Efficient entanglement concentration for arbitrary less-entangled NOON state assisted with single photon

We put forward two efficient entanglement concentration protocols (ECPs) for distilling the maximally entangled NOON state from arbitrary less-entangled NOON state with only an auxiliary single photon. With the help of the weak cross-Kerr nonlinearities, both the two ECPs can be used repeatedly to get a high success probability. In the first ECP, the auxiliary single photon should be shared by the two parties say Alice and Bob. In the second ECP, the auxiliary single photon is only possessed by Bob, which can greatly increase the practical success probability by avoiding the transmission loss. Moreover, Bob can operate the whole protocol alone, which makes the protocol more simple. Therefore, our two ECPs, especially the second ECP may be more useful and convenient in the current quantum information processing.
Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures