Characterization of separable states and entanglement witnesses

We provide a canonical form of mixed states in bipartite quantum systems in terms of a convex combination of a separable state and a, so-called, edge state. We construct entanglement witnesses for all edge states. We present a canonical form of nondecomposable entanglement witnesses and the corresponding positive maps. We provide constructive methods for their optimization in a finite number of steps. We present a characterization of separable states using a special class of entanglement witnesses. Finally, we present a nontrivial necessary condition for entanglement witnesses and positive maps to be extremal