Distillable Entanglement Research Articles

Distillable entanglement and area laws in spin and harmonic-oscillator systems

We address the presence of nondistillable (bound) entanglement in natural many-body systems. In particular, we consider standard harmonic and spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ chains, at thermal equilibrium and characterized by few interaction parameters. The existence of bound entanglement is addressed by calculating explicitly the negativity of entanglement for different partitions. This allows us to individuate a range of temperatures for which no entanglement can be distilled by means of local operations, despite the system being globally entangled. We discuss how the appearance of bound entanglement can be linked to entanglement-area laws, typical of these systems. Various types of interactions are explored, showing that the presence of bound entanglement is an intrinsic feature of these systems. In the harmonic case, we analytically prove that thermal bound entanglement persists for systems composed by an arbitrary number of particles. Our results strongly suggest the existence of bound entangled states in the macroscopic limit also for spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ systems.

General Paradigm for Distilling Classical Key From Quantum States

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> In this paper, we develop a formalism for distilling a classical key from a quantum state in a systematic way, expanding on our previous work on a secure key from bound entanglement (Horodecki <etal/>, 2005). More detailed proofs, discussion, and examples are provided of the main results. Namely, we demonstrate that all quantum cryptographic protocols can be recast in a way which looks like entanglement theory, with the only change being that instead of distilling Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) pairs, the parties distill private states. The form of these general private states are given, and we show that there are a number of useful ways of expressing them. Some of the private states can be approximated by certain states, which are bound entangled. Thus, distillable entanglement is not a requirement for a private key. We find that such bound entangled states are useful for a cryptographic primitive we call a controlled private quantum channel (PQC). We also find a general class of states, which have negative partial transpose (are NPT), but which appear to be bound entangled. The relative entropy distance is shown to be an upper bound on the rate of a key. This allows us to compute the <emphasis emphasistype="bold"><emphasis emphasistype="italic">exact</emphasis></emphasis> value of a distillable key for a certain class of private states. </para>

Distilling entanglement from random cascades with partial “which path” ambiguity

We develop a framework to calculate the density matrix of a pair of photons emitted in a decay cascade with partial ``which path'' ambiguity. We describe an appropriate entanglement distillation scheme which works also for certain random cascades. The qualitative features of the distilled entanglement are presented in a two dimensional ``phase diagram.'' The theory is applied to the quantum tomography of the decay cascade of a biexciton in a semiconductor quantum dot. Agreement with experiment is obtained.

Robust and Efficient Generator of Almost Maximal Multipartite Entanglement

Quantum chaotic maps can efficiently generate pseudorandom states carrying almost maximal multipartite entanglement, as characterized by the probability distribution of bipartite entanglement between all possible bipartitions of the system. We show that such multipartite entanglement is robust, in the sense that, when realistic noise is considered, distillable entanglement of bipartitions remains almost maximal up to a noise strength that drops only polynomially with the number of qubits.

Degradation of nonmaximal entanglement of scalar and Dirac fields in noninertial frames

The entanglement between two modes of free scalar and Dirac fields as seen by two relatively accelerated observers has been investigated. It is found that the same initial entanglement for an initial state parameter $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ and its ``normalized partner'' $\sqrt{1\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{2}}$ will be degraded by the Unruh effect along two different trajectories except for the maximally entangled state, which just shows the inequivalence of the quantization for a free field in Minkowski and Rindler coordinates. In the infinite-acceleration limit, the state does not have distillable entanglement for any $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ for the scalar field, but always remains entangled to a degree that is dependent on $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ for the Dirac field. It is also interesting to note that in this limit the mutual information equals just half of the initial mutual information; this result is independent of $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ and the type of field.

Useful entanglement can be extracted from all nonseparable states

We consider entanglement distillation from a single copy of multipartite quantum states, and instead of rates we analyze the “quality” of the distilled entanglement. This quality is quantified by the fidelity with the gigahertz state. We show that each not fully separable state σ can increase the quality of the entanglement distilled from other states, no matter how weakly entangled is σ. We also generalize this to the case where the goal is distilling states different from the gigahertz. These results provide new insights on the geometry of the set of separable states and its dual (the set of entanglement witnesses).

Entanglement measures and approximate quantum error correction

It is shown that if the loss of entanglement along a quantum channel is sufficiently small, then approximate quantum error correction is possible, thereby generalizing what happens for coherent information. Explicit bounds are obtained for the entanglement of formation and the distillable entanglement, and their validity naturally extends to other bipartite entanglement measures in between. Robustness of derived criteria is analyzed and their tightness compared. Finally, as a by-product, we prove a bound quantifying how large the gap between the entanglement of formation and distillable entanglement can be for any given finite dimensional bipartite system, thus providing a sufficient condition for distillability in term of the entanglement of formation.

