A mixed quantum state $\ensuremath{\rho}$ shared between two parties is said to be distillable if, by means of a protocol involving only local quantum operations and classical communication, the two parties can transform some number of copies of $\ensuremath{\rho}$ into a single shared pair of qubits having high fidelity with the maximally entangled state $|{\ensuremath{\varphi}}^{+}\ensuremath{\rangle}=(|00\ensuremath{\rangle}+|11\ensuremath{\rangle})/\sqrt{2}$. In this Letter it is proved that there exist states that are distillable, but for which an arbitrarily large number of copies is required before any distillation procedure can produce a shared pair of qubits with even a small amount of entanglement. Specifically, for every positive integer
n there exists a state $\ensuremath{\rho}$ that is distillable, but, given
n or fewer copies of $\ensuremath{\rho}$, every distillation procedure outputting a single shared pair of qubits outputs those qubits in a separable (i.e., unentangled) state.
Entanglement distillation, an essential quantum information processing task, refers to the conversion from multiple copies of noisy entangled states to a smaller number of highly entangled states. In this paper, we study the non-asymptotic fundamental limits for entanglement distillation. We investigate the optimal tradeoff between the distillation rate, the number of prepared states, and the error tolerance. First, we derive the one-shot distillable entanglement under completely positive partial transpose preserving operations as a semidefinite program and demonstrate an exact characterization via the quantum hypothesis testing relative entropy. Second, we establish efficiently computable second-order estimations of the distillation rate for general quantum states. In particular, we provide explicit as well as approximate evaluations for various quantum states of practical interest, including pure states, mixture of Bell states, maximally correlated states, and isotropic states.
© 1963-2012 IEEE. Entanglement distillation, an essential quantum information processing task, refers to the conversion from multiple copies of noisy entangled states to a smaller number of highly entangled states. In this paper, we study the non-asymptotic fundamental limits for entanglement distillation. We investigate the optimal tradeoff between the distillation rate, the number of prepared states, and the error tolerance. First, we derive the one-shot distillable entanglement under completely positive partial transpose preserving operations as a semidefinite program and demonstrate an exact characterization via the quantum hypothesis testing relative entropy. Second, we establish efficiently computable second-order estimations of the distillation rate for general quantum states. In particular, we provide explicit as well as approximate evaluations for various quantum states of practical interest, including pure states, mixture of Bell states, maximally correlated states, and isotropic states.
Entanglement distillation is a fundamental operation in quantum information processing used to obtain higher-fidelity entangled pairs from a supply of less entangled quantum states using local operations aided by classical communication (LOCC). In a physically relevant setting, where states with an initial fidelity of
f0, probabilistically generated over multiple,
m, memory pairs distributed between two parties, Alice and Bob, are pairwise distilled, the optimal policy identifies the system-configuration dependent sequence of entanglement generation and distillation operations that need to be performed in order to minimize the expected time to reach some target fidelity
fT>f0. Here, we formulate and systematically analyze this task as a Markov decision problem and using a value iteration algorithm, obtain optimal deterministic policies that minimize the expected waiting time required to reach a target fidelity. Our results show that the expected waiting time under the optimal policy decreases with increasing generation probability
p and number of quantum memories
m - as expected. In contrast, it exhibits non-monotonic behavior with respect to
f0 for a fixed fidelity gap,
(Δf=fT−f0). While the optimal policy consistently outperforms baseline policies such as the greedy, nested and entanglement pumping policies, its relative advantage is regime-dependent, being determined by the system parameters (
p,f0,fT,m), and exhibits a nontrivial dependence on the fidelity gap
Δf. Our results highlight the value of formulating entanglement distillation as a Markov decision problem, enabling the systematic design of policies that achieve target fidelity thresholds for quantum information tasks in realistic resource-constrained settings.
Abstract Nonlocality, manifested by the violation of Bell inequalities, indicates entanglement within a joint quantum system. A natural question is how much entanglement is required for a given nonlocal behavior. Here, we explore this question by quantifying entanglement using a family of generalized Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt-type Bell inequalities. Given a Bell-inequality violation, we derive analytical lower bounds on the entanglement of formation, a measure related to entanglement dilution. The bounds also lead to an analytical estimation of the negativity of entanglement. In addition, we consider one-way distillable entanglement tied to entanglement distillation and derive tight numerical estimates. With the additional assumptions of qubit-qubit systems, we find that the relationship between entanglement and measurement incompatibility is not simply a trade-off under a fixed nonlocal behavior. Furthermore, we apply our results to two realistic scenarios—non-maximally entangled and Werner states. We show that one can utilize the nonlocal statistics by optimizing the Bell inequality for better entanglement estimation.
Non-local correlations are not only a fascinating feature of quantum theory, but an interesting resource for information processing, for instance in communication-complexity theory or cryptography. An important question in this context is whether the resource can be distilled: Given a large amount of weak non-local correlations, is there a method to obtain strong non-locality using local operations and shared randomness? We partly answer this question by no: CHSH-type non-locality, the only possible non-locality of binary systems, which is not super-strong, but achievable by measurements on certain quantum states, has at best very limited distillability by any non-interactive classical method. This strongly extends and generalizes what was previously known, namely that there are two limits that cannot be overstepped: The Bell and Tsirelson bounds. Moreover, our results imply that there must be an infinite number of such bounds. A noticeable feature of our proof of this purely classical statement is that it is quantum mechanical in the sense that (both novel and known) facts from quantum theory are used in a crucial way to obtain the claimed results. One of these results, of independent interest, is that certain mixed entangled states cannot be distilled without communication. Weaker statements, namely limited distillability, have been known for Werner states.