Pancharatnam phase deficit can detect macroscopic entanglement

Abstract

The Pancharatnam phase deficit is defined as the difference between the Pancharatnam phase acquired by the global system and the sum of the Pancharatnam phases acquired by subsystems during local unitary evolutions. We show that a non-zero value of the Pancharatnam phase deficit for a composite quantum system can be a signature of quantum entanglement. In the context of macroscopic quantum systems, we illustrate how the Pancharatnam phase deficit can be used to detect macroscopically entangled states. In particular, we use the Pancharatnam phase deficit to detect the entanglement for macroscopic superposition of coherent states. Furthermore, we show that by measuring the Pancharatnam phase deficit one can measure the concurrence of two spin singlets between distant boundaries.