Bipartite qubit entanglement distillation is the process of converting noisy ebits into pure ebits using only local operations and classical communication. This is a core operation for quantum repeaters, enabling such crucial tasks as long-distance quantum communication and distributed quantum computing. In this work, we introduce a method for searching for entanglement distillation protocols and, using this technique, distil qubit Werner states at a higher rate than could be achieved using previously discovered protocols. In particular, we demonstrate the advantage of our new distillation strategy by improving the best-known lower bound for the two-way-assisted quantum capacity of the qubit depolarising channel across a wide range of channel parameters, making progress in one of the long-standing problems of quantum information theory.
Bipartite qubit entanglement distillation is the process of converting noisy ebits into pure ebits using only local operations and classical communication. This is a core operation for quantum repeaters, enabling such crucial tasks as long-distance quantum communication and distributed quantum computing. In this work, we introduce a method for searching for entanglement distillation protocols and, using this technique, distil qubit Werner states at a higher rate than could be achieved using previously discovered protocols. In particular, we demonstrate the advantage of our new distillation strategy by improving the best-known lower bound for the two-way-assisted quantum capacity of the qubit depolarising channel across a wide range of channel parameters, making progress in one of the long-standing problems of quantum information theory.
Abstract Production of quantum states exhibiting a high degree of entanglement out of noisy conditions is one of the main goals of quantum information science. Here, we provide a conditional yet efficient entanglement distillation method which functions within the framework of spatially localized operations and classical communication. This method exploits indistinguishability effects due to the spatial overlap between two identical qubits in distinct sites and encompasses particle statistics imprint. We derive the general conditions for the maximum entanglement distillation out of mixed states. As applications, we give a thorough description of distilled entanglement and associated success probability starting from typical noisy states, such as thermal Gibbs states and Werner states. The influence of local temperatures and of a noise parameter is discussed, respectively, in these two cases. The proposed scheme paves the way towards quantum repeaters in composite networks made of controllable identical quantum particles.
Quantum communication and computation heavily rely on entanglement distillation protocols. There is a plethora of distillation protocols for Pauli channels and also for some non-Pauli channels. However, an effort to relate the effectiveness of these protocols for different types of noise has been missing. For most quantum channels, the gap between the existing lower and upper bounds on distillation rates is substantial, and improvements of achievable rates have been stagnant for decades. In this work, we improve the best known distillation lower bounds, for both the amplitude damping and depolarizing channels. We build on a key observation that distillation protocols reshape several uses of a very noisy channel into a better effective channel. We apply this channel processing in an adaptive and recurrent manner. For the amplitude damping channel, our suggested protocol reshapes the channel into an erasure channel, achieving rates exceeding the best known lower bound given by the channel’s reverse coherent information. For the depolarizing channel, we introduce the Greedy recurrence protocol with proven performance guarantees and construct a combined protocol improving upon previously known distillation rates. Improved bounds on attainable distillation rates give insights for both practical implementations and theoretical understanding of quantum information processing.
Near-term and early fault-tolerant quantum computing architectures are expected to exhibit highly non-uniform error rates. In particular, local operations within a chip can be substantially more reliable than operations connecting different chips or dilution refrigerators. Such inter-module operations can therefore become a dominant bottleneck, even when quantum error correction is applied. Entanglement distillation provides a natural way to trade additional operations and qubits for higher-fidelity entanglement. Standard distillation protocols, however, are usually formulated in an LOCC resource model, in which several noisy Bell pairs are generated initially and all subsequent processing consists only of local operations and classical communication. Here, we consider a generalized model tailored to modular quantum computing hardware, in which the two modules have access to high-fidelity local operations and to repeated uses of the same noisy inter-module entangling operation during the protocol. We develop practical small-scale entanglement distillation protocols designed to minimize both space and time overhead. Remarkably, our main protocol requires only two qubits per module, yet achieves quadratic error suppression of inter-module errors, assuming local operations are much cleaner. Compared with existing small-scale protocols, our space-optimal protocol provides more space- and time-efficient quadratic error suppression and achieves the best performance in our simulations and experiments on noisy links of current superconducting quantum processors. These results suggest that inter-module-gate-assisted entanglement distillation can be a practical primitive for overcoming noisy links in modular quantum computing architectures.
Entanglement distillation, a fundamental building block of quantum networks, enables the purification of noisy entangled states shared among distant nodes by local operations and classical communication. Its practical realization presents several technical challenges, including the storage of quantum states in quantum memory and the execution of coherent quantum operations on multiple copies of states within the quantum memory. In this work, we present an entanglement purification protocol via quantum communication, namely a carrier-assisted entanglement purification protocol, which utilizes two elements only: i) quantum memory for a single-copy entangled state shared by parties and ii) single qubits travelling between parties. We show that the protocol, when single-qubit transmission is noiseless, can purify a noisy entangled state shared by parties. When single-qubit transmission is noisy, the purification relies on types of noisy qubit channels; we characterize Pauli channels such that the protocol works for the purification. We address this limitation by using multiple carrier qubits, and show that for any non-entanglement-breaking Pauli channel, the protocol's fixed-point fidelity approaches unity as the number of carriers increases. Our results significantly reduce the experimental overhead required for distilling entanglement: the practical advantage is demonstrated through parameters directly related to the capability of entanglement purification, such as noise in quantum memory, local measurements, channel use, and entanglement fidelity. We envisage that the protocol would make long-distance pure entanglement closer to a practical realization.
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.
Entanglement distillation is the process of converting noisy entangled states into maximally entangled pure states via local operations and classical communication. A long-standing, unresolved question is which entangled states are amenable to distillation, known as the distillability problem. We solve this for Bell-diagonal qutrits with Weyl structure, and present a noise-robust scheme for entanglement distillation. In particular, we find that violating the positive partial transposition (PPT) criterion is necessary and sufficient for the 1-distillability of these states. For this, we construct a Schmidt rank 2 eigenvector of the partially transposed density matrix associated with its unique, three-fold degenerate negative eigenvalue. This feature makes the derived entanglement distillation protocol resilient to white-noise effects on the quantum states. Our results thus make noisy entangled qutrit pairs more accessible for future quantum technologies.