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arXiv:quant-ph/0605151 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General

On the geometry of four-qubit invariants

Péter Lévay

Published Jul 12, 2006• 58 citations
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Abstract

The geometry of four-qubit entanglement is investigated. We replace some of the polynomial invariants for four qubits introduced recently by new ones of direct geometrical meaning. It is shown that these invariants describe four points, six lines and four planes in complex projective space CP 3 . For the generic entanglement class of stochastic local operations and classical communication they take a very simple form related to the elementary symmetric polynomials in four complex variables. Moreover, suitable powers of their magnitudes are entanglement monotones that fit nicely into the geometric set of n -qubit ones related to Grassmannians of l -planes found recently. We also show that in terms of these invariants the hyperdeterminant of order 24 in the four-qubit amplitudes takes a more instructive form than the previously published expressions available in the literature. Finally, in order to understand two-, three- and four-qubit entanglement in geometric terms we propose a unified setting based on CP 3 furnished with a fixed quadric.

DOI
10.1088/0305-4470/39/30/009

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The geometry of four-qubit entanglement is investigated. We replace some of the polynomial invariants for four qubits introduced recently by new ones of direct geometrical meaning. It is shown that these invariants describe four points, six lines and four planes in complex projective space CP 3 . For the generic entanglement class of stochastic local operations and classical communication they take a very simple form related to the elementary symmetric polynomials in four complex variables. Moreover, suitable powers of their magnitudes are entanglement monotones that fit nicely into the geometric set of n -qubit ones related to Grassmannians of l -planes found recently. We also show that in terms of these invariants the hyperdeterminant of order 24 in the four-qubit amplitudes takes a more instructive form than the previously published expressions available in the literature. Finally, in order to understand two-, three- and four-qubit entanglement in geometric terms we propose a unified setting based on CP 3 furnished with a fixed quadric.
We propose a new approach to the geometry of the four-qubit entanglement classes depending on parameters. More precisely, we use invariant theory and algebraic geometry to describe various stratifications of the Hilbert space by Stochastic Local Operations with Classical Communication (SLOCC) invariant algebraic varieties. The normal forms of the four-qubit classification of Verstraete et al. are interpreted as dense subsets of components of the dual variety of the set of separable states and an algorithm based on the invariants/covariants of the four-qubit quantum states is proposed to identify a state with a SLOCC equivalent normal form (up to qubits permutation).
A family of N -qubit entanglement monotones invariant under stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC) is defined. This class of entanglement monotones includes the well-known examples of the concurrence, the 3-tangle and some of the four-, five- and N -qubit SLOCC invariants introduced recently. The construction of these invariants is based on bipartite partitions of the Hilbert space in the form with L = 2 N − n ⩾ l = 2 n . Such partitions can be given a nice geometrical interpretation in terms of Grassmannians Gr ( L , l ) of l -planes in C L that can be realized as the zero locus of quadratic polynomials in the complex projective space of suitable dimension via the Plücker embedding. The invariants are neatly expressed in terms of the Plücker coordinates of the Grassmannians.
A geometrical description of three-qubit entanglement is given. A part of the transformations corresponding to stochastic local operations and classical communication on the qubits is regarded as a gauge degree of freedom. Entangled states can be represented by the points of the Klein quadric Q\mathcal{Q}Q, a space known from twistor theory. It is shown that three-qubit invariants are vanishing on special subspaces of Q\mathcal{Q}Q with interesting geometric properties. An invariant characterizing the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger class is proposed. A geometric interpretation of the canonical decomposition and the inequality for distributed entanglement is also given.
We discuss the entanglement properties of symmetric states of n qubits. The Majorana representation maps a generic such state into a system of n points on a sphere. Entanglement invariants, either under local unitaries (LU) or stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC), can then be addressed in terms of the relative positions of the Majorana points. In the LU case, an overcomplete set of invariants can be built from the inner product of the radial vectors pointing to these points; this is detailed for the well-documented three-qubits case. In the SLOCC case, a cross ratio of related Möbius transformations are shown to play a central role, exemplified here for four qubits. Finally, as a side result, we also analyze the manifold of maximally entangled 3 qubit state, both in the symmetric and generic case.
It is a recent observation that entanglement classification for qubits is closely related to stochastic local operations and classical communication (SLOCC) invariants. Verstraete et al.[ Phys. Rev. A 65 (2002) 052112 ] showed that for pure states of four qubits there are nine different degenerate SLOCC entanglement classes. Li et al.[ Phys. Rev. A 76 (2007) 052311 ] showed that there are at feast 28 distinct true SLOCC entanglement classes for four qubits by means of the SLOCC invariant and semi-invariant. We give 16 different entanglement classes for four qubits by means of basic SLOCC invariants.
We describe explicitly the algebra of polynomial functions on the Hilbert space of four-qubit states that are invariant under the group SL(2,C)4\mathrm{SL}(2,C{)}^{4}SL(2,C)4 of stochastic local quantum operations assisted by classical communication. From this description, we obtain a closed formula for the hyperdeterminant in terms of low degree invariants.