Interplay between computable measures of entanglement and other quantum correlations

Composite quantum systems can be in generic states characterized not only by entanglement, but also by more general quantum correlations. The interplay between these two signatures of nonclassicality is still not completely understood. In this work we investigate this issue focusing on computable and observable measures of such correlations: entanglement is quantified by the negativity N, while general quantum correlations are measured by the (normalized) geometric quantum discord D_G. For two-qubit systems, we find that the geometric discord reduces to the squared negativity on pure states, while the relationship $D_G \geq N^2$ holds for arbitrary mixed states. The latter result is rigorously extended to pure, Werner and isotropic states of two-qudit systems for arbitrary d, and numerical evidence of its validity for arbitrary states of a qubit and a qutrit is provided as well. Our results establish an interesting hierarchy, that we conjecture to be universal, between two relevant and experimentally friendly nonclassicality indicators. This ties in with the intuition that general quantum correlations should at least contain and in general exceed entanglement on mixed states of composite quantum systems.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Classical Tensors and Quantum Entanglement II: Mixed States

Invariant operator-valued tensor fields on Lie groups are considered. These define classical tensor fields on Lie groups by evaluating them on a quantum state. This particular construction, applied on the local unitary group U(n)xU(n), may establish a method for the identification of entanglement monotone candidates by deriving invariant functions from tensors being by construction invariant under local unitary transformations. In particular, for n=2, we recover the purity and a concurrence related function (Wootters 1998) as a sum of inner products of symmetric and anti-symmetric parts of the considered tensor fields. Moreover, we identify a distinguished entanglement monotone candidate by using a non-linear realization of the Lie algebra of SU(2)xSU(2). The functional dependence between the latter quantity and the concurrence is illustrated for a subclass of mixed states parametrized by two variables.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figure

Phase transitions and metastability in the distribution of the bipartite entanglement of a large quantum system

We study the distribution of the Schmidt coefficients of the reduced density matrix of a quantum system in a pure state. By applying general methods of statistical mechanics, we introduce a fictitious temperature and a partition function and translate the problem in terms of the distribution of the eigenvalues of random matrices. We investigate the appearance of two phase transitions, one at a positive temperature, associated to very entangled states, and one at a negative temperature, signalling the appearance of a significant factorization in the many-body wave function. We also focus on the presence of metastable states (related to 2-D quantum gravity) and study the finite size corrections to the saddle point solution.Comment: 23 pages, 32 figures. More details added about the metastable branch and the first-order phase transitio

Classical Tensors and Quantum Entanglement I: Pure States

The geometrical description of a Hilbert space asociated with a quantum system considers a Hermitian tensor to describe the scalar inner product of vectors which are now described by vector fields. The real part of this tensor represents a flat Riemannian metric tensor while the imaginary part represents a symplectic two-form. The immersion of classical manifolds in the complex projective space associated with the Hilbert space allows to pull-back tensor fields related to previous ones, via the immersion map. This makes available, on these selected manifolds of states, methods of usual Riemannian and symplectic geometry. Here we consider these pulled-back tensor fields when the immersed submanifold contains separable states or entangled states. Geometrical tensors are shown to encode some properties of these states. These results are not unrelated with criteria already available in the literature. We explicitly deal with some of these relations.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Int. J. Geom. Meth. Mod. Phy

Classical Statistical Mechanics Approach to Multipartite Entanglement

We characterize the multipartite entanglement of a system of n qubits in terms of the distribution function of the bipartite purity over balanced bipartitions. We search for maximally multipartite entangled states, whose average purity is minimal, and recast this optimization problem into a problem of statistical mechanics, by introducing a cost function, a fictitious temperature and a partition function. By investigating the high-temperature expansion, we obtain the first three moments of the distribution. We find that the problem exhibits frustration.Comment: 38 pages, 10 figures, published versio