In this work, a variation of the problem originally solved by Verstraete, Audenaert, and De Moor [Phys. Rev. A 64, 012316 (2001)] on what is the maximum entanglement that can be created in a two-qubit system by a global unitary transformation is considered and solved when permutation invariance in the state is imposed. The additional constraint of permutation symmetry appears naturally in the context of bosonic systems or spin states. We also characterise symmetric two-qubit states that remain separable after any global unitary transformation, called symmetric absolutely separable states (SAS), or absolutely classical for spin states. This allows us to determine the maximal radius of a ball of SAS states around the maximally mixed state in the symmetric sector, and the minimal radius of a ball that includes the set of SAS states. For three-qubit systems, a necessary condition for absolute separability of symmetric states is given, which leads us to upper bounds on the ball radii similar to those studied for the two-qubit system.
In this work, a variation of the problem originally solved by Verstraete, Audenaert, and De Moor [Phys. Rev. A 64, 012316 (2001)] on what is the maximum entanglement that can be created in a two-qubit system by a global unitary transformation is considered and solved when permutation invariance in the state is imposed. The additional constraint of permutation symmetry appears naturally in the context of bosonic systems or spin states. We also characterise symmetric two-qubit states that remain separable after any global unitary transformation, called symmetric absolutely separable states (SAS), or absolutely classical for spin states. This allows us to determine the maximal radius of a ball of SAS states around the maximally mixed state in the symmetric sector, and the minimal radius of a ball that includes the set of SAS states. For three-qubit systems, a necessary condition for absolute separability of symmetric states is given, which leads us to upper bounds on the ball radii similar to those studied for the two-qubit system.
We study the maximum entanglement that can be produced by a global unitary transformation for systems of two and three qubits constrained to the fully symmetric states. This restriction to the symmetric subspace appears naturally in the context of bosonic or collective spin systems. We also study the symmetric states that remain separable after any global unitary transformation, called symmetric absolutely separable (SAS) states, or absolutely classical for spin states. The results for the two-qubit system are deduced analytically. In particular, we determine the maximal radius of a ball of SAS states around the maximally mixed state in the symmetric sector, and the minimal radius of a ball that contains the set of SAS states. As an application of our results, we also analyse the temperature dependence of the maximum entanglement that can be obtained from the thermal state of a spin-1 system with a spin-squeezing Hamiltonian. For the symmetric three-qubit case, our results are mostly numerical, and we conjecture a 3-parameter family of states that achieves the maximum negativity in the unitary orbit of any mixed state. In addition, we derive upper bounds, apparently tight, on the radii of balls containing only/all SAS states.
This paper deals with the radius of the largest ball of separable mixed states around the maximally mixed state for multiqubit systems. This radius determines how close entangled states can be to the maximally mixed state. In Aubrun and Szarek (e-print arXiv:quant-ph/0503221) an upper bound on the radius was given, while in Gurvits and Barnum (e-print arXiv:quant-ph/0409095) a lower bound was provided. In this paper we improve both the upper and the lower bound, bringing the ratio of these bounds down to a constant $c=\sqrt{34∕27}\ensuremath{\approx}1.122$, as opposed to a term of order mlogm for the best bounds known previously, where m is the number of qubits in the system. We construct concrete examples of separable states on the boundary to entanglement which realize the upper bounds. As a by-product, we compute the radii of the largest balls that fit into the projective tensor product of three and four unit balls in R3 and in the projective tensor product of an arbitrary number of unit balls in Rn for n=2, 4, and 8.
A pure multipartite quantum state is called absolutely maximally entangled if all reductions of no more than half of the parties are maximally mixed. However, an n-qubit absolutely maximally entangled state exists only when n equals 2, 3, 5, and 6. A natural question arises when it does not exist: Which n-qubit pure state has the largest number of maximally mixed $\ensuremath{\lfloor}n/2\ensuremath{\rfloor}$-party reductions? We denote this number by Qex(n). It was shown that Qex(4)=4 by Higuchi and Sudbery [Phys. Lett. A 273, 213 (2000)] and Qex(7)=32 by Huber et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 200502 (2017)]. In this paper, we give a general upper bound of Qex(n) by linking the well-known Tur\'an problem in graph theory and provide lower bounds using constructive and probabilistic methods. In particular, we show that Qex(8)=56, which is the third known value for this problem.
The geometric measure of entanglement is investigated for permutation symmetric pure states of multipartite qubit systems, in particular the question of maximum entanglement. This is done with the help of the Majorana representation, which maps an n qubit symmetric state to n points on the unit sphere. It is shown how symmetries of the point distribution can be exploited to simplify the calculation of entanglement and also help find the maximally entangled symmetric state. Using a combination of analytical and numerical results, the most entangled symmetric states for up to 12 qubits are explored and discussed. The optimization problem on the sphere presented here is then compared with two classical optimization problems on the S 2 sphere, namely Tóth's problem and Thomson's problem, and it is observed that, in general, they are different problems.
We investigate multipartite entanglement for composite quantum systems in a pure state. Using the generalized Bloch representation for n-qubit states, we express the condition that all k-qubit reductions of the whole system are maximally mixed, reflecting maximum bipartite entanglement across all k vs $n\ensuremath{-}k$ bipartitions. As a special case, we examine the class of balanced pure states, which are constructed from a subset of the Pauli group Pn that is isomorphic to Z2n. This makes a connection with the theory of quantum error-correcting codes and provides bounds on the largest allowed k for fixed n. In particular, the ratio k/n can be lower and upper bounded in the asymptotic regime, implying that there must exist multipartite entangled states with at least $k=\ensuremath{\lfloor}0.189\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}n\ensuremath{\rfloor}$ when $n\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$. We also analyze symmetric states as another natural class of states with high multipartite entanglement and prove that, surprisingly, they cannot have all maximally mixed k-qubit reductions with k>1. Thus, measured through bipartite entanglement across all bipartitions, symmetric states cannot exhibit large entanglement. However, we show that the permutation symmetry only constrains some components of the generalized Bloch vector, so that very specific patterns in this vector may be allowed even though k>1 is forbidden. This is illustrated numerically for a few symmetric states that maximize geometric entanglement, revealing some interesting structures.
The persistent separability of certain quantum states, known as symmetric absolutely separable (SAS), under symmetry-preserving global unitary transformations is of key significance in the context of quantum resources for bosonic systems. In this paper, we develop criteria for detecting SAS states of any number of qubits. Our approach is based on the Glauber-Sudarshan P representation for finite-dimensional quantum systems. We introduce three families of SAS witnesses, one linear and two nonlinear in the eigenvalues of the state, formulated respectively as an algebraic inequality or a quadratic optimization problem. These witnesses are capable of identifying more SAS states than previously known counterparts. We also explore the geometric properties of the subsets of SAS states detected by our witnesses, shedding light on their distinctions.