Uncontrolled interactions with the environment introduce errors that remain a significant challenge to the reliability of quantum technologies using entanglement. An essential method to overcome or mitigate these errors is entanglement distillation, the transformation of multiple copies of weakly entangled states into a smaller number of approximately maximally entangled states. We present a comparative analysis of the distillation effectivity for the stabilizer-based two-copy entanglement distillation protocol, FIMAX, against other recurrent two-copy protocols, including ADGJ, DEJMPS, P1–P2 and the generalized BBPSSW protocol. We focus on low-fidelity bipartite quantum states in dimensions [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], which are particularly challenging to distill. Our findings demonstrate that FIMAX exhibits superior performance regarding the distillable share for these states. While other protocols struggle with highly noisy states, FIMAX successfully distills entanglement even when the initial state quality is severely compromised. These results highlight the protocol’s capability to address the effects of environmental noise, advancing the robustness and scalability of quantum technologies leveraging entanglement distillation.
Uncontrolled interactions with the environment introduce errors that remain a significant challenge to the reliability of quantum technologies using entanglement. An essential method to overcome or mitigate these errors is entanglement distillation, the transformation of multiple copies of weakly entangled states into a smaller number of approximately maximally entangled states. We present a comparative analysis of the distillation effectivity for the stabilizer-based two-copy entanglement distillation protocol, FIMAX, against other recurrent two-copy protocols, including ADGJ, DEJMPS, P1–P2 and the generalized BBPSSW protocol. We focus on low-fidelity bipartite quantum states in dimensions [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], which are particularly challenging to distill. Our findings demonstrate that FIMAX exhibits superior performance regarding the distillable share for these states. While other protocols struggle with highly noisy states, FIMAX successfully distills entanglement even when the initial state quality is severely compromised. These results highlight the protocol’s capability to address the effects of environmental noise, advancing the robustness and scalability of quantum technologies leveraging entanglement distillation.
Entanglement distillation, the process of converting weakly entangled states into maximally entangled ones using Local Operations and Classical Communication (LOCC), is pivotal for robust entanglement-assisted quantum information processing in error-prone environments. A construction based on stabilizer codes offers an effective method for designing such protocols. By analytically investigating the effective action of stabilizer protocols for systems of prime dimension d , we establish a standard form for the output states of recurrent stabilizer-based distillation. This links the properties of input states, stabilizers, and encodings to the properties of the protocol. Based on those insights, we present a novel two-copy distillation protocol, applicable to all bipartite states in prime dimension, that maximizes the fidelity increase per iteration for Bell-diagonal states. The power of this framework and the protocol is demonstrated through numerical investigations, which provide evidence for superior performance in terms of efficiency and distillability of low-fidelity states compared to other well-established recurrence protocols. By elucidating the interplay between states, errors, and protocols, our contribution advances the systematic development of highly effective distillation protocols, enhancing our understanding of distillability.
Quantum technologies rely on high-quality resource states, such as maximally entangled or private states, which are indispensable for quantum communication and cryptography. In practice, however, these states are inevitably degraded by noise. Distillation protocols aim to recover high-resource states from multiple imperfect copies, and while stabilizer-based methods have demonstrated high performance in entanglement purification, they have yet to be established for broader tasks such as secret-key distillation. This work introduces a unified framework for stabilizer-based resource distillation in systems of prime local dimension. By formulating stabilizer routines as quantum channels and deriving closed-form expressions for their output, we enable the application of stabilizer operations to general input states and diverse distillation objectives. We identify key invariances in resource measures, such as coherent and private information, and demonstrate how they can be leveraged to significantly reduce the numerical complexity of channel optimization. To illustrate the framework's versatility, we introduce several protocols: gF-IMAX for general fidelity optimization, and (S)CI-IMAX and (S)PI-IMAX for optimizing (smooth) coherent and private information in both asymptotic and one-shot regimes. Our numerical results confirm that these protocols effectively tailor stabilizer channels to specific operational tasks, establishing them as a robust and flexible tool for quantum resource distillation.
