Extreme Eigenvalues of Wishart Matrices: Application to Entangled Bipartite System

Satya N. Majumdar

Published 2010-05-25Version 1

We discuss an application of the random matrix theory in the context of estimating the bipartite entanglement of a quantum system. We discuss how the Wishart ensemble (the earliest studied random matrix ensemble) appears in this quantum problem. The eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix of one of the subsystems have similar statistical properties as those of the Wishart matrices, except that their {\em trace is constrained to be unity}. We focus here on the smallest eigenvalue which serves as an important measure of entanglement between the two subsystems. In the hard edge case (when the two subsystems have equal sizes) one can fully characterize the probability distribution of the minimum eigenvalue for real, complex and quaternion matrices of all sizes. In particular, we discuss the important finite size effect due to the {\em fixed trace constraint}.