An alternative representation for pure symmetric states of qubits and its applications to entanglement classification

Abstract: We prove that the vast majority of symmetric states of qubits can be decomposed in a unique way into a superposition of spin 1/2 coherent states. For the case of two qubits, the proposed decomposition reproduces the Schmidt decomposition and therefore, in the case of a higher number of qubits, can be considered as its generalization. We analyze the geometrical aspects of the proposed representation and its invariant properties under the action of local unitary and local invertible transformations. As an application, we identify the most general classes of entanglement and representative states for any number of qubits in a symmetric state.