The research field of quantum entanglement theory is comparatively new. While a basic understanding of the most simple systems in question (i.e. bipartite systems) has been established over the past few decades, multipartite entanglement still holds many unsolved questions and intriguing riddles. In particular, it is completely unclear how several concepts from the bipartite case can be generalised in a meaningful way to multipartite scenarios. In this work, the main issues of multipartite entanglement detection, characterisation and classification are discussed. The differences and similarities between the bipartite and the multipartite situation are reviewed, various possible generalisations are presented and results are obtained in several areas. The focus of this work particularly lies on a formalism - the so called HMGH framework, which has been developed and expanded for the past several years - which allows for construction of very specific separability criteria, capable of discriminating between different kinds of multipartite entanglement. By means of these criteria, the questions of partial separability, genuine multipartite entanglement and - ultimately - multipartite entanglement classification (which appear to contain the most striking differences to bipartite entanglement) are adressed and discussed. In order to illustrate the theoretical conclusions in these respects, several examples are given from different (and differently closely related) fields, showing the capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of the HMGH framework as well as giving insights into the current status of research in multipartite entanglement theory as a whole.
The problems of genuine multipartite entanglement detection and classification are challenging. We show that a multipartite quantum state is genuine multipartite entangled if the multipartite concurrence is larger than certain quantities given by the number and the dimension of the subsystems. This result also provides a classification of various genuine multipartite entanglements. We present a lower bound of the multipartite concurrence in terms of bipartite concurrences. While various operational approaches are available for providing lower bounds of bipartite concurrences, our results give an effective operational way to detect and classify genuine multipartite entanglement. As applications, genuine multipartite entanglement of tripartite systems is analyzed in detail.
Multipartite entanglement includes not only the genuine entanglement but also the
k-entanglement $(k\ensuremath{\geqslant}2)$. It is known that the most bipartite entanglement measures have been shown to be monogamous, but the monogamy relation is involved in the bipartite entanglement measures rather than the multipartite ones. So how we can explore the monogamy relation for
k-entanglement becomes a basic open problem. In this paper we establish an axiomatic definition of the monogamy relation for the
k-entanglement measure based on the coarser relation of the system partition. We also present the axiomatic definition of the complete
k-entanglement measure and the associated complete monogamy relation according to the framework of the complete multipartite entanglement measure we established in [Phys. Rev. A 101, 032301 (2020)], which is shown to be an efficient tool for characterizing the multipartite quantum correlation as complementary to the monogamy relation associated with the bipartite measure. Consequently, the relation and the difference between monogamy, complete monogamy, and tightly complete monogamy are clearly depicted in light of the three types of coarser relation of the system partition. We then illustrate our approach with two classes of
k-entanglement measures in detail. We find that all these
k-entanglement measures are monogamous if the reduced function is strictly concave, they are not completely monogamous, and they are not complete generally.
We prove exactly that the squared entanglement of formation, which quantifies the bipartite entanglement, obeys a general monogamy inequality in an arbitrary multiqubit mixed state. Based on this kind of exotic monogamy relation, we are able to construct two sets of useful entanglement indicators: the first one can detect all genuine multiqubit entangled states even in the case of the two-qubit concurrence and n-tangles being zero, while the second one can be calculated via quantum discord and applied to multipartite entanglement dynamics. Moreover, we give a computable and nontrivial lower bound for multiqubit entanglement of formation.