Entanglement and nonclassical properties of hypergraph states

Abstract

Hypergraph states are multiqubit states that form a subset of the locally maximally entangleable states and a generalization of the well-established notion of graph states. Mathematically, they can conveniently be described by a hypergraph that indicates a possible generation procedure of these states; alternatively, they can also be phrased in terms of a nonlocal stabilizer formalism. In this paper, we explore the entanglement properties and nonclassical features of hypergraph states. First, we identify the equivalence classes under local unitary transformations for up to four qubits, as well as important classes of five- and six-qubit states, and determine various entanglement properties of these classes. Second, we present general conditions under which the local unitary equivalence of hypergraph states can simply be decided by considering a finite set of transformations with a clear graph–theoretical interpretation. Finally, we consider the question of whether hypergraph states and their correlations can be used to reveal contradictions with classical hidden-variable theories. We demonstrate that various noncontextuality inequalities and Bell inequalities can be derived for hypergraph states.