Local conversion of four Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen photon pairs into four-photon polarization-entangled decoherence-free states with non-photon-number-resolving detectors

We propose a linear-optics-based scheme for local conversion of four Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen photon pairs distributed among five parties into four-photon polarization-entangled decoherence-free states using local operations and classical communication. The proposed setup involves simple linear optical elements and non-photon-number-resolving detectors that can only distinguish between the presence and absence of photons, and no information on the exact number of photons can be obtained. This greatly simplifies the experimental realization for linear optical quantum computation and quantum information processing. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America