Detecting multipartite entanglement

Doherty, Andrew C.; Parrilo, Pablo A.; Spedalieri, Federico M.

Detecting multipartite entanglement

Authors

Doherty, Andrew C.

Parrilo, Pablo A.

Spedalieri, Federico M.

Description

We discuss the problem of determining whether the state of several quantum mechanical subsystems is entangled. As in previous work on two subsystems we introduce a procedure for checking separability that is based on finding state extensions with appropriate properties and may be implemented as a semidefinite program. The main result of this work is to show that there is a series of tests of this kind such that if a multiparty state is entangled this will eventually be detected by one of the tests. The procedure also provides a means of constructing entanglement witnesses that could in principle be measured in order to demonstrate that the state is entangled.
9 pages, REVTEX