With any state of a multipartite quantum system its separability polytope is associated. This is an algebro-topological object (non-trivial only for mixed states) which captures the localisation of entanglement of the state. Particular examples of separability polytopes for 3-partite systems are explicitly provided. It turns out that this characterisation of entanglement is associated with simulation of arbitrary unitary operations by 1- and 2-qubit gates. A topological description of how entanglement changes in course of such simulation is provided.
Categories: quant-ph