It is crucial to share maximally entangled pairs in quantum information processing. However, unwanted interactions with the environment can reduce the entanglement fidelity of the produced pairs. Entanglement distillation is a method to overcome this problem by creating higher-fidelity entangled pairs from a more significant number of lower-fidelity pairs. This study uses Werner states and imperfect gates to analyse the performance of BBPSSW, DEJMPS, 3-to-1, and EPL protocols for entanglement distillation. Specifically, this study focuses on how the increase in fidelity depends on the input pair and gate fidelities. The results are obtained through numerical simulation using the NetSquid simulator. After characterising the numerical errors, the study demonstrates that all four protocols increase the pair fidelity for a gate higher than 0.96. The study also reveals that the higher the success fidelity, the lower the probability, as predicted theoretically. Additionally, based on a list of requirements and hardware performance, we developed a simple recipe for selecting the most suitable protocol. The simulation results highlight the practical limitations of entanglement distillation protocols, indicating the need for further investigation. This includes the development of a theoretical model for the EPL protocol implemented with Werner states, incorporating noisy measurements in the simulated protocols and increasing the number of simulations for higher accuracy.
High-fidelity entanglement shared between distant quantum systems is an essential resource for quantum communication and computation. Entanglement distillation addresses this need by converting multiple noisy Bell pairs into fewer higher-fidelity pairs, using only local quantum operations and classical communication. However, this approach typically requires a substantial overhead in the number of qubits. To bypass this hurdle, we propose to leverage the high-dimensional Hilbert space of a single pair of bosonic systems to store a large amount of entanglement, replacing the need for multi-qubit systems. To distill entanglement in such a setup, we devise a new entanglement distillation protocol, tailored for bosonic systems. The protocol converts a highly-entangled noisy state between two bosonic systems into a lower-dimensional but high-fidelity entangled state, using only local bosonic operations. We show that our protocol significantly enhances the fidelity of the entangled state in the presence of naturally occurring loss and dephasing errors. Compared to methods relying on multiple Bell pairs, our scheme offers a more hardware-efficient strategy, providing a practical route toward the realization of entanglement distillation.
We recently proposed an entanglement distillation protocol based on local operations and classical communication that probabilistically and universally distills a maximally entangled Bell pair from multiple copies of an unknown two-qubit state [Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 260202 (2025)]. Here, we investigate the robustness of this protocol against imperfections in its implementation. We consider several incoherent and coherent gate-error models, as well as measurement readout errors, and determine the regimes in which distillation enhances the fidelity with the target Bell state. We find that the protocol remains effective over substantial error ranges, although its robustness depends strongly on the type of error. We further analyze asymmetric errors between the two parties and identify conditions under which complementary postselection outcomes yield identical distillation dynamics, allowing the success probability to be enhanced.
Entanglement is essential for quantum information processing, but is limited by noise. We address this by developing high-yield entanglement distillation protocols with several advancements. (1) We extend the 2-to-1 recurrence entanglement distillation protocol to higher-rate n -to- ( n − 1 ) protocols that can correct any single-qubit errors. These protocols are evaluated through numerical simulations focusing on fidelity and yield. We also outline a method to adapt any classical error-correcting code for entanglement distillation, where the code can correct both bit-flip and phase-flip errors by incorporating Hadamard gates. (2) We propose a constant-depth decoder for stabilizer codes that transforms logical states into physical ones using single-qubit measurements. This decoder is applied to entanglement distillation protocols, reducing circuit depth and enabling protocols derived from high-performance quantum error-correcting codes. We demonstrate this by evaluating the circuit complexity for entanglement distillation protocols based on surface codes and quantum convolutional codes. (3) Our stabilizer entanglement distillation techniques advance quantum computing. We propose a fault-tolerant protocol for constant-depth encoding and decoding of arbitrary states in surface codes, with potential extensions to more general quantum low-density parity-check codes. This protocol is feasible with state-of-the-art reconfigurable atom arrays and surpasses the limits of conventional logarithmic depth encoders. Overall, our study integrates stabilizer formalism, measurement-based quantum computing, and entanglement distillation, advancing both quantum communication and computing.