Asymptotic correctability of Bell-diagonal quantum states and maximum tolerable bit error rates

The general conditions are discussed which quantum state purification protocols have to fulfill in order to be capable of purifying Bell-diagonal qubit-pair states, provided they consist of steps that map Bell-diagonal states to Bell-diagonal states and they finally apply a suitably chosen Calderbank-Shor-Steane code to the outcome of such steps. As a main result a necessary and a sufficient condition on asymptotic correctability are presented, which relate this problem to the magnitude of a characteristic exponent governing the relation between bit and phase errors under the purification steps. These conditions allow a straightforward determination of maximum tolerable bit error rates of quantum key distribution protocols whose security analysis can be reduced to the purification of Bell-diagonal states.