Analytically solvable two-qubit entanglement monotone
Jing Zhang,
1,
*
Chun-Wen Li,
1
Tzyh-Jong Tarn,
2
and Jian-Wu Wu
1
1
Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
2
Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA
共Received 6 June 2007; published 7 September 2007
兲
A so-called quasientanglement measure was obtained 关J. Zhang et al., Phys. Rev. A 73, 022319 共2006兲兴 by
extending Jaeger’s Minkowskian norm entanglement measure to general multipartite mixed states. The ob-
tained quasientanglement measure has good properties, but it is still left open whether it is nonincreasing under
general local operations and classical communications 共LOCC兲. We show that the obtained quasientanglement
measure is indeed nonincreasing on average under LOCC at least for two-qubit states. Thus, it is a good
candidate for the two-qubit entanglement monotone. Further, it is shown that this entanglement measure is less
than the concurrence for a large class of mixed entangled states.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.76.032306 PACS number共s兲: 03.67.Mn, 03.67.Lx, 03.67.Pp
I. INTRODUCTION
Quantum entanglement 关1–32兴 is a key physical resource
to realize high-speed quantum computation and high-security
quantum communication, which makes it central to quantum
information theory. Among the theoretical analyses and prac-
tical applications of quantum entanglement, it is important to
quantify the amount of entanglement in quantum states
which shows the capacity of the states to implement quantum
information processes. Although this problem has been well
understood for two-qubit pure states 关12兴, it is still unsolved
for more general multiqubit or even multipartite mixed
states.
In practice, a quantum system is always entangled with its
environment, which changes the pure state of the quantum
system into a mixed state. Thus, it is important to find a good
mixed-state entanglement measure. Further, for the purpose
of controlling quantum entanglement—e.g., preserving quan-
tum entanglement against decoherence—such mixed-state
entanglement measures should be analytically solvable and
be in a simple form. To our knowledge, existing mixed-state
entanglement measures are mainly defined by two alternative
methods. The first method is to define the measure as a so-
lution of a related minimization problem—e.g., the entangle-
ment of formation 关12–15兴 and the relative entropy of en-
tanglement 关16–20兴. The second method is to define the
measure as a function of the eigenvalues of some matrix—
e.g., concurrence 关13,21,22兴, negativity, and logarithmic
negativity 关23–27兴. Since the minimization problem and cal-
culations of the eigenvalues of a matrix are mathematically
equivalent to solving a nonlinear algebraic equation, these
two kinds of entanglement measures are not analytically
solvable in general.
To obtain a mixed-state entanglement measure which can
be analytically solved, we extended Jaeger’s Minkowskian
norm entanglement measure 关28–30兴 in Ref. 关31兴 to the gen-
eral multipartite mixed states. This measure can be expressed
as a quadratic scalar function of the system density matrix in
the so-called coherence vector picture 关33–38兴 and possesses
the basic properties including 共i兲 zero for all separable states,
共ii兲 invariance under local unitary operations, 共iii兲 nonin-
creasing under a local positive operator-valued measure mea-
surement, and 共iv兲 0 艋E共
兲艋1. However, it is still unclear
whether it is nonincreasing under general local operations
and classical communications 共LOCC兲. In this paper, we will
show that this measure is nonincreasing on average under
general LOCC at least for two-qubit mixed states, which
means that the measure is indeed a two-qubit entanglement
monotone 关32兴. The paper is organized as follows: in Sec. II,
the proposed entanglement measurement is expressed in
terms of the coherence vector of the system density matrix,
and the results obtained in the literature 关29,39–41兴 about
how to express the local operation in the coherence vector
picture are also introduced in this section. Our main results
are presented in Sec. III, and the obtained entanglement mea-
sure is compared with the concurrence in Sec. IV. The mul-
tiqubit case is discussed in Sec. V, and conclusions and per-
spectives for future studies are given in Sec. VI.
II. PRELIMINARIES
In Ref. 关31兴, we obtain a multipartite mixed-state en-
tanglement measure by extending Jaeger’s Minkowskian
norm entanglement measure. For two-qubit states, this mea-
sure can be simply expressed as
E共
兲 = max兵tr关
共
y
丢
y
兲
*
共
y
丢
y
兲兴 − 关1−tr共
2
兲兴,0其,
共1兲
where
y
is the y-axis Pauli matrix and
*
denotes the com-
plex conjugate of the density matrix
. The term
J共
兲 =tr关
共
y
丢
y
兲
*
共
y
丢
y
兲兴
in Eq. 共1兲 is just Jaeger’s Minkowskian norm entanglement
measure 关28–30兴. As is pointed out in Ref. 关31兴, J共
兲 is a
good pure-state entanglement measure, but is not applicable
to mixed states. In fact, it is positive for some mixed sepa-
rable states—e.g., the completely mixed state
1
4
I 丢 I. The
main reason is believed to be that these mixed separable
states with positive J共
兲 contain classical correlation infor-
mation which is related to the mixedness of the quantum
*
zhangjing97@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn
PHYSICAL REVIEW A 76, 032306 共2007兲
1050-2947/2007/76共3兲/032306共9兲 ©2007 The American Physical Society032306-1