Compared to scribbling mathematical expressions for entangled quantum states on a sheet of paper, producing real entanglement is a tricky task. In the lab, physicists can only claim a prepared quantum state is entangled after it passes an entanglement verification test, and all conventional testing strategies have a major drawback: they destroy the entanglement in the process of certifying it. This means that, post-certification, experimenters must prepare the system in the same state again if they want to use it – but this assumes they trust their source to reliably produce the same state each time.
In a new study, physicists led by Hyeon-Jin Kim from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) found a way around this trust assumption. They did this by refining conventional entanglement certification (EC) strategies in a way that precludes complete destruction of the initial entanglement, making it possible to recover it (albeit with probability < 1) along with its certification.
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