Bound Entanglement and Teleportation

Recently M. Horodecki, P. Horodecki and R. Horodecki have introduced a set of density matrices of two spin-1 particles from which it is not possible to distill any maximally entangled states, even though the density matrices are entangled. Thus these density matrices do not allow reliable teleportation. However it might nevertheless be the case that these states can be used for teleportation, not reliably, but still with fidelity greater than that which may be achieved with a classical scheme. We show that, at least for some of these density matrices, teleportation cannot be achieved with better than classical fidelity.Comment: 3 pages, RevTe

Phase coexistence in a monolayer of active particles induced by Marangoni flows

Thermally or chemically active colloids generate thermodynamic gradients in the solution in which they are immersed and thereby induce hydrodynamic flows that affect their dynamical evolution. Here we study a mean-field model for the many-body dynamics of a monolayer of active particles located at a fluid-fluid interface. In this case, the activity of the particles creates long-ranged Marangoni flows due to the response of the interface, which compete with the direct interaction between the particles. For the most interesting case of a $r^{-3}$ soft repulsion that models the electrostatic or magnetic interparticle forces, we show that an "onion-like" density distribution will develop within the monolayer. For a sufficiently large average density, two-dimensional phase transitions (freezing from liquid to hexatic, and melting from solid to hexatic) should be observable in a radially stratified structure. Furthermore, the analysis allows us to conclude that, while the activity may be too weak to allow direct detection of such induced Marangoni flows, it is relevant as a collective effect in the emergence of the experimentally observable spatial structure of phase coexistences noted above. Finally, the relevance of these results for potential experimental realizations is critically discussed.Comment: 11 page

Shy and Fixed-Distance Couplings of Brownian Motions on Manifolds

In this paper we introduce three Markovian couplings of Brownian motions on smooth Riemannian manifolds without boundary which sit at the crossroad of two concepts. The first concept is the one of shy coupling put forward in \cite{Burdzy-Benjamini} and the second concept is the lower bound on the Ricci curvature and the connection with couplings made in \cite{ReSt}. The first construction is the shy coupling, the second one is a fixed-distance coupling and the third is a coupling in which the distance between the processes is a deterministic exponential function of time. The result proved here is that an arbitrary Riemannian manifold satisfying some technical conditions supports shy couplings. If in addition, the Ricci curvature is non-negative, there exist fixed-distance couplings. Furthermore, if the Ricci curvature is bounded below by a positive constant, then there exists a coupling of Brownian motions for which the distance between the processes is a decreasing exponential function of time. The constructions use the intrinsic geometry, and relies on an extension of the notion of frames which plays an important role for even dimensional manifolds. In fact, we provide a wider class of couplings in which the distance function is deterministic in Theorem \ref{t:100} and Corollary~\ref{Cor:9}. As an application of the fixed-distance coupling we derive a maximum principle for the gradient of harmonic functions on manifolds with non-negative Ricci curvature. As far as we are aware of, these constructions are new, though the existence of shy couplings on manifolds is suggested by Kendall in \cite{Kendall}.Comment: This version is a refinement expansion and simplification of the previous versio

Purifying noisy entanglement requires collective measurements

Known entanglement purification protocols for mixed states use collective measurements on several copies of the state in order to increase the entanglement of some of them. We address the question of whether it is possible to purify the entanglement of a state by processing each copy separately. While this is possible for pure states, we show that this is impossible, in general, for mixed states. The importance of this result both conceptually and for experimental realization of purification is discussed. We also give explicit invariants of an entangled state of two qubits under local actions and classical communication.Comment: 5 pages, Late

Non-local properties of multi-particle density matrices

As far as entanglement is concerned, two density matrices of $n$ particles are equivalent if they are on the same orbit of the group of local unitary transformations, $U(d_1)\times...\times U(d_n)$ (where the Hilbert space of particle $r$ has dimension $d_r$). We show that for $n$ greater than or equal to two, the number of independent parameters needed to specify an $n$-particle density matrix up to equivalence is $\Pi_r d_r^2 - \sum_r d_r^2 + n - 1$. For $n$ spin-${1\over 2}$ particles we also show how to characterise generic orbits, both by giving an explicit parametrisation of the orbits and by finding a finite set of polynomial invariants which separate the orbits.Comment: 13 pages RevTe

Diffusive spreading and mixing of fluid monolayers

The use of ultra-thin, i.e., monolayer films plays an important role for the emerging field of nano-fluidics. Since the dynamics of such films is governed by the interplay between substrate-fluid and fluid-fluid interactions, the transport of matter in nanoscale devices may be eventually efficiently controlled by substrate engineering. For such films, the dynamics is expected to be captured by two-dimensional lattice-gas models with interacting particles. Using a lattice gas model and the non-linear diffusion equation derived from the microscopic dynamics in the continuum limit, we study two problems of relevance in the context of nano-fluidics. The first one is the case in which along the spreading direction of a monolayer a mesoscopic-sized obstacle is present, with a particular focus on the relaxation of the fluid density profile upon encountering and passing the obstacle. The second one is the mixing of two monolayers of different particle species which spread side by side following the merger of two chemical lanes, here defined as domains of high affinity for fluid adsorption surrounded by domains of low affinity for fluid adsorption.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

Active colloids at fluid interfaces

If an active Janus particle is trapped at the interface between a liquid and a fluid, its self-propelled motion along the interface is affected by a net torque on the particle due to the viscosity contrast between the two adjacent fluid phases. For a simple model of an active, spherical Janus colloid we analyze the conditions under which translation occurs along the interface and we provide estimates of the corresponding persistence length. We show that under certain conditions the persistence length of such a particle is significantly larger than the corresponding one in the bulk liquid, which is in line with the trends observed in recent experimental studies

Bell inequalities for arbitrarily high dimensional systems

We develop a novel approach to Bell inequalities based on a constraint that the correlations exhibited by local realistic theories must satisfy. This is used to construct a family of Bell inequalities for bipartite quantum systems of arbitrarily high dimensionality which are strongly resistant to noise. In particular our work gives an analytic description of numerical results of D. Kaszlikowski, P. Gnacinski, M. Zukowski, W. Miklaszewski, A. Zeilinger, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 85}, 4418 (2000) and T. Durt, D. Kaszlikowski, M. Zukowski, quant-ph/0101084, and generalises them to arbitrarily high dimensionality.Comment: 6 pages, late