Entanglement Witness Research Articles

Spectral properties of symmetric quantum states and symmetric entanglement witnesses

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.

Class of Bell-diagonal entanglement witnesses in C4⊗C4 : Optimization and the spanning property

Two classes of Bell-diagonal indecomposable entanglement witnesses in ${\mathbb{C}}^{4}\ensuremath{\bigotimes}{\mathbb{C}}^{4}$ are considered. Within the first class, we find a generalization of the well-known Choi witness from ${\mathbb{C}}^{3}\ensuremath{\bigotimes}{\mathbb{C}}^{3}$, while the second one contains the reduction map. Interestingly, contrary to the ${\mathbb{C}}^{3}\ensuremath{\bigotimes}{\mathbb{C}}^{3}$ case, the generalized Choi witnesses are no longer optimal. We perform an optimization procedure of finding spanning vectors that eventually gives rise to optimal witnesses. Operators from the second class turn out to be optimal, however, without the spanning property. This analysis sheds light onto the intricate structure of optimal entanglement witnesses.

Genuine multipartite correlations in a boundary time crystal

In this work we study genuine multipartite correlations (GMC's) in a boundary time crystal (BTC). Boundary time crystals are nonequilibrium quantum phases of matter in contact to an environment, for which a macroscopic fraction of the many-body system breaks the time-translation symmetry. We analyze both (i) the structure (orders) of GMC's among the subsystems, as well as (ii) their build-up dynamics for an initially uncorrelated state. We find that, in the thermodynamic limit (and only in such a limit), multipartite correlations of all orders grow indefinitely in time in the BTC phase, further displaying a persistent oscillatory behavior around their mean growth. The orders of the correlations show a power-law decaying hierarchy among its $k$-partitions. Moreover, in the long-time limit the GMC's are shown extensive with the system size, contrasting to the subextensive scaling in the non time-crystal (ferromagnetic) phase of the model. We also discuss the classical and quantum nature of these correlations with basis on multipartite entanglement witnesses, specifically, the analysis of the Quantum Fisher Information (QFI). Both GMC and QFI are able to capture and distinguish the different phases of the model. Our work highlights the genuine many-body properties of these peculiar non-equilibrium phases of matter.

Full-separability and bi-separability of qubits using Bell operators, partial transpose, witnesses and explicit (full/bi) separability

Using the Hilbert–Schmidt (HS) decomposition we suggest new possible choices of Bell operators and entanglement witnesses (EWs) for [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) qubits systems for (full/bi) separability. The latter give upper bounds for (full/bi) separability. Also using the HS decomposition, we find explicitly (full/bi) separable forms for some qubits states which give lower bounds for (full/bi) separability. When the lower bounds and upper bounds coincide it means that the EW is optimal. In the case of full separability, the positive transpose method can sometimes give optimal results. As concrete examples, we give results for the GHZ(3), [Formula: see text] and cluster [Formula: see text] states.

Local and scalable detection of genuine multipartite single-photon path entanglement

How can a multipartite single-photon path-entangled state be certified efficiently by means of local measurements? We address this question by constructing an entanglement witness based on local photon detections preceded by displacement operations to reveal genuine multipartite entanglement. Our witness is defined as a sum of three observables that can be measured locally and assessed with two measurement settings for any number of parties N. For any bipartition, the maximum mean value of the witness observable over biseparable states is bounded by the maximum eigenvalue of an N×N matrix, which can be computed efficiently. We demonstrate the applicability of our scheme by experimentally testing the witness for heralded 4- and 8-partite single-photon path-entangled states. Our implementation shows the scalability of our witness and opens the door for distributing photonic multipartite entanglement in quantum networks at high rates.

