How much does it cost to teleport?

Abstract

We show that the entropy of entanglement of a state characterizes its ability to teleport. In particular, in order to teleport faithfully an unknown quantum $N$-state, the two users must share an entangled state with at least ${\log }_{2}N$ bits entropy of entanglement. We also note that the maximum capacity for a mixed state $\mathcal{M}$ to teleport equals the maximum amount of entanglement entropy that can be distilled out from $\mathcal{M}$. Our result, therefore, provides an alternative interpretation for entanglement purification.

5 pages, extended abstract submitted to PHYSCOMP96