Gisin's theorem 2026-09-28
Every entangled pure state of two qubits violates a CHSH inequality for a suitable choice of local measurement axes. If its two Schmidt coefficients are , the optimal construction already gives a value .
The Schmidt decomposition states that every finite-dimensional bipartite pure state has
where , , and the two displayed families are orthonormal. The integer is the Schmidt rank.
To prove it, choose product bases and write
Apply the singular value decomposition . Absorbing the columns of and the complex conjugates of the columns of into new orthonormal bases gives the stated sum, with the nonzero singular values as the Schmidt coefficients. Equivalently, are the common nonzero eigenvalues of the two reduced density matrices, so .
The Bell state has two nonzero Schmidt coefficients. Since the density operator is pure, every ensemble decomposition uses vectors in the same one-dimensional support, and hence
For particle positions , the two-particle Schrodinger equation is
Write for the localized wave packet and . Neglecting packet spreading and branch overlap, the initial product state evolves branchwise as
up to phases generated independently on the two particles. These branch-dependent phases generally cannot be separated into one phase depending only on and one depending only on , so the Newtonian gravitational potential energy creates gravitationally induced entanglement.
If is much smaller than the other separations, remove their nearly common phase and retain only
The state is approximately
Its concurrence is , so it becomes maximally entangled first at . For ,
Thus the near-maximal entanglement time is about within the stated approximation.
A single prescribed classical gravitational potential gives a Hamiltonian of the form . Its evolution factorizes as and preserves every initial product state, so it cannot generate this entanglement. A semiclassical mean field sourced only by expectation values likewise gives each particle a local one-body potential and does not provide a quantum mediator carrying branch correlations.
An entanglement witness is a Hermitian operator whose expectation is nonnegative on every separable state but negative on at least one entangled state. At , define
The largest Schmidt coefficient of is , so every product state in the four-dimensional branch subspace satisfies . By closure under convex combinations, for every separable mixture, whereas
A negative measured value therefore certifies entanglement. Under the assumptions that the masses began unentangled and interacted only through gravity, such certification would show that the mediator can transmit quantum coherence; it would be evidence against a purely classical gravitational channel and for the quantum nature of gravity.