Abstract. We establish contact between the delocalization properties of pure quantum states, as quantified by their number of principal components, and the average generalized entanglement properties, as quantified by purity measures relative to different observable sets. We find that correlations between products of state vector components with respect to Hamming distance play an important role in the structure of subsystem-based purity measures. In particular, we derive general conditions under which the amount of global multipartite entanglement relates to the inverse participation ratio averaged over a maximal set of mutually unbiased product bases. Furthermore, we provide a method for computing the expected amount of generalized entanglement with respect to an arbitrary observable set for random pure states. Specific examples and an explicit application to a disordered quantum spin chain are discussed.

PACS numbers: 03.67.Mn, 03.67.Lx, 05.45.Mt, 24.10.Cn

Print publication: Issue 28 (13 July 2007)
Received 30 October 2006, in final form 12 January 2007
Published 27 June 2007