Harmonic Total Concurrence: A Bottleneck-Sensitive Genuine Multipartite Entanglement Measure
Qi Han, Xuexin Huang, Junlin Li +1 more
Abstract Quantum entanglement is a core resource for quantum communication and computation. Genuine multipartite entanglement (GME), as a critical quantum correlation, underpins measurement-based quantum computation and multipartite quantum simulation, but existing GME measures cannot well characterize uneven entanglement distributions and are insensitive to single-partition entanglement failure in practical bottleneck scenarios. To address this problem, we propose a novel GME measure termed harmonic total concurrence (HTC), defined as the harmonic mean of total concurrence over all nontrivial bipartitions, and place it within a one-parameter power-mean family of total concurrence measures. HTC satisfies the standard entanglement hierarchy and effectively distinguishes GHZ and W states. Its computable lower bounds for mixed states outperform geometric total concurrence in entanglement detection under typical noise, and it extends the effective time window for entanglement certification while enabling early warning of asymmetric entanglement decay. We further define an entanglement non-uniformity parameter and prove HTC induces a state ordering distinct from existing measures. This work provides a new theoretical tool for multipartite entanglement characterization, with good experimental accessibility on photonic, atomic and optomechanical platforms.
Chinese Physics B•Oct 9, 2026•0 citations