# Local environment can enhance fidelity of quantum teleportation

## I Introduction

Quantum teleportation  is fundamentally important as an operational test of the presence and the strength of entanglement. Moreover, a recent series of beautiful experiments , which realized teleportation in practice, opened a window for a wide range of its possible technological applications.

In this paper, teleportation is understood as any strategy which uses local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC)  to transmit an unknown state via a shared pair. In an ideal teleportation scheme, the EPR-channel is constituted by a pure, maximally entangled bipartite state:

$$\psi _{}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|01|10).$$
(1)   
The state is shared by a sender (Alice) and a receiver (Bob). By sharing $`\psi _{}`$ with Alice, Bob can produce an exact replica of another (input) state originally held by Alice. In reality, however, interactions with the environment and imperfections of preparation result in Alice and Bob sharing a state which is always mixed. Consequently, at Bob’s end, the teleported state can only be a distorted copy of the input initially held by Alice. Moreover, if the bipartite state is mixed too much, it will not provide for any better transmission fidelity than that of an ordinary classical communication channel . To do better than a classical channel, the shared quantum state must be entangled. A natural question then is : can any entangled state provide better than classical fidelity of teleportation?

Early attempts to answer this question, concentrated on the characterization of the states which can offer non-classical fidelity within the original teleportation scheme supplemented by local unitary rotations. Henceforth we will call such a scheme the standard teleportation scheme (STS). Fidelity of teleportation achievable in STS is uniquely determined by the bipartite state’s fully entangled fraction. It was defined in  as

$$f(\varrho )=\underset{\psi }{\mathrm{max}}\psi |\varrho \psi .$$
(2)   
In the definition, the maximum is taken over all maximally entangled states $`\psi `$ i.e. over $`\psi =U_1U_2\psi _+`$, where

$$\psi _+=\frac{1}{\sqrt{d}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}|i|i$$
(3)   
$`U_1`$ and $`U_2`$ are unitary transformations. Later, it was shown that in order to be useful for STS, the states acting on a Hilbert space $`C^dC^d`$ must have $`f>1/d`$ . Moreover, it was shown that no bound entangled state (see ) can offer better fidelity than classical communication . Somewhat earlier, in Refs. , the authors identified a class of states which do not permit any increase of $`f`$, neither by any trace preserving (TP) LOCC nor even by some less restricted non-TP LOCC actions. Mixtures of a maximally mixed state and $`\psi _+`$  belong, among others, to this class.

One could then be tempted to speculate that $`f`$ could not be increased by any TP LOCC operations. If so, then STS would be a unique teleportation scheme in the sense that no other scheme would provide better fidelity than STS. On the other hand, one could still suspect that by some intelligent, sophisticated LOCC operation, Alice and Bob would be able to increase $`f`$ for some states anyway. An important question was then to be answered:

Is it possible to design a teleportation scheme, for which at least some states with $`f1/d`$ would give non-classical fidelity? 

In this paper, we answer this question by presenting a class of two-qubit states with $`f1/2`$, which can, nevertheless, be used for teleportation with non-classical fidelity. For that, however, one has to allow for some dissipative interaction between the states and their local environment first. This means that dissipation, which is usually associated with decoherence and destruction of teleportation, increases $`f`$ of some initially non-teleporting states to above $`1/2`$. In other words, some states can produce non-classical fidelity within the original teleportation scheme but only after being ’corrupted’ by the environment !

To our knowledge, this is a previously unknown effect. In particular, it is different than that used in the so called filtering method of improving some of the states’ parameters . Filtering includes a selection process based on a readout of measurement outcomes. In our examples, on the other hand, Alice and Bob do not need to know the outcomes at all. Hence, in particular, unlike filtering, the actions in our examples are entirely trace preserving.

We begin our presentation by recalling some of the general results on optimal teleportation fidelity in Sect.II(c.f. Ref. ). This allows us to conclude that an optimal teleportation scheme should include maximization of $`f`$ by means of TP LOCC operations. Then, in Sect. III we put the problem in the context of increasing $`f`$ by the maps of the form $`I\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. We can limit the possible successful maps by showing that, e.g., for two qubits, the bistochastic processes cannot do the job. We also show that the states with $`f`$ improvable by $`I\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ action must violate the so called reduction criterion. Subsequently, in Sect. IV we present the examples of states, for which $`f`$ can be non-trivially increased by TP LOCC operations. The paper ends with the summary of the results and the conclusions in Sect. V.

