A Discourse on Bound Entanglement in Quantum Information Theory

Chiara Macchiavello

Lieven Clarisse

PhD thesis (University of York). The thesis covers in a unified way the material presented in quant-ph/0403073, quant-ph/0502040, quant-ph/0504160, quant-ph/0510035, quant-ph/0512012 and quant-ph/0603283. It includes two large review chapters on entanglement and distillation.

Jef Pauwels, Nicolas Gisin, Renato Renner

There exist bipartite quantum states that cost entanglement to create, yet from which no singlet can be distilled. This extreme irreversibility is known as bound entanglement. A quarter-century ago, Gisin and Wolf asked whether classical information theory admits the same phenomenon. Are there correlations, shared by two parties and an eavesdropper, that cost secret bits to create, yet from which none can be distilled? This question is part of a broader program exploring the relation between quantum and classical information theory. We answer it in the affirmative, providing a simple example, a distribution of two bits and a trit. Bound entanglement thus has a classical counterpart, bound information. An even more direct correspondence was originally conjectured, namely that measuring purifications of bound-entangled states yields distributions with bound information. The very states that motivated the conjecture, however, yield no bound information when measured in the standard basis, whereas suitable measurements of purifications of separable states do. The analogy between bound entanglement and bound information thus lies in the accounting of resources, not in a correspondence between individual quantum states and the classical probability distributions induced by measuring them.

Beatrix C. Hiesmayr, Christopher Popp, Tobias C. Sutter

Bound entanglement is a special form of quantum entanglement that cannot be used for distillation, i.e. the local transformation of copies of arbitrarily entangled states into a smaller number of approximately maximally entangled states. Implying an inherent irreversibility of quantum resources, this phenomenon highlights the gaps in our current theory of entanglement. This review provides a comprehensive exploration of the key findings on bipartite bound entanglement. We focus on systems of finite dimensions, an area of high relevance for many quantum information processing tasks. We elucidate the properties of bound entanglement and its interconnections with various facets of quantum information theory and quantum information processing. The paper highlights areas where our understanding of bound entangled states, particularly in their detection and characterization, remains underdeveloped. By highlighting the need for further research into this phenomenon and underscoring relevant open questions, this paper invites researchers to unravel its relevance for our understanding of entanglement in Nature and how this resource can most effectively be used for applications in quantum technology.

Mahmoud Abdel‐Aty

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