Lower bounds on bipartite entanglement in noisy graph states

Quantum 10, 2111 (2026). https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2026-05-21-2111 Graph states are a key resource for a number of applications in quantum information theory. Due to the inherent noise in noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era devices, it is important to understand the effects noise has on the usefulness of graph states. We consider a noise model where the initial qubits, prepared in $|+\rangle$ states, undergo depolarizing noise before the application of the CZ operations that generate edges between qubits situated at the nodes of the resulting graph state. For this model we develop a method for calculating the coherent information – a lower bound on the rate at which entanglement can be distilled, across a bipartition of the graph state. We also identify some patterns on how adding more nodes or edges affects the bipartite distillable entanglement. As an application, we find a family of graph states that maintain a strictly positive coherent information for any amount of (non-maximal) depolarizing noise.