Continuous-variable entanglement distillation between remote quantum nodes

Abstract

The development of quantum network relies on high-quality entanglement between remote quantum nodes. In reality the unavoidable decoherence limits the quality of entangled quantum nodes, however, entanglement distillation can overcome this problem. Here we propose an experimentally feasible scheme of continuous-variable entanglement generation, storage, and distillation between distant quantum nodes, which only requires the atomic ensemble quantum memory and balanced homodyne detection (BHD). Initially one copy of a bipartite entangled state of light, suffering phase fluctuations during the distributions, is stored in two distant atomic ensembles so that the atomic ensembles are entangled. Within the storage lifetime, by distributing and storing another copy of entangled optical modes in these two atomic ensembles, the distillation on entangled atomic spin waves can be implemented based on the post-selection of the BHD result. Our scheme provides a highly entangled state between remote quantum nodes for downstream applications, and enables the extension to multipartite entanglement distillation in a large-scale quantum network.