Entanglement distillation is a key primitive for distributing high-quality
entanglement between remote locations. Probabilistic noiseless linear
amplification based on the quantum scissors is a candidate for entanglement
distillation from noisy continuous-variable (CV) entangled states. Being a
non-Gaussian operation, quantum scissors is challenging to analyze. We present
a derivation of the non-Gaussian state heralded by multiple quantum scissors in
a pure loss channel with two-mode squeezed vacuum input. We choose the reverse
coherent information (RCI)---a proven lower bound on the distillable
entanglement of a quantum state under one-way local operations and classical
communication (LOCC), as our figure of merit. We evaluate a Gaussian lower
bound on the RCI of the heralded state. We show that it can exceed the
unlimited two-way LOCCassisted direct transmission entanglement distillation
capacity of the pure loss channel. The optimal heralded Gaussian RCI with two
quantum scissors is found to be significantly more than that with a single
quantum scissors, albeit at the cost of decreased success probability. Our
results fortify the possibility of a quantum repeater scheme for CV quantum
states using the quantum scissors.Comment: accepted for publication in Physical Review
