On the notion of entanglement in Hilbert spaces

Александр Семенович Холево, Максим Евгеньевич Широков, Reinhard F. Werner · Russian Mathematical Surveys · 2005

A density operator (state) on a tensor product H ⊗ K of Hilbert spaces is separable if it is in the convex closure of the subset of all tensor product states. Non-separable states are called entangled. These concepts are of great importance in quantum information theory, but they have been studied in depth only in the finite-dimensional context [1]. In this note we give a general integral representation for separable states and provide the first example of separable states that are not countably decomposable. We also prove a structure theorem for quantum communication channels that are entanglement-breaking, generalizing the finite-dimensional result of [2]. In the finite-dimensional case such channels can be characterized as having a Stinespring–Kraus representation (3) with operators Vj of rank 1. The above example implies the existence of infinite-dimensional entanglement-breaking channels having no such representation. In what follows, H, K ,... are separable Hilbert spaces, T(H) is the Banach space of trace-class operators and S(H) is the convex subset of all density operators on H. For brevity we shall also call them states, having in mind that a density operator ρ uniquely determines a normal state on the algebra B(H) of all bounded operators on H. Equipped with the trace-norm topology, S(H) is a complete separable metric space. If π is a Borel probability measure on S(H), then the Bochner integral

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