Managing the Three-Party Entanglement Challenge

Abstract

We introduce the challenges of multi-party quantum entanglement and explain a recent success in learning to take its measure. Given the widely accepted reputation of entanglement as a counter-intuitive feature of quantum theory, we first describe pure-state entanglement itself. We restrict attention to multi-party qubit states. Then we introduce the features that have made it challenging for several decades to extend an entanglement measure beyond the 2-qubit case of Bell states. We finish with a description of the current understanding that solves the 3-qubit entanglement challenge. This necessarily takes into account the fundamental division of the 3-qubit state space into two completely independent sectors identified with the so-called GHZ and $W$ states.