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Relativistic Quantum Fields Are Universal Entanglement Embezzlers

Quantum Physics 2025-07-23 v4 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Embezzlement of entanglement refers to the counterintuitive possibility of extracting entangled quantum states from a reference state of an auxiliary system (the "embezzler") via local quantum operations while hardly perturbing the latter. We uncover a deep connection between the operational task of embezzling entanglement and the mathematical classification of von Neumann algebras. Our result implies that relativistic quantum fields are universal embezzlers: Any entangled state of any dimension can be embezzled from them with arbitrary precision. This provides an operational characterization of the infinite amount of entanglement present in the vacuum state of relativistic quantum field theories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2401.07292,
  title  = {Relativistic Quantum Fields Are Universal Entanglement Embezzlers},
  author = {Lauritz van Luijk and Alexander Stottmeister and Reinhard F. Werner and Henrik Wilming},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.07292},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Overview paper accompanying the technical manuscript arXiv:2401.07299; v3: published version; changed the title of the paper (previous title "Embezzling entanglement from quantum fields")

R2 v1 2026-06-28T14:16:22.288Z