Iterative Entanglement Distillation: Approaching full Elimination of Decoherence

TL;DR

This paper experimentally demonstrates iterative entanglement distillation, a process that significantly reduces decoherence in quantum entanglement, advancing the potential for reliable quantum communication and computing.

Contribution

First experimental realization of iterative entanglement distillation that can fully eliminate decoherence effects in quantum states.

Findings

Successfully distilled entanglement in multiple steps

Improved entangled states through iterative distillation

Established the feasibility of decoherence-free entanglement distribution

Abstract

The distribution and processing of quantum entanglement form the basis of quantum communication and quantum computing. The realization of the two is difficult because quantum information inherently has a high susceptibility to decoherence, i.e. to uncontrollable information loss to the environment. For entanglement distribution, a proposed solution to this problem is capable of fully eliminating decoherence; namely iterative entanglement distillation. This approach builds on a large number of distillation steps each of which extracts a number of weakly decohered entangled states from a larger number of strongly decohered states. Here, for the first time, we experimentally demonstrate iterative distillation of entanglement. Already distilled entangled states were further improved in a second distillation step and also made available for subsequent steps.Our experiment displays the realization of the building blocks required for an entanglement distillation scheme that can fully eliminate decoherence.