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Is there a basis such that if we measure the bell state $\dfrac{|00\rangle+|11\rangle}{\sqrt2}$ the results might not be correlated at all (or at least not maximally)?

For example $\dfrac{|00\rangle+|11\rangle}{\sqrt2}$ = $\dfrac{|++\rangle+|--\rangle}{\sqrt2}$ = $\dfrac{|LL\rangle-|RR\rangle}{\sqrt2}$. The results are perfectly correlated no matter in which of these bases we measure. I used this bell state as an example but I'm asking about in general with quantum states.

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    $\begingroup$ maximal or not, trace is always basis independent. $\endgroup$
    – Paradoxy
    Commented Apr 30 at 15:46
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    $\begingroup$ Can you clarify the question, please? Do you mean that the state you've written is always the maximally entangled state, irrespective of the basis you might express it in? $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 30 at 15:47
  • $\begingroup$ I hope now it's more clear. I'm asking if maximally entangled states maintain perfect correlation (or anti-correlation, or a mix of both) with respect to every basis. So for example could there be a basis {u,v} such that if I measure the first qubit of a maximally entangled 2-qubit state in that basis and the outcome is u I don't necessarily know what the outcome of the second qubit will be? $\endgroup$
    – Omeglac
    Commented Apr 30 at 16:00
  • $\begingroup$ The fact that the first qubit is in the maximally mixed state after tracing out the second is completely basis independent. $\endgroup$
    – Meng Cheng
    Commented Apr 30 at 17:02
  • $\begingroup$ $|LL\rangle-|RR\rangle$ isn't equal to $|00\rangle+|11\rangle$. You might have wanted to write $|LR\rangle+|RL\rangle$ instead there $\endgroup$
    – glS
    Commented May 1 at 15:25

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The property you seem to be referring to is the invariance of maximally entangled (bipartite) states upon unitary transformations of the form $U\otimes \bar U$ for any $U$. In fact, this property is characteristic of maximally entangled and maximally mixed states only. Mind the complex conjugate here: it's the reason you don't have $|00\rangle+|11\rangle=|LL\rangle+|RR\rangle$ but rather $|00\rangle+|11\rangle=|LR\rangle+|RL\rangle$.

About correlations, yes, kinda. For any choice of projective measurement basis on the first space, there's a choice on the second with respect to which you have full correlation. To see this, observe the following general property of a maximally entangled state $\sqrt2|\Psi\rangle=|00\rangle+|11\rangle$ (though the property works in higher dimensions as well): $$\langle u,v|\Psi\rangle = \bar u_0\bar v_0 + \bar u_1\bar v_1 = \langle u|\bar v\rangle,$$ holding for any pair of vectors $|u\rangle, |v\rangle$. It follows that if the first party measures in $\{|u\rangle,|u_\perp\rangle\}$ and the second one in $\{|\bar u\rangle,|\bar u_\perp\rangle\}$, then there's full correlation. Again, the conjugate is important, otherwise the statement is false eg when they both measure in the $Y$ eigenbasis, as $$\langle L,R|\Psi\rangle = \langle L|L\rangle = 1\neq0.$$

Of course, whether this makes entanglement "basis independent" depends on what precisely you mean by that sentence. Entanglement as a property isn't defined with respect to any basis, so in that sense yes, of course it's basis-independent. But that doesn't seem to be what you're asking about.

See also this related answer of mine on qc.SE.

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  • $\begingroup$ So is there an example of a basis {u,v} in which the results of measuring |00>+|11> in that basis aren't completely correlated (meaning it's not |uu>+|vv>, |uv>+|vu> or anything of that sort)? $\endgroup$
    – Omeglac
    Commented May 1 at 16:11
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    $\begingroup$ @Omeglac you mean if both sides measure in that basis? An example is the $Y$ eigenbasis, as mentioned in the answer. Or well, in fairness there's still correlation, but they'll end up maximally anticorrelated in that case, because $|00\rangle+|11\rangle=|LR\rangle+|RL\rangle$. But if more generally you take something such that $|\bar u\rangle\neq |u_\perp\rangle$ you don't have such correlation anymore: eg $|u\rangle=|0\rangle+\sqrt2 i|1\rangle$ and its orthogonal, then you have neither full correlation nor anticorrelation $\endgroup$
    – glS
    Commented May 1 at 17:00
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    $\begingroup$ but I feel like I should mention that whether you get full (anti)correlation when both parties measure in the same basis has nothing to do with entanglement. Something like $|0+\rangle+|1-\rangle$ is equally maximally entangled but clearly doesn't have that property at all $\endgroup$
    – glS
    Commented May 1 at 17:04
  • $\begingroup$ Oh I thought the idea behind maximal entanglement was that measuring one of the states completely determined the others. How is that possible without full (anti)correlation? $\endgroup$
    – Omeglac
    Commented May 1 at 18:45
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    $\begingroup$ @Omeglac well, no, that's not the idea of entanglement. Though for two-qubit pure states, it's true that all maximally entangled states are maximally correlated with respect to some measurement choices. That is, for any projective measurement done by one party, there's a choice for the second party wrt which you have full correlation. But for multipartite entanglement even this property doesn't hold anymore $\endgroup$
    – glS
    Commented May 2 at 12:57
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Entanglement is generally a basis-independent concept. Suppose I have two quantum systems $A$ and $B$, with the joint system being in the pure state $\vert \psi\rangle$, for simplicity. One way of quantifying the entanglement between $A$ and $B$ is through the purity of the reduced density matrix of the $A$ subsystem $\rho_A = \mathrm{Tr}_B(\vert\psi\rangle\langle\psi\vert)$: $$S(\vert \psi\rangle) = \mathrm{Tr}(\rho_A^2),$$ where $\mathrm{Tr}_B$ denotes the partial trace over subsystem $B$. (You can also do this on the other subsystem if you want, the two turn out to be equivalent.) Basically, the smaller $S(\vert \psi\rangle)$ is, the "more entangled" $A$ is to $B$. If $S(\vert \psi\rangle)$ is minimized, the state $\vert \psi\rangle$ is maximally entangled, and conversely, if $S(\vert \psi\rangle) = 1$ (its maximum value), $\vert \psi\rangle$ is separable.

