Critique of generalised purity as an entanglement measure: Explicit failure in simple separable Bose-Hubbard models

The SU(2) and SU(3) Lie algebras lend themselves naturally to studies of two- and three-well Bose-Einstein condensates, with the group operators being expressed in terms of bosonic annihilation and creation operators at each site. The success of these representations has led to the purities associated with these algebras to be promoted as a measure of entanglement in these systems. In this work, we show that these purities do not provide an unambiguous measure of entanglement between wells, but instead give results which depend on the quantum statistical states of the atomic ensembles in each well. Using the example of totally uncoupled wells where the atoms in one have never interacted with the atoms in the other, we quantify these purities for different states and show that completely separable states can give values which have been claimed to indicate the presence of entanglement. We also consider claims that the generalised purities measure particle rather than mode entanglement, with emphasis on the case of indistinguishable bosons, as found in these systems. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.