Purifying noisy entanglement is a protocol which can increase the entanglement of a mixed state (as a source)at expense of the entanglement of others(as an ancilla)by collective measurement. A protocol with which one can get a pure entangled state from a mixed state is defined as purifying mixed states. We address a basic question: can one get a pure entangled state from a mixed state? We give a necessary and sufficient condition of purifying a mixed state by fit local operations and classical communication and show that for a class of source states and ancilla states in arbitrary bipartite systems purifying mixed states is impossible by finite rounds of purifying protocols. For $2\otimes 2$ systems, it is proved that arbitrary states cannot be purified by individual measurement. The possible application and meaning of the conclusion are discussed.
It is known that entanglement swapping can be used to realize entanglement purifying. By this way, two particles belong to different non-maximally entangled pairs can be projected probabilisticly to a maximally entangled state or to a less entangled state. In this report, we show, when the less entangled state is obtained, if a unitary transformation is introduced locally, then a maximally entangled state can be obtained probabilisticly from this less entangled state. The total successful probability of our scheme is equal to the entanglement of a single pairpurification (if two original pairs…
Two qubits in pure entangled states going through separate paths and interacting with their own individual environments will gradually lose their entanglement. Here we show that the entanglement change of a two-qubit state due to amplitude damping noises can be recovered by entanglement swapping. Some initial states can be asymptotically purified into maximally entangled states by iteratively using our protocol.
Known entanglement purification protocols for mixed states use collective measurements on several copies of the state in order to increase the entanglement of some of them. We address the question of whether it is possible to purify the entanglement of a state by processing each copy separately. While this is possible for pure states, we show that this is impossible, in general, for mixed states. The importance of this result both conceptually and for experimental realization of purification is discussed. We also give explicit invariants of an entangled state of two qubits under local actions …
An experimental scheme for concentrating entanglement in partially entangled photon pairs is proposed. In this scheme, two separated parties obtain one maximally entangled photon pair from previously shared two partially entangled photon pairs by local operations and classical communication. A practical realization of the proposed scheme is discussed, which uses imperfect photon detectors and spontaneous parametric down-conversion as a photon source. This scheme also works for purifying a class of mixed states.
We present a probabilistic scheme for generating and purifying maximally-entangled states of two atoms inside an optical cavity via no-photon detection in the output cavity mode, where ideal detectors may not be required. The intermediate mixed states can be continuously "filtered" so as to violate Bell inequalities in a parametrized manner. The scheme relies on an additional strong-driving field that yields unusual dynamics in cavity QED experiments, simultaneously realizing Jaynes-Cummings and anti-Jaynes-Cummings interactions.
We present a criterion for multiparticle entanglement based on covariance matrices. On the one hand, the criterion allows to detect bound entangled states which are not detected by other criteria; on the other hand, some strongly entangled pure states such as the GHZ states are not detected. We show, however, that this is a general phenomenon: No separability criterion based on two-particle correlations can recognize the entanglement in the family of graph states, to which the GHZ states belong.
Recently Xiao et al. proposed a scheme for entanglement purification based on doubly entangled photon states (Phys. Rev. A 77(2008) 042315). We modify their scheme for improving the efficiency of entanglement purification. This modified scheme contains two steps, i.e., the bit-flip error correction and the entanglement purification of phase-flip errors. All the photon pairs in the first step can be kept as all the bit-flip errors are corrected. For purifying the phase-flip errors, a wavelength conversion process is needed. This scheme has the advantage of high efficiency and it requires the or…
I present a schema for a superluminal telecommunication system based on polarization entangled photon pairs. Binary signals can be transmitted at superluminal speed in this system, if entangled photon pairs can really be produced. The existence of the polarization entangled photon pairs is in direct contradiction to the relativistic causality in this telecommunication system. This contradiction implies the impossibility of generating entangled photon pairs.
We derive a new inequality for entanglement for a mixed four-partite state. Employing this inequality, we present a one-shot lower bound for entanglement cost and prove that entanglement cost is strictly larger than zero for any entangled state. We demonstrate that irreversibility occurs in the process of formation for all non-distillable entangled states. In this way we solve a long standing problem, of how "real" is entanglement of bound entangled states. Using the new inequality we also prove impossibility of local-cloning of a known entangled state.
