On the extreme points of sets of absolulely separable and PPT states

TL;DR

This paper characterizes the extreme points of sets of absolutely separable and PPT states in various quantum systems, providing conditions, eigenvalue bounds, and introducing a robustness measure for nonabsolute separability.

Contribution

It offers a compact characterization of extreme points, eigenvalue bounds, and a new robustness measure for nonabsolute separability in quantum states.

Findings

Extreme points have at most three eigenvalues in two-qubit and qubit-qudit systems.

Necessary and sufficient conditions for extreme points of absolutely PPT states are derived as linear equations.

The robustness measure is positive, invariant, monotonic, convex, with analytical expressions for specific states.

Abstract

The absolutely separable (resp. PPT) states remain separable (resp. positive partial transpose) under any global unitary operation. We present a compact form of the extreme points in the sets of absolutely separable states and PPT states in two-qubit and qubit-qudit systems. The results imply that each extreme point has at most three distinct eigenvalues. We establish a necessary and sufficient condition for determining extreme points of the set of absolutely PPT states in two-qutrit and qutrit-qudit systems, expressed as solvable linear equations. We also demonstrate that any extreme point in qutrit-qudit system has at most seven distinct eigenvalues. We introduce the concept of robustness of nonabsolute separability. It quantifies the minimal amount by which a state needs to mix with other states such that the overall state is absolutely separable. We show that the robustness satisfies positivity, invariance under unitary transformation, monotonicity and convexity, so it is a good measure within the resource theory of nonabsolute separability. Analytical expressions for this measure are given for pure states in arbitrary system and rank-two mixed states in two-qubit system.