Figure 1

Entanglement distillation by dissipation (a) Distillation setup without communication. (b) Distillation setup including classical communication.Reuse & Permissions

Figure 2

Dissipative distillation according to scheme I without communication [panel (a)] and including classical communication [panels (b)–(d)]. The full red lines show the steady state entanglement of formation (Eof) of system $\mathcal{T}$. The dashed blue lines depict the steady state Eof of the source state $s_1$ if no distillation is performed (a),(c),(d) and during the protocol (b). For better visibility the blue dashed curve is multiplied by a factor 30 in panels b and c. The dotted green lines show the entropy of $s_1$ which is a measure of its mixedness. (a) EoF attainable without communication versus error rate ${\epsilon }_{\mathrm{N}}\equiv {\epsilon }_h={\epsilon }_c={\epsilon }_d$. (b) EoF versus the noise parameter ${\epsilon }_c$. (c) EoF versus error rate ${\epsilon }_{\mathrm{N}}$. The black dotted curve represents the entanglement of the total source system measured in log negativity. (d) EoF versus the parameter $r$.Reuse & Permissions

Figure 3

Building blocks of a dissipative quantum repeater. (a) Noise resistant distillation setup. The process acting on the target system is boosted using several copies of the source system. (b) Continuous entanglement swapping procedure.Reuse & Permissions

Figure 4

Nested steady state quantum repeater scheme. In contrast to common repeater schemes, the levels of the nested protocol are physically present all the time and connected via dissipative processes.Reuse & Permissions