skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Entanglement purification of unknown quantum states

Journal Article · · Physical Review A

A concern has been expressed that ''the Jaynes principle can produce fake entanglement'' [R. Horodecki , Phys. Rev. A 59, 1799 (1999)]. In this paper we discuss the general problem of distilling maximally entangled states from N copies of a bipartite quantum system about which only partial information is known, for instance, in the form of a given expectation value. We point out that there is indeed a problem with applying the Jaynes principle of maximum entropy to more than one copy of a system, but the nature of this problem is classical and was discussed extensively by Jaynes. Under the additional assumption that the state {rho}{sup (N)} of the N copies of the quantum system is exchangeable, one can write down a simple general expression for {rho}{sup (N)}. By measuring one or more of the subsystems, one can gain information and update the state estimate for the remaining subsystems with the quantum version of the Bayes rule. Using this rule, we show how to modify two standard entanglement purification protocols, one-way hashing and recurrence, so that they can be applied to exchangeable states. We thus give an explicit algorithm for distilling entanglement from an unknown or partially known quantum state.

Sponsoring Organization:
(US)
OSTI ID:
40206040
Journal Information:
Physical Review A, Vol. 63, Issue 4; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.63.042309; Othernumber: PLRAAN000063000004042309000001; 105104PRA; PBD: Apr 2001; ISSN 1050-2947
Publisher:
The American Physical Society
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Complete family of separability criteria
Journal Article · Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 EST 2004 · Physical Review. A · OSTI ID:40206040

Entanglement and symmetry: A case study in superselection rules, reference frames, and beyond
Journal Article · Fri Dec 15 00:00:00 EST 2006 · Physical Review. A · OSTI ID:40206040

Classes of n-copy undistillable quantum states with negative partial transposition
Journal Article · Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2003 · Physical Review. A · OSTI ID:40206040