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arXiv:2512.10410

Entanglement in C$^*$-algebras: tensor products of state spaces

Magdalena Musat, Mikael Rørdam

math.OAmath.FAquant-phSubmitted Dec 11, 2025• Announced Dec 12, 2025• Revised Jul 25, 2026 (v5)
v1 · Dec 11, 2025v2 · Dec 13, 2025v3 · Feb 11, 2026v4 · Apr 14, 2026v5 · Jul 25, 2026
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Abstract

We analyze the Namioka-Phelps minimal and maximal tensor products of compact convex sets which arise as the state spaces of unital C$^*$-algebras. Relatedly, we study entanglement in (infinite dimensional) C$^*$-algebras. While the minimal Namioka-Phelps tensor product of the state spaces of two C$^*$-algebras is the well-known set of separable (= un-entangled) states on the (minimal) tensor product of the C$^*$-algebras, we also describe the more elusive maximal Namioka-Phelps tensor product of state spaces of C$^*$-algebras. We show that the minimal and maximal tensor products of state spaces of C$^*$-algebras agree precisely when one of the two C$^*$-algebras is commutative, which confirms Barker's conjecture in the case where the compact convex sets are state paces of C$^*$-algebras. Further, the Namioka-Phelps tensor product of the trace simplexes of two or more unital C$^*$-algebras is shown to be the trace simplex of the (minimal or maximal) tensor product of the C$^*$-algebras. This enables a systematic way of determining the trace simplex of a tensor product of C$^*$-algebras.

Comments
27 pages. This version has undergone significant revisions, including correcting a wrong statement about tensor products of Poulsen simplexes