## II Optimal fidelity in a general teleportation scheme

Let Alice and Bob share a pair of particles in a given state $`\varrho `$ acting on a Hilbert space $`_A_B=C^dC^d`$. Additionally, let Alice have a third particle in an unknown pure state $`\psi _C=C^d`$ to be teleported. In the most general teleportation scheme, Bob and Alice apply some trace preserving (TP) (hence without selection of the ensemble) LOCC operation $`𝒯`$ to the particles which they share and to the third (Alice’s) particle. After the operation is completed, the final state of Bob’s particle (from the pair) is

$$\varrho _{Bob}^\psi =\mathrm{Tr}_{A,C}\left[𝒯(|\psi \psi |\varrho )\right].$$
(4)   
The resulting mapping of the input state (the state of the third particle) onto $`\varrho _{Bob}(\psi )`$ establishes a teleportation channel $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ (it depends on both, $`𝒯`$ and $`\varrho `$):

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }(|\psi \psi |)=\varrho _{Bob}(\psi ).$$
(5)   
The aim of teleportation is to bring $`\varrho _{Bob}(\psi )`$ as close to $`|\psi \psi |`$ as possible. A useful measure of the quality of teleportation is then provided by teleportation’s fidelity 

$$=\overline{\psi |\varrho _{Bob}(\psi )|\psi }.$$
(6)   
Fidelity is a function of map $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and, like $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, it depends on both, teleporting state $`\varrho `$ and the strategy of teleportation $`𝒯`$ . One can show  that in the standard teleportation scheme, the maximal fidelity achievable from a given bipartite state $`\varrho `$ is

$$=\frac{fd+1}{d+1}$$
(7)   
where $`f`$ is the fully entangled fraction of $`\rho `$ given by formula (2). To achieve this fidelity, Alice and Bob have to rotate their respective parts of the teleporting state $`\rho `$ so that the maximum of formula (2) is attained on singlet $`\psi _{}`$. The original teleportation scheme applied with the rotated bipartite state $`\rho `$ will now produce the maximal fidelity (8).

If, on the other hand, Alice and Bob do not share any quantum state, then their best strategy is :

1. Alice performs an optimal measurement of the system to be teleported and sends the outcome to Bob (classically).
2. On the basis of her results, Bob tries to reconstruct the state.

The optimal teleportation fidelity for this strategy is equal to the optimal fidelity of the state estimation for a single system. It is given by 

$$_{cl}=\frac{2}{1+d}.$$
(8)   
One can easily see now that, in order to perform better than classical communication, STS needs bipartite states with $`f>1/d`$. With $`f1/d`$, Alice and Bob can just as well discard their bipartite state and communicate classically.

There is no reason why STS should represent the most efficient teleportation scheme using states with $`f>1/d`$. One can show, however, that the optimal teleportation scheme (OTS) is a generalization of STS . OTS consists of two steps:

1. Alice and Bob try to maximize $`f`$ by applying TP LOCC (not necessarily unitary) operations to the original state $`\varrho `$.
2. They apply STS using the transformed state.

Let then $`f_{max}(\varrho )`$ denote the maximal $`f`$ attainable from $`\varrho `$ by means of TP LOCC operations. The maximal teleportation fidelity from state $`\varrho `$ is then given by 

$$_{max}=\frac{f_{max}d+1}{d+1}.$$
(9)   
Thus, to find the optimal teleportation fidelity for a given bipartite state $`\rho `$, one must find $`f_{max}`$. In other words, the fidelity of STS can be improved if:

1. $`f`$ can be increased by LOCC,
2. The final $`f`$ is in quantum region i.e. it is greater than $`1/d`$.

Henceforth, when referring to a process of increasing $`f`$, we will understand it as increasing so that the final value is above $`1/d`$ (Within the range $`f1/d`$, the fully entangled fraction can be increased relatively easily. This, however, does not produce any better fidelity than $`_{cl}`$).

