Separability for weakly irreducible matrices

This paper is devoted to the study of the separability problem in the field of Quantum information theory. We focus on the bipartite finite dimensional case and on two types of matrices: SPC and PPT matrices (see definitions 32 and 33). We prove that many results hold for both types. If these matrices have specific Hermitian Schmidt decompositions then they are separable in a very strong sense (see theorem 38 and corollary 39). We prove that both types have what we call \textbf{split decompositions} (see theorems 41 and 42). We also define the notion of weakly irreducible matrix (see definition 43), based on the concept of irreducible state defined recently in \cite{chen1}, \cite{chen} and \cite{chen2}.}{These split decomposition theorems imply that every SPC $($PPT$)$ matrix can be decomposed into a sum of $s+1$ SPC $($PPT$)$ matrices of which the first $s$ are weakly irreducible, by theorem 48, and the last one has a further split decomposition of lower tensor rank, by corollary 49. Thus the SPC $($PPT$)$ matrix is decomposed in a finite number of steps into a sum of weakly irreducible matrices. Different components of this sum have support on orthogonal local Hilbert spaces, therefore the matrix is separable if and only if each component is separable. This reduces the separability problem for SPC $($PPT$)$ matrices to the case of weakly irreducible SPC $($PPT$)$ matrices. We also provide a complete description of weakly irreducible matrices of both types (see theorem 46).}{Using the fact that every positive semidefinite Hermitian matrix with tensor rank 2 is separable (see theorem 58), we found sharp inequalites providing separability for both types (see theorems 61 and 62).