Channel estimation with noisy entanglement

We analyze the Pauli-channel estimation with mixed nonseparable states. It turns out that within a specific range entanglement can serve as a nonclassical resource. However, this range is rather small, that is entanglement is not very robust for this application. We further show that Werner states yield the best result of all Bell diagonal states with the same amount of entanglement. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.