Scalability of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and random-state entanglement in the presence of decoherence

Abstract

We derive analytical upper bounds for the entanglement of generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states coupled to locally depolarizing and dephasing environments and for local thermal baths of arbitrary temperature. These bounds apply for any convex quantifier of entanglement, and exponential entanglement decay with the number of constituent particles is found. The bounds are tight for depolarizing and dephasing channels. We also show that randomly generated initial states tend to violate these bounds and that this discrepancy grows with the number of particles.