Estimating the best separable approximation of non-pure spin-squeezed states
Quantum 10, 2078 (2026).
https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2026-04-21-2078
We discuss the estimation of the distance of a given mixed many-body quantum state to the set of fully separable states, applied to the concrete scenario of collective spin states. Concretely, we discuss lower bounds to distances from the set of fully separable states based on entanglement criteria and upper bounds to those distances using an iterative algorithm to find the optimal separable state closest to the target. Focusing on collective states of $N$ spin-$1/2$ particles, we consider spin-squeezing inequalities (SSIs), which provide a complete set of nonlinear entanglement criteria based on collective spin variances. First, we find a lower bound to distance-based entanglement monotones, specifically the so-called best separable approximation (BSA) from the complete set of SSIs, thereby bypassing entirely a numerical optimization over a (potentially very large) set of linear entanglement witnesses. Then, we improve current algorithms to iteratively find the closest separable state to a given target state, exploiting the symmetry of the system. These results allow us to study entanglement quantitatively on thermal states of spin systems on fully-connected graphs at nonzero temperature, as well as potentially similar states arising in out-of-equilibrium situations. We thus apply our methods to investigate entanglement across different phases of a fully-connected XXZ model. We observe that our lower bound becomes often tight for zero temperature as well as for the temperature at which entanglement disappears, both of which are thus precisely captured by the SSIs. We further observe, among other things, that entanglement can arise at nonzero temperature even in the ordered phase, where the ground state is separable, revealing the potential usefulness of entanglement quantification also beyond the ground state paradigm.