## III Some general results on improving $``$ by local intractions

### A A simplified formula for maximal $`f`$ attainable by local interaction

When local TP transformations are used to increase $`f`$ of a general bipartite state $`\varrho C^dC^d`$, then the best attainable result is

$$f_A=\underset{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\mathrm{max}}\text{Tr}\left((\mathrm{\Lambda }I)\varrho P_+\right).$$
(10)   
The maximum is here taken over all TP completely positive (CP) maps $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`P_+=|\psi _+\psi _+|`$, with $`\psi _+`$ given by (3). Stinespring decomposition of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ gives 

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }()=\underset{i}{}V_i()V_i^{}$$
(11)   
with $`_iV_i^{}V_i=I`$. Moreover, we can utilize the fact that $`AI\psi _+=IA^T\psi _+`$  (superscript $`T`$ denotes transposition in basis $`\left\{|i\right\}`$) and rewrite formula (10) as

$$f_A=\underset{\mathrm{\Gamma }}{\mathrm{max}}\text{Tr}\left(\varrho (I\mathrm{\Gamma })P_+\right),$$
(12)   
with

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }()=\underset{i}{}W_i()W_i^{}$$
(13)   
and $`W_i=V_i^{}`$ (the star denotes complex conjugation). Naturally, like $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is trace preserving, too.

We can now recall that there is an isomorphism between the TP CP maps and the bipartite states with one subsystem maximally mixed. The isomorphism is given by

$$\varrho ^{}=(I\mathrm{\Lambda })P_+.$$
(14)   
Thus, for any TP CP map, the corresponding state has a maximally mixed subsystem $`A`$ and for any state with a maximally mixed subsystem $`A`$, there exists a map that realizes it via the above formula. Consequently, we can obtain the following form for $`f_A`$

$$f_A(\varrho )=\underset{\varrho ^{}}{\mathrm{max}}\text{Tr}(\varrho \varrho ^{}),$$
(15)   
where the maximum is taken over all states $`\varrho ^{}`$ with maximally mixed subsystem $`A`$. An analogous formula holds for $`f_B`$. In general, the values $`f_A`$ and $`f_B`$ are likely to be different from one another.

Formula (15) allows for identification of those maps which definitely cannot improve $`f`$. Take, for instance, the maps describing the action of random external fields . They are of the form

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }()=\underset{i}{}p_iU_i()U_i^{},$$
(16)   
with $`U_i`$ denoting unitary transformations. The corresponding $`\varrho ^{}=(I\mathrm{\Lambda })P_+`$ is a mixture of maximally entangled vectors. Consequently, $`\text{Tr}(\varrho \varrho ^{})`$ cannot exceed $`f(\varrho )`$ which is equal to the maximal overlap of $`\varrho `$ with one maximally entangled vector.

In addition to preserving trace, maps (16) preserve the identity, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(I)=I`$. Maps preserving both the trace and the identity are called bistochastic. In general, the class of bistochastic maps can be wider than the class specified by (16). For two qubits, however, the two classes coincide. To see this, one can note that, in general, the set of states corresponding to the set of bistochastic maps via the isomorphism consists of the states with both subsystems maximally mixed. For two-qubit systems such states are mixtures of maximally entangled vectors . Each such vector can be written as $`IU\psi _+`$ for some unitary $`U`$. Hence, the maps corresponding to mixtures of such vectors are mixtures of unitary maps. Thus, for two qubits the bistochastic maps cannot increase $`f`$. One may conjecture that this should be the case in higher dimensions, too.

### B Increasing $`f`$ by local actions and the reduction criterion for separability

Let us now derive some constraints for the states with $`f`$ improvable by local interaction. A state suitable for a teleportation channel must be entangled, i.e., it must be impossible to represent it by a mixture of product states .

$$\varrho \underset{i}{}p_i\varrho _i\stackrel{~}{\varrho }_i.$$
(17)   
Such states violate different separability criteria. Here, we consider the so called reduction criterion for separability. It is given by the following conditions satisfied by all separable states :

$$\varrho _AI\varrho 0,I\varrho _B\varrho 0.$$
(18)   
The inequalities mean that the operators on the left hand sides must be positive, i.e., they must have nonnegative eigenvalues only. In a two-qubit case, the reduction criterion is equivalent to separability (hence it is also a sufficient condition for separability), while it becomes a weaker “detector” of entanglement in higher dimensions. In other words, there exist non-separable (entangled) states in higher dimensions which do not violate the reduction criterion.

