Multipartite entanglement percolation

We present a percolation strategy based on multipartite measurements to propagate entanglement in quantum networks. We consider networks spanned on regular lattices whose bonds correspond to pure but nonmaximally entangled pairs of qubits, with any quantum operation allowed at the nodes. Despite significant effort in the past, improvements over standard ( classical) percolation have been found for only a few lattices, often with restrictions on the initial amount of entanglement in the bonds. In contrast, multipartite entanglement percolation outperform the classical percolation protocols, as well as all previously known quantum ones, over the entire range of initial entanglement and for every lattice that we considered. Finally, we briefly show that our ideas also find application in noisy networks.