Class of Unlockable Bound Entangled States and Their Applications

A class of unlockable bound entangled states and their applications are presented. They can be considered as quasi generalized Smolin states [Phys. Rev. A 63(2001)032306], which are the states of N+N qubits. No pure entanglement can be distilled from this class of states by local quantum operations and classical communications. However, if certain parties group together, they become distillable. Although they are bound entangled states, they could be used to achieve some non-trivial tasks, such as quantum secret sharing shown in the study.