Separability of mixed quantum states: linear contractions approach

Recently, a new and powerful separability criterion was introduced in [O. Rudolph, quant-ph/0202121] and [Chen {\it et al.}, quant-ph/0205017]. Composing the main idea behind the above criterion and the necessary and sufficient condition in terms of positive maps, we provide a characterization of separable states by means of linear contractions. The latter need not be positive maps. We extend the idea to multipartite systems, and find that, somewhat suprisingly, partial realigment (unlike partial transposition) can detect genuinely triparite entanglement. We also show that for multipartite system any permutation of indices of density matrix leads to separability criterion.