Optimal entanglement criteria from trace invariants

Abstract

Randomized measurement protocols give experimental access to low-degree polynomial invariants of a quantum state rather than to the state itself, which raises the question of what the best entanglement criterion is that can be built from finitely many such invariants. In this work we answer this question through convex duality. For each degree we introduce the cone of local unitary trace inequalities that are valid for separable bipartite states in all local dimensions, together with its one-matrix counterparts for Hermitian and positive semidefinite matrices. Each cone is the polar dual of a moment cone; we also determine the minimal combinatorial parametrization of the separable cone. The framework organizes the known moment criteria: the PPT criterion using the first three moments of the partial transposition is the image under an embedding of a Hankel determinant from the positive semidefinite cone to the bipartite cone, which we show to be an extremal ray, and we determine the first nontrivial separable cone completely, finding exactly four extremal rays. The framework allows us to analyze the realignment criterion and its centered (or enhanced) variant. We prove that the even singular value moments of the (centered) realignment matrix are trace invariants, associated with explicit fixed-point-free involutions. Extracting the optimal trace-norm bound from $m$ such moments thus becomes a dimension-free truncated moment problem, which we solve in closed form for $m = 2$ and relax to a semidefinite program of size $O(m)$ for arbitrary $m$. The dual solutions are polynomial minorants of $\sqrt{x}$ on $[0,1]$, and two explicit families, binomial and $L^1$-weighted, yield hierarchies of separability inequalities. Finally, we compare the criteria against one another and on PPT entangled states.