Deterministic local doubling of W states

In large quantum systems, multipartite entanglement can be found in many inequivalent classes. Preparing states of arbitrary size in different classes is important for performing a wide range of quantum protocols. W states, in particular, constitute a class with a variety of quantum networking protocols. However, all known schemes for preparing polarization encoded photonic W states are probabilistic, with resource requirements increasing at least sub-exponentially. We propose a deterministic scheme for preparing W states of size of any power of 2, which requires no prior entanglement and can be performed locally. We introduce an all-optical setup that can efficiently double the size of W states of arbitrary size. Our scheme advances the use of W states in real-world quantum networks and could be extended to other physical systems. (C) 2016 Optical Society of Americ