The Mathematics of Entanglement - Summer 2013

29 May, 2013

Separable states, PPT and Bell inequalities

Lecturer: Fernando G.S.L. Brand
ao

Lecture 7

Recall from yesterday this theorem.

Theorem 1. For any pure state |iAB ,
Ec (|ih|AB ) = ED (|ih|AB ) = S(A ) = S(B ),
where S() = tr log .
As a result, many copies of a pure entangled state can be (approximately) reversibly transformed
into EPR pairs and back again. Up to a small approximation error and inefficiency, we have
|in
LOCC |+ inS(A ) .
AB

Mixed-state entanglement

For pure states, a state is entangled if its not a product state. This is easy to check, and we can
even quantify the amount of entanglement (using Theorem 1) by looking at the entropy of one of
the reduced density matrices.
But what about for mixed states? Here the situation is more complicated.
Definition 1. Define the set of separable states Sep to be the set of all AB that can be written as
X
pi |i ihi |A |i ihi |B .
(1)
i

Definition 2. A state is entangled if it is not separable.

We should check that this notion of entanglement makes sense in terms of LOCC. And indeed,
separable states can be created using LOCC: Alice samples i according to p, creates |i i and sends
i to Bob, who uses it to create |i i. On the other hand, entangled states cannot be created from a
separable state by using LOCC. In other words, the set Sep is closed under LOCC.

The PPT test

It is in general hard to test, given a state AB , whether Sep. Naively we would have to check
for all possible decompositions of the form in (1). So it is desirable to find efficient tests that work
at least some of the time.
One such test is the Positive Partial Transpose, or PPT, test. The partial transpose can be
thought of as (T id), where T is the transpose map. More concretely, if
X
XAB =
ci,j,k,l |iihj|A |kihl|B
i,j,k,l

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then the partial transpose is

TA
XAB
=

ci,j,k,l (|iihj|A )T |kihl|B

i,j,k,l

ci,j,k,l |jihi|A |kihl|B

i,j,k,l

The PPT test asks whether TA is positive semidefinite. If so, we say

Pthat is PPT.
Observe that all separable states are PPT. This is because if = i pi |i ihi |A |i ihi |B ,
then
X
TA =
pi |i ihi |A |i ihi |.
i

This is still a valid density matrix and in particular is positive semidefinite (indeed, it is also in
Sep).
Thus, Sep implies PPT. The contrapositive is that 6 PPT implies 6 Sep. This
gives us an efficient test that will detect entanglement in some cases.
Are there in fact any states that are not in PPT? Otherwise this would not be a very interesting
test.
Examples
1. |+ iAB =

|0,0i+|1,1i

.
2

Then
1
(|0, 0ih0, 0| + |1, 0ih0, 1| + |0, 1ih1, 0| + |1, 1ih1, 1|)
2

1/2 0
0
0
0
0 1/2 0
= 1 SWAP.
=
0 1/2 0
0 2
0
0
0 1/2

A
|+ ih+ |TAB
=

This has eigenvalues (1/2, 1/2, 1/2, 1/2), meaning that |+ ih+ |AB 6 PPT. Of course, we
already knew that |+ i was entangled.
2. Lets try an example where we dont already know the answer, like a noisy version of |+ i.
Let
I
= p|+ ih+ | + (1 p) .
4
Then one can calculate min (TA ) = p2 +

1p
4

which is < 0 if and only if p > 1/3.

Maybe PPT = Sep? Unfortunately not. In D(C2 C3 ) (i.e. density matrices in which one
system has 2 dimensions and the other has 3) then all PPT states are separable. But for larger
systems, e.g. 3x3 or 2x4, then there exist PPT states that are not separable.

2.1

Bound entanglement

Theorem 2. If AB PPT then ED () = 0.

To prove this we will establish two properties of the set PPT:
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1. PPT is closed under LOCC.

Consider a general LOCC protocol. This can be thought of as Alice and Bob alternating general measurements and sending each other the outcomes. When Alice makes a measurement,
this transformation is
(M I)AB (M I)
AB 7
.
tr((M M I)AB )
After Bob makes a measurement as well, depending on the outcome, the state is proportional
to
(M N )AB (M N ),
and so on. The class SLOCC (stochastic LOCC) consists of outcomes that can be obtained
with some positive probability, and we will see later that this can be characterized in terms
of (M N )AB (M N ).
We claim that if AB PPT then (M N )AB (M N ) PPT. Indeed
A
((M N )AB (M N ))TA = (M T N )TAB
(M T N ) .
A
Now TAB
0 and XY X 0 whenever Y 0, implying that ((M N )AB (M N ))TA 0.

2. PPT is closed under tensor product. If AB , A0 B 0 PPT, then (AB A0 B 0 ) PPT. Why?
Because
T 0
A
AA0 B 0 0.
(AB A0 B 0 )TAA0 = TAB
Proof of Theorem 2. Assume towards a contradiction that PPT and ED () > 0. Then for any
+
 > 0 there exists n such that n
AB can be transformed to | i using LOCC up to error . Since
n
PPT, is also PPT and so is the output of the protocol, which we call . Then TA 0 and
k |+ ih+ |k1 . If we had  = 0, then this would be a contradiction, because is in PPT
and |+ ih+ | is not. We can use an argument based on continuity (details omitted) to show that
a contradiction must appear even for some sufficiently small  > 0.
If is entangled but ED () = 0, then we say that has bound entanglement meaning that
it is entangled, but no pure entanglement can be extracted from it. By Theorem 2, we know that
any state in PPT but not Sep must be bound entangled.
Open question: A major open question (the NPT bound entanglement question) is whether
there exist bound entangled states that have a non-positive partial transpose.

Entanglement witnesses

Sep is a convex set, meaning that if , Sep and 0 1 then + (1 ) Sep. Thus the
separating hyperplane theorem implies that for any 6 Sep, there exists a Hermitian matrix W
such that
1. For all Sep, tr(W ) 0
2. tr(W ) < 0.
Example: consider the state = |+ ih+ |. Let W = I 2|+ ih+ |. As an exercise, show that
tr(W ) 0 for all Sep. We can also check that tr(W ) = 1.
Observe that an entanglement witness W needs to be chosen with a specific in mind. An an
exercise, show that no W can be a witness for all entangled states of a particular dimension.
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CHSH game

One very famous type of entanglement witness is called a Bell inequality. In fact, these bounds rule
out not only separable states but even classically correlated distributions over states that could
be from a theory more general than quantum mechanics. Historically, Bell inequalities have been
important in showing that entanglement is an inescapable, and experimentally testable, part of
quantum mechanics.
The game is played by two players, Alice and Bob, together with a Referee. The Referee choose
bits r, s at random and sends r to Alice and s to Bob. Alice then sends a bit a back to the Referee
and Bob sends the bit b to the Referee.
R
r

s
a

Alice and Bob win if a b = r s, i.e. they want a b to be chosen according to this table:
r
0
0
1
1

s
0
1
0
1

desired a b
0
0
0
1

One can show that if Alice and Bob use a deterministic strategy, their success probability will
be 3/4. However, using entanglement they can achieve a success probability of cos2 (/8)
0.854 . . . > 3/4. This strategy, together with the payoff function (+1 if they win, -1 if they lose),
yields an entanglement witness, and one that can be implemented only with local measurements.

7-4