Optimal entanglement manipulation via coherent-state transmission

We derive an optimal bound for arbitrary entanglement manipulation based on the transmission of a pulse in coherent states over a lossy channel followed by local operations and unlimited classical communication (LOCC). This stands on a theorem to reduce LOCC via a local unital qubit channel to local filtering. We also present an optimal protocol based on beam splitters and a quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement on photons. Even if we replace the QND measurement with photon detectors, the protocol outperforms known entanglement generation schemes.