Entanglement is a resource in quantum information theory when state manipulation is restricted to local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC). It is therefore of paramount importance to decide which LOCC transformations are possible and, particularly, which states are maximally useful under this restriction. While the bipartite maximally entangled state is well known (it is the only state that cannot be obtained from any other and, at the same time, it can be transformed to any other by LOCC), no such state exists in the multipartite case. In order to cope with this fact, we introduce here the notion of the maximally entangled set (MES) of n-partite states. This is the set of states which are maximally useful under LOCC manipulation; i.e., any state outside of this set can be obtained via LOCC from one of the states within the set and no state in the set can be obtained from any other state via LOCC. We determine the MES for states of three and four qubits and provide a simple characterization for them. In both cases, infinitely many states are required. However, while the MES is of measure zero for 3-qubit states, almost all 4-qubit states are in the MES. This is because, in contrast to the 3-qubit case, deterministic LOCC transformations are almost never possible among fully entangled four-partite states. We determine the measure-zero subset of the MES of LOCC convertible states. This is the only relevant class of states for entanglement manipulation.
Entanglement is a resource in quantum information theory when state manipulation is restricted to local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC). It is therefore of paramount importance to decide which LOCC transformations are possible and, particularly, which states are maximally useful under this restriction. While the bipartite maximally entangled state is well known (it is the only state that cannot be obtained from any other and, at the same time, it can be transformed to any other by LOCC), no such state exists in the multipartite case. In order to cope with this fact, we introduce here the notion of the maximally entangled set (MES) of n-partite states. This is the set of states which are maximally useful under LOCC manipulation; i.e., any state outside of this set can be obtained via LOCC from one of the states within the set and no state in the set can be obtained from any other state via LOCC. We determine the MES for states of three and four qubits and provide a simple characterization for them. In both cases, infinitely many states are required. However, while the MES is of measure zero for 3-qubit states, almost all 4-qubit states are in the MES. This is because, in contrast to the 3-qubit case, deterministic LOCC transformations are almost never possible among fully entangled four-partite states. We determine the measure-zero subset of the MES of LOCC convertible states. This is the only relevant class of states for entanglement manipulation.
Entanglement is a resource to overcome the natural restriction of operations used for state manipulation to Local Operations assisted by Classical Communication (LOCC). Hence, a bipartite maximally entangled state is a state which can be transformed deterministically into any other state via LOCC. In the multipartite setting no such state exists. There, rather a whole set, the Maximally Entangled Set of states (MES), which we recently introduced, is required. This set has on the one hand the property that any state outside of this set can be obtained via LOCC from one of the states within the set and on the other hand, no state in the set can be obtained from any other state via LOCC. Recently, we studied LOCC transformations among pure multipartite states and derived the MES for three and generic four qubit states. Here, we consider the non-generic four qubit states and analyze their properties regarding local transformations. As already the most coarse grained classification, due to Stochastic LOCC (SLOCC), of four qubit states is much richer than in case of three qubits, the investigation of possible LOCC transformations is correspondingly more difficult. We prove that most SLOCC classes show a similar behavior as the generic states, however we also identify here three classes with very distinct properties. The first consists of the GHZ and W class, where any state can be transformed into some other state non-trivially. In particular, there exists no isolation. On the other hand, there also exist classes where all states are isolated. Last but not least we identify an additional class of states, whose transformation properties differ drastically from all the other classes. Although the possibility of transforming states into local-unitary inequivalent states by LOCC turns out to be very rare, we identify those states (with exception of the latter class) which are in the MES and those, which can be obtained (transformed) non-trivially from (into) other states respectively. These investigations do not only identify the most relevant classes of states for LOCC entanglement manipulation, but also reveal new insight into the similarities and differences between separable and LOCC transformations and enable the investigation of LOCC transformations among arbitrary four qubit states.
Entanglement is a resource under local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC). Given a set of states S, if there is one state in S that can be transformed by LOCC into all other states in S, then this state is maximally entangled in S. It is a well-known result that the d-dimensional Bell state is the maximally entangled state in the set of all bipartite states of local dimension d. Since in practical applications noise renders every state mixed, it is interesting to study whether sets of mixed states of relevance enable the notion of a maximally entangled state. A natural choice is the set of all states with the same spectrum. In fact, for any given spectrum distribution on two-qubit states, previous work has shown that several entanglement measures are all maximized by one particular state in this set. This has led us to consider the possibility that this family of states could be the maximally entangled states in the set of all states with the same spectrum, which should then maximize all entanglement measures. In this work, I answer this question in the negative: There are no maximally entangled states for a fixed spectrum in general, i.e., for every possible choice of the spectrum. In order to do so, I consider the case of rank-2 states and show that for particular values of the eigenvalues there exists no state that can be transformed to all other isospectral states not only under LOCC but also under the larger class of nonentangling operations. This in particular implies that in these cases the state that maximizes a given entanglement measure among all states with the same spectrum depends on the choice of entanglement measure; i.e., it cannot be that the aforementioned family of states maximizes all entanglement measures.
We consider generic pure n-qubit states and a general class of pure states of arbitrary dimensions and arbitrarily many subsystems. We characterize those states which can be reached from some other state via local operations assisted by finitely many rounds of classical communication (LOCC_{N}). For n qubits with n>3, we show that this set of states is of measure zero, which implies that the maximally entangled set is generically of full measure if restricted to the practical scenario of LOCC_{N}. Moreover, we identify a class of states for which any LOCC_{N} protocol can be realized via a concatenation of deterministic steps. We show, however, that in general there exist state transformations which require a probabilistic step within the protocol, which highlights the difference between bipartite and multipartite LOCC.
Local operations assisted by classical communication (LOCC) constitute the free operations in entanglement theory. Hence, the determination of LOCC transformations is crucial for the understanding of entanglement. We characterize here almost all LOCC transformations among pure multipartite multilevel states. Combined with the analogous results for qubit states shown by Gour \emph{et al.} [J. Math. Phys. 58, 092204 (2017)], this gives a characterization of almost all local transformations among multipartite pure states. We show that nontrivial LOCC transformations among generic, fully entangled, pure states are almost never possible. Thus, almost all multipartite states are isolated. They can neither be deterministically obtained from local-unitary-inequivalent (LU-inequivalent) states via local operations, nor can they be deterministically transformed to pure, fully entangled LU-inequivalent states. In order to derive this result, we prove a more general statement, namely, that, generically, a state possesses no nontrivial local symmetry. We discuss further consequences of this result for the characterization of optimal, probabilistic single copy and probabilistic multi-copy LOCC transformations and the characterization of LU-equivalence classes of multipartite pure states.
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.
The study of state transformations under local operations and classical communication (LOCC) plays a crucial role in entanglement theory. While this has been long ago characterized for pure bipartite states, the situation is drastically different for systems of more parties: generic pure qudit states cannot be obtained from nor transformed to any state (i.e., they are isolated), which contains a different amount of entanglement. We consider here the question of LOCC convertibility for permutation-symmetric pure states of an arbitrary number of parties and local dimension, a class of clear interest both for physical and mathematical reasons and for which the aforementioned result does not apply given that it is a zero-measure subset in the state space. While it turns out that generic n-qubit symmetric states are also isolated, we consider particular families for which we can determine to be, on the contrary, endowed with a rich local stabilizer, a necessary requirement for LOCC convertibility to be possible. This allows us to identify classes in which LOCC transformations among permutation-symmetric states are possible. Notwithstanding, we provide several results that indicate severe obstructions to LOCC convertibility in general even within these highly symmetrical classes. In the course of the study of LOCC transformations, we also characterize the local symmetries of symmetric states.