Test for entanglement using physically observable witness operators and positive maps

Motivated by the Peres-Horodecki criterion and the realignment criterion we develop a more powerful method to identify entangled states for any bipartite system through a universal construction of the witness operator. The method also gives a new family of positive but noncompletely positive maps of arbitrary high dimensions, which provide a much better test than the witness operators themselves. Moreover, we find that there are two types of positive maps that can detect 2×N and 4×N bound entangled states. Since entanglement witnesses are physical observables and may be measured locally our construction could be of great significance for future experiments.