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Geometric Aspects of Quantum Entanglement

Leif Ove Hansen

Published Jan 1, 2016• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Summary: \nEntanglement is a strange feature contained in the quantum mechanical framework, first observed theoretically by Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein. An inherent attribute of entanglement is non-locality, and in the continuation of this, several non-reductionist features, which are conceptually challenging and philosophically interesting. \n \nA considerable growth of the interest in quantum entanglement has occurred since the early 1990s, and much of the reason for this is that the tools of quantum optics and modern instrumentation have made it possible to measure and manipulate entangled quantum systems. Today, several applications of entanglement exist, including quantum computers and several areas in quantum communications. \n \nA quantum state is either separable or entangled, it cannot be none or both. A separable state do not exhibit the non-local features found in entangled states, and are in this sense comparable to classic states. An important issue here is the separability problem, which is the problem of determining whether a given state is entangled or not. \n \nWe study these quantum states as Hermitian matrices with positive eigenvalues in convex spaces. The PPT criterion is based on the partial transposition operation, which essentially transposes one of the two subsystems in the quantum system. For some states the result is another quantum (positive) state, and these are PPT (Positive Partial Transpose) states, while others that gain negative eigenvalues are called NPT states. \n \nFor systems of dimensions 2 × 2 and 2 × 3, the PPT states are identical to the separable states, and the NPT states are identical to the entangled states, so the PPT criterion is always conclusive. But for larger dimensions, such as for instance the 3 × 3 system, there always exist PPT states that are entangled, so for this case the PPT criterion can only be used in a contrapositive way. Since entangled PPT states in this sense seem to have great significance, their characteristics are worth studying. \nAs mentioned, the PPT criterion uses the transposition map on one of the two subsystems of a composite quantum system. Transposition is an example of a positive map, in that it maps all quantum states into quantum states. It is possible to use positive maps to formulate a much more general criterion for the separability problem.There is a link (an isomorphism) between positive maps and a subset of Hermitian operators called entanglement witnesses. \n \nThe so-called Horodecki criterion states that a quantum state is separable if and only if the expectation value of all entanglement witnesses in the state are non-negative. If the expectation value of one (or possibly several) entanglement witnesses in a given quantum state is negative, then the state is always entangled. This criterion is both necessary and sufficient, but demands that we can characterize the entire set of entanglement witnesses. \n \nThe approach in this thesis is through geometry. Of fundamental importance is the convex nature of the sets in question. The knowledge and understanding of the extremal points in these sets is very relevant, since they describe the sets completely. Undertaking completely analytic studies of the geometry at hand is in general very hard, especially as the dimension of the systems grow. The development and use of numerical tools is therefore essential.

