Weakly-entangled states are dense and robust

Motivated by the mathematical definition of entanglement we undertake a rigorous analysis of the separability and non-distillability properties in the neighborhood of those three-qubit mixed states which are entangled and completely bi-separable. Our results are not only restricted to this class of quantum states, since they rest upon very general properties of mixed states and Unextendible Product Bases for any possible number of parties. Robustness against noise of the relevant properties of these states implies the significance of their possible experimental realization, therefore being of physical -and not exclusively mathematical- interest.Comment: 4 pages, final version, accepted for publication in PR

Speed of Light in Non--Trivial Vacua

We unify all existing results on the change of the speed of low--energy photons due to modifications of the vacuum, finding that it is given by a universal constant times the quotient of the difference of energy densities between the usual and modified vacua over the mass of the electron to the fourth power. Whether photons move faster or slower than $c$ depends only on the lower or higher energy density of the modified vacuum, respectively. Physically, a higher energy density is characterized by the presence of additional particles (real or virtual) in the vacuum whereas a lower one stems from the absence of some virtual modes. We then carry out a systematic study of the speed of propagation of massless particles for several field theories up to two loops on a thermal vacuum. Only low--energy massless particles corresponding to a massive theory show genuine modifications of their speed while remaining massless. All other modifications are mass-related, or running mass-related. We also develop a formalism for the Casimir vacuum which parallels the thermal one and check that photons travel faster than $c$ between plates.Comment: 24 p., plain te

Mode dependent field renormalization and triviality

We critically analyze the introduction of an independent zero momentum mode field renormalization for Phi4. It leads to an infrared divergent effective action. It does not achieve its purpose: triviality still gives massless particles in the broken phase in the continuum limit. It leads to an effective potential which is not the low energy limit of the effective action.Comment: 14 pages, no figures, TeX fil