Criteria for unconditional entanglement purification

Abstract

We show that the fidelity result of advantage distillation (Bennett et al, Phys. Rev. Lett., 76, 722(1996)) is not only for the product state of raw pairs, it is actually correct with whatever form of state of raw pairs. We then give a general theorem for unconditional entanglement purification. This theorem lists the conditions on which the fidelity result of a purification protocol keeps unchanged from product form of raw-pair state and arbitrary form of raw-pair state. Using this theorem, we find that all existing purification puricfication can work for arbitrary initial state of raw pairs.