We study how multipartite entanglement evolves under the paradigm of separable operations, which include the local operations and classical communication as a special case. We prove that the average ``decay'' of entanglement induced by a separable operation is measure independent (among SL-invariant ones) and state independent: The ratio between the average output entanglement and the initial entanglement is solely a function of the separable operation, regardless of the input state and of the SL-invariant entanglement measure being used. We discuss the ``disentangling power'' of a quantum channel and show that it exhibits a similar state invariance as the average entanglement decay ratio. Our Rapid Communication significantly extends the bipartite results of Horodecki and Horodecki, Quantum Inf. Comput. 10, 901 (2010), Konrad et al., Nat. Phys. 4, 99 (2008), and Tiersch et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 170502 (2008) as well as the multipartite one of Gour, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 190504 (2010), all of the previous work being restricted to one-sided or particular noise models.
We study how multipartite entanglement evolves under the paradigm of separable operations, which include the local operations and classical communication as a special case. We prove that the average decay'' of entanglement induced by a separable operation is measure independent (among SL-invariant ones) and state independent: The ratio between the average output entanglement and the initial entanglement is solely a function of the separable operation, regardless of the input state and of the SL-invariant entanglement measure being used. We discuss the disentangling power'' of a quantum channel and show that it exhibits a similar state invariance as the average entanglement decay ratio. Our Rapid Communication significantly extends the bipartite results of Horodecki and Horodecki, Quantum Inf. Comput. 10, 901 (2010), Konrad et al., Nat. Phys. 4, 99 (2008), and Tiersch et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 170502 (2008) as well as the multipartite one of Gour, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 190504 (2010), all of the previous work being restricted to one-sided or particular noise models.
We discover a simple factorization law describing how multipartite entanglement of a composite quantum system evolves when one of the subsystems undergoes an arbitrary physical process. This multipartite entanglement decay is determined uniquely by a single factor we call the entanglement resilience factor. Since the entanglement resilience factor is a function of the quantum channel alone, we find that multipartite entanglement evolves in exactly the same way as bipartite (two qudits) entanglement. For the two qubits case, our factorization law reduces to the main result of [T. Konrad, Nature Phys. 4, 99 (2008)10.1038/nphys885]. In addition, for a permutation P, we provide an operational definition of P asymmetry of entanglement, and find the conditions when a permuted version of a state can be achieved by local means.
We study two distinct diagnostics of bipartite quantum channels: the average fidelity between a desired state and noisy output across different classes of input states, and generation of entanglement from pure product input states, quantified by well-defined entangling power. These diagnostics are generally independent, but together they provide a more complete description of bipartite channels. We show that the fidelity averaged over any local-unitary orbit with fixed Schmidt coefficients for equal local dimensions is completely determined by the average input-output fidelity and its restriction to product inputs. We also introduce concurrence- and negativity-based entangling power for two-qubit channels, prove their convexity and monotonicity under local postprocessing, and show that, unlike the previously proposed linear-entropy quantity, they vanish for all separable channels. Representative separable and nonseparable channels are investigated. Finally, we generalize our definitions of entangling power to nonproduct inputs, and provide an analytical lower bound for the concurrence-based entanglement variation, showing its effectiveness with specific examples.
We explore how entanglement of a bipartite system evolves when one subsystem undergoes the action of an arbitrary noisy channel. It is found that the dynamics of entanglement of such system is determined by the channel's action on the maximally entangled state, which includes as a special case the results for two-qubit systems [Konrad et al., Nat. Phys. 4, 99 (2008)]. In particular, for multiqubit or qubit-qudit systems, we get a general factorization law for the evolution equation of entanglement, with one qubit being subject to a noisy channel.
The main concern of this paper is how to define proper measures of multipartite entanglement for mixed quantum states. Since the structure of partial separability and multipartite entanglement is getting complicated if the number of subsystems exceeds two, one cannot expect the existence of an ultimate scalar entanglement measure, which grasps even a small part of the rich hierarchical structure of multipartite entanglement, and some higher-order structure characterizing that is needed. In this paper we make some steps in this direction. First, we reveal the lattice-theoretic structure of the partial separability classification, introduced earlier [Sz. Szalay and Z. K\"ok\'enyesi, Phys. Rev. A 86, 032341 (2012)]. It turns out that, mathematically, the structure of the entanglement classes is the up-set lattice of the structure of the different kinds of partial separability, which is the down-set lattice of the lattice of the partitions of the subsystems. It also turns out that, physically, this structure is related to the local operations and classical communication convertibility: If a state from a class can be mapped into another one, then that class can be found higher in the hierarchy. Second, we introduce the notion of multipartite monotonicity, expressing that a given set of entanglement monotones, while measuring the different kinds of entanglement, shows also the same hierarchical structure as the entanglement classes. Then we construct such hierarchies of entanglement measures and propose a physically well-motivated one, being the direct multipartite generalization of the entanglement of formation based on the entanglement entropy, motivated by the notion of statistical distinguishability. The multipartite monotonicity shown by this set of measures motivates us to consider the measures to be the different manifestations of some ``unified'' notion of entanglement.
Multipartite entanglement is an essential resource for quantum communication, quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum networks. The utility of a quantum state |ψ⟩ for these applications is often directly related to the degree or type of entanglement present in |ψ⟩. Therefore, efficiently quantifying and characterizing multipartite entanglement is of paramount importance. In this work, we introduce a family of multipartite entanglement measures, called concentratable entanglements. Several well-known entanglement measures are recovered as special cases of our family of measures, and hence we provide a general framework for quantifying multipartite entanglement. We prove that the entire family does not increase, on average, under local operations and classical communications. We also provide an operational meaning for these measures in terms of probabilistic concentration of entanglement into Bell pairs. Finally, we show that these quantities can be efficiently estimated on a quantum computer by implementing a parallelized SWAP test, opening up a research direction for measuring multipartite entanglement on quantum devices.
Understanding multipartite entanglement is a key goal in quantum information. Entanglement in pure states can be characterized by considering transformations under local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC). However, it has been shown that, for $n\ensuremath{\ge}5$ parties, multipartite pure states are generically isolated, i.e., they can be neither reached nor transformed under LOCC. Nonetheless, in any real laboratory, one never deterministically transforms a pure initial state exactly to a pure target state. Instead, one transforms a mixed state near the initial state to an ensemble that is on average close to the target state. This motivates studying approximate LOCC transformations. After reviewing in detail the known results in the bipartite case, we present the gaps that remain open in the multipartite case. While the analysis of the multipartite setting is much more technically involved due to the existence of different stochastic LOCC (SLOCC) classes, certain features simplify in the approximate setting. In particular, we show that it is sufficient to consider pure initial states, that it is sufficient to consider LOCC protocols with finitely many rounds of communication, and that approximate transformations can be approximated by ensemble transformations within an SLOCC class. Then we formally define a hierarchy of different forms of approximate transformations that are relevant from a physical point of view. Whereas this hierarchy collapses in the bipartite case, we show that this is not the case for the multipartite setting, which is fundamentally richer. To wit, we show that optimal multipartite approximate transformations are not generally deterministic, that ensemble transformations within an SLOCC class can achieve a higher fidelity than deterministic transformations within an SLOCC class, and that there are approximate transformations with no deterministic transformations nearby.