We investigate the structural aspects of genuine multipartite entanglement in Gaussian states of continuous variable systems. Generalizing the results of Adesso and Illuminati [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 150501 (2007)], we analyze whether the entanglement shared by blocks of modes distributes according to a strong monogamy law. This property, once established, allows us to quantify the genuine
N-partite entanglement not encoded into $2,\dots{},K,\dots{},(N\ensuremath{-}1)$-partite quantum correlations. Strong monogamy is numerically verified, and the explicit expression of the measure of residual genuine multipartite entanglement is analytically derived, by a recursive formula, for a subclass of Gaussian states. These are fully symmetric (permutation-invariant) states that are multipartitioned into blocks, each consisting of an arbitrarily assigned number of modes. We compute the genuine multipartite entanglement shared by the blocks of modes and investigate its scaling properties with the number and size of the blocks, the total number of modes, the global mixedness of the state, and the squeezed resources needed for state engineering. To achieve the exact computation of the block entanglement, we introduce and prove a general result of symplectic analysis: Correlations among
K blocks in
N-mode multisymmetric and multipartite Gaussian states, which are locally invariant under permutation of modes within each block, can be transformed by a local (with respect to the partition) unitary operation into correlations shared by
K single modes, one per block, in effective nonsymmetric states where $N\ensuremath{-}K$ modes are completely uncorrelated. Due to this theorem, the above results, such as the derivation of the explicit expression for the residual multipartite entanglement, its nonnegativity, and its scaling properties, extend to the subclass of non-symmetric Gaussian states that are obtained by the unitary localization of the multipartite entanglement of symmetric states. These findings provide strong numerical evidence that the distributed Gaussian entanglement is strongly monogamous under and possibly beyond specific symmetry constraints, and that the residual continuous-variable tangle is a proper measure of genuine multipartite entanglement for permutation-invariant Gaussian states under any multipartition of the modes.
In this chapter we review the characterization of entanglement in Gaussian states of continuous variable systems. For two-mode Gaussian states, we discuss how their bipartite entanglement can be accurately quantified in terms of the global and local amounts of mixedness, and efficiently estimated by direct measurements of the associated purities. For multimode Gaussian states endowed with local symmetry with respect to a given bipartition, we show how the multimode block entanglement can be completely and reversibly localized onto a single pair of modes by local, unitary operations. We then analyze the distribution of entanglement among multiple parties in multimode Gaussian states. We introduce the continuous-variable tangle to quantify entanglement sharing in Gaussian states and we prove that it satisfies the Coffman-Kundu-Wootters monogamy inequality. Nevertheless, we show that pure, symmetric three-mode Gaussian states, at variance with their discrete-variable counterparts, allow a promiscuous sharing of quantum correlations, exhibiting both maximum tripartite residual entanglement and maximum couplewise entanglement between any pair of modes. Finally, we investigate the connection between multipartite entanglement and the optimal fidelity in a continuous-variable quantum teleportation network. We show how the fidelity can be maximized in terms of the best preparation of the shared entangled resources and, viceversa, that this optimal fidelity provides a clearcut operational interpretation of several measures of bipartite and multipartite entanglement, including the entanglement of formation, the localizable entanglement, and the continuous-variable tangle.
Quantum teleportation (QT) is a fundamentally remarkable communication protocol that also finds many important applications for quantum informatics. Given a quantum entangled resource, it is crucial to know to what extent one can accomplish the QT. This is usually assessed in terms of output fidelity, which can also be regarded as an operational measure of entanglement. In the case of multipartite communication when each communicator possesses a part of an
N-partite entangled state, not all pairs of communicators can achieve a high fidelity due to the monogamy property of quantum entanglement. We here investigate how such a monogamy relation arises in multipartite continuous-variable (CV) teleportation, particularly when using a Gaussian entangled state. We show a strict monogamy relation, i.e., a sender cannot achieve a fidelity higher than optimal cloning limit with more than one receiver. While this seems rather natural owing to the no-cloning theorem, a strict monogamy relation still holds even if the sender is allowed to individually manipulate the reduced state in collaboration with each receiver to improve fidelity. The local operations are further extended to non-Gaussian operations such as photon subtraction and addition, and we demonstrate that the Gaussian cloning bound cannot be beaten by more than one pair of communicators. Furthermore, we investigate a quantitative form of monogamy relation in terms of teleportation capability, for which we show that a faithful monogamy inequality does not exist.
We present a complete analysis of the multipartite entanglement of three-mode Gaussian states of continuous-variable systems. We derive standard forms which characterize the covariance matrix of pure and mixed three-mode Gaussian states up to local unitary operations, showing that the local entropies of pure Gaussian states are bound to fulfill a relationship which is stricter than the general Araki-Lieb inequality. Quantum correlations can be quantified by a proper convex roof extension of the squared logarithmic negativity, the continuous-variable tangle, or contangle. We review and elucidate in detail the proof that in multimode Gaussian states the contangle satisfies a monogamy inequality constraint [G. Adesso and F. Illuminati, New J. Phys8, 15 (2006)]. The residual contangle, emerging from the monogamy inequality, is an entanglement monotone under Gaussian local operations and classical communications and defines a measure of genuine tripartite entanglements. We determine the analytical expression of the residual contangle for arbitrary pure three-mode Gaussian states and study in detail the distribution of quantum correlations in such states. This analysis yields that pure, symmetric states allow for a promiscuous entanglement sharing, having both maximum tripartite entanglement and maximum couplewise entanglement between any pair of modes. We thus name these states
GHZ∕W states of continuous-variable systems because they are simultaneous continuous-variable counterparts of both the GHZ and the
W states of three qubits. We finally consider the effect of decoherence on three-mode Gaussian states, studying the decay of the residual contangle. The
GHZ∕W states are shown to be maximally robust against losses and thermal noise.