Entanglement beyond subsystems

Lorenza Viola, Howard Barnum, Emanuel Knill, Gerardo Ortiz, Rolando Somma

Published 2004-03-04Version 1

We present a notion of generalized entanglement which goes beyond the conventional definition based on quantum subsystems. This is accomplished by directly defining entanglement as a property of quantum states relative to a distinguished set of observables singled out by Physics. While recovering standard entanglement as a special case, our notion allows for substantially broader generality and flexibility, being applicable, in particular, to situations where existing tools are not directly useful.