We discuss the entropic criterion for separability of compound quantum systems for general nonadditive entropic forms based on arbitrary concave functions f. For any separable state, the generalized entropy of the whole system is shown to be not smaller than that of the subsystems, for any choice of f, providing thus a necessary criterion for separability. Nevertheless, the criterion is not sufficient and examples of entangled states with the same property are provided. This entails, in particular, that the conjecture about the positivity of the conditional Tsallis entropy for all q, a more stringent requirement than the positivity of the conditional von Neumann entropy, is actually a necessary but not sufficient condition for separability in general. The direct relation between the entropic criterion and the largest eigenvalues of the full and reduced density operators of the system is also discussed.

• Received 21 April 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.66.042306