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.
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.
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 can not 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 towards this direction.
First, we reveal the lattice-theoretic structure of the partial separability classification, introduced earlier [Sz. Szalay and Z. Kokenyesi, 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 turns also out that, physically, this structure is related to the LOCC convertibility: if a class can completely be mapped into another one by the use of LOCC, then it 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.
Although many different entanglement measures have been proposed so far, much less is known in the multipartite case, which leads to the previous monogamy relations in the literature being not complete. We establish here a strict framework for defining the multipartite entanglement measure (MEM): apart from the postulates of the bipartite measure, i.e., vanishing on separable measures and nonincreasing under local operations and classical communication, a complete MEM should additionally satisfy the unification condition and the hierarchy condition. We then come up with a complete monogamy formula for the unified MEM (an MEM is called a unified MEM if it satisfies the unification condition) and a tightly complete monogamy relation for the complete MEM (an MEM is called a complete MEM if it satisfies both the unification condition and the hierarchy condition). Consequently, we propose MEMs which are multipartite extensions of entanglement of formation (EoF), concurrence, tangle, Tsallis q entropy of entanglement, R\'enyi $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ entropy of entanglement, the convex-roof extension of negativity, and negativity. We show that (i) the extensions of EoF, concurrence, tangle, and Tsallis q entropy of entanglement are complete MEMs; (ii) multipartite extensions of R\'enyi $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ entropy of entanglement, negativity, and the convex-roof extension of negativity are unified MEMs but not complete MEMs; and (iii) all these multipartite extensions are completely monogamous, and the ones which are defined by the convex-roof structure (except for the R\'enyi $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ entropy of entanglement and the convex-roof extension of negativity) are not only completely monogamous but also tightly completely monogamous. In addition, as a byproduct, we find a class of states that satisfy the additivity of EoF. We also find a class of tripartite states one part of which can be maximally entangled with the other two parts simultaneously according to the definition of mixed maximally entangled state (MMES) in Li et al. [Z. Li, M. Zhao, S. Fei, H. Fan, and W. Liu, Quantum Inf. Comput. 12, 0063 (2012)]. Consequently, we improve the definition of maximally entangled state (MES) and prove that the only MES is the pure MES.
Multipartite entanglement is regarded as a crucial physical resource in quantum network communication. However, due to the intrinsic complexity of quantum many-body systems, identifying a multipartite entanglement measure that is both efficiently computable and capable of accurately characterizing entanglement remains a challenging problem. To address these issues, we propose a family of two-parameter multipartite entanglement measures for mixed states, termed unified-entropy concentratable entanglements. Many well-known multipartite entanglement measures are recovered as special cases of this family of measures, such as the entanglement of formation and the concentratable entanglements introduced in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 140501 (2021)]. We demonstrate that the unified-entropy concentratable entanglements constitutes a well-defined entanglement monotones, and establish several desirable properties it satisfies, such as subadditivity and continuity. We further investigate the ordering relations of unified-entropy concentratable entanglements and discuss how these quantities can be efficiently estimated on near-term quantum devices. As an application, we demonstrate that the unified-entropy concentratable entanglements can effectively distinguish between multi-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and W states. The ordering relations of these entanglement measures are further validated using four-partite star quantum network states and four-qubit Dicke states. Moreover, we find that the unified-entropy concentratable entanglements exhibit greater sensitivity than the original concentratable entanglements in detecting certain four-partite star quantum network states.
We present two sets of computable entanglement measures for multipartite systems where each subsystem can have different degrees of freedom (so-called qudits). One set, called ``separability'' measure, reveals which of the subsystems are separable or entangled. For that we have to extend the concept of k separability for multipartite systems to a unambiguous separability concept which we call ${\ensuremath{\gamma}}_{k}$ separability. The second set of entanglement measures reveals the ``kind'' of entanglement, i.e., if it is bipartite, tripartite, \dots{}, n-partite entangled and is denoted as the ``physical'' measure. We show how lower bounds on both sets of measures can be obtained by the observation that any entropy may be rewritten via operational expressions known as m concurrences. Moreover, for different classes of bipartite or multipartite qudit systems we compute the bounds explicitly and discover that they are often tight or equivalent to positive partial transposition.
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.
Although many different entanglement measures have been proposed so far, much less is known in the multipartite case, which leads to the previous monogamy relations in literatures are not complete. We establish here a strict framework for defining multipartite entanglement measure (MEM): apart from the postulates of bipartite measure [i.e., vanishing on separable and nonincreasing under local operations and classical communication (LOCC)], a genuine MEM should additionally satisfy the \textit{unification condition} and the \textit{hierarchy condition}. We then come up with a \textit{complete monogamy formula} under the unified MEM (an MEM is called a unified MEM if it satisfies the unification condition). Consequently, we propose MEMs which are multipartite extensions of entanglement of formation (EoF), concurrence, tangle, the convex-roof extension of negativity and negativity, respectively. We show that multipartite extensions of the bipartite measures that are defined by the convex-roof structure are completely monogamous, the extensions of EoF, concurrence and tangle are genuine MEMs (an MEM is called a genuine MEM if it satisfies both the unification condition and the hierarchy condition), and multipartite extensions of both negativity and the convex-roof extension of negativity are unified MEMs but not genuine MEMs.