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Phys. Rev. A 63, 044301 (2001) [4 pages]

Potential multiparticle entanglement measure

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Alexander Wong* and Nelson Christensen
Physics and Astronomy, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota 55057

Received 12 October 2000; published 13 March 2001

In this Brief Report we discuss entanglement of multiparticle quantum systems. We propose a potential measure of a type of entanglement of pure states of n qubits, the n-tangle. For a system of two qubits the n-tangle is equal to the square of the concurrence, and for systems of three qubits it is equal to the “residual entanglement.” We show that the n-tangle is also equal to a generalization of the concurrence squared for even n, and use this fact to prove that the n-tangle is an entanglement monotone. However, the n-tangle is undefined for odd n>3. Finally, we propose a measure related to the n-tangle for mixed-state systems of n qubits, and find an analytical formula for this measure for even n.

© 2001 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.63.044301
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.63.044301
PACS:
03.67.-a, 03.65.Ta, 89.70.+c

*Email address: wongal@carleton.edu

Email address: nchriste@carleton.edu