Abstract
We propose a framework to analyze linear optical circuits based on an analogy with stabilizer formalism in quantum circuits, which provides efficiently computable formulas related to state discriminations. Hence, we analyze a Bell-state discrimination scheme with linear optics and ancillary single photons. With an increasing number of ancilla photons, the success probability of Bell-state discrimination has a maximum of 403/512 ≃ 0.787 at 28 ancilla photons. By contrast, the corresponding two-qubit measurement asymptotically approaches a maximally entangling measurement.