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Entanglement finds wide application in the development of quantum information theory. After reviewing states in classical mechanics, this chapter discusses the fundamental aspects of characterization of quantum entanglement like the definition, the detection, the classification and quantification of entanglement. The density operator is used to describe the state of a quantum system in a more general way than provided by the state vector of the Hilbert space. Multipartite entanglement theory is much complex compared to the bipartite case. One cannot generalize the results of bipartite entanglement to multipartite entanglement. The Peres criterion known as positive partial transpose criterion is an important criterion to find the separability of mixed states at least for low-dimensional systems. B.W. Terhal introduced the term entanglement witnesses for operators detecting quantum entanglement states. It is found that any entangled state can be detected by some entanglement witnesses.
The positive partial transposition (PPT) criterion and the realignment criterion constitute two of the most important criteria for detecting entanglement. The general- ized partial transposition (GPT) criterion which contains the PPT criterion and the realignment criterion as special cases, provides a necessary condition for a multipartite state to be separable. Here we extend the GPT criterion to the infinite- dimensional multipartite (bipartite) case and show that it includes multipartite (bipartite) PPT criterion and multipartite (bipartite) realignment criterion as special cases as well.
In the studies of quantum information and computation, the quantum correlations present in a non-classical system are seen as natural resources. In this thesis, we present a detailed study on quantification and characterization of multipartite quantum entanglement from a geometric perspective. Furthermore, we present protocols and algorithms where quantum correlations such as entanglement, quantum Fisher information, and quantum superposition have been used to provide advantages as well securities in quantum communication tasks, quantum speed-up, and protection against the decoherence in an open quantum system. First, we use a geometric measure of entanglement quantification based on Euclidean distance of the Hermitian matrices to obtain the minimum distance between the set of bipartite n- qudit density matrices with a positive partial transpose and the maximally mixed state. This minimum distance coincides with the radius of the largest separable ball. We present the interior geometry of the set of all positive semidefinite matrices and identify a particular class of Werner states for which the Peres-Horodecki criterion is both necessary and sufficient for separability even in the dimensions greater than six.
The main topic of this compilation thesis is the investigation of multipartite entanglement of finite dimensional systems. We developed a numerical algorithm that detects if a multipartite state is entangled or separable in a finite number of steps of a semi-definite optimization task. This method is an extension of previously known semi-definite methods, which are inconclusive when the state is separable. In our case, if the state is separable, an explicit decomposition into a mixture of separable states can be extracted. This was achieved by mapping the entanglement problem onto the mathematically well studied truncated moment problem. Additionally, a new way of writing the partially transposed state for symmetric multi-qubit states was developed which simplifies many results previously known in entanglement theory. This new way of writing the partial transpose criterion unifies different interpretations and alternative formulations of the partial transpose criterion and it is also a part in the aforementioned semi-definite algorithm. The geometric properties of entangled symmetric states of two qubits were studied in detail: We could answer the question of how far a given pure state is from the convex hull of symmetric separable states, as measured by the Hilbert-Schmidt distance, by giving an explicit formula for the closest separable symmetric state. For mixed states we could provide a numerical upper and analytical lower bound for this distance. For a larger number of qubits we investigated the ball of absolutely classical states, i.e. symmetric multi-qubit states that stay separable under any unitary transformation. We found an analytical lower bound for the radius of this ball around the maximally mixed symmetric state and gave a numerical upper bound on this radius, by searching for an entangled state as close as possible to the maximally mixed symmetric state. The tensor representation of a symmetric multi-qubit state, or spin-j state, allowed us to study entanglement properties based on the spectrum of the tensor via tensor eigenvalues. The definiteness of this tensor relates to the entanglement of the state it represents and, hence, the smallest tensor eigenvalue can be used to detect entanglement. However, the tensor eigenvalues are more difficult to determine than the familiar matrix eigenvalues which made the investigation computationally more challenging. The relationship between the value of the smallest tensor eigenvalue and the amount of entanglement in the state was also investigated. It turned out that they are strongly correlated for small system sizes, i.e. for up to six qubits. However, to investigate this correlation we needed an independent way to gauge the amount of entanglement of a state and in order to do so we improved existing numerical methods to determine the distance of a state to the set of separable symmetric states, using a combination of linear and quadratic programming. The tensor representation of symmetric multi-qubit states was also used to formally define a new tensor class of regularly decomposable tensors that corresponds to the set of separable symmetric multi-qubit states.
Abstract This chapter gives a detailed overview of entanglement for pure and mixed states. We begin with the Schmidt-decomposition theorem, which allows us to associate the subsystem mixedness of pure state with entanglement. We discuss the purification of mixed quantum states, the convexity of the set of separable states, and entanglement as a form of correlation. As an example we examine the Bloch decomposition for two qubits. For the detection of entanglement the Peres-Horodecki criterion is introduced, before we analyse the relation between entanglement and non-locality via the CHSH-Operator Criterion and the family of Werner states. We further consider Tsirelson’s bound and hidden non-locality. We then discuss important mathematical tools for entanglement detection, including the positive-map theorem, the Størmer-Woronowicz theorem, and the reduction criterion. In this context we examine the family of isotropic states. Finally, the Weyl states provide an example for which we study the geometry of two-qubit entanglement
Abstract Quantum entanglement between several particles is essential for applications like quantum metrology or quantum cryptography, but it is also central for foundational phenomena like quantum non-locality. This leads to the problem of quantifying the amount of entanglement in a quantum state. We present a review on the geometric measure of entanglement, being a quantifier based on the distance of a state to the nearest separable state. We explain basic properties, existing methods to compute it, its operational interpretations, as well as scaling and complexity issues. We point out intimate relations to fundamental problems in mathematics concerning eigenvalues and norms of tensors. Consequently, the geometric measure of entanglement provides a playground where physical intuition and mathematical rigor benefit from each other.