Unveiling Quantum Entanglement in Many-Body Systems from Partial Information

Quantum entanglement is commonly assumed to be a central resource for quantum computing and quantum simulation. Nonetheless, the capability to detect it in many-body systems is severely limited by the absence of sufficiently scalable and flexible certification tools. This issue is particularly critical in situations where the structure of entanglement is a priori unknown, and where one cannot rely on existing entanglement witnesses. Here, we implement a scheme in which the knowledge of the mean value of arbitrary observables can be used to probe multipartite entanglement in a scalable, certified, and systematic manner. Specifically, we rely on positive semidefinite conditions, independent of partial-transposition-based criteria, necessarily obeyed if the data can be reproduced by a separable state. The violation of any of these conditions yields a specific entanglement witness, tailored to the data of interest, revealing the salient features of the data which are impossible to reproduce without entanglement. We validate this approach by probing theoretical many-body states of several hundreds of qubits relevant to existing experiments: a single-particle quench in a one-dimensional XX chain; a many-body quench in a two-dimensional XX model with 1/r3 interactions; and thermal equilibrium states of Heisenberg and transverse-field Ising chains. In all cases, these investigations have led us to discover new entanglement witnesses, some of which could be characterized analytically, generalizing existing results in the literature. In summary, our paper introduces a flexible data-driven entanglement detection technique for uncharacterized quantum many-body states, of immediate relevance to experiments in a quantum advantage regime.Received 11 August 2021Revised 2 December 2021Accepted 22 February 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.010342Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasEntanglement detectionQuantum entanglementPhysical SystemsQuantum spin modelsTechniquesData analysisSemiclassical methodsQuantum InformationAtomic, Molecular & OpticalStatistical Physics

Optimal fidelity witnesses for gravitational entanglement

Optomechanical systems open new possibilities in fundamental research at the interface between quantum information and gravity. Recently, an ambitious experimental proposal was suggested by Bose et al. to measure the entanglement between two optomechanical systems generated by their gravitational interaction. The scheme relies on witnessing entanglement between the two systems. Here we develop a general framework to study the quality of bipartite entanglement witnesses using fidelity witnesses. We then apply this framework to the gravitational entanglement proposal, optimizing for the detection of entanglement. We construct a witness consisting of only 5 non-trivial spin measurements, which we compare with other proposed witnesses. With post-processing our witness can detect entanglement for any choice of phases in the setup, up to a set of measure zero.

Entanglement witnesses of four-qubit tripartite separable quantum states* *Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No: 61871347).

A quantum entangled state is easily disturbed by noise and degenerates into a separable state. Compared to the entanglement with bipartite quantum systems, less progress has been made for the entanglement with multipartite quantum systems. For tripartite separability of a four-qubit system, we propose two entanglement witnesses, each of which corresponds to a necessary condition of tripartite separability. For the four-qubit GHZ state mixed with a W state and white noise, we prove that the necessary conditions of tripartite separability are also sufficient at W states side.

Blindly verifying partially unknown entanglement

SummaryQuantum entanglement has shown distinguished features beyond any classical state. Many methods have been presented to verify unknown entanglement with the complete information about the density matrices by quantum state tomography. In this work, we aim to identify unknown entanglement with only partial information of the state space. The witness consists of a generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-like paradox expressed by Pauli observables, and a nonlinear entanglement witness expressed by density matrix elements. First, we verify unknown bipartite entanglement and study the robustness of entanglement witnesses against the white noise. Second, we generalize such verification to partially unknown multipartite entangled states, including the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-type and W-type states. Third, we give a quantum-information application related to the quantum zero-knowledge proof. It further provides a useful method in blindly verifying universal quantum computation resources. These results may be interesting in entanglement theories, quantum communication, and quantum networks.

Non-Gaussian entanglement swapping between three-mode spontaneous parametric down-conversion and three qubits

In this work we study the production and swapping of non-gaussian multipartite entanglement in a setup containing a parametric amplifier which generates three photons in different modes coupled to three qubits. We prove that the entanglement generated in this setup is of nongaussian nature. We introduce witnesses of genuine tripartite nongaussian entanglement, valid both for mode and qubit entanglement. Moreover, those witnesses show that the entanglement generated among the photons can be swapped to the qubits, and indeed the qubits display nongaussian genuine tripartite entanglement over a wider parameter regime, suggesting that our setup could be a useful tool to extract entanglement generated in higher-order parametric amplification for quantum metrology or quantum computing applications.

Quantum signatures of gravity from superpositions of primordial massive particles

We study the superposition of primordial massive particles and compute the associated decoherence time scale in the radiation dominated Universe. We observe that for lighter primordial particles with masses up to ${10}^{7}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{kg}$, the corresponding decoherence timescale is significantly larger than the age of the observable Universe, demonstrating that a primordial particle would persist in a pure quantum state, with its wave function spreading freely. For heavier particles, they can still be in a quantum state while their position uncertainties are limited by the wavelength of background photons. We then discuss three observational signatures that may arise from a quantum superposition of primordial particles such as primordial black holes and other heavy dark matter candidates, namely, interference effects due to superpositions of the metric, transition lines in the gravitational wave spectrum due to gravitationally bound states indicating the existence of gravitons, and witnesses of quantum entanglement between massive particles and of the gravitational field.

