Revisiting the invariant ring of two-qubit mixed states

Abstract

Local unitary equivalence serves as the cornerstone for classifying entanglement in bipartite quantum systems. Mathematically, it reduces to the study of polynomial invariants of the density matrix under the action of local unitary groups. The collection of all such polynomial invariants forms a ring, known as the invariant ring. However, identifying the complete generators of the invariant ring is the central issue. In 2007, for the two-qubit system, King et al fully characterized the structure of the invariant ring and determined its Cohen--Macaulay decomposition. In this paper, we revisit their work, with a focus on the computation of the Molien series and the construction of invariants. On one hand, we rigorously derive the Molien series via explicit contour integration over the maximal torus, filling in all previously omitted computational steps. On the other hand, we systematically construct all invariants using a graphical method, and then reduce the candidate set by applying various identities and algebraic relations, obtaining a generating set consisting of 21 invariants. This paper aims to make this important result more widely accessible to researchers in quantum information and invariant theory through the above discussions.