Bound entanglement maximally violating Bell inequalities: Quantum entanglement is not fully equivalent to cryptographic security

It is shown that Smolin four-qubit bound entangled states [J. A. Smolin, Phys. Rev. A 63, 032306 (2001)] can maximally violate the simple two-setting Bell inequality similar to the standard Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality. The simplicity of the setting and the robustness of the entanglement make it promising for current experimental technology. On the other hand, the entanglement does not allow for secure key distillation, so neither entanglement nor maximal violation of Bell inequalities implies directly the presence of a quantum secure key. As a result, one concludes that two tasks-reducing of communication complexity and cryptography-are not (even qualitatively) equivalent in a quantum multipartite scenario. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.