Optimal entanglement witness for Cooper pair splitters

The generation of spin-entangled electrons is an important prerequisite for future solid-state quantum technologies. Cooper pairs in a superconductor can be split into separate electrons in a spin-singlet state, however, detecting their entanglement remains an open experimental challenge. Proposals to detect the entanglement by violating a Bell inequality typically require a large number of current cross-correlation measurements, and not all entangled states can be detected in this way. Here, we instead formulate an entanglement witness that can detect the spin-entanglement using only three cross-correlation measurements of the currents in the outputs of a Cooper pair splitter. We identify the optimal measurement settings for witnessing the entanglement, and we illustrate the use of our entanglement witness with a realistic model of a Cooper pair splitter for which we evaluate the cross-correlations of the output currents. Specifically, we find that the entanglement of the spins can be detected even with a moderate level of decoherence. Our work thereby paves the way for an experimental detection of the entanglement produced by Cooper pair splitters.

Probing multipartite entanglement, coherence and quantum information preservation under classical Ornstein–Uhlenbeck noise

We address entanglement, coherence, and information protection in a system of four non-interacting qubits coupled with different classical environments, namely: common, bipartite, tripartite, and independent environments described by Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (ORU) noise. We show that quantum information preserved by the four qubit state is more dependent on the coherence than the entanglement using time-dependent entanglement witness, purity, and Shannon entropy. We find these two quantum phenomena directly interrelated and highly vulnerable in environments with ORU noise, resulting in the pure exponential decay of a considerable amount. The current Markovian dynamical map, as well as suppression of the fluctuating character of the environments, are observed to be entirely attributable to the Gaussian nature of the noise. The increasing number of environments are witnessed to speed up the amount of decay. Unlike other noises, the current noise parameter’s flexible range is readily exploitable, ensuring long enough preserved memory properties. The four-qubit GHZ state, besides having a large information storage potential, stands partially entangled and coherent in common environments for an indefinite duration. In addition, we derive computational values for each system-environment interaction, which will help quantum practitioners to optimize the related classical environments.

Semiparametric estimation of the Hong-Ou-Mandel profile

We apply the theory of semiparametric estimation to a Hong-Ou-Mandel interference experiment with a spectrally entangled two-photon state generated by spontaneous parametric downconversion. Thanks to the semiparametric approach we can evaluate the Cram\'er-Rao bound and find an optimal estimator for a particular parameter of interest without assuming perfect knowledge of the two-photon wave function, formally treated as an infinity of nuisance parameters. In particular, we focus on the estimation of the Hermite-Gauss components of the marginal symmetrised wavefunction, whose Fourier transform governs the shape of the temporal coincidence profile. We show that negativity of these components is an entanglement witness of the two-photon state.

Entanglement witnesses from mutually unbiased measurements

A new family of positive, trace-preserving maps is introduced. It is defined using the mutually unbiased measurements, which generalize the notion of mutual unbiasedness of orthonormal bases. This family allows one to define entanglement witnesses whose indecomposability depends on the characteristics of the associated measurement operators. We provide examples of indecomposable witnesses and compare their entanglement detection properties with the realignment criterion.

Mutually unbiased measurements with arbitrary purity

Mutually unbiased measurements are a generalization of mutually unbiased bases in which the measurement operators need not to be rank one projectors. In a $d$-dimension space, the purity of measurement elements ranges from $1/d$ for the measurement operators corresponding to maximally mixed states to $1$ for the rank one projectors. In this contribution, we provide a class of MUM that encompasses the full range of purity. Similar to the MUB in which the operators corresponding to different outcomes of the same measurement commute mutually, our class of MUM possesses this sense of compatibility within each measurement. This makes the provided class more similar to the MUB, so that the main difference between them and MUB is due to the purity of the measurement operators. The spectra of these MUMs provides a way to construct a class of $d$-dimensional orthogonal matrices which leave the vector of equal components invariant. Based on this property, and by using the MUM-based entanglement witnesses, we investigate the role of purity to detect entanglement of bipartite states.

