We present a way of identifying all kinds of entanglement for three-qubit pure states in terms of the expectation values of Pauli operators. The necessary and sufficient conditions to classify the fully separable, biseparable, and genuine entangled states are explicitly given. The approach can be generalized to multipartite high-dimensional cases. For three-qubit mixed states, we propose two kinds of inequalities in terms of the expectation values of complementary observables. One inequality has advantages in entanglement detection of the quantum state with positive partial transpositions, and the other is able to detect genuine entanglement. The results give an effective method for experimental entanglement identification.

• Received 22 November 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.87.012316