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arXiv:quant-ph/0003050 · Physical Review Letters

Generalized Schmidt Decomposition and Classification of Three-Quantum-Bit States

A. Acín, Alexander A. Andrianov, Laura Costa, E. Jané, José Ignacio Latorre, R. Tarrach

Published Aug 14, 2000• 521 citations
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Abstract

We prove for any pure three-quantum-bit state the existence of local bases which allow one to build a set of five orthogonal product states in terms of which the state can be written in a unique form. This leads to a canonical form which generalizes the two-quantum-bit Schmidt decomposition. It is uniquely characterized by the five entanglement parameters. It leads to a complete classification of the three-quantum-bit states. It shows that the right outcome of an adequate local measurement always erases all entanglement between the other two parties.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.85.1560

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We prove for any pure three-quantum-bit state the existence of local bases which allow one to build a set of five orthogonal product states in terms of which the state can be written in a unique form. This leads to a canonical form which generalizes the two-quantum-bit Schmidt decomposition. It is uniquely characterized by the five entanglement parameters. It leads to a complete classification of the three-quantum-bit states. It shows that the right outcome of an adequate local measurement always erases all entanglement between the other two parties.
We prove for any pure three-quantum-bit state the existence of local bases which allow to build a set of five orthogonal product states in terms of which the state can be written in a unique form. This leads to a canonical form which generalizes the two-quantum-bit Schmidt decomposition. It is uniquely characterized by the five entanglement parameters. It leads to a complete classification of the three-quantum-bit states. It shows that the right outcome of an adequate local measurement always erases all entanglement between the other two parties.
Abstract We present Schmidt decomposition formulas for mutually orthogonal two-qubit pure states and classify orthonormal sets according to their entanglement structure. We begin by presenting explicit formulas for the Schmidt decomposition of arbitrary two-qubit pure states. Building on this, we construct and analyze all possible configurations of two mutually orthogonal pure states, providing corresponding Schmidt decomposition expressions for each case. For orthonormal sets of three and four states, we derive explicit formulas for selected representative types and discuss the difficulties in obtaining closed-form expressions for more general cases. In particular, we focus on special classes of orthonormal bases that include one or two maximally entangled states. Finally, we prove that no orthonormal basis can contain three product states and one entangled state, revealing a structural constraint that restricts the composition of entangled orthonormal sets.
We characterize the entanglement contained in a pure three-qubit state via operational entanglement measures. To this end, we derive a new decomposition for arbitrary three-qubit states which is characterized by five parameters (up to local unitary operations). We show that these parameters are uniquely determined by bipartite entanglement measures. These quantities measure the entanglement required to generate the state following a particular preparation procedure and have a clear physical meaning. Moreover, we show that the classification of states obtained in this way is strongly related to the one obtained when considering general local operations and classical communication.
We show that there is a unique maximal decomposition of a pure multi-partite (N>2) quantum state into a sum of states which are "locally orthogonal" in the sense that the local reduced state for a term in the sum lives in its own orthogonal subspace for each subsystem. Observers can make local measurements on any subsystem and determine which "branch" they are on. The Shannon entropy of the resulting branch weights defines a new measure of global, GHZ-like entanglement, which is insensitive to local pairwise entangling operations and vanishes when there is no piece of information recorded at every subsystem. In the bi-partite (N=2) case, this decomposition reduces to the (not necessarily unique) Schmidt decomposition and the entropy reduces to the entropy of entanglement
We give explicit expressions for canonical states labeling the vast majority of entanglement equivalent classes of symmetric states of qubits and efficient algorithms for reducing a given state to the representative of the class it belongs. This way, we achieve an almost complete classification under local unitary and local invertible transformations for symmetric states. The main tool is a technique introduced in this work, enabling to decompose in a unique way, spin symmetric states into a superposition of spin-1/21/21/2 coherent states. For the case of two qubits, the proposed decomposition reproduces the Schmidt decomposition and therefore, in the case of a higher number of qubits, can be considered as its generalization.
Entanglement between three or more parties exhibits a realm of properties unknown to two-party states. Bipartite states are easily classified using the Schmidt decomposition. The Schmidt coefficients of a bipartite pure state encompass all the nonlocal properties of the state and can be ``seen'' by looking at one party's density matrix only. Pure states of three and more parties, however, lack such a simple form. They have more invariants under local unitary transformations than any one party can ``see'' on their subsystem. These ``hidden nonlocalities'' will allow us to exhibit a class of multipartite states that cannot be distinguished from each other by any party. Generalizing a result of Bennett, Popescu, Rohrlich, Smolin, and Thapliyal, and using a recent result by Nielsen, we will show that these states cannot be transformed into each other by local actions and classical communication. Furthermore, we will use an orthogonal subset of such states to hint at applications to cryptography and illustrate an extension to quantum secret sharing [using recently suggested ((n,k))((n,k))((n,k))-threshold schemes].