Physical qubits from charged particles: Infrared divergences in quantum information

Abstract

We consider soft-photon effects (ir structure of QED) on the construction of physical qubits. Soft photons appear when we build charged qubits from the asymptotic states of QED. This construction is necessary in order to include the effect of soft photons on entanglement measures. The nonexistence of free charged particles (due to the long range of QED interactions) leads us to question the sense of the very concept of free charged qubit. In this work, using the >dressing> formalism, we build physical charged qubits from dressed fields which have the correct asymptotic behavior, are gauge invariant, have propagators with a particle pole structure, and are free from infrared divergences. Finally, we discuss the impact of the soft corrections on the entanglement measures. © 2009 The American Physical Society.