Mixed-State Entanglement and Quantum Communication

Michał Horodecki, Paweł Horodecki, Ryszard Horodecki

We present basics of mixed-state entanglement theory. The first part of the article is devoted to mathematical characterizations of entangled states. In second part we discuss the question of using mixed-state entanglement for quantum communication. In particular, a type of entanglement that is not directly useful for quantum communcation (called bound entanglement) is analysed in detail.

Andrew G. White, Daniel F. V. James, William J. Munro +1 more

Michał Horodecki, Paweł Horodecki, Ryszard Horodecki

It is shown that if a mixed state can be distilled to the singlet form it must violate partial transposition criterion [A. Peres, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1413 (1996)]. It implies that there are two qualitatively different types of entanglement: ``free'' entanglement which is distillable, and ``bound'' entanglement which cannot be brought to the singlet form useful for quantum communication purposes. A possible physical meaning of the result is discussed.

Zeilinger

Mayukh Lahiri, Radek Łapkiewicz, Armin Hochrainer +2 more

Entanglement verification and measurement is essential for experimental tests of quantum mechanics and also for quantum communication and information science. Standard methods of verifying entanglement in a bipartite mixed state require detection of both particles and involve coincidence measurement. We present a method that enables us to verify and measure entanglement in a two-photon mixed state without detecting one of the photons, i.e., without performing any coincidence measurement or postselection. We consider two identical sources, each of which can generate the same two-photon mixed state but they never emit simultaneously. We show that one can produce a set of single-photon interference patterns, which contain information about entanglement in the two-photon mixed state. We prove that it is possible to retrieve the information about entanglement from the visibility of the interference patterns. Our method reveals a distinct avenue for verifying and measuring entanglement in mixed states.