Suppose now that for some state $`\varrho `$ one has $`f_A(\varrho )>f(\varrho )`$, i.e., $`f`$ can be improved by a local TP operation on subsystem $`A`$. Naturally, we require that the improvement is non-trivial, i.e., $`f_A>1/d`$. We will show now that this condition implies violation of the reduction criterion. Indeed, since $`f_A>1/d`$, then there exists a state $`\varrho ^{}`$ whose one subsystem (say, $`\varrho _A^{}`$) has maximal entropy and:

$$\text{Tr}(\varrho \varrho ^{})>1/d.$$
(19)   
Maximum entropy means that $`\varrho _A^{}=I/d`$. This implies $`\text{Tr}((\varrho _AI)\varrho ^{})=\text{Tr}\left(\varrho _A\varrho _A^{}\right)=1/d`$. By putting this into inequality (19), we obtain

$$\text{Tr}\left((\varrho _AI\varrho )\varrho ^{}\right)<0$$
(20)   
The trace of a composition of two positive operators is nonnegative. Operator $`\varrho ^{}`$ is positive. Consequently, in order to satisfy the last inequality, the operator $`\varrho _AI\varrho `$ cannot be positive.

Since all the entangled two-qubit states violate the reduction criterion, the condition for improvability of $`f`$ derived above, does not put any new restrictions on the class of states with improvable $`f`$ here . Nevertheless, the condition should be useful while investigating bipartite states in more dimensions. This is because not all the entangled states there violate the reduction criterion.

## IV Beating the standard teleportation scheme

Before showing how to do better than STS, we will still need to introduce some methods of dealing with the fully entangled fraction of two-qubit states.

### A Fully entangled fraction in the Hilbert-Schmidt representation

An arbitrary state of a two-qubit system can be represented as

$$\varrho =\frac{1}{4}(II+𝒓\mathbf{}𝝈I+I𝒔\mathbf{}𝝈+\underset{m,n=1}{\overset{3}{}}t_{nm}\sigma _n\sigma _m).$$
(21)   
Here, $`I`$ stands for the identity operator, $`𝒓`$ and $`𝒔`$ belong to $`R^3`$, $`\{\sigma _n\}_{n=1}^3`$ are standard Pauli matrices, $`𝒓\mathbf{}𝝈=_{i=1}^3r_i\sigma _i`$. Coefficients $`t_{mn}=\mathrm{Tr}(\rho \sigma _n\sigma _m)`$ form a real $`3\times 3`$ matrix later denoted by $`T`$. Note that $`𝒓`$ and $`𝒔`$ are local parameters as they determine the reductions of $`\varrho `$:

$`\varrho _1`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{Tr}__2\varrho ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(I+𝒓\mathbf{}𝝈),`$ (22)   
$`\varrho _2`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{Tr}__1\varrho ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(I+𝒔\mathbf{}𝝈).`$ (23)   
Matrix $`T`$ , on the other hand, is responsible for the correlations

$$E(𝒂,𝒃)\text{Tr}(\varrho 𝒂\mathbf{}𝝈𝒃\mathbf{}𝝈)=(𝒂,T𝒃).$$
(24)   
One can notice now, that for any two-qubit state $`\varrho `$, one can find a product unitary transformation $`U_1U_2`$ which will transform $`\varrho `$ to a form with diagonal $`T`$. This statement follows from the fact that for any $`2\times 2`$ unitary transformation $`U`$, there is a unique $`3\times 3`$ rotation $`O`$ such that 

$$U\widehat{𝒏}\mathbf{}𝝈U^{}=(O\widehat{𝒏})\mathbf{}𝝈.$$
(25)   
Now, if a state is subjected to a $`U_1U_2`$ transformation, the parameters $`𝒓,𝒔`$ and $`T`$ are transformed into

$`𝒓^{}=O_1𝒓,`$ (26)   
$`𝒔^{}=O_2𝒔,`$ (27)   
$`T^{}=O_1TO_2^{}.`$ (28)   
with $`O_i`$’s corresponding to $`U_i`$’s via formula (25). Thus, for every two-qubit state $`\rho `$, we can always find such $`U_1`$ and $`U_2`$ so that the corresponding rotations will diagonalize $`T`$ . Moreover, by selecting suitable rotations, one can make $`t_{11}`$ and $`t_{22}`$ non-positive. In what follows, the states with diagonal $`T`$ and $`t_{11},t_{22}0`$ will be called canonical.

