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arXiv:1307.5779 · Physical Review Letters

Certifying Separability in Symmetric Mixed States of N Qubits, and Superradiance

Elie Wolfe, Susanne F. Yelin

Published Apr 7, 2014• 59 citations
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Abstract

Separability criteria are typically of the necessary, but not sufficient, variety, in that satisfying some separability criterion, such as positivity of eigenvalues under partial transpose, does not strictly imply separability. Certifying separability amounts to proving the existence of a decomposition of a target mixed state into some convex combination of separable states; determining the existence of such a decomposition is "hard." We show that it is effective to ask, instead, if the target mixed state "fits" some preconstructed separable form, in that one can generate a sufficient separability criterion relevant to all target states in some family by ensuring enough degrees of freedom in the preconstructed separable form. We demonstrate this technique by inducing a sufficient criterion for "diagonally symmetric" states of N qubits. A sufficient separability criterion opens the door to study precisely how entanglement is (not) formed; we use ours to prove that, counterintuitively, entanglement is not generated in idealized Dicke model superradiance despite its exemplification of many-body effects. We introduce a quantification of the extent to which a given preconstructed parametrization comprises the set of all separable states; for "diagonally symmetric" states our preconstruction is shown to be fully complete. This implies that our criterion is necessary in addition to sufficient, among other ramifications which we explore.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.112.140402

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Separability criteria are typically of the necessary, but not sufficient, variety, in that satisfying some separability criterion, such as positivity of eigenvalues under partial transpose, does not strictly imply separability. Certifying separability amounts to proving the existence of a decomposition of a target mixed state into some convex combination of separable states; determining the existence of such a decomposition is "hard." We show that it is effective to ask, instead, if the target mixed state "fits" some preconstructed separable form, in that one can generate a sufficient separability criterion relevant to all target states in some family by ensuring enough degrees of freedom in the preconstructed separable form. We demonstrate this technique by inducing a sufficient criterion for "diagonally symmetric" states of N qubits. A sufficient separability criterion opens the door to study precisely how entanglement is (not) formed; we use ours to prove that, counterintuitively, entanglement is not generated in idealized Dicke model superradiance despite its exemplification of many-body effects. We introduce a quantification of the extent to which a given preconstructed parametrization comprises the set of all separable states; for "diagonally symmetric" states our preconstruction is shown to be fully complete. This implies that our criterion is necessary in addition to sufficient, among other ramifications which we explore.
We study the separability problem in mixtures of Dicke states i.e., the separability of the so-called Diagonal Symmetric (DS) states. First, we show that separability in the case of DS in Cd⊗CdC^d\otimes C^dCd⊗Cd (symmetric qudits) can be reformulated as a quadratic conic optimization problem. This connection allows us to exchange concepts and ideas between quantum information and this field of mathematics. For instance, copositive matrices can be understood as indecomposable entanglement witnesses for DS states. As a consequence, we show that positivity of the partial transposition (PPT) is sufficient and necessary for separability of DS states for d≤4d \leq 4d≤4. Furthermore, for d≥5d \geq 5d≥5, we provide analytic examples of PPT-entangled states. Second, we develop new sufficient separability conditions beyond the PPT criterion for bipartite DS states. Finally, we focus on NNN-partite DS qubits, where PPT is known to be necessary and sufficient for separability. In this case, we present a family of almost DS states that are PPT with respect to each partition but nevertheless entangled.
We study the separability problem in mixtures of Dicke states i.e., the separability of the so-called Diagonal Symmetric (DS) states. First, we show that separability in the case of DS in C d ⊗ C d (symmetric qudits) can be reformulated as a quadratic conic optimization problem. This connection allows us to exchange concepts and ideas between quantum information and this field of mathematics. For instance, copositive matrices can be understood as indecomposable entanglement witnesses for DS states. As a consequence, we show that positivity of the partial transposition (PPT) is sufficient and necessary for separability of DS states for d ≤ 4 . Furthermore, for d ≥ 5 , we provide analytic examples of PPT-entangled states. Second, we develop new sufficient separability conditions beyond the PPT criterion for bipartite DS states. Finally, we focus on N -partite DS qubits, where PPT is known to be necessary and sufficient for separability. In this case, we present a family of almost DS states that are PPT with respect to each partition but nevertheless entangled.
We study the noisy GHZ-W mixture (where GHZ denotes Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger). We demonstrate some necessary but not sufficient criteria for different classes of separability of these states. It turns out that the partial transposition criterion of Peres [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 1413 (1996)] and the criteria of G\"uhne and Seevinck [New J. Phys. 12, 053002 (2010)] dealing with matrix elements are the strongest ones for different separability classes of this two-parameter state. As a result, we determine a set of entangled states of positive partial transpose.
We introduce a family of separability criteria that are based on the existence of extensions of a bipartite quantum state \ensuremath{\rho} to a larger number of parties satisfying certain symmetry properties. It can be easily shown that all separable states have the required extensions, so the nonexistence of such an extension for a particular state implies that the state is entangled. One of the main advantages of this approach is that searching for the extension can be cast as a convex optimization problem known as a semidefinite program. Whenever an extension does not exist, the dual optimization constructs an explicit entanglement witness for the particular state. These separability tests can be ordered in a hierarchical structure whose first step corresponds to the well-known positive partial transpose (Peres-Horodecki) criterion, and each test in the hierarchy is at least as powerful as the preceding one. This hierarchy is complete, in the sense that any entangled state is guaranteed to fail a test at some finite point in the hierarchy, thus showing it is entangled. The entanglement witnesses corresponding to each step of the hierarchy have well-defined and very interesting algebraic properties that, in turn, allow for a characterization of the interior of the set of positive maps. Coupled with some recent results on the computational complexity of the separability problem, which has been shown to be NP hard, this hierarchy of tests gives a complete and also computationally and theoretically appealing characterization of mixed bipartite entangled states.
We explore the subtle relationships between partial separability and entanglement of subsystems in multiqubit quantum states and give experimentally accessible conditions that distinguish between various classes and levels of partial separability in a hierarchical order. These conditions take the form of bounds on the correlations of locally orthogonal observables. Violations of such inequalities give strong sufficient criteria for various forms of partial inseparability and multiqubit entanglement. The strength of these criteria is illustrated by showing that they are stronger than several other well-known entanglement criteria (the fidelity criterion, violation of Mermin-type separability inequalities, the Laskowski-\ifmmode \dot{Z}\else \.{Z}\fi{}ukowski criterion, and the D\"ur-Cirac criterion) and also by showing their great noise robustness for a variety of multiqubit states, including NNN-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states and Dicke states. Furthermore, for $N\ensuremath{\geqslant}3$ they can detect bound entangled states. For all these states, the required number of measurement settings for implementation of the entanglement criteria is shown to be only N+1N+1N+1. If one chooses the familiar Pauli matrices as single-qubit observables, the inequalities take the form of bounds on the antidiagonal matrix elements of a state in terms of its diagonal matrix elements.
Recently, a powerful separability criterion was introduced by O. Rudolf in [5] and by K. Chen et al. in [6] — basing on realignment of elements of density matrix. Composing the main idea behind the above criterion and the necessary and sufficient condition in terms of positive maps, we provide a characterization of separable states by means of linear contractions. The latter need not be positive maps. We extend the idea to multipartite systems, and find that, somewhat suprisingly, partial realigment (unlike partial transposition) can detect genuinely tri-parite entanglement. We generalize it by introducing a family of so called permutation separability criteria for multipartite states. Namely, any permutation of indices of density matrix written in product basis leads to a separability criterion. Partial transpose and realignment criterion are special cases of permutation criteria.