Understand
Entanglement is central both to the foundations of quantum theory and, as a novel resource, to quantum information science.
- The theory of entanglement establishes basic laws, such as the non-increase of entanglement under local operations, that govern its manipulation and aims to draw from them formal analogies to the second law of thermodynamics.
- However, while in the second law the entropy uniquely determines whether a state is adiabatically accessible from another, the manipulation of entanglement under local operations exhibits a fundamental irreversibility which prevents the existence of such an order.
- Here we show that a reversible theory of entanglement and a rigorous relationship with thermodynamics may be established when one considers all non-entangling transformations.