Scheme for linear optical preparation of a type of four-photon entangled state with conventional photon detectors

We propose a simple experimental scheme to prepare a type of four-photon entangled state |χ〉 that has many interesting entanglement properties and possible applications in quantum information processing with a certain success probability. The proposed setup involves only simple linear optical devices, a single-photon polarization state, three pairs of two-photon polarization entangled states, and the conventional photon detectors that cannot distinguish a single photon from two or more photons, which greatly simplify the experimental realization of the scheme.     

Two-photon imaging with thermal light

We report the first experimental demonstration of two-photon imaging with a pseudothermal source. Similarly to the case of entangled states, a two-photon Gaussian thin lens equation is observed, indicating EPR type correlation in position. We introduce the concepts of two-photon coherent and two-photon incoherent imaging. The differences between the entangled and the thermal cases are explained in terms of these concepts.     

Experimentally testing Hardy's theorem on nonlocality with entangled mixed states

Hardy's theorem on nonlocality has been verified by a series of experiments with two-qubit entangled pure states.However,in this paper we demonstrate the experimental test of the theorem by using the two-photon entangled mixed states.We first investigate the generic logic in Hardy's proof of nonlocality,which can be applied for arbitrary two-qubit mixed polarization entangled states and can be reduced naturally to the well-known logic tested successfully by the previous pure state experiments.Then,the optimized violations of locality for various experimental parameters are delivered by the numerical method.Finally,the logic argued above for testing Hardy's theorem on nonlocality is demonstrated experimentally by using the mixed entangled-photon pairs generated via pumping two type-I BBO crystals.Our experimental results shows that Hardy's proof of nonlocality can also be verified with two-qubit polarization entangled mixed states,with a violation of about 3.4 standard deviations.     

Manipulating quantum states with aspheric lenses

We present an experimental demonstration to manipulate the width and position of the down-converted beam waist. Our results can be used to engineer the two-photon orbital angular momentum (OAM) entangled states (such as concentrating OAM entangled states) and generate Hermite–Gaussian (HG) modes entangled states.     

Generation of multipartite entangled states by cavity QED

We propose the methods of generating multipartite entanglement by considering the interaction of a system of N two-level atoms in M cavities of high quality factor with a strong classical driving field. It is shown that, with the cavity detuning, the applied driving field detuning and vacuum Rabi coupling, we can produce an entangled coherent state in two single-mode cavities and generate the entangled coherent cluster states in two bimodal vacuum cavities. Tuning these parameters also allows us to acquire the anti-Jaynes-Cummings （AJC） interaction, with which we can generate the maximally two-photon entangled states, and the two-atom and the two-photon entangled cluster states.     

Robust long-distance entanglement and a loophole-free bell test with ions and photons

Two trapped ions that are kilometers apart can be entangled by the joint detection of two photons, each coming from one of the ions, in a basis of entangled states. Such a detection is possible with linear optical elements. The use of two-photon interference allows entanglement distribution free of interferometric sensitivity to the path length of the photons. The present method of creating entangled ions also opens up the possibility of a loophole-free test of Bell's inequalities.     

Macroscopic Superpositions and Entanglement of Mesoscopic Squeezed Vacuum States in Dissipative Cavity QED System

A scheme has been proposed for generating the macroscopic superpositions and the entanglement between the mesoscopic squeezed vacuum states by considering the two-photon interaction of N two-level atoms in a dissipative cavity with high quality factor assisted by a strong driving field. A number of multiparty entangled states between the atoms and the squeezed vacuum states, among the atoms, and among the squeezed vacuum states, can be prepared by virtue of a specific choice of the cavity detuning and the detuning of applied coherent field under the dissipation condition. The corresponding analytical expressions of the influence can be given. Moreover, we can also give a series of macroscopic entangled states between the usual coherent states and the squeezed vacuum states using the combination of the dissipative one-photon interaction Hamiltonian with the dissipative two-photon interaction Hamiltonian. We also discuss the experimental feasibility. Our scheme can be realized in the current techniques on the cavity QED.     

Optical realization of optimal symmetric real state quantum cloning machine

We present an experimentally uniform linear optical scheme to implement the optimal 1→2 symmetric and optimal 1→3 symmetric economical real state quantum cloning machine of the polarization state of the single photon. This scheme requires single-photon sources and two-photon polarization entangled state as input states. It also involves linear optical elements and three-photon coincidence. Then we consider the realistic realization of the scheme by using the parametric down-conversion as photon resources. It is shown that under certain condition, the scheme is feasible by current experimental technology.     

Practical scheme for non-postselection entanglement concentration using linear optical elements

We report a practical non-postselection entanglement concentration scheme in which a maximally entangled Bell-state photon pair is produced from two pairs of partially (or non-maximally) entangled photons. Since this scheme is built only upon linear optical elements and does not require photon-number resolving detectors, it has immediate applications in experimental implementations of various quantum information protocols which require two-photon Bell-states.     

