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arXiv:quant-ph/0006132 · Physical Review A

Entanglement-swapping chains for general pure states

Lucién Hardy, David D. Song

Published Oct 18, 2000• 58 citations
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Abstract

We consider entanglement-swapping schemes with general (rather than maximally) entangled bipartite states of arbitary dimension shared pairwise between three or more parties in a chain. The intermediate parties perform generalized Bell measurements with the result that the two end parties end up sharing an entangled state which can be converted into maximally entangled states. We obtain an expression for the average amount of maximal entanglement concentrated in such a scheme and show that in a certain reasonably broad class of cases this scheme is provably optimal and that, in these cases, the amount of entanglement concentrated between the two ends is equal to that which could be concentrated from the weakest link in the chain.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.62.052315

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We consider entanglement-swapping schemes with general (rather than maximally) entangled bipartite states of arbitary dimension shared pairwise between three or more parties in a chain. The intermediate parties perform generalized Bell measurements with the result that the two end parties end up sharing an entangled state which can be converted into maximally entangled states. We obtain an expression for the average amount of maximal entanglement concentrated in such a scheme and show that in a certain reasonably broad class of cases this scheme is provably optimal and that, in these cases, the amount of entanglement concentrated between the two ends is equal to that which could be concentrated from the weakest link in the chain.
In two partially entangled states, entanglement swapping by Bell measurement will yield the weaker entanglement of the two. This scheme is optimal because the average entanglement cannot increase under local operation and classical communication. However, for more than two states, this scheme does not always yield the weakest link. We consider projective measurements other than Bell-type measurement and show, numerically, that while Bell measurement may not be unique, it is indeed optimal among these projective measurements. We also discuss the non-uniqueness of Bell measurements.
Entanglement swapping is a key primitive for distributing entanglement over quantum networks, but different measurement outcomes can produce end-to-end states with different entanglement, requiring branch-dependent processing or the rejection of unfavorable outcomes. We characterize all projective swapping measurements with full-Schmidt-rank vectors such that, for every pair of pure input links, all outcomes yield the same end-to-end state up to local-unitary corrections. Within this family, the measurements that maximize the average G-concurrence for every input pair are built from complex Hadamard operators, and every outcome individually attains the optimum. Classifying the underlying complex Hadamard operators that preserve optimal deterministic swapping gives one class for d=2,3d=2,3d=2,3, exactly 727272 classes for d=5d=5d=5, and uncountably many whenever d=4kd=4kd=4k. We show further that for d=2,3d=2,3d=2,3, the corrected end-to-end state in a swapping chain is independent of the swapping order, and discuss noise robustness under depolarizing noise and arbitrary convex input contamination. For pure inputs, these schemes retain every outcome while achieving optimal G-concurrence and therefore eliminate outcome-based postselection.
The quantum information network is important in establishing next-generation technology. In particular, maximal and long-distance entangled states are important in realizing a number of quantum information technologies, such as teleportation, key distribution and so forth. Entanglement swapping is a scheme that creates a long-distance network by using multiple short ones. Entanglement swapping protocols applied to non-maximal correlations have been thoroughly investigated by various people. Rather than providing any new analytic results, some examples of a numerical approach will be provided in this paper. In particular, the paper reveals the existence of different classes of coefficients that approximate the optimal outcome ( i.e. , the weaker average maximal entanglement between the two initial states). The new class of states is non-trivial in the sense that their coefficients are just as widely distributed as the coefficients of states satisfying optimality conditions are. Moreover, we will numerically examine entanglement swapping methods and show the distribution of optimal and general coefficients for three and four 2-level correlations.
We investigate absolutely maximally entangled (AME) states, which are multipartite quantum states that are maximally entangled with respect to any possible bipartition. These strong entanglement properties make them a powerful resource for a variety of quantum information protocols. In this paper, we show the existence of AME states for any number of parties, given that the dimension of the involved systems is chosen appropriately. We prove the equivalence of AME states shared between an even number of parties and pure state threshold quantum secret sharing (QSS) schemes, and prove necessary and sufficient entanglement properties for a wider class of ramp QSS schemes. We further show how AME states can be used as a valuable resource for open-destination teleportation protocols and to what extend entanglement swapping generalizes to AME states.
The basic entanglement swapping protocol allows to achieve the main aim of deterministically projecting two qubits, which have never interacted, onto a maximally entangled state. For deterministic swapping the key ingredient is the maximal entanglement initially contained in two pairs of qubits and the ability to measure onto a Bell basis. In other words, the basic and deterministic entanglement swapping scheme involves three maximal level of entanglement. In this work we address probabilistic entanglement swapping processes performed with different amounts of initial entanglement. Besides, we suggest a non Bell measuring-basis, thus we introduce a third entanglement level in the process. Additionally, we propose the \emph{unambiguous state extraction} scheme as the local mechanism for probabilistically achieving the main aim. Amalgamating these three elements allows us to design four strategies for performing probabilistic entanglement swapping. Surprisingly, we encountered an twofold entanglement matching effect related to the concurrence of the measuring-basis. Specifically, the maximal probability of accomplishing the main aim becomes a constant for concurrences higher than or equal to the matching entanglement values. Thus, we show that maximal entanglement in the measuring-basis is not required for attaining the main aim with optimal probability.