The problem of determining whether a given quantum state is separable is known to be computationally difficult. We develop an approach to this problem based on approximations of convex polytopes in high dimensions. By showing that a convex polytope constructed from a finite number of hyperplanes approximates the Euclidean ball arbitrarily well in high dimensions, we find evidence that a finite set of approximate entanglement witnesses is potentially sufficient to determine the entanglement of a state with high probability.
The problem of determining whether a given quantum state is separable is known to be computationally difficult. We develop an approach to this problem based on approximations of convex polytopes in high dimensions. By showing that a convex polytope constructed from a finite number of hyperplanes approximates the Euclidean ball arbitrarily well in high dimensions, we find evidence that a finite set of approximate entanglement witnesses is potentially sufficient to determine the entanglement of a state with high probability.
We focus on determining the separability of an unknown bipartite quantum state $\ensuremath{\rho}$ by invoking a sufficiently large subset of all possible entanglement witnesses given the expected value of each element of a set of mutually orthogonal observables. We review the concept of an entanglement witness from the geometrical point of view and use this geometry to show that the set of separable states is not a polytope and to characterize the class of entanglement witnesses (observables) that detect entangled states on opposite sides of the set of separable states. All this serves to motivate a classical algorithm which, given the expected values of a subset of an orthogonal basis of observables of an otherwise unknown quantum state, searches for an entanglement witness in the span of the subset of observables. The idea of such an algorithm, which is an efficient reduction of the quantum separability problem to a global optimization problem, was introduced by [Ioannou et al., Phys. Rev. A 70, 060303(R)], where it was shown to be an improvement on the naive approach for the quantum separability problem (exhaustive search for a decomposition of the given state into a convex combination of separable states). The last section of the paper discusses in more generality such algorithms, which, in our case, assume a subroutine that computes the global maximum of a real function of several variables. Despite this, we anticipate that such algorithms will perform sufficiently well on small instances that they will render a feasible test for separability in some cases of interest (e.g., in $3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}3$ dimensional systems).
Let ${H}^{[N]}{=H}^{[{d}_{1}]}\ensuremath{\bigotimes}\ensuremath{\cdots}\ensuremath{\bigotimes}{H}^{[{d}_{n}]}$ be a tensor product of Hilbert spaces and let ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{0}$ be the closest separable state in the Hilbert-Schmidt norm to an entangled state ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{0}.$ Let ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{0}$ denote the closest separable state to ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{0}$ along the line segment from I/N to ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{0}$ where I is the identity matrix. Following A. O. Pittenger and M. H. Rubin [Linear Algebr. Appl. 346, 75 (2002)] a witness W0 detecting the entanglement of ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{0}$ can be constructed in terms of I, ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{0},$ and ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{0}.$ If representations of ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{0}$ and ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{0}$ as convex combinations of separable projections are known, then the entanglement of ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{0}$ can be detected by local measurements. G\"uhne et al. [Phys. Rev. A 66, 062305 (2002)] obtain the minimum number of measurement settings required for a class of two-qubit states. We use our geometric approach to generalize their result to the corresponding two-qudit case when d is prime and obtain the minimum number of measurement settings. In those particular bipartite cases, ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{0}={\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{0}.$ We illustrate our general approach with a two-parameter family of three-qubit bound entangled states for which ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{0}\ensuremath{\ne}{\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{0}$ and we show that our approach works for n qubits. We elaborated earlier [A. O. Pittenger, Linear Algebr. App. 359, 235 (2003)] on the role of a ``far face'' of the separable states relative to a bound entangled state ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{0}$ constructed from an orthogonal unextendible product base. In this paper the geometric approach leads to an entanglement witness expressible in terms of a constant times I and a separable density ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{0}$ on the far face from ${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{0}.$ Up to a normalization this coincides with the witness obtained by G\"uhne et al. for the particular example analyzed there.
