ENTANGLED MARKOV CHAINS GENERATED BY SYMMETRIC CHANNELS
A notion of entangled Markov chain was introduced by Accardi and Fidaleo in the context of quantum random walk. They proved that, in the finite-dimensional case, the corresponding states have vanishing entropy density, but they did not prove that they are entangled. In this note this entropy result is extended to the infinite-dimensional case under the assumption of finite speed of hopping. Then the entanglement problem is discussed for spin-1/2, entangled Markov chains generated by a binary symmetric channel with hopping probability 1-q. The von Neumann entropy of these states, restricted on a sublattice is explicitly calculated and shown to be independent of the size of the sublattice. This is a new, purely quantum, phenomenon. Finally the entanglement property between the sublattices [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] is investigated using the PPT criterium. It turns out that, for q≠ 0, 1, ½ the states are non-separable, thus truly entangled, while for q = 0, 1, ½, they are separable.