which is characterized by the fact that\nany bipartition of the states would give a maximal entangled state between the two sets.\nThe relationship between AME states and Quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocols is\nexhibited and the application of AME states in novel quantum communication protocols\nis also explored.
Abstract We study the task of entanglement distillation in the one-shot setting under different classes of quantum operations which extend the set of local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Establishing a general formalism which allows for a straightforward comparison of their exact achievable performance, we relate the fidelity of distillation under these classes of operations with a family of entanglement monotones and the rates of distillation with a class of smoothed entropic quantities based on the hypothesis testing relative entropy. We then characterise exactly the one-shot distillable entanglement of several classes of quantum states and reveal many simplifications in their manipulation. We show in particular that the ε-error one-shot distillable entanglement of any pure state is the same under all sets of operations ranging from one-way LOCC to separability-preserving operations or operations preserving the set of states with positive partial transpose, and can be computed exactly as a quadratically constrained linear program. We establish similar operational equivalences in the distillation of isotropic and maximally correlated states, reducing the computation of the relevant quantities to linear or semidefinite programs. We also show that all considered sets of operations achieve the same performance in environment-assisted entanglement distillation from any state.
In this article we obtain results for the task of converting a single NNN-qubit WWW-class state (of the form $\sqrt{{x}_{0}}|00...0\ensuremath{\rangle}+\sqrt{{x}_{1}}|10...0\ensuremath{\rangle}+\ensuremath{\cdots}+\sqrt{{x}_{N}}|00...1\ensuremath{\rangle}$) into maximum entanglement shared between two random parties. Previous studies in random distillation have not considered how the particular choice of target pairs affects the transformation, and here we develop a strategy for distilling into general configurations of target pairs. We completely solve the problem of determining the optimal distillation probability for all three-qubit configurations and most four-qubit configurations when x0=0{x}_{0}=0x0​=0. Our proof involves deriving new entanglement monotones defined on the set of four-qubit WWW-class states. As an additional application of our results, we present new upper bounds for converting a generic WWW-class state into the standard WWW state $|{W}_{N}\ensuremath{\rangle}=\sqrt{\frac{1}{N}}(|10...0\ensuremath{\rangle}+\ensuremath{\cdots}+|00...1\ensuremath{\rangle})$.
Quantum communication relies on the existence of high quality quantum channels to exchange information. In practice, however, all communication links are affected by noise from the environment. Here we investigate the ability of quantum channels to perform quantum communication tasks by restricting the participants to use only local operations and one-way classical communication (one-way LOCC) along with the available quantum channel. In particular, a channel can be used to distill a highly entangled state between two parties, which further enables quantum or private communication. In this work, we invoke the framework of superchannels to study the distillation of a resourceful quantum state, such as a maximally entangled state or a private state, using multiple instances of a point-to-point quantum channel. We use the idea ofk-extendibility to obtain a semidefinite relaxation of the set of one-way LOCC superchannels and define a class of entanglement measures for quantum channels that decrease monotonically under such superchannels; therefore these measures, dubbed collectively the “unextendible entanglement of a channel”, yield upper bounds on several communication-theoretic quantities of interest in the regimes of resource distillation and zero error.We then generalize the formalism ofk-extendibility to bipartite superchannels, thus obtaining functions that are monotone under two-extendible superchannels. This allows us to analyze probabilistic distillation of ebits or secret key bits from a bipartite state when using a resourceful quantum channel. Moreover, we propose semidefinite programs to evaluate several of these quantities, providing a computationally feasible method of comparison between quantum channels for resource distillation.
This thesis studies the manipulation of entanglement in three-qubit quantum systems. I consider the operational setting in which the qubits are distributed to three spatially separated parties. The parties act locally on their quantum systems and share classical communication with one another, a scenario commonly called local operations and classical communication (LOCC). In the LOCC setting, there are two different classes of entanglement in multipartite systems, called the GHZ and W classes, which are inequivalent in the sense that states from one class cannot be transformed into the other without the consumption of additional entanglement. In this thesis, I first show that the LOCC conversion of certain GHZ and W-class states becomes possible by using only one additional ebit (“entangled bit”) of shared entanglement. In many cases, this can be proven as the minimal amount of needed entanglement. I then consider the problem of one-way communication transformations from general three-qubit states into two-qubit maximally entangled states, known as EPR states. An optimal protocol in terms of success probability is provided for W-class states. The success probability of this protocol coincides with the optimal success probability if two of the parties are allowed to act jointly within the same laboratory. In other words, forcing the locality constraint on all three parties does not weaken their capabilities for obtaining bipartite entanglement when starting from a W-class state. I also present that this property holds for certain types of GHZ-class states as well.