The entanglement of formation (EOF), which quantifies the required minimally physical resources to prepare a quantum state, plays important roles in many quantum information processes. Due to the convex-roof definition, it is hard to find the explicit analytic formulae of EOF, except for some special quantum systems. The correlation matrix of a quantum state is closely related to entanglement property. In this paper, we use the Lagrange-multiplier approach to obtain an analytic lower bound of EOF for arbitrary dimensional bipartite states, which improves the previous conclusions. Numerical example shows that the bound is also valid for some PPT entangled states.
Entanglement of formation quantifies the entanglement of a state in terms of the entropy of entanglement of the least entangled pure state needed to prepare it. An analytical expression for this measure exists only for special cases, and finding a closed formula for an arbitrary state remains an open problem. In this work we focus on two-mode Gaussian states, and we derive narrow upper and lower bounds for the measure that get tight for several special cases. Further, we show that the problem of calculating the actual value of the entanglement of formation for arbitrary two-mode Gaussian states reduces to a trivial single parameter optimization process, and we provide an efficient algorithm for the numerical calculation of the measure.
In several articles, the authors assume that the convex roof structure of the EoF and finite-dimensionality of subsystems
A and
B guarantee the existence of the (global) supporting affine functional for the EoF at any state of the system
AB. This means that for any state
ρ of
AB there is a Hermitian operator
Λρ on
HAB=HA⊗HB such that
EF(ρ)=TrΛρρ and
EF(σ)≥TrΛρσ for any state
σ of
AB. We present an explicit example showing that, when
ρ is degenerate, this is not true even in the simplest case when
A and
B are qubit systems. The construction is based on the fact that the existence of a supporting affine functional for the EoF at a state
ρ is equivalent to the Lipschitz lower semicontinuity of the EoF at this state
ρ. We use Wootters' formula and the help of Claude Fable 5 to find a state
ρ of the system
AB for which the latter property does not hold.
We also describe conditions for the existence the local and global supporting affine functionals for the EoF at a given state of both finite and infinite-dimensional bipartite quantum systems. These conditions allow us to find Lipschitz lower semicontinuity bounds for the EoF at a given finite rank state
ρ (i.e. inequalities of the form
EF(ρ)−EF(σ)≤Cρ∥ρ−σ∥1) with and without restrictions on the support of the state
σ.
Quantum correlations play vital roles in the quantum features in quantum information processing tasks. Among the measures of quantum correlations, quantum discord (QD) and entanglement of formation (EOF) are two significant ones. Recent research has shown that there exists a relation between QD and EOF, which makes QD more significant in quantum information theory. However, until now, there exists no general method of characterizing quantum discord in high-dimensional quantum systems. In this paper, we have proposed a general method for calculating quantum discord in arbitrary-dimensional bipartite quantum systems in terms of Hurwitz's theory. Applications including the Werner state, the spin-1 XXZ model thermal equilibrium state, the Horodecki state, and the separable-bound-free entanglement state are investigated. We present the method of obtaining the EOF of arbitrary-dimensional bipartite quantum states via purification, and the relationship between QD and EOF.
Entangled two-mode Gaussian states are a key resource for quantum information technologies such as teleportation, quantum cryptography, and quantum computation, so quantification of Gaussian entanglement is an important problem. Entanglement of formation is unanimously considered a proper measure of quantum correlations, but for arbitrary two-mode Gaussian states no analytical form is currently known. In contrast, logarithmic negativity is a measure that is straightforward to calculate and so has been adopted by most researchers, even though it is a less faithful quantifier. In this work, we derive an analytical lower bound for entanglement of formation of generic two-mode Gaussian states, which becomes tight for symmetric states and for states with balanced correlations. We define simple expressions for entanglement of formation in physically relevant situations and use these to illustrate the problematic behavior of logarithmic negativity, which can lead to spurious conclusions.
Multipartite entanglement is the premier resource for quantum technologies. Yet, its exact quantification in the laboratory is notoriously challenging, typically requiring the full knowledge of high dimensional quantum states. Here, we construct observable bounds to multipartite entanglement for systems of arbitrary size, which are functions of the local and global state purities, and correlation functions. First, we derive experimentally accessible upper and lower limits to both the bipartite entanglement of formation and the squashed entanglement of bipartite systems, by leveraging cornerstone results of quantum information theory: the entropy strong subadditivity inequality and the Koashi-Winter monogamy relation. Then, we convert them into bounds to the entanglement up to degree k for arbitrary states, and to the genuine k-partite entanglement, by employing a recently proposed method. Finally, we analytically and numerically test these results, by bounding the multipartite entanglement of several relevant states and mixtures, including the important classes of GHZ, Dicke, W states, and random pure states.