Entanglement monogamy Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-11-05
Entanglement monogamy describes limits on sharing quantum entanglement among several partners. If two qubits form a pure Bell state, their joint state cannot also be correlated with a third system: the Bell pair already has a pure joint density operator, so the full state factorizes from the third system.
For partially entangled states, a quantitative sharing rule depends on the measure and subsystem dimensions. The Coffman--Kundu--Wootters inequality bounds the sum of squared pairwise concurrences for three qubits by the entanglement of one qubit with the other two together. Squaring and the chosen measure matter; one cannot assume an identical linear inequality for every entanglement measure. Classical correlations can be shared much more freely, distinguishing monogamy from a general ban on correlated triples.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 iii Paper 343 2 a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Entanglement monogamy says that maximal entanglement with one independent system excludes entanglement with another. For three qubits this is quantified by the Coffman--Kundu--Wootters inequalityFor example, if is a maximally entangled state, then and the global state factorizes as up to local unitaries, so . The three-qubit GHZ state instead has entanglement across every one-versus-two cut but no pairwise concurrence after the third qubit is traced out.