Entanglement purification in cavity QED using local operations

We study a physical implementation of an entanglement purification protocol using a cavity quantum electrodynamics based proposal, in both the microwave and the optical domain. The protocol consists of local quantum operations of each particle of an entangled system with one auxiliary particle (ancilla). After the above interaction a measurement on ancillas is carried out. In the microwave region the quantum information is stored in field states inside two distant cavities. We also give a procedure for quantifying the degree of entanglement between quantum fields, which allows verifying the efficiency of the purification process. In the optical domain, we study a setup of cold trapped ions inside cavities, where quantum bits are defined by two electronic levels of ions. This latter proposal is extended to create multiparticle entangled states among distant quantum systems. Entanglement is achieved through a set of local measurements on pairs of entangled particles