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Typical Entanglement of Superpositions

Quantum Physics 2026-07-07 v1

Abstract

We investigate universal entanglement properties inherent to superpositions of randomized states. We find that an mm-fold superposition of typical states may be classified into two distinct entanglement classes via the 2nd R\'enyi entropy density s2s_2. The maximally entangled regime is defined by s2ln(2)s_2 \sim \ln (2), for which superposition adds no additional entanglement. The sub-maximally entangled regime, s2<ln2s_2<\ln 2, instead constrains the reduced density matrices of independent components to be orthogonal in the thermodynamic limit, which fixes the entanglement of the superposition to a logarithmic enhancement ΔS(m)=ln(m)\Delta S(m)=\ln (m). As a consequence, an exponentially large number of superpositions is required to transition from the sub-maximally entangled class to maximal entanglement. We explicitly calculate s2s_2 and the logarithmic enhancement, and demonstrate orthogonality for two canonical examples of the sub-maximally entangled regime (superpositions of pure Gaussian states and of random matrix-product states). We also examine the entanglement of superpositions of random stabilizer states, and discuss their relaxation to the Haar limit.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.06474,
  title  = {Typical Entanglement of Superpositions},
  author = {Damien Quinn and Joshuah T. Heath and Graham Kells},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.06474},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

13 pages, 5 figures