Purification schemes for multiparticle entangled states cannot be treated as straightforward extensions of those two-particle ones because of the lack of symmetry they possess. We propose purification protocols for a wide range of mixed entangled states of many particles. These are useful for understanding entanglement, and could be of practical significance in multiuser cryptographic schemes or distributed quantum computation and communication. We show that operating locally on multiparticle entangled states directly is more efficient than relying on two-particle purification.

• Received 18 December 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.57.R4075