For the states with diagonal matrix $`T`$ (hence also for the canonical states), the fully entangled fraction is given by (c.f.)

$$f=\{\begin{array}{c}\frac{1}{4}(1+_i|t_{ii}|)\mathrm{if}\mathrm{det}T0\hfill \\ \frac{1}{4}\left(1+\mathrm{max}_{ikj}(|t_{ii}|+|t_{jj}||t_{kk}|)\right)\mathrm{if}\mathrm{det}T>0\hfill \end{array}.$$
(29)   
One can show now  that if $`\mathrm{det}T0`$, then $`f1/2`$, i.e., $`f`$ belongs to the classical region. Thus, while analyzing $`f`$ in the quantum region, it will be convenient to investigate a relatively simple function $`N(\varrho )`$, instead of a more involved matrix $`T`$. Function $`N(\varrho )`$ is given by

$$N(\varrho )=\underset{i}{}|t_{ii}|.$$
(30)   
It has the following important properties:

1. $`f(\varrho )=\frac{1}{4}(1+N(\varrho ))`$ for $`f\frac{1}{2}`$
2. $`N(\varrho )1`$ if and only if $`f\frac{1}{2}`$

It then contains all the information necessary to analyze $`f`$.

### B The canonical form in terms of the matrix elements

By applying the formula for $`t_{ij}`$, one can easily show that diagonality of $`T`$ is equivalent to the following conditions for the matrix elements of $`\varrho `$ written in the standard basis ($`|1=|00`$, $`|2=|01`$ etc.):

$`\varrho _{12}=\varrho _{34}`$ (31)   
$`\varrho _{14}=\varrho _{32}`$ (32)   
$`\varrho _{23}\text{ and }\varrho _{14}\text{ are real}.`$ (33)   
Moreover, since $`t_{11}=2(\varrho _{14}+\varrho _{23})`$ and $`t_{22}=2(\varrho _{23}\varrho _{14})`$, the condition $`t_{11},t_{22}0`$ is equivalent to

$`\varrho _{23}0`$ (34)   
$`|\varrho _{23}|\left|\varrho _{14}\right|`$ (35)   
Thus, any state $`\varrho `$ can be locally rotated to a form with matrix elements satisfying the above constraints. This gives the following expression for $`N(\varrho )`$:

$$N(\varrho )=|12(\varrho _{22}+\varrho _{33})|2\varrho _{23}.$$
(36)   
Now, for

$$\varrho _{22}+\varrho _{33}\frac{1}{2}$$
(37)   
we have $`t_{33}0`$ hence $`\mathrm{det}T0`$. Consequently, by eq. (29) the fully entangled fraction is given by

$$f(\varrho )=\frac{1}{4}(1+N(\varrho ))=\frac{1}{2}(\varrho _{22}+\varrho _{33}2\varrho _{23}).$$
(38)   
Then, with $`2\varrho _{23}`$ large enough, one has $`f1/2`$ and $`f`$ is attained on singlet $`\psi _{}`$: $`f=\psi _{}|\varrho |\psi _{}`$.

### C A local action which improves $`f`$.

With the canonical form of $`\varrho `$ at hand, it is not all that difficult to eventually find examples of states with improvable $`f`$. After some trials, we focused our attention on a simple family of states which in their canonical form have $`\varrho _{24}=\varrho _{13}=0`$:

$$\varrho =\left[\begin{array}{cccc}\varrho _{11}& 0& 0& \varrho _{14}\\ 0& \varrho _{22}& p_{23}& 0\\ 0& p_{23}& \varrho _{33}& 0\\ \varrho _{14}& 0& 0& \varrho _{44}\end{array}\right]$$
(39)   
Here $`p_{23}0`$ and $`\varrho _{14}`$ is real. We assumed also that $`\varrho `$ satisfies the condition (37) and that $`p_{23}(1\varrho _{22}\varrho _{33})/2`$, so that the state has $`f=\psi _{}|\varrho |\psi _{}1/2`$. Explicitly, $`f`$ is given by

