Optimality of universal conclusive entanglement purification protocols
Abstract
Entanglement purification is essential for quantum technologies; yet, rigorous bounds on the success probability for universal protocols -- those requiring no prior knowledge about the input state -- have remained underexplored. We establish such fundamental limits for conclusive protocols distilling perfect Bell states from a pure two-qubit states by deriving the optimal success probability starting with: two copies of a state with known Schmidt basis, and four copies of a state with unknown Schmidt basis. We prove that a known protocol achieves these bounds, confirming its optimality. Crucially, universality imposes an inherent efficiency trade-off, yielding an average success probability of just over Haar measure.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.09423,
title = {Optimality of universal conclusive entanglement purification protocols},
author = {Alexandre C. Orthey and Aby Philip and Tulja Varun Kondra and Alexander Streltsov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.09423},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
5 pages + 2 pages of end matter, 3 figures