Multipartite entanglement purification using time-bin entanglement

Abstract Multipartite entanglement has been widely employed in quantum information processing. However, the unavoidable noise in quantum channels causes the maximally multipartite entangled state to degrade to the mixed state. In this paper, we propose a highly efficient multipartite entanglement purification protocol (MEPP) for the polarization Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger state. Unlike conventional MEPPs, where two pairs of polluted entanglement are usually required, our protocol only requires one noisy copy of polarization-time-bin hyperentanglement and exploits the time-bin entanglement to purify the polarization entanglement. This feature increases the efficiency of our MEPP. Our MEPP may have potential applications in long-distance quantum communication.