Multiparticle entanglement and its experimental detection

Abstract

We discuss several aspects of multiparticle mixed-state entanglement and its experimental detection. First we consider entanglement between two particles which is robust against disposals of other particles. To completely detect these kinds of entanglement, full knowledge of the multiparticle density matrix (or of all reduced density matrices) is required. Then we review the relation of the separability properties of l-partite splittings of a state ρ to its multipartite entanglement properties. We show that it suffices to determine the diagonal matrix elements of ρ in a certain basis in order to detect multiparticle entanglement properties of ρ. We apply these observations to analyse two recent experiments, where multiparticle entangled states of 3 (4) particles were produced. Finally, we focus on bound entangled states (non-separable, non-distillable states) and show that they can be activated by joint actions of the parties. We also provide several examples which show the activation of bound entanglement with bound entanglement.