Genuine N -partite entanglement without N -partite correlation functions

A genuinely $N$-partite entangled state may display vanishing $N$-partite correlations measured for arbitrary local observables. In such states the genuine entanglement is noticeable solely in correlations between subsets of particles. A straightforward way to obtain such states for odd $N$ is to design an “antistate” in which all correlations between an odd number of observers are exactly opposite. Evenly mixing a state with its antistate then produces a mixed state with no $N$-partite correlations, with many of them genuinely multiparty entangled. Intriguingly, all known examples of “entanglement without correlations” involve an odd number of particles. Here we further develop the idea of antistates, thereby shedding light on the different properties of even and odd particle systems. We conjecture that there is no antistate to any pure even-$N$-party entangled state making the simple construction scheme unfeasible. However, as we prove by construction, higher-rank examples of entanglement without correlations for arbitrary even $N$ indeed exist. These classes of states exhibit genuine entanglement and even violate an $N$-partite Bell inequality, clearly demonstrating the nonclassical features of these states as well as showing their applicability for quantum information processing.