Since the trace is basis independent, the entanglement content will also be basis independent. This obviously also includes the case where the entanglement is maximal.

As an aside, there are a lot more entanglement measures you can define, each with there own properties. E.g., you can also look into entanglement entropy if you're curious.

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  • $\begingroup$ To complete the argument: in addition to basis invariance of the trace you of course also need that the eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix are invariant under local basis transformations (else different local bases could give rise to different ${\rm tr}(\rho_A^2)$). And indeed, ${\rm tr}_A((U\otimes V)X(U^*\otimes V^*))=V{\rm tr}_A(X)V^*$ for all operators $X$ so the eigenvalues of ${\rm tr}_A(X)$---and thus $({\rm tr}_A(X))^2$---remain the same. $\endgroup$ Commented May 7 at 8:51
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Let $\mathcal{H}$ with dimension $\dim \mathcal{H} = 2^n$ where $n \in \mathbb{N}$ be a Hilbert space describing your system of interest. This could be a Hilbert space for a system of $n$ qubits, for instance. There are two choices to be made.

  1. Choice of tensor product factorization$^{1}$. We can write $$\mathcal{H} \cong \mathbb{C}^2 \otimes \mathbb{C}^2 \otimes ... \otimes \mathbb{C}^2$$ or we can write $$\mathcal{H} \cong \mathbb{C}^{2^n}$$ or we can write a great number of other tensor product factorizations. As far as linear algebra is concerned, these are all Hilbert spaces with dimension $2^n$ and so are isomorphic, or essentially the same. All we have done is specify an additional labeling structure on the Hilbert space.
  2. Choice of Hilbert space basis. Given a tensor product factorized Hilbert space $$\mathcal{H} \cong \mathbb{C}^2 \otimes \mathbb{C}^2 \otimes ... \otimes \mathbb{C}^2$$ we can further specify a labelling structure by giving each factor $\mathbb{C}^2$ a concrete basis. For example, $\mathbb{C}^2$ is two dimensional and so is spanned by two linearly independent vectors. We can label these basis vectors $\lvert +z \rangle$ and $\lvert -z \rangle$.

Entanglement is emphatically dependent on the choice of tensor product factorization. For instance, if we choose the tensor product factorization $$\mathcal{H} \cong \mathbb{C}^{2^n}$$ entanglement cannot even be defined between subsytems because there are no subsystems! But, if we just move into another tensor product factorization $$\mathcal{H} \cong \mathbb{C}^2 \otimes \mathbb{C}^2 \otimes ... \otimes \mathbb{C}^2$$ there are now subsystems and entanglement can exist between them.

Entanglement entropy is not dependent on the choice of basis for the tensor factors. This follows, as others remark, from the fact that matrix trace is cyclic and so invariant under conjugating the argument by unitary matrices $$\text{Tr}(U M U^\dagger) = \text{Tr}(MU^\dagger U) = \text{Tr}(M).$$ This is actually a fundamental property of any entanglement entropy measure, so anything that you call entanglement entropy must be independent of choice of individual tensor factor basis. This is obvious after understanding that entanglement entropy is a quantity defined between subsystems, so it should only depend on the choice of labelling subsystems. And, the mathematical structure corresponding to labelling subsystems is precisely a choice of tensor product factorization.

Hence, the answer to your question is yes. This follows immediately from the more general fact that entanglement entropy is independent of the choice of individual tensor factor basis you choose to compute it in.


[1] In actuality, some tensor product factorizations are equivalent to other tensor product factorizations in the sense that the entanglement entropy in one tensor product factorization is the same as in another, equivalent tensor product factorization. Then, the correct object to consider is a tensor product structure, which is an equivalence class of tensor product factorizations. The precise definition of a tensor product structure is given on page 6 of the paper "Locality from the spectrum".

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  • $\begingroup$ What about the state $\frac{|+++>+|--->}{\sqrt(2)}=\frac{|000⟩+|011⟩+|110⟩+|101⟩}{2}? Looking at its representation in the Z basis it doesn't look maximally entangled while in the X basis it does. $\endgroup$
    – Omeglac
    Commented Apr 30 at 21:28
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    $\begingroup$ @Omeglac Just because a state does not immediately and obviously show by inspection that it is maximally entangled doesn't mean it isn't. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 30 at 21:58
  • $\begingroup$ @Emilio Pisanty But isn't the idea of maximal entanglement that if I measure one qubit I know 100% what the others are going to be? That doesn't happen in the example above. $\endgroup$
    – Omeglac
    Commented Apr 30 at 22:10
  • $\begingroup$ Perhaps you could convince yourself (for this case) via doing the calculation corresponding to the example you constructed @Omeglac $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 30 at 22:17
  • $\begingroup$ To add to what Emilio said, indeed it is in general very difficult to by inspection see if a state is unentangled or not. There is an entire active area of research that is trying to solve the "separability problem". This research aims to construct an operationally useful necessary and sufficient condition for a given state to be separable. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 30 at 22:19

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