Considering pure quantum states, entanglement concentration is the procedure where from
N copies of a partially entangled state, a single state with higher entanglement can be obtained. Getting a maximally entangled state is possible for
N=1. However, the associated success probability can be extremely low while increasing the system's dimensionality. In this work, we study two methods to achieve a probabilistic entanglement concentration for bipartite quantum systems with a large dimensionality for
N=1, regarding a reasonably good probability of success at the expense of having a non-maximal entanglement. Firstly, we define an efficiency function
Q considering a tradeoff between the amount of entanglement (quantified by the I-Concurrence) of the final state after the concentration procedure and its success probability, which leads to solving a quadratic optimization problem. We found an analytical solution, ensuring that an optimal scheme for entanglement concentration can always be found in terms of
Q. Finally, a second method was explored, which is based on fixing the success probability and searching for the maximum amount of entanglement attainable. Both ways resemble the Procrustean method applied to a subset of the most significant Schmidt coefficients but obtaining non-maximally entangled states.
copies of a partially entangled state, a single state with higher entanglement can be obtained. Obtaining a maximally entangled state is possible for N=1. However, the associated success probability can be extremely low when increasing the system's dimensionality. In this work, we study two methods to achieve a probabilistic entanglement concentration for bipartite quantum systems with a large dimensionality for N=1, regarding a reasonably good probability of success at the expense of having a non-maximal entanglement. Firstly, we define an efficiency function Q considering a tradeoff between the amount of entanglement (quantified by the I-Concurrence) of the final state after the concentration procedure and its success probability, which leads to solving a quadratic optimization problem. We found an analytical solution, ensuring that an optimal scheme for entanglement concentration can always be found in terms of Q. Finally, a second method was explored, which is based on fixing the success probability and searching for the maximum amount of entanglement attainable. Both ways resemble the Procrustean method applied to a subset of the most significant Schmidt coefficients but obtaining non-maximally entangled states.
We analytically obtain the maximum probability of converting a finite number of copies of an arbitrary two-qubit pure state to a single copy of a maximally entangled two-qubit pure state via entanglement assisted local operations and classical communications using a two-qubit catalyst state. We show that the optimal catalyst for this transformation is always more entangled than the initial state but any two-qubit state can act as a (non-optimal) catalyst. Interestingly, the entanglement of the optimal two-qubit catalyst state is shown to decrease with that of the initial state. Entanglement assisted strategies for obtaining multiple Bell states are discussed.
We present two realistic entanglement concentration protocols (ECPs) for pure partially entangled photons. A partially entangled photon pair can be concentrated to a maximally entangled pair with only an ancillary single photon with a certain probability, while the conventional ECPs require two copies of partially entangled pairs at least. Our first protocol is implemented with linear optics and the second protocol is implemented with cross-Kerr-nonlinearities. Compared with other ECPs, they do not need to know the accurate coefficients of the initial state. With linear optics, it is feasible with current experiments. With cross-Kerr-nonlinearities, it does not require sophisticated single-photon detectors and can be repeated to get a higher success probability. Moreover, the second protocol can get the higher entanglement transformation efficiency and it may be the most economical protocol by far. Meanwhile, both protocols are more suitable for multiphoton system concentration because they need less operations and classical communications. All these advantages make the two protocols useful in current long-distance quantum communications.
Entanglement concentration is essential for quantum technologies, yet rigorous bounds on the success probability for universal protocols (those requiring no prior knowledge about the input state) have remained underexplored. We establish such fundamental limits for conclusive protocols distilling a perfect Bell state from pure two-qubit states by deriving the optimal success probability starting with two copies of a state with known Schmidt basis and four copies of a state with unknown Schmidt basis, using concatenated two-qubit operations. We prove that a known protocol achieves these bounds, confirming its optimality. Crucially, universality imposes an inherent efficiency trade-off, yielding an average success probability of just 2/105 over Haar measure.