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  • Open Access

Resource state distillation via stabilizer channels

Christopher Popp1,*, Tobias C. Sutter1,†, and Beatrix C. Hiesmayr2,‡

  • 1University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Währingerstrasse 17, 1090 Vienna, Austria
  • 2IT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University, Freistädter Strasse 400, 4040 Linz, Austria

  • *Contact author: christopher.popp@univie.ac.at
  • †Contact author: tobias.christoph.sutter@univie.ac.at
  • ‡Contact author: beatrix.hiesmayr@univie.ac.at
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Phys. Rev. A 114, 012421 – Published 7 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/78nk-n9sm

Abstract

Quantum technologies rely on high-quality resource states, such as maximally entangled or private states, which are indispensable for quantum communication and cryptography. In practice, however, these states are inevitably degraded by noise. Distillation protocols aim to recover high-resource states from multiple imperfect copies, and while stabilizer-based methods have demonstrated high performance in entanglement purification, they have yet to be established for broader tasks such as secret-key distillation. This work introduces a unified framework for stabilizer-based resource distillation in systems of prime local dimension. By formulating stabilizer routines as quantum channels and deriving closed-form expressions for their output, we enable the application of stabilizer operations to general input states and diverse distillation objectives. We identify key invariances in resource measures—such as coherent and private information—and demonstrate how they can be leveraged to significantly reduce the numerical complexity of channel optimization. To illustrate the framework's versatility, we introduce several protocols: gF-IMAX for general fidelity optimization, and (S)CI-IMAX and (S)PI-IMAX for optimizing (smooth) coherent and private information in both asymptotic and one-shot regimes. Our numerical results confirm that these protocols effectively tailor stabilizer channels to specific operational tasks, establishing them as a flexible tool for quantum resource distillation in highly noisy environments.

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Phys. Rev. A 114, 012421– Published 7 July, 2026
  • Received 25 March 2026
  • Accepted 11 June 2026
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