SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications
Geometric Measure of Entanglement and U-Eigenvalues of Tensors
Guyan Ni, Liqun Qi, Minru Bai
Abstract
We study tensor analysis problems motivated by the geometric measure of quantum entanglement. We define the concept of the unitary eigenvalue (U-eigenvalue) of a complex tensor, the unitary symmetric eigenvalue (US-eigenvalue) of a symmetric complex tensor, and the best complex rank-one approximation. We obtain an upper bound on the number of distinct US-eigenvalues of symmetric tensors and count all US-eigenpairs with nonzero eigenvalues of symmetric tensors. We convert the geometric measure of the entanglement problem to an algebraic equation system problem. A numerical example shows that a symmetric real tensor may have a best complex rank-one approximation that is better than its best real rank-one approximation, which implies that the absolute-value largest Z-eigenvalue is not always the geometric measure of entanglement.