Multipartite Entanglement versus Multiparticle Entanglement

Abstract

Entanglement is defined as presence of quantum correlations beyond those achieved by local action and classical communication. To identify its presence in a generic state, one can, for example, check for existence of a decomposition of separable states. A natural extension is a genuine multipartite entanglement (GME), understood as nonexistenence of a decomposition into biseparable states (later called biseparable decomposition, BD). In this contribution we revisit activation of GME. We discuss few examples of states, which are decomposable into a mixture of biproduct states. However, after merging two copies of these states, we certify nonexistence of BD with witness operators. This seems to challenge our understanding of GME as a separate resource. It turns out that it requires a careful consideration of the physical context. We stress that activation of GME from multiple copies of GME-free states necessarily involves entangling operations.