Local Disentanglement in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory

Giovanni Valente (Pittsburgh) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (06 December, 2012) titled "Local Disentanglement in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory". Abstract: In their paper on "Entanglement and Open Systems in Algebraic Quantum Field Theory", Clifton and Halvorson (2001) raised the question whether entanglement between quantum systems can be destroyed by means of local operations and claimed that, contrary to non-relativistic quantum mechanics, this can never be the case in relativistic quantum field theory. In this talk I will argue that Clifton and Halvorson's no-go result applies only to a special kind of local operations, and thereby I will reject their conclusion. In fact, after providing sufficient conditions for local disentanglement to be achieved, I will show that, if the split property holds, there exists a class of local operations which disentangle all states across any pair of spacelike separated quantum field systems.