Continuous-variable entanglement distillation over a general lossy channel

Abstract

Any continuous-variable distillation protocol that does not change the effective loss of the transmission channel cannot be used to achieve maximum Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen style correlations after distillation. We analyze the continuous-variable entanglement distillation protocol described by [Browne et al., Phys. Rev. A 67, 062320 (2003)] and show that it does not change the effective loss of the transmission of entanglement. We extend this scheme to one which does change the effective transmission coefficient of the channel. Our scheme has the added benefit that the states generated exhibit isotropic noise which is best suited to applications of continuous-variable entanglement such as continuous-variable teleportation.