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Exact maximum purity of absolutely PPT qutrit–qudit states

Establish the exact maximum purity of absolutely positive partial transpose (PPT) states ρ ∈ M_3 ⊗ M_n for n ≥ 2 by proving that the maximum equals 4/(9n) when n ≡ 0 (mod 4), equals (36n+8)/( (9n+1)^2 ) when n ≡ 1 (mod 4), equals (36n+16)/( (9n+2)^2 ) when n ≡ 2 (mod 4), and equals (36n−8)/( (9n−1)^2 ) when n ≡ 3 (mod 4), and demonstrate that the maximizers are precisely those states whose spectra match the corresponding piecewise patterns specified in Conjecture 2.

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Background

Absolute PPT for qutrit–qudit systems admits explicit spectral semidefinite constraints (Hildebrand’s criterion). Leveraging these constraints, the authors performed numerical optimization to estimate maximum purity and observed dimension-dependent patterns consistent with closed-form expressions.

Proving these formulae would settle the optimization problem for all qutrit–qudit dimensions and, in geometric terms, determine the exact smallest Hilbert–Schmidt ball around the maximally mixed state that contains all absolutely PPT states in M_3 ⊗ M_n.

References

The numerical finding in Table 2 and Conjecture \ref{conj1} lead us to the following conjecture for the qutrit-qudit case. Conjecture \ref{conj2} The maximum purity of absolutely PPT states \rho \in M_3\otimes M_n, n\ge 2, is given by \frac{4}{9n} if n \equiv 0 \mod 4, \frac{36n+8}{(9n+1)2} if n \equiv 1 \mod 4, \frac{36n+16}{(9n+2)2} if n \equiv 2 \mod 4, and \frac{36n-8}{(9n-1)2} if n \equiv 3 \mod 4. Moreover, the maximum value is attained when the corresponding eigenvalue multiplicities and values specified in the conjecture hold.

On the maximum purity of absolutely separable bipartite states (2510.19508 - Dung et al., 22 Oct 2025) in Section 3.3 (Conjecture 2)