$$f(\varrho )=\frac{1}{2}(\varrho _{22}+\varrho _{33}+2p_{23}).$$
(40)   
We know (see Sec.III) that bistochastic maps cannot improve $`f`$. So, to improve it, we must try a non-bistochastic map. A possible simple candidate is, e.g., a map which acts on Bob’s qubit and transforms it as follows:

$$\varrho _B\stackrel{~}{\varrho }_B=\mathrm{\Lambda }(\varrho )=W_0\varrho _BW_0^{}+W_1\varrho _BW_1^{}$$
(41)   
where the operators $`W_i`$ are given by

$$W_1=\left[\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& \sqrt{p}\end{array}\right],W_2=\left[\begin{array}{cc}0& \sqrt{1p}\\ 0& 0\end{array}\right]$$
(42)   
It is easy to check that $`W_i`$’s satisfy $`W_1^{}W_1+W_2^{}W_2=I`$, hence the operation is trace preserving. Moreover, one can notice that $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ can be regarded as resulting from the interaction of a two-level atom (Bob’s qubit) with electromagnetic field (an environment). Such an interaction produces the following transitions:

$$|0_a|0_e|0_a|0_e$$
(43)   
$$|1_a|0_e\sqrt{p}|0_a|1_e+\sqrt{1p}|1_a|0_e.$$
(44)   
where the subscripts $`a`$ and $`e`$ denote atomic and field states respectively. The parameter $`p`$ is then interpreted as the probability of photon emission from the atom in its upper state $`|1_a`$. This kind of interaction is called the amplitude damping channel and one can check  that, if repeatedly applied to a qubit, it produces an exponential decay characteristic to spontaneous emission. The completely positive map $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is then obtained from the amplitude damping channel by tracing out the environment variables .

Let us then put $`\sqrt{p}=\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ and apply transformation (41) to Bob’s part of the total (2-qubit) system. The 2-qubit operator corresponding to $`W_i`$ is $`A_iIW_i`$ and, consequently, we obtain

$$\varrho \varrho ^{}=A_1\varrho A_1^{}+A_2\varrho A_2^{}$$
(45)   
with

$$A_1=\left[\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& \mathrm{cos}\theta & 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \mathrm{cos}\theta \end{array}\right]$$
(46)   
and

$$A_2=\left[\begin{array}{cccc}0& \mathrm{sin}\theta & 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \mathrm{sin}\theta \\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right].$$
(47)   
Note that like the original state $`\varrho `$, the new state $`\stackrel{~}{\varrho }`$ is in its canonical form, too.

$$\stackrel{~}{\varrho }=\left[\begin{array}{cccc}\varrho _{11}+\varrho _{22}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta & 0& 0& \varrho _{14}\mathrm{cos}\theta \\ 0& \varrho _{22}\mathrm{cos}^2\theta & p_{23}\mathrm{cos}^2\theta & 0\\ 0& p_{23}\mathrm{cos}^2\theta & \varrho _{33}+\varrho _{44}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta & 0\\ \varrho _{14}\mathrm{cos}\theta & 0& 0& \varrho _{44}\mathrm{cos}^2\theta \end{array}\right]$$
(48)   
The change of $`f`$ associated with the transformation is now given by $`\mathrm{\Delta }_B=\psi _{}|\stackrel{~}{\varrho }|\psi _{}f(\varrho )`$. A simple calculation shows that

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_B=\left(1\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\left[\frac{1+\mathrm{cos}\theta }{2}\left(\varrho _{44}\varrho _{22}\right)p_{23}\right].$$
(49)   
Here, the index $`B`$ indicates that Bob’s qubit has been transformed. One can check that if one transforms Alice’s qubit instead of Bob’s then the resulting $`\mathrm{\Delta }_A`$ is given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_A=\left(1\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\left[\frac{1+\mathrm{cos}\theta }{2}\left(\varrho _{44}\varrho _{33}\right)p_{23}\right].$$
(50)   
Finally, one can swap places of $`1`$ and $`\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ on the diagonal of the first transformation matrix $`A_1`$ and adjust $`A_2`$ accordingly. This, translated into changes of $`f`$, result in expressions like (49) and (50) but with $`\varrho _{44}`$ substituted by $`\varrho _{11}`$. In other words, single qubit, trace preserving transformations like that defined by (45) can improve fidelity of states in form (29) provided that

