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Entanglement purification for quantum communication

Nature volume 410, pages 1067–1070 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

The distribution of entangled states between distant locations will be essential for the future large-scale realization of quantum communication schemes such as quantum cryptography1,2 and quantum teleportation3. Because of unavoidable noise in the quantum communication channel, the entanglement between two particles is more and more degraded the further they propagate. Entanglement purification4,5,6,7 is thus essential to distil highly entangled states from less entangled ones. Existing general purification protocols4,5,6 are based on the quantum controlled-NOT (CNOT) or similar quantum logic operations, which are very difficult to implement experimentally. Present realizations of CNOT gates are much too imperfect to be useful for long-distance quantum communication8. Here we present a scheme for the entanglement purification of general mixed entangled states, which achieves 50 per cent of the success probability of schemes based on the CNOT operation, but requires only simple linear optical elements. Because the perfection of such elements is very high, the local operations necessary for purification can be performed with the required precision. Our procedure is within the reach of current technology, and should significantly simplify the implementation of long-distance quantum communication.

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Figure 1: Scheme showing the principle of entanglement purification after Bennett et al.4.
Figure 2: Using a polarizing beam splitter as a polarization comparer.
Figure 3: Our purification scheme using polarizing beam splitters.

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Acknowledgements

We thank L.-M. Duan, H. Ritsch, T. Tyc, L. Vaidman, P. Zoller and M. Zukowski for discussions. This work was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation FWF, the Austrian academy of sciences, and the TMR and QIPC programmes of the European Union.

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Author notes

  1. Christoph Simon

    Present address: Centre for Quantum Computation, Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PU, UK

  2. Anton Zeilinger: Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.Z.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Wien, Boltzmanngasse 5, Wien, 1090, Austria

    Jian-Wei Pan, Christoph Simon, Časlav Brukner & Anton Zeilinger

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  1. Jian-Wei Pan
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Correspondence to Anton Zeilinger.

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Pan, JW., Simon, C., Brukner, Č. et al. Entanglement purification for quantum communication. Nature 410, 1067–1070 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35074041

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