Quantum cryptography and quantification of quantum correlations

Study of the security of quantum key distribution protocols has provided us a deeper understanding about the trade-off between the amount of information extracted from a quantum system and the disturbance left in the system as a result of the extraction process. Here we discuss how such a new development helps us to understand the quantum correlations in a quantitative way. A detailed analysis of the information-disturbance trade-off for the zero-disturbance cases leads to a simple structure theorem, and the theorem can be used to derive an exact formula for the compressibility of quantum signals, which is a measure of quantum correlations in terms of the cost to preserve them. The analysis including the nonzero disturbance cases has a very close connection to the theory of entanglement. While the distillable key is regarded as a measure of entanglement, it does not coincide with either of the two operational measures of entanglement, the distillable entanglement and the entanglement cost. We discuss the physical meaning of the difference between these three measures of entanglement by providing each of them with an alternative operational definition.

Total versus quantum correlations in quantum states

On the premises that total correlations in a bipartite quantum state are measured by the quantum mutual information, and that separation of total correlations into quantum and classical parts satisfies an intuitive dominance relation, we examine to what extent various entropic entanglement measures, such as the distillable entanglement, the relative entropy entanglement, the squashed entanglement, the entanglement cost, and the entanglement of formation, can be regarded as consistent measures of quantum correlations. We illustrate that the entanglement of formation often overestimates quantum correlations and thus is too big to be a genuine measure of quantum correlations. This indicates that the entanglement of formation does not quantify the quantum correlations intrinsic to a quantum state, but rather characterizes the pure entanglement needed to build the quantum state via local operations and classical communication. Furthermore, it has the consequence that, if the additive conjecture for the entanglement of formation is true (as is widely believed), then the entanglement cost, which is an operationally defined measure of entanglement with significant physical meaning, cannot be a consistent measure of quantum correlations in the sense that it may exceed total correlations. Alternatively, if the entanglement cost is dominated by total correlations, as our intuition suggests, then we can immediately disprove the additive conjecture. Both scenarios have their counterintuitive and appealing aspects, and a natural challenge arising in this context is to prove or disprove that the entanglement cost is dominated by the quantum mutual information.

The entanglement and phase measurement performance of the damped NOON state

The evolution of the optical NOON state is investigated. The relative entropy of entanglement is exactly obtained for the NOON state simultaneously damped by symmetric amplitude damping and phase damping. The distillable entanglement of the phase-damped state is also obtained. The phase measurement performance of the damped state is studied according to the full measurement results of the quantum interferometry output. The phase sensitivity does not rely on the phase under estimate for the symmetrically amplitude-damped state.

Random Bipartite Entanglement fromWandW-Like States

We describe a protocol for distilling maximally entangled bipartite states between random pairs of parties from those sharing a tripartite W state |W=(1/sqrt[3])(|100+|010+|001)(ABC), and show that the total distillation rate E(t)(infinity) [the total number of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs distilled per W, irrespective of who shares them] may be done at a higher rate than EPR distillation between specified pairs of parties. Specifically, the optimal rate for distillation to specified parties has been previously shown to be 0.92 EPR pairs per W, while our protocol can asymptotically distill 1 EPR pair per W between random pairs of parties, which we conjecture to be optimal. We thus demonstrate a tradeoff between overall distillation rate and final distribution of EPR pairs. We further show that there exist states with fixed lower-bounded E(t)(infinity), but arbitrarily small distillable entanglement for specified parties.

An introduction to entanglement measures

We review the theory of entanglement measures, concentrating mostly on the finite dimensional two-party case. Topics covered include: single-copy and asymptotic entanglement manipulation; the entanglement of formation; the entanglement cost; the distillable entanglement; the relative entropic measures; the squashed entanglement; log-negativity; the robustness monotones; the greatest cross-norm; uniqueness and extremality theorems. Infinite dimensional systems and multi-party settings will be discussed briefly.

Quantum states representing perfectly secure bits are always distillable

It is proven that recently introduced states with perfectly secure bits of cryptographic key (private states representing secure bit) [K. Horodecki et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 160502 (2005)] as well as its multipartite and higher dimension generalizations always represent distillable entanglement. The corresponding lower bounds on distillable entanglement are provided. We also present a simple alternative proof that for any bipartite quantum state entanglement cost is an upper bound on a distillable cryptographic key in a bipartite scenario.

Effects of collisional decoherence on multipartite entanglement: How entanglement might not be relatively common

We consider the collision model of Ziman et al. and study the robustness of $N$-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ), $W$, and linear cluster states. Our results show that $N$-qubit entanglement of GHZ states would be extremely fragile under collisional decoherence, and that of $W$ states could be more robust than that of linear cluster states. We indicate that the collision model of Ziman et al. could provide a physical mechanism for some known results in this area of investigation. More importantly, we show that it could give a clue as to how $N$-partite distillable entanglement would be relatively rare in our macroscopic classical world.

