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arXiv:2610.18816

On the coincidence of discrete and continuous definitions of Entanglement of Formation

Haobo Ma, Maksim E. Shirokov, Wenlin Zhang

quant-phmath-phmath.FASubmitted Oct 13, 2026• Announced Oct 14, 2026• 0 citations• Revised Oct 15, 2026 (v2)
v1 · Oct 13, 2026v2 · Oct 15, 2026
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Abstract

It is proved that every Borel ensemble of pure states on a separable bipartite Hilbert space with finite average entanglement admits a countable ensemble with the same barycenter and arbitrarily small additional average entanglement. Consequently, the discrete and continuous versions of the Entanglement of Formation coincide on the whole space of states of infinite-dimensional bipartite quantum system (with infinite values allowed). The main idea of the proof (realized with the AI-assistance) is the lifting a Borel ensemble of pure bipartite states to a Borel probability measure on the unit sphere in the space of Hilbert--Schmidt operators followed by dividing the support of this measure into appropriate cells and replacing each cell by its conditional barycenter. The resulting countable ensemble is obtained by a recursive construction.

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14 pages, preliminary vesion, any comments are welcome

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It is proved that every Borel ensemble of pure states on a separable bipartite Hilbert space with finite average entanglement admits a countable ensemble with the same barycenter and arbitrarily small additional average entanglement. Consequently, the discrete and continuous versions of the Entanglement of Formation coincide on the whole space of states of infinite-dimensional bipartite quantum system (with infinite values allowed).
The main idea of the proof (realized with the AI-assistance) is the lifting a Borel ensemble of pure bipartite states to a Borel probability measure on the unit sphere in the space of Hilbert--Schmidt operators followed by dividing the support of this measure into appropriate cells and replacing each cell by its conditional barycenter. The resulting countable ensemble is obtained by a recursive construction.
We analyse two possible definitions of the squashed entanglement in an infinite-dimensional bipartite system: direct translation of the finite-dimensional definition and its universal extension. It is shown that the both definitions produce the same lower semicontinuous entanglement measure possessing all basis properties of the squashed entanglement on the set of states having at least one finite marginal entropy. It is also shown that the second definition gives an adequate lower semicontinuous extension of this measure to all states of the infinite-dimensional bipartite system. A general condition relating continuity of the squashed entanglement to continuity of the quantum mutual information is proved and its corollaries are considered. Continuity bound for the squashed entanglement under the energy constraint on one subsystem is obtained by using the tight continuity bound for quantum conditional mutual information (proved in the Appendix by using Winter’s technique). It is shown that the same continuity bound is valid for the entanglement of formation. As a result the asymptotic continuity of the both entanglement measures under the energy constraint on one subsystem is proved.
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.
A density operator (state) on a tensor product H ⊗ K of Hilbert spaces is separable if it is in the convex closure of the subset of all tensor product states. Non-separable states are called entangled. These concepts are of great importance in quantum information theory, but they have been studied in depth only in the finite-dimensional context [1]. In this note we give a general integral representation for separable states and provide the first example of separable states that are not countably decomposable. We also prove a structure theorem for quantum communication channels that are entanglement-breaking, generalizing the finite-dimensional result of [2]. In the finite-dimensional case such channels can be characterized as having a Stinespring–Kraus representation (3) with operators Vj of rank 1. The above example implies the existence of infinite-dimensional entanglement-breaking channels having no such representation. In what follows, H, K ,... are separable Hilbert spaces, T(H) is the Banach space of trace-class operators and S(H) is the convex subset of all density operators on H. For brevity we shall also call them states, having in mind that a density operator ρ uniquely determines a normal state on the algebra B(H) of all bounded operators on H. Equipped with the trace-norm topology, S(H) is a complete separable metric space. If π is a Borel probability measure on S(H), then the Bochner integral
Quantum systems prepared in pure states evolve into mixtures under environmental action. Continuously realizable ensembles (or physically realizable) are the pure state decompositions of those mixtures that can be generated in time through continuous measurements of the environment. Here, we define continuously realizable entanglement as the average entanglement over realizable ensembles. We search for the measurement strategy to maximize and minimize this quantity through observations on the independent environments that cause two qubits to disentangle in time. We then compare it with the entanglement bounds (entanglement of formation and entanglement of assistance) for the unmonitored system. For some relevant noise sources the maximum realizable entanglement coincides with the upper bound, establishing the scheme as an alternative to protect entanglement. However, for local strategies, the lower bound of the unmonitored system is not reached.
We investigate entanglement measures in the infinite-dimensional regime. First, we discuss the peculiarities that may occur if the Hilbert space of a bi-partite system is infinite dimensional, most notably the fact that the set of states with infinite entropy of entanglement is trace-norm dense in state space, implying that in any neighbourhood of every product state lies an arbitrarily strongly entangled state. The starting point for a clarification of this counterintuitive property is the observation that if one imposes the natural and physically reasonable constraint that the mean energy is bounded from above, then the entropy of entanglement becomes a trace-norm continuous functional. The considerations will then be extended to the asymptotic limit, and we will prove some asymptotic continuity properties. We proceed by investigating the entanglement of formation and the relative entropy of entanglement in the infinite-dimensional setting. Finally, we show that the set of entangled states is still trace-norm dense in state space, even under the constraint of a finite mean energy.
The newfound importance of ``entanglement as a resource'' in quantum computation and quantum communication compels us to quantify it in as many distinct ways as possible. Here we explore a new measure of entanglement for mixed quantum states of bipartite systems, which we name the Entanglement of Assistance. We show it to be the maximum average entanglement of all pure-state ensembles consistent with the given density matrix. In this sense, the Entanglement of Assistance is a quantity directly dual to the more standard Entanglement of Formation. With the help of lower and upper bounds, we calculate the Entanglement of Assistance for a few cases and use these results to show that it possesses the surprising property of superadditivity. We believe that this may shed some light on the question of additivity for the Entanglement of Formation.