Characterizing entanglement

Abstract

Quantum entanglement is at the heart of many tasks in quantum information. Apart from simple cases (low dimensions, few particles, pure states), however, the mathematical structure of entanglement is not yet fully understood. This tutorial is an introduction to our present knowledge about how to decide whether a given state is separable or entangled, how to characterize entanglement via witness operators, how to classify entangled states according to their usefulness (i.e., distillability), and how to quantify entanglement with appropriate measures.