$$\left[\mathrm{max}(\varrho _{11},\varrho _{44})\mathrm{min}(\varrho _{22},\varrho _{33})\right]p_{23}0.$$
(51)   
The maximal increase $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\mathrm{max}\{\mathrm{\Delta }_A,\mathrm{\Delta }_B\}`$ achievable in this way is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=\frac{\left[\mathrm{max}(\varrho _{11},\varrho _{44})\mathrm{min}(\varrho _{22},\varrho _{33})p_{23}\right]^2}{2\left[\mathrm{max}(\varrho _{11},\varrho _{44})\mathrm{min}(\varrho _{22},\varrho _{33})\right]}$$
(52)   
To obtain a more clear picture of the situation, let us write the diagonal elements of $`\varrho `$ as:

$$\varrho _{11}=\frac{1\epsilon \gamma }{4}\varrho _{44}=\frac{1\epsilon +\gamma }{4}$$
(53)   
$$\varrho _{22}=\frac{1+\epsilon \delta }{4}\varrho _{33}=\frac{1+\epsilon +\delta }{4}$$
(54)   
To satisfy $`\left(\varrho _{22}+\varrho _{33}+2p_{23}\right)1`$ (so that $`f(\varrho )=\psi _{}|\varrho |\psi _{}1/2`$), one needs a non-negative $`\epsilon `$ and :

$$\frac{1\epsilon }{4}p_{23}\frac{1}{4}\sqrt{\left(1+\epsilon \right)^2\delta ^2}.$$
(55)   
(the upper limit for $`p_{23}`$ guaranties positivity of $`\varrho `$). Thus, the method improves $`f`$ on states with $`0<\epsilon <1`$ and $`\left|\gamma \right|+\left|\delta \right|2\epsilon >4p_{23}`$. One can easily check that in this class, the ”most improvable” border state ($`4p_{23}=1\epsilon `$, i.e., $`f=1/2`$) is

$$\varrho =\frac{1}{2}\left[\begin{array}{cccc}0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 32\sqrt{2}& 1\sqrt{2}& 0\\ 0& 1\sqrt{2}& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 2\sqrt{2}2\end{array}\right]$$
(56)   
Since $`f(\varrho )=1/2`$ then standard teleportation scheme using $`\varrho `$ does not offer any better fidelity than classical. On the other hand, if we transform $`\varrho `$ by transformation (45) with $`\mathrm{cos}\theta =(\sqrt{2}1)/(4\sqrt{2}5)`$ (this choice maximizes $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$), then the new state still satisfies the condition (37), and we obtain $`f(\stackrel{~}{\varrho })0.53>1/2`$. The new state can than be used for teleportation with non-classical fidelity

$$\frac{2.06}{3}>\frac{2}{3}$$
(57)   
In other words, the state $`\varrho `$ gets “better” when corrupted by environment. The improvement is small, nevertheless it is significant. It changes the character of the state: from non-teleporting to teleporting.

While analyzing this result, one may notice that the states with the fully entangled fraction improvable by the map (45) form a rather restricted class. In particular, this map cannot increase the entangled fraction of states like

$`\varrho ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}|\psi _{}\psi _{}|+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}|0000|.`$

It would then be very interesting to provide a complete characterization the class of states which allow to improve fidelity by some local process, as well as the class of local processes capable to improve fidelity for some states. This task is, however, beyond the scope of this paper.

## V Conclusions

We have examined the problem of optimal teleportation fidelity with given bipartite quantum states. To this end, we investigated a possibility of increasing the fully entangled fraction by means of trace preserving LOCC operations and discovered a class of LOCC operations which non-trivially increase $`f`$ on some of the two-qubit states. To a surprise, the successful operations do not represent any sophisticated action of Alice or Bob. Instead, they result from a common (dissipative) interaction between the teleporting state and the local environment. The unexpected conclusion then is that a dissipative interaction, normally associated with the destruction of quantum teleportation, can sometimes facilitate it.

P.B. acknowledges stimulating discussions with Richard Bonner and Benjamin Baumslag. M.H., P.H. and R.H. are supported by Polish Committee for Scientific Research, contract No. 2 P03B 103 16. P.B. is partially supported by Svenska Institutet, project ML2000.