Unconditional security of quantum key distribution and the uncertainty principle

An approach to the unconditional security of quantum key distribution protocols is presented, which is based on the uncertainty principle. The approach applies to every case that has been treated via the argument by Shor and Preskill, but it is not necessary to find quantum error correcting codes. It can also treat the cases with uncharacterized apparatuses. The proof can be applied to cases where the secret key rate is larger than the distillable entanglement.

Aspects of Generic Entanglement

We study entanglement and other correlation properties of random states in high-dimensional bipartite systems. These correlations are quantified by parameters that are subject to the ``concentration of measure'' phenomenon, meaning that on a large-probability set these parameters are close to their expectation. For the entropy of entanglement, this has the counterintuitive consequence that there exist large subspaces in which all pure states are close to maximally entangled. This, in turn, implies the existence of mixed states with entanglement of formation near that of a maximally entangled state, but with negligible quantum mutual information and, therefore, negligible distillable entanglement, secret key, and common randomness. It also implies a very strong locking effect for the entanglement of formation: its value can jump from maximal to near zero by tracing over a number of qubits negligible compared to the size of the total system. Furthermore, such properties are generic. Similar phenomena are observed for random multiparty states, leading us to speculate on the possibility that the theory of entanglement is much simplified when restricted to asymptotically generic states. Further consequences of our results include a complete derandomization of the protocol for universal superdense coding of quantum states.

Quantum Key Distribution Based on Arbitrarily Weak Distillable Entangled States

States with private correlations but little or no distillable entanglement were recently reported. Here, we consider the secure distribution of such states, i.e., the situation when an adversary gives two parties such states and they have to verify privacy. We present a protocol which enables the parties to extract from such untrusted states an arbitrarily long and secure key, even though the amount of distillable entanglement of the untrusted states can be arbitrarily small.

Entanglement-area law for general bosonic harmonic lattice systems

We demonstrate that the entropy of entanglement and the distillable entanglement of regions with respect to the rest of a general harmonic lattice system in the ground or a thermal state scale at most as the boundary area of the region. This area law is rigorously proven to hold true in non-critical harmonic lattice system of arbitrary spatial dimension, for general finite-ranged harmonic interactions, regions of arbitrary shape and states of nonzero temperature. For nearest-neighbor interactions - corresponding to the Klein-Gordon case - upper and lower bounds to the degree of entanglement can be stated explicitly for arbitrarily shaped regions, generalizing the findings of [Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 060503 (2005)]. These higher dimensional analogues of the analysis of block entropies in the one-dimensional case show that under general conditions, one can expect an area law for the entanglement in non-critical harmonic many-body systems. The proofs make use of methods from entanglement theory, as well as of results on matrix functions of block banded matrices. Disordered systems are also considered. We moreover construct a class of examples for which the two-point correlation length diverges, yet still an area law can be proven to hold. We finally consider the scaling of classical correlations in a classical harmonic system and relate it to a quantum lattice system with a modified interaction. We briefly comment on a general relationship between criticality and area laws for the entropy of entanglement.

Superadditivity of distillable entanglement from quantum teleportation

We show that the phenomenon of superadditivity of distillable entanglement observed in multipartite quantum systems results from the consideration of states created during the execution of the standard end-to-end quantum teleportation protocol (and a few additional local operations and classical communication (LOCC) steps) on a linear chain of singlets. Some of these intermediate states are tensor products of bound-entangled (BE) states, and hence, by construction possess distillable entanglement, which can be unlocked by simply completing the rest of the LOCC operations required by the underlying teleportation protocol. We use this systematic approach to construct both new and known examples of superactivation of bound entanglement, and first examples of activation of BE states using other BE states. A surprising outcome is the construction of noiseless quantum relay channels with no distillable entanglement between any two parties, except for that between the two end nodes.

Information Theories with Adversaries, Intrinsic Information, and Entanglement

There are aspects of privacy theory that are analogous to quantum theory. In particular one can define distillable key and key cost in parallel to distillable entanglement and entanglement cost. We present here classical privacy theory as a particular case of information theory with adversaries, where similar general laws hold as in entanglement theory. We place the result of Renner and Wolf—that intrinsic information is lower bound for key cost—into this general formalism. Then we show that the question of whether intrinsic information is equal to key cost is equivalent to the question of whether Alice and Bob can create a distribution product with Eve using I M bits of secret key. We also propose a natural analogue of relative entropy of entanglement in privacy theory and show that it is equal to the intrinsic information. We also provide a formula analogous to the entanglement of formation for classical distributions.