Entanglement of a system changes due to interactions with the environment. A typical type of interaction is amplitude damping. If we add a detector to monitor the environment and only select the no-damping outcome, this amplitude damping is modified into a weak measurement. Here we show that the entanglement change of a two-qubit state due to amplitude damping or weak measurement can be probabilistically reversed. For the amplitude-damping case, the entanglement partially recovers under most conditions. For the weak-measurement case, the recovery of the initial entangled state is exact. The reversal procedure involves another weak measurement, preceded and followed by bit flips applied to both qubits. We propose a linear optics scheme for the experimental demonstration of these procedures.

• Received 17 August 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.82.052323