Imagine that Alice and Bob, unable to communicate, are both given a 16-bit string such that the strings are either equal, or they differ in exactly 8 positions. Both parties are then supposed to output a 4-bit string in such a way that these short strings are equal if and only if the original longer strings given to them were equal as well. It is known that this task can be fulfilled without failure and without communication if Alice and Bob share 4 maximally entangled quantum bits. We show that, on the other hand, they CANNOT win the same game with certainty if they only share classical bits,…
The impossibility of ascribing definite states to the constituents of an entangled system restricts the scope of Pauli's principle in this context. We analyze the conceptual and physical aspects of the problem by studying the actual scope of the principle and the possibility of extending the concept of exclusion in correlated systems. When the entanglement is weak, as in the archetypical case of the Helium atom, the principle can be applied in an approximated way. The concept of non-complete set of properties plays a crucial role in the argument, which also clarifies the physical meaning of th…
We propose a scheme to entangle multiple material qubits through interaction with single photons via non-exciting processes associated with strongly coupling systems. The basic idea is based on the material state dependent reflection and transmission for the input photons. Thus, the material qubits in several systems can be entangled when one photon interacts with each system in cascade and the photon paths are mixed by the photon detection. The character of non-exciting of the material qubits does not change the state of material qubit and thus ensures the possibility of purifying entangled s…
By using local quantum teleportation of a fixed state to one qubit of an entangled pair sent from the other party, it is shown how one party can commit a bit with only classical information as evidence that results in an unconditionally secure protocol. The well-known ``impossibility proof'' does not cover such protocols due to its different commitment and opening prescriptions, which necessitate actual quantum measurements among different possible systems that cannot be entangled as a consequence.
We consider entanglement purification protocols for multiple copies of qubit states. We use high-dimensional auxiliary entangled systems to learn about number and positions of errors in the noisy ensemble in an explicit and controlled way, thereby reducing the amount of noise in the ensemble and purifying the remaining states. This allows us to design entanglement purification protocols for any number of copies that work particularly well for a small number of expected errors, i.e. high fidelity of initial states. The main tool is a counter gate with which the required non-local information ca…
Quantum no-cloning, the impossibility of perfectly cloning an arbitrary unknown quantum state, is one of the most fundamental limitations due to the laws of quantum mechanics, which underpin the physical security of quantum key distribution. Quantum physics does allow, however, approximate cloning with either imperfect state fidelity and/or probabilistic success. Whereas approximate quantum cloning of single-particle states has been tested previously, experimental cloning of quantum entanglement -- a highly non-classical correlation -- remained unexplored. Based on a multiphoton linear optics …
It is well known that Wheeler proposed several delayed choice experiments in order to show the impossibility to speak of the way a quantum system behaves before being detected. In a double-slit experiment, when do photons decide to travel by one way or by two ways? Delayed choice experiments seem to indicate that, strangely, it is possible to change the decision of the photons until the very last moment before they are detected. This led Wheeler to his famous sentence: No elementary quantum phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered phenomenon, brought to a close by an irreversible ac…
We propose an experiment to test the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) with a test mass consisting of two entangled atoms of different species. In the proposed experiment, a coherent measurement of the differential gravity acceleration between the two atomic species is considered, by entangling two atom interferometers operating on the two species. The entanglement between the two atoms is heralded at the initial beam splitter of the interferometers through the detection of a single photon emitted by either of the atoms, together with the impossibility of distinguishing which atom emitted the p…
We develop graph theoretic methods for analysing maximally entangled pure states distributed between a number of different parties. We introduce a technique called {\it bicolored merging}, based on the monotonicity feature of entanglement measures, for determining combinatorial conditions that must be satisfied for any two distinct multiparticle states to be comparable under local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We present several results based on the possibility or impossibility of comparability of pure multipartite states. We show that there are exponentially many such entangl…
