Spectral properties of symmetric quantum states and symmetric entanglement witnesses

Abstract

We introduce and explore two questions concerning spectra of operators that are of interest in the theory of entanglement in symmetric (i.e., bosonic) quantum systems. First, we investigate the inverse eigenvalue problem for symmetric entanglement witnesses—that is, we investigate what their possible spectra are. Second, we investigate the problem of characterizing which separable symmetric quantum states remain separable after conjugation by an arbitrary unitary acting on symmetric space—that is, which states are separable in every orthonormal symmetric basis. Both of these questions have been investigated thoroughly in the non-symmetric setting, and we contrast the answers that we find with their non-symmetric counterparts.