Single-photon-assisted entanglement concentration of a multiphoton system in a partially entangled W state with weak cross-Kerr nonlinearity

摘要

We propose a nonlocal entanglement concentration protocol (ECP) for N-photon systems in a partially entangled W state, resorting to some ancillary single photons and the parity-check measurement based on cross-Kerr nonlinearity. One party in quantum communication first performs a parity-check measurement on her photon in an Nphoton system and an ancillary photon, and then she picks up the even-parity instance for obtaining the standard W state. When she obtains an odd-parity instance, the system is in a less-entanglement state, and it is the resource in the next round of entanglement concentration. By iterating the entanglement concentration process several times, the present ECP has a total success probability approaching the limit in theory. The present ECP has the advantage of a high success probability. Moreover, the present ECP requires only the N-photon system itself and some ancillary single photons, not two copies of the systems, which decreases the difficulty of its implementation greatly in experiment. It may have good applications in quantum communication in the future.