Entanglement, Mixedness, and Spin-Flip Symmetry in Multiple-Qubit Systems

Abstract

A relationship between a recently introduced multipartite entanglement measure, state mixedness, and spin-flip symmetry is established for any finite number of qubits. It is also shown that, within those classes of states invariant under the spin-flip transformation, there is a complementarity relation between multipartite entanglement and mixedness. A number of example classes of multiple-qubit systems are studied in light of this relationship.

To appear in Physical Review A; submitted 14 May 2003