One of the four following states:
When unqualified as in "the Bell state", it generally just means .
The Bell states are entangled and non-separable. Intuitively, we can see that when we measure that state, the values of the first and second bit are strictly correlated. This is the hallmark of quantum computation: making up states where qubits are highly correlated to match a specific algorithmic answer, and opposed to uniformly random noise. For example, the Bell state circuit is a common hello world, e.g. it is used in the official Qiskit hello world.
A quantum circuit which when fed with input produces the Bell state.
Figure 1.
Quantum circuit that generates the Bell state
. Source.
The fundamental intuition for this circuit is as follows.
First the Hadamard gate makes the first qubit be in a 50/50 state.
Then, the CNOT gate gets controlled by that 50/50 value, and the controlled qubit also gets 50/50 chance as a result.
However, both qubits are now entangled: the result of the second qubit depends on the result of the first one. Because:

Articles by others on the same topic (2)

Bell state by Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-11-05
A Bell state is one of four maximally entangled states forming an orthonormal basis for two qubits:
Each qubit alone has reduced density matrix , giving equal probabilities for outcomes in any orthonormal measurement basis. The joint state nevertheless has definite correlations; for , computational-basis outcomes always agree.
A separable quantum state can imitate those same computational-basis correlations. The distinction appears in complementary measurements: the coherent relative phase between and controls correlations in the Hadamard basis. Bell states are therefore resources for quantum teleportation and useful tests of quantum entanglement, rather than merely pairs with correlated classical bits.
A Bell state is a specific type of quantum state that represents maximal entanglement between two qubits. There are four Bell states, and they form the basis of the two-qubit quantum system. The four Bell states are: 1. \(|\Phi^+\rangle = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} (|00\rangle + |11\rangle)\) 2.