Bounding the persistency of the nonlocality of W states

Abstract

The nonlocal properties of the W states are investigated under particle loss. By removing all but two particles from an $N$-qubit W state, the resulting two-qubit state is still entangled. Hence, the W state has high persistency of entanglement. We ask an analogous question regarding the persistency of nonlocality introduced in [Phys. Rev. A 86, 042113]. Namely, we inquire what is the minimal number of particles that must be removed from the W state so that the resulting state becomes local. We bound this value in function of $N$ qubits by considering Bell nonlocality tests with two alternative settings per site. In particular, we find that this value is between $2N/5$ and $N/2$ for large $N$. We also develop a framework to establish bounds for more than two settings per site.