Entanglement Theory and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Abstract

Entanglement is central both to the foundations of quantum theory and, as a novel resource, to quantum information science. The theory of entanglement establishes basic laws, such as the non-increase of entanglement under local operations, that govern its manipulation and aims to draw from them formal analogies to the second law of thermodynamics. However, while in the second law the entropy uniquely determines whether a state is adiabatically accessible from another, the manipulation of entanglement under local operations exhibits a fundamental irreversibility which prevents the existence of such an order. Here we show that a reversible theory of entanglement and a rigorous relationship with thermodynamics may be established when one considers all non-entangling transformations. The role of the entropy in the second law is taken by the asymptotic relative entropy of entanglement in the basic law of entanglement. We show the usefulness of this new approach to general resource theories and to quantum information theory.

Published in Nature Physics as advanced online publication (October 2008). This is the original submitted version

References in corpus (1)

• The resource theory of quantum reference frames: manipulations and monotones

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