Are all maximally entangled states pure?

We study if all maximally entangled states are pure through several entanglement monotones. In the bipartite case, we find that the same conditions which lead to the uniqueness of the entropy of entanglement as a measure of entanglement exclude the existence of maximally mixed entangled states. In the multipartite scenario, our conclusions allow us to generalize the idea of the monogamy of entanglement: we establish the polygamy of entanglement, expressing that if a general state is maximally entangled with respect to some kind of multipartite entanglement, then it is necessarily factorized of any other system.

Figure 1

(Color online) $E_{n:1}^1\left({\rho }_q\right)$ for $0⩽n⩽4$ and $0⩽q⩽1$. When $n⪡1$, $E_{n:1}^1\left(\rho \right)=n{B}_{\mathrm{app}}\left(\rho \right)$ and MME states are possible. In the other limit $E_{n:1}^1\left(\rho \right)=R^1\left(\rho \right)$ [4], and all maximally entangled states are pure. The irregularities in the figure are due to the approximative nature of the numerical method used [19].