Entanglement and separability of quantum harmonic oscillator systems at finite temperature

In the present paper we study the entanglement properties of thermal (a.k.a. Gibbs) states of quantum harmonic oscillator systems as functions of the Hamiltonian and the temperature. We prove the physical intuition that at sufficiently high temperatures the thermal state becomes fully separable and we deduce bounds on the critical temperature at which this happens. We show that the bound becomes tight for a wide class of Hamiltonians with sufficient translation symmetry. We find, that at the crossover the thermal energy is of the order of the energy of the strongest normal mode of the system and quantify the degree of entanglement below the critical temperature. Finally, we discuss the example of a ring topology in detail and compare our results with previous work in an entanglement-phase diagram.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

"Hot Entanglement"? -- A Nonequilibrium Quantum Field Theory Scrutiny

The possibility of maintaining entanglement in a quantum system at finite, even high, temperatures -- the so-called `hot entanglement' -- has obvious practical interest, but also requires closer theoretical scrutiny. Since quantum entanglement in a system evolves in time and is continuously subjected to environmental degradation, a nonequilibrium description by way of open quantum systems is called for. To identify the key issues and the contributing factors that may permit `hot entanglement' to exist, or the lack thereof, we carry out a model study of two spatially-separated, coupled oscillators in a shared bath depicted by a finite-temperature scalar field. From the Langevin equations we derived for the normal modes and the entanglement measure constructed from the covariance matrix we examine the interplay between direct coupling, field-induced interaction and finite separation on the structure of late-time entanglement. We show that the coupling between oscillators plays a crucial role in sustaining entanglement at intermediate temperatures and over finite separations. In contrast, the field-induced interaction between the oscillators which is a non-Markovian effect, becomes very ineffective at high temperature. We determine the critical temperature above which entanglement disappears to be bounded in the leading order by the inverse frequency of the center-of-mass mode of the reduced oscillator system, a result not unexpected, which rules out hot entanglement in such settings.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Quantum Entanglement at High Temperatures? II. Bosonic Systems in Nonequilibrium Steady State

This is the second of a series of three papers examining how viable it is for entanglement to be sustained at high temperatures for quantum systems in thermal equilibrium (Case A), in nonequilibrium (Case B) and in nonequilibrium steady state conditions (Case C). The system we analyze here consists of two coupled quantum harmonic oscillators each interacting with its own bath described by a scalar field, set at temperatures $T_1 > T_2$. For \textit{constant bilinear inter-oscillator coupling} studied here (Case C1) owing to the Gaussian nature, the problem can be solved exactly at arbitrary temperatures even for strong coupling. We find that the valid entanglement criterion in general is not a function of the bath temperature difference, in contrast to thermal transport in the same NESS setting [1]. Thus lowering the temperature of one of the thermal baths does not necessarily help to safeguard the entanglement between the oscillators. Indeed, quantum entanglement will disappear if any one of the thermal baths has a temperature higher than the critical temperature $T_c$. With the Langevin equations derived we give a full display of how entanglement dynamics in this system depends on $T_{1}$, $T_{2}$ , the inter-oscillator coupling and the system-bath coupling strengths. For weak oscillator-bath coupling the critical temperature $T_c$ is about the order of the inverse oscillator frequency, but for strong oscillator-bath coupling it will depend on the bath cutoff frequency. We conclude that in most realistic circumstances, for bosonic systems in NESS with constant bilinear coupling, `hot entanglement' is largely a fiction. In Paper III we will examine the case (C2) of \textit{time-dependent driven coupling } which contains the parametric pumping type described in [2] wherein entanglement was first shown to sustain at high temperatures.Comment: 47 pages, 9 figure

Gaussian entanglement revisited

We present a novel approach to the problem of separability versus entanglement in Gaussian quantum states of bosonic continuous variable systems, as well as a collection of closely related results. We derive a simplified necessary and sufficient separability criterion for arbitrary Gaussian states of $m$ vs $n$ modes, which relies on convex optimisation over marginal covariance matrices on one subsystem only. We further revisit the currently known results stating the equivalence between separability and positive partial transposition (PPT) for specific classes of multimode Gaussian states. Using techniques based on matrix analysis, such as Schur complements and matrix means, we then provide a unified treatment and compact proofs of all these results. In particular, we recover the PPT-separability equivalence for Gaussian states of $1$ vs $n$ modes, for arbitrary $n$. We then proceed to show the novel result that Gaussian states invariant under partial transposition are separable.
 Next, we provide a previously unknown extension of the PPT-separability equivalence to arbitrary Gaussian states of $m$ vs $n$ modes that are symmetric under the exchange of any two modes belonging to one of the parties. Further, we include a new proof of the sufficiency of the PPT criterion for separability of isotropic Gaussian states, not relying on their mode-wise decomposition. In passing, we also provide an alternative proof of the recently established equivalence between separability of an arbitrary Gaussian state and its complete extendability with Gaussian extensions. Finally, we prove that Gaussian states which remain PPT under passive optical operations cannot be entangled by them either; this is not a foregone conclusion per se (since Gaussian bound entangled states do exist) and settles a question that had been left unanswered in the existing literature on the subject.
 This paper, enjoyable by both the quantum optics and the matrix analysis communities, overall delivers technical and conceptual advances which are likely to be useful for further applications in continuous variable quantum information theory, beyond the separability problem

Symmetry decomposition of negativity of massless free fermions

We consider the problem of symmetry decomposition of the entanglement negativity in free fermionic systems. Rather than performing the standard partial transpose, we use the partial time-reversal transformation which naturally encodes the fermionic statistics. The negativity admits a resolution in terms of the charge imbalance between the two subsystems. We introduce a normalised version of the imbalance resolved negativity which has the advantage to be an entanglement proxy for each symmetry sector, but may diverge in the limit of pure states for some sectors. Our main focus is then the resolution of the negativity for a free Dirac field at finite temperature and size. We consider both bipartite and tripartite geometries and exploit conformal field theory to derive universal results for the charge imbalance resolved negativity. To this end, we use a geometrical construction in terms of an Aharonov-Bohm-like flux inserted in the Riemann surface defining the entanglement. We interestingly find that the entanglement negativity is always equally distributed among the different imbalance sectors at leading order. Our analytical findings are tested against exact numerical calculations for free fermions on a lattice.Comment: 48 pages, 7 figure