The distillability problem revisited

An important open problem in quantum information theory is the question of the existence of NPT bound entanglement. In the past years, little progress has been made, mainly because of the lack of mathematical tools to address the problem. (i) In an attempt to overcome this, we show how the distillability problem can be reformulated as a special instance of the separability problem, for which a large number of tools and techniques are available. (ii) Building up to this we also show how the problem can be formulated as a Schmidt number problem. (iii) A numerical method for detecting distillability is presented and strong evidence is given that all 1-copy undistillable Werner states are also 4-copy undistillable. (iv) The same method is used to estimate the volume of distillable states, and the results suggest that bound entanglement is primarily a phenomenon found in low dimensional quantum systems. (v) Finally, a set of one parameter states is presented which we conjecture to exhibit all forms of distillability.Comment: Several corrections, main results unchange

On two-distillable Werner states

We consider bipartite mixed states in a $d\otimes d$ quantum system. We say that $\rho$ is PPT if its partial transpose $1 \otimes T (\rho)$ is positive semidefinite, and otherwise $\rho$ is NPT. The well-known Werner states are divided into three types: (a) the separable states (the same as the PPT states); (b) the one-distillable states (necessarily NPT); and (c) the NPT states which are not one-distillable. We give several different formulations and provide further evidence for validity of the conjecture that the Werner states of type (c) are not two-distillable.Comment: 19 pages, expanded version containing new result

A few steps more towards NPT bound entanglement

We consider the problem of existence of bound entangled states with non-positive partial transpose (NPT). As one knows, existence of such states would in particular imply nonadditivity of distillable entanglement. Moreover it would rule out a simple mathematical description of the set of distillable states. Distillability is equivalent to so called n-copy distillability for some n. We consider a particular state, known to be 1-copy nondistillable, which is supposed to be bound entangled. We study the problem of its two-copy distillability, which boils down to show that maximal overlap of some projector Q with Schmidt rank two states does not exceed 1/2. Such property we call the the half-property. We first show that the maximum overlap can be attained on vectors that are not of the simple product form with respect to cut between two copies. We then attack the problem in twofold way: a) prove the half-property for some classes of Schmidt rank two states b) bound the required overlap from above for all Schmidt rank two states. We have succeeded to prove the half-property for wide classes of states, and to bound the overlap from above by c<3/4. Moreover, we translate the problem into the following matrix analysis problem: bound the sum of the squares of the two largest singular values of matrix A \otimes I + I \otimes B with A,B traceless 4x4 matrices, and Tr A^\dagger A + Tr B^\dagger B = 1/4.Comment: 15 pages, Final version for IEEE Trans. Inf. Theor

Quantum Correlations and Quantum Non-Locality: A Review and a Few New Ideas

In this paper we make an extensive description of quantum non-locality, one of the most intriguing and fascinating facets of quantum mechanics. After a general presentation of several studies on this subject, we consider if quantum non-locality, and the friction it carries with special relativity, can eventually find a "solution" by considering higher dimensional spaces.Comment: 1

Entanglement Distillation; A Discourse on Bound Entanglement in Quantum Information Theory

PhD thesis (University of York). The thesis covers in a unified way the material presented in quant-ph/0403073, quant-ph/0502040, quant-ph/0504160, quant-ph/0510035, quant-ph/0512012 and quant-ph/0603283. It includes two large review chapters on entanglement and distillation.Comment: 192 page