On the entanglement of formation of two-mode Gaussian states: a compact form

Abstract

We define an EPR-like uncertainty by using the Duan et al.'s inequality which gives a necessary and sufficient condition for the separability of any two-mode Gaussian state. We show that for a given amount of entanglement, the uncertainty is minimized by pure two-mode squeezed states. Using this fact, we write the optimal pure-state decomposition and derive a compact form for the entanglement of formation of two-mode Gaussian states. For illustration purposes, we consider symmetric and squeezed thermal states as special cases and evaluate their entanglement of formation explicitly. For the symmetric states, our result is in agreement with the Giedke et al.'s one. To our knowledge, our work is the first one which gives the exact entanglement of formation of two-mode squeezed thermal states explicitly.