English

Entangleability of cones

Functional Analysis 2021-08-26 v3 Quantum Physics

Abstract

We solve a long-standing conjecture by Barker, proving that the minimal and maximal tensor products of two finite-dimensional proper cones coincide if and only if one of the two cones is generated by a linearly independent set. Here, given two proper cones C1C_1, C2C_2, their minimal tensor product is the cone generated by products of the form x1x2x_1 \otimes x_2, where x1C1x_1 \in C_1 and x2C2x_2 \in C_2, while their maximal tensor product is the set of tensors that are positive under all product functionals f1f2f_1 \otimes f_2, where f1f_1 is positive on C1C_1 and f2f_2 is positive on C2C_2. Our proof techniques involve a mix of convex geometry, elementary algebraic topology, and computations inspired by quantum information theory. Our motivation comes from the foundations of physics: as an application, we show that any two non-classical systems modelled by general probabilistic theories can be entangled.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1911.09663,
  title  = {Entangleability of cones},
  author = {Guillaume Aubrun and Ludovico Lami and Carlos Palazuelos and Martin Plavala},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.09663},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

v2: added more background, several minor corrections v3: minor improvements

R2 v1 2026-06-23T12:23:44.811Z