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arXiv:2602.10668 · Physical Review A

Maximum residual strong monogamy inequality for multiqubit entanglement

Dong-Dong Dong, Xue-Ke Song, Liu Ye, Dong Wang, Gerardo Adesso

quant-phSubmitted Feb 11, 2026• Announced Feb 12, 2026• 0 citations• Revised Feb 12, 2026 (v2)

v1 · Feb 11, 2026 v2 · Feb 12, 2026

Abstract

We establish two new inequalities, the weighted strong monogamy (WSM) and the maximum residual strong monogamy (MRSM), which sharpen the generalized Coffman-Kundu-Wootters inequity for multiqubit states. The WSM inequality distinguishes itself from the strong monogamy (SM) conjecture [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 110501 (2014)] by using coefficients rather than exponents to modulate the weight allocated to various m-partite contributions. In contrast, the MRSM inequality is formulated using only the maximum m-partite entanglement. We find that the residual entanglement of the MRSM inequality can effectively distinguish the separable states. We also compare the tightness of various SM inequalities and provide examples using a four-qubit mixed state and a five-qubit pure state to illustrate the MRSM inequality. These examples characterize the trade-off relations among entanglement components involving varying numbers of qubits. Our results provide a rigorous framework to characterize and quantify the monogamy of multipartite entanglement.

Journal reference: Phys. Rev. A 113, 022444 (2026)
DOI: 10.1103/ppcz-znyt
Comments: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted by Physical Review A

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We establish two new inequalities, the weighted strong monogamy (WSM) and the maximum residual strong monogamy (MRSM), which sharpen the generalized Coffman-Kundu-Wootters inequity for multiqubit states. The WSM inequality distinguishes itself from the strong monogamy (SM) conjecture [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 110501 (2014)] by using coefficients rather than exponents to modulate the weight allocated to various m-partite contributions. In contrast, the MRSM inequality is formulated using only the maximum m-partite entanglement. We find that the residual entanglement of the MRSM inequality can effectively distinguish the separable states. We also compare the tightness of various SM inequalities and provide examples using a four-qubit mixed state and a five-qubit pure state to illustrate the MRSM inequality. These examples characterize the trade-off relations among entanglement components involving varying numbers of qubits. Our results provide a rigorous framework to characterize and quantify the monogamy of multipartite entanglement.

We investigate possible generalizations of the Coffman-Kundu-Wootters monogamy inequality to four qubits, accounting for multipartite entanglement in addition to the bipartite terms. We show that the most natural extension of the inequality does not hold in general, and we describe the violations of this inequality in detail. We investigate alternative ways to extend the monogamy inequality to express a constraint on entanglement sharing valid for all four-qubit states, and perform an extensive numerical analysis of randomly generated four-qubit states to explore the properties of such extensions.

The monogamy inequality in terms of the concurrence, called the Coffman-Kundu-Wootters inequality [V. Coffman et al., Phys. Rev. A 61, 052306 (2000)], and its generalization [T. J. Osborne and F. Verstraete, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 220503 (2006)] hold on general

n

-qubit states including mixed ones. In this Brief Report, we consider the monogamy inequalities in terms of the fully entangled fraction and the teleportation fidelity. We show that the monogamy inequalities do not hold on general mixed states, while the inequalities hold on

n

-qubit pure states.

We propose an entanglement measure to quantify three-qubit entanglement in terms of negativity. A monogamy inequality analogous to the Coffman-Kundu-Wootters inequality is established. This consequently leads to a definition of residual entanglement, which is referred to as the three-$\ensuremath{\pi}$ in order to distinguish it from the three-tangle. The three-$\ensuremath{\pi}$ is proved to be a natural entanglement measure. By contrast to the three-tangle, it is shown that the three-$\ensuremath{\pi}$ always gives greater than zero values for pure states belonging to the

W

and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger classes, implying that three-way entanglement always exists for them; the three-tangle generally underestimates the three-way entanglement of a given system. This investigation will offer an alternative tool to understand genuine multipartite entanglement.