Multipartite entanglement is one of the crucial resources in quantum information processing tasks such as quantum metrology, quantum computing and quantum communications. It is essential to verify not only the multipartite entanglement, but also the entanglement structure in both fundamental theories and the applications of quantum information technologies. However, it is proved to be challenging to detect the entanglement structures, including entanglement depth, entanglement intactness and entanglement stretchability, especially for general states and large-scale quantum systems. By using the partitions of the tensor product space we propose a systematic method to construct powerful entanglement witnesses which identify better the multipartite entanglement structures. Besides, an efficient algorithm using semi-definite programming and a gradient descent algorithm are designed to detect entanglement structure from the inner polytope of the convex set containing all the states with the same entanglement structure. We demonstrate by detailed examples that our criteria perform better than other known ones. Our results may be applied to many quantum information processing tasks.
Abstract Entanglement witnesses (EWs) are a versatile tool to detect entangled states and characterize related properties of entanglement in quantum information theory. The verification of entangled states via EWs relies on the fact that separable states form a convex set; this also means that the framework presented by EWs generally applies to other quantum resources where free resources contain the convexity. A witness W corresponds to an observable satisfying Tr [ W σ sep ] ⩾ 0 for all separable states σ sep ; entangled states are detected once the inequality is violated. Recently, mirrored EWs have been introduced by showing that there exist non-trivial upper bounds to EWs, u W ⩾ Tr [ W σ sep ] ⩾ 0. An upper bound to a witness W signifies the existence of the other one M , called a mirrored EW, such that W + M = u W I ⊗ I . The framework of mirrored EWs shows that a single EW can be even more useful, as it can detect a larger set of entangled states by lower and upper bounds. In this work, we develop and investigate mirrored EWs for multipartite qubit states and also for high-dimensional systems, to find the efficiency and effectiveness of mirrored EWs in detecting entangled states. We provide mirrored EWs for n -partite GHZ states, graph states such as two-colorable states and tripartite bound entangled states. We also show that optimal EWs can be reflected with each other. For bipartite systems, we present mirrored EWs for existing optimal EWs and also construct a mirrored pair of optimal EWs in dimension three. Finally, we generalize mirrored EWs such that a pair of EWs can be connected by another EW, i.e. W + M = K is also an EW. Our results enhance the capability of EWs to detect a larger set of entangled states in multipartite and high-dimensional quantum systems.
Quantum states are the key mathematical objects in quantum mechanics, and entanglement lies at the heart of the nascent fields of quantum information processing and computation. However, there has not been a general, necessary and sufficient, and operational separability condition to determine whether an arbitrary quantum state is entangled or separable. In this paper, we show that whether a quantum state is entangled or not is determined by a threshold within the quantum state. We first introduce the concept of finer and optimal separable states based on the properties of separable states in the role of higher-level witnesses. Then we show that any bipartite quantum state can be decomposed into a convex mixture of its optimal entangled state and its optimal separable state. Furthermore, we show that whether an arbitrary quantum state is entangled or separable, as well as positive partial transposition (PPT) or not, is determined by the robustness of its optimal entangled state to its optimal separable state with reference to a crucial threshold. Moreover, for an arbitrary quantum state, we provide operational algorithms to obtain its optimal entangled state, its optimal separable state, its best separable approximation (BSA) decomposition, and its best PPT approximation decomposition. And the open question of how to calculate the BSA in high-dimension systems is partially done.
Quantum entanglement is a unique correlation phenomenon in quantum mechanics, and the measurement of quantum entanglement plays an important role in quantum computing and quantum communication. Many mainstream entanglement criteria and measurement methods currently known have shortcomings in certain aspects, such as not being sufficient or necessary conditions for entanglement, or only being effective in simple cases such as 2-qubits or pure states. In this work, we will propose a scheme for measuring quantum entanglement, which starts with treating the set of quantum separable states as a convex hull of quantum separable pure states, and analyzes the properties of the convex hull to obtain a new form of entanglement measurement. Although a large amount of data is required in the measurement process, this method is not only applicable to 2-qubit quantum states, but also a entanglement measurement method that can be applied to any dimension and any fragment. We will provide several examples to compare their results with other entanglement metrics and entanglement determination methods to verify their feasibility.