Entanglement Dimensionality of Continuous Variable States From Phase-Space Quasi-Probabilities

Abstract:The dimensionality of entanglement, quantified by the Schmidt number, is a core resource for quantum information processing. While its certification is well-established in finite-dimensional systems, many platforms harnessing high Schmidt numbers are natively continuous-variable (CV) systems, which are usually truncated to a finite subspace before canonical discrete-variable techniques are applied. For those instances, a core question is whether directly utilizing a genuinely CV toolbox leads to better and more robust characterisations. We answer this question by introducing Schmidt-number witnesses built directly from correlations and covariances of phase-space observables, accessible through characteristic- or Wigner-function measurements. They hold for arbitrary mixed states, including non-Gaussian ones, and only require correlations along a slice of phase space. We show that this direct estimation is more robust and versatile than first discretizing the system and using canonical discrete variable techniques. Moreover, we apply our method to certify arbitrarily-large Schmidt numbers of a bound-entangled Gaussian state. These results motivate genuine CV methods for characterizing high-dimensional entanglement across CV quantum technologies.

arXiv:2509.02743 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2509.02743v2 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.02743 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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