Guaranteeing completely positive quantum evolution

In open quantum systems, it is known that if the system and environment are in a product state, the evolution of the system is given by a linear completely positive (CP) Hermitian map. CP maps are a subset of general linear Hermitian maps, which also include non completely positive (NCP) maps. NCP maps can arise in evolutions such as non-Markovian evolution, where the CP divisibility of the map (writing the overall evolution as a composition of CP maps) usually fails. Positive but NCP maps are also useful as entanglement witnesses. In this paper, we focus on transforming an initial NCP map to a CP map through composition with the asymmetric depolarizing map. We use separate asymmetric depolarizing maps acting on the individual subsystems. Previous work have looked at structural physical approximation (SPA), which is a CP approximation of an NCP map using a mixture of the NCP map with a completely depolarizing map. We prove that the composition can always be made CP without completely depolarizing in any direction. It is possible to depolarize less in some directions. We give the general proof by using the Choi matrix and an isomorphism from a maximally entangled two qudit state to a set of qubits. We also give measures that describe the amount of disturbance the depolarization introduces to the original map. Given our measures, we show that asymmetric depolarization has many advantages over SPA in preserving the structure of the original NCP map. Finally, we give some examples. For some measures and examples, completely depolarizing (while not necessary) in some directions can give a better approximation than keeping the depolarizing parameters bounded by the required depolarization if symmetric depolarization is used.

Toward witnessing molecular exciton entanglement from spectroscopy

Entanglement is a defining feature of quantum mechanics that can be a resource in engineered and natural systems, but measuring entanglement in experiment remains elusive especially for large chemical systems. Most practical approaches require determining and measuring a suitable entanglement witness which provides some level of information about the entanglement structure of the probed state. A fundamental quantity of quantum metrology is the quantum Fisher information (QFI) which is a rigorous witness of multipartite entanglement that can be evaluated from linear response functions for certain states. In this work, we explore measuring the QFI of molecular exciton states of the first-excitation subspace from spectroscopy. In particular, we utilize the fact that the linear response of a pure state subject to a weak electric field over all possible driving frequencies encodes the variance of the collective dipole moment in the probed state, which is a valid measure for QFI. The systems that are investigated include the molecular dimer, $N$-site linear aggregate with nearest-neighbor coupling, and $N$-site circular aggregate, all modeled as a collection of interacting qubits. Our theoretical analysis shows that the variance of the collective dipole moment in the brightest dipole-allowed eigenstate is the maximum QFI. The optical response of a thermally equilibrated state in the first-excitation subspace is also a valid QFI. Theoretical predictions of the measured QFI for realistic linear dye aggregates as a function of temperature and energetic disorder due to static variations of the host matrix show that 2- to 3-partite entanglement is realizable. This work lays some groundwork and inspires measurement of multipartite entanglement of molecular excitons with ultrafast pump-probe experiments.

Witnessing quantum correlations in a nuclear ensemble via an electron spin qubit

A coherent ensemble of spins interfaced with a proxy qubit is an attractive platform to create many-body coherences and probe the regime of collective excitations. An electron spin qubit in a semiconductor quantum dot can act as such an interface to the dense nuclear spin ensemble within the quantum dot consisting of multiple high-spin atomic species. Earlier work has shown that the electron can relay properties of its nuclear environment through the statistics of its mean-field interaction with the total nuclear polarisation, namely its mean and variance. Here, we demonstrate a method to probe the spin state of a nuclear ensemble that exploits its response to collective spin excitations, enabling a species-selective reconstruction beyond the mean field. For the accessible range of optically prepared mean fields, the reconstructed populations indicate that the ensemble is in a non-thermal, correlated nuclear state. The sum over reconstructed species-resolved polarisations exceeds the classical prediction threefold. This stark deviation follows from a spin ensemble that contains inter-particle coherences, and serves as an entanglement witness that confirms the formation of a dark many-body state.

Verification of blind quantum computation with entanglement witnesses

Verifiable blind quantum computation provides a cloud scenario for scalable quantum information processing. However, constructing one resource-efficient verification protocol is still an open problem. In this paper, the context of verification we consider is the measurement-based model, in which the client receives the graph state prepared by the server and performs single-qubit measurements on it to drive the computation. We first utilize three entanglement witnesses to estimate the fidelity of the prepared graph state. Applying entanglement witnesses to design the test phase, we propose verification protocols. Our protocol requires overhead in terms of copies of the graph state that scales as $O({n}^{2}logn)$, where $n$ is the number of qubits of the graph state. Furthermore, the soundness of our protocol is improved. The advantages of our protocol are derived from the fact that each entanglement witness can be implemented by the client with a fixed number of measurement settings.