The degree to which a pure quantum state is entangled can be characterized by the distance or angle to the nearest unentangled state. This geometric measure of entanglement, already present in a number of settings [A. Shimony, Ann. NY. Acad. Sci. 755, 675 (1995); H. Barnum and N. Linden, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 34, 6787 (2001)], is explored for bipartite and multipartite pure and mixed states. The measure is determined analytically for arbitrary two-qubit mixed states and for generalized Werner and isotropic states, and is also applied to certain multipartite mixed states. In particular, a detailed analysis is given for arbitrary mixtures of three-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger, W, and inverted-
W states. Along the way, we point out connections of the geometric measure of entanglement with entanglement witnesses and with the Hartree approximation method.
We introduce a class of generalized geometric measures of entanglement. For pure quantum states of
N elementary subsystems, they are defined as the distances from the sets of
K-separable states
(K=2,…,N). The entire set of generalized geometric measures provides a quantification and hierarchical ordering of the different bipartite and multipartite components of the global geometric entanglement, and allows discrimination among the different contributions. The extended measures are applied to the study of entanglement in different classes of
N-qubit pure states. These classes include
W and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, and their symmetric superpositions; symmetric multimagnon states; cluster states; and, finally, asymmetric generalized
W-like superposition states. We discuss in detail a general method for the explicit evaluation of the multipartite components of geometric entanglement, and we show that the entire set of geometric measures establishes an ordering among the different types of bipartite and multipartite entanglement. In particular, it determines a consistent hierarchy between GHZ and
W states, clarifying the original result of Wei and Goldbart that
W states possess a larger global entanglement than GHZ states. Furthermore, we show that all multipartite components of geometric entanglement in symmetric states obey a property of self-similarity and scale invariance with the total number of qubits and the number of qubits per party.
The thesis includes the original results of our articles [30, 37, 40, 42, 51, 53, 75]. A method is developed to compute analytically entanglement measures of three-qubit pure states. Owing to it closed-form expressions are presented for the geometric measure of entanglement for three-qubit states that are linear combinations of four orthogonal product states. It turns out that the geometric measure for these states has three different expressions depending on the range of definition in parameter space and the Hilbert space of three-qubits consists of three different entangled regions. The states that lie on joint surfaces separating different entangled regions, designated as shared states, have particularly interesting features and are dual quantum channels for the perfect teleportation and superdense coding [42]. A powerful method is developed to compute analytically multipartite entanglement measures. The method uses the duality concept and creates a bijection between highly entangled quantum states and their nearest separable states. The bijection gives explicitly the geometric entanglement measure of arbitrary generalized W states of n qubits [30, 75]. Additionaly, the behavior of the geometric entanglement measure of many-qubit W states is analyzed and an interpolating formula is derived [51]. Generalized Schmidt decomposition of pure three-qubit states has four positive and one complex coefficients. In contrast to the bipartite case, they are not arbitrary and the largest Schmidt coefficient restricts severely other coefficients. It is derived a non-strict inequality between three-qubit Schmidt coefficients, where the largest coefficient defines the least upper bound for the three nondiagonal coefficients or, equivalently, the three nondiagonal coefficients together define the greatest lower bound for the largest coefficient [53].
The geometric measure of quantum entanglement of a pure state, defined by its distance to the set of pure separable states, is extended to multipartite mixed states. We characterize the nearest disentangled mixed state to a given mixed state with respect to the geometric measure by means of a system of equations. The entanglement eigenvalue for a mixed state is introduced. And we show that, for a given mixed state, its nearest disentangled mixed state is associated with its entanglement eigenvalue. Two numerical examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.