Entanglement and geometry
Per Øyvind Sollid
Abstract
In bipartite quantum systems of dimension 3× 3 the lowest rank entangled states that are positive under partial transposition (PPT) can be related, by product transformations, to states that are constructed by the use of unextendible product bases (UPB) in the Hilbert space of the system. Here we consider a possible generalization of the product bases, which can be related in a similar way to low-rank entangled density matrices in higher dimensions. The idea is to give up the condition of orthogonality of the product vectors, while keeping the relation between the density matrix and the projection on the associated UPB. We examine first this generalization for the 3 × 3 system where numerical studies indicate that one-parameter families of such generalized states can be found. Similar numerical searches in higher dimensional systems show the presence of extremal PPT states of the same form. Based on these results we indicate that the UPB construction of the lowest rank entangled states in the 3×3 system can be generalized to higher dimensions, with the use of non-orthogonal UPBs of the suggested form.