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Entanglement in C∗^*∗-algebras: tensor products of state spaces
We analyze the Namioka-Phelps minimal and maximal tensor products of compact convex sets which arise as the state spaces of unital C∗^*∗-algebras. Relatedly, we study entanglement in (infinite dimensional) C∗^*∗-algebras. While the minimal Namioka-Phelps tensor product of the state spaces of two C∗^*∗-algebras is the well-known set of separable (= un-entangled) states on the (minimal) tensor product of the C∗^*∗-algebras, we also describe the more elusive maximal Namioka-Phelps tensor product of state spaces of C∗^*∗-algebras. We show that the minimal and maximal tensor products of state spaces of C∗^*∗-algebras agree precisely when one of the two C∗^*∗-algebras is commutative, which confirms Barker's conjecture in the case where the compact convex sets are state paces of C∗^*∗-algebras.
Further, the Namioka-Phelps tensor product of the trace simplexes of two or more unital C∗^*∗-algebras is shown to be the trace simplex of the (minimal or maximal) tensor product of the C∗^*∗-algebras. This enables a systematic way of determining the trace simplex of a tensor product of C∗^*∗-algebras.
Given two unital C*-algebras equipped with states and a positive operator in the enveloping von Neumann algebra of their minimal tensor product, we define three parameters that measure the capacity of the operator to align with a coupling of the two given states. Further, we establish a duality formula that shows the equality of two of the parameters for operators in the minimal tensor product of the relevant C*-algebras. In the context of abelian C*-algebras, our parameters are related to quantitative versions of Arveson's null set theorem and to dualities considered in the theory of optimal transport. On the other hand, restricting to matrix algebras we recover and generalize quantum versions of Strassen's theorem. We show that in the latter case our parameters can detect maximal entanglement and separability.
We introduce a class of states of a composite quantum system, the so-called cross states, that turn out to play a major role in the theory of entanglement for a genuinely infinite-dimensional bipartite system. In the case where at least one of the Hilbert spaces of the bipartition is finite-dimensional, all states are cross states, whereas, in the genuinely infinite-dimensional setting where the dimension of both Hilbert spaces is not finite, the cross states form a trace-norm dense, convex, proper subset of the set of all states. In the latter case, the cross states can be regarded as those physical states that possess a finite amount of entanglement; accordingly, all separable states are of this kind. We prove that, for any Hilbert space dimension, the separable states can be characterized as those cross states that minimize a suitable norm, i.e., the projective norm associated with the projective tensor product of two trace classes; all other cross states are density operators belonging to the projective tensor product space. This is a generalization of the classical cross norm criterion of separability. Finally, we define an extended real-valued entanglement function and study its main properties. Coherently with the interpretation of cross states as finitely entangled states, this function is finite, and coincides with the projective norm, precisely on the cross states of the system.
We introduce the notion of a Tsirelson pair of C*-algebras, which is a pair of C*-algebras for which the space of quantum strategies obtained by using states on the minimal tensor product of the pair is dense in the space of quantum strategies obtained by using states on the maximal tensor product. We exhibit a number of examples of such pairs that are “nontrivial” in the sense that the minimal tensor product and the maximal tensor product of the pair are not isomorphic. For example, we prove that any pair containing a C*-algebra with Kirchberg’s QWEP property is a Tsirelson pair. We then introduce the notion of a C*-algebra with the Tsirelson property (TP) and establish a number of closure properties for this class. We also show that the class of C*-algebras with the TP forms an elementary class (in the sense of model theory), but that this class does not admit an effective axiomatization.
In quantum physics, multiparticle systems are described by quantum states acting on tensor products of Hilbert spaces. This product structure leads to the distinction between product states and entangled states; moreover, one can quantify entanglement by considering the distance of a quantum state to the set of product states. The underlying optimization problem occurs frequently in physics and beyond, for instance in the computation of the injective tensor norm in multilinear algebra. Here, we introduce a method to determine the maximal overlap of a pure multiparticle quantum state with product states based on considering several copies of the pure state. This leads to three types of hierarchical approximations to the problem, all of which we prove to converge to the actual value. Besides allowing for the computation of the geometric measure of entanglement, our results can be used to tackle optimizations over stochastic local transformations, to find entanglement witnesses for weakly entangled bipartite states, and to design strong separability tests for mixed multiparticle states. Finally, our approach sheds light on the complexity of separability tests.
Abstract Every multipartite entangled quantum state becomes fully separable after an entanglement breaking quantum channel acted locally on each of its subsystems. Whether there are other quantum channels with this property has been an open problem with important implications for entanglement theory (e.g., for the distillation problem and the PPT squared conjecture). We cast this problem in the general setting of proper convex cones in finite-dimensional vector spaces. The max-entanglement annihilating maps transform thek-fold maximal tensor product of a cone C1{\textsf{C}}_1C1​ C1 into thek-fold minimal tensor product of a cone C2{\textsf{C}}_2C2​ C2 , and the pair (C1,C2)({\textsf{C}}_1,{\textsf{C}}_2)(C1​,C2​) (C1,C2) is called resilient if all max-entanglement annihilating maps are entanglement breaking. Our main result is that (C1,C2)({\textsf{C}}_1,{\textsf{C}}_2)(C1​,C2​) (C1,C2) is resilient if either C1{\textsf{C}}_1C1​ C1 or C2{\textsf{C}}_2C2​ C2 is a Lorentz cone. Our proof exploits the symmetries of the Lorentz cones and applies two constructions resembling protocols for entanglement distillation: As a warm-up, we use the multiplication tensors of real composition algebras to construct a finite family of generalized distillation protocols for Lorentz cones, containing the distillation protocol for entangled qubit states by Bennett et al. (Phys Rev Lett 76(5):722, 1996) as a special case. Then, we construct an infinite family of protocols using solutions to the Hurwitz matrix equations. After proving these results, we focus on maps between cones of positive semidefinite matrices, where we derive necessary conditions for max-entanglement annihilation similar to the reduction criterion in entanglement distillation. Finally, we apply results from the theory of Banach space tensor norms to show that the Lorentz cones are the only cones with a symmetric base for which a certain stronger version of the resilience property is satisfied.
Completely positive and trace preserving (CPT) maps are important for Quantum Information Theory, because they describe a broad class of of transformations of quantum states. There are also two other related classes of maps, the unital completely positive (UCP) maps and the unital completely positive and trace preserving (UCPT) maps. For these three classes, the maps from a finite dimensional Hilbert space XXX to another one YYY is a compact convex set and, as such, it is the convex hull of its extreme points. The extreme points of these convex sets are yet not well understood. In this article we investigate the preservation of extremality under the tensor product. We prove that extremality is preserved for CPT or UCP maps, but for UCPT it is not always preserved.