Quantum Authencryption with Two-Photon Entangled States for Off-Line Communicants

In this paper, a quantum authencryption protocol is proposed by using the two-photon entangled states as the quantum resource. Two communicants Alice and Bob share two private keys in advance, which determine the generation of two-photon entangled states. The sender Alice sends the two-photon entangled state sequence encoded with her classical bits to the receiver Bob in the manner of one-step quantum transmission. Upon receiving the encoded quantum state sequence, Bob decodes out Alice’s classical bits with the two-photon joint measurements and authenticates the integrity of Alice’s secret with the help of one-way hash function. The proposed protocol only uses the one-step quantum transmission and needs neither a public discussion nor a trusted third party. As a result, the proposed protocol can be adapted to the case where the receiver is off-line, such as the quantum E-mail systems. Moreover, the proposed protocol provides the message authentication to one bit level with the help of one-way hash function and has an information-theoretical efficiency equal to 100 %.     

Experimental realization of deterministic entanglement transformations of bipartite pure states

We experimentally realize a kind of entanglement transformations of bipartite pure states with 100% efficiency. The protocol employs two-outcome positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) and can transform two-photon maximally entangled state to any two-photon entangled pure state with 100% efficiency. The average fidelity of all output states is 96%. Moreover, the scheme to implement arbitrary POVM on single-photon polarization state is also discussed. In principle, our setup can be applied to any kind of entanglement transformations of two-qubit entangled states to achieve optimal successful probability.     

Generation and characterization of Werner states and maximally entangled mixed states by a universal source of entanglement

We present a novel technique for generating two-photon polarization mixed states of any structure, which is based on the peculiar spatial characteristics of a high brilliance source of entangled pairs. Werner states and maximally entangled mixed states, two well-known families of mixed states important for quantum information, have been created and fully characterized by this technique. We have also investigated and tested the nonlocal properties of these states.     

Direct measurement of the concurrence for two-photon polarization entangled pure states by parity-check measurements

We present a protocol for directly measuring the concurrence of a two-photon polarization entangled pure or mixed state without prior quantum state tomography. By parity-check measurements and simple operations on two copies of the two-photon polarization entangled pure state, the concurrence is encoded in the total probability of picking up the odd parity states from the signal states. This protocol makes use of highly efficient homodyne detection, and it could be feasible in the near future with the help of the weak cross-Kerr nonlinearity. Moreover, our protocol can be used in a distributed fashion to directly determine the entanglement of remote states, which may find its important applications in quantum communication.     

Experimental realization of one-way quantum computing with two-photon four-qubit cluster states

We report an experimental realization of one-way quantum computing on a two-photon four-qubit cluster state. This is accomplished by developing a two-photon cluster state source entangled both in polarization and spatial modes. With this special source, we implemented a highly efficient Grover's search algorithm and high-fidelity two-qubit quantum gates. Our experiment demonstrates that such cluster states could serve as an ideal source and a building block for rapid and precise optical quantum computation.     

Scheme for Implementing Quantum Dense Coding with χ-Type Entangled States in Optical Systems

A novel scheme for realizing dense coding with χ-type entangled states in linear optical system is proposed. In this protocol, Alice encodes her classical information on photons by linear optical elements and sends these photons to Bob. Then Bob performs a sequent single-qubit measurement on all photons in the χ-type entangled state by employing linear optical elements. According to the outcomes of his measurement, Bob can determine what operation Alice performed. The scheme is based on linear optical elements, which is feasible with existing experimental technology.     

Two-photon spectral coherence matrix and characterization of multi-parameter entangled states

In this Letter we discuss how the classical coherence matrix can be generalized to describe the quantum properties of broadband two-photon entangled states. Procedures for experimental evaluation of two-photon matrix elements have been outlined. We illustrate how this formalism can be used for characterization of multi-parameter optical entanglement and discuss its possible applications in quantum optical measurement and quantum coherent control.     

Scheme for Realizing Probabilistic Teleportation of Bipartite Photonic States via Linear Optical Elements

We propose a probabilistic scheme for realizing teleportation of bipartite photonic states using linear optical elements where only requires a two-photon Bell state used as quantum channel. It reduces the requirement of the entanglement of quantum channel, but requires an additional photon and an auxiliary maximally entangled photon pair locally.     

Scheme for Realizing Probabilistic Teleportation of Bipartite Photonic States via Linear Optical Elements

We propose a probabilistic scheme for realizing teleportation of bipartite photonic states using linear optical elements where only requires a two-photon Bell state used as quantum channel. It reduces the requirement of the entanglement of quantum channel, but requires an additional photon and an auxiliary maximally entangled photon pair locally.     

Two-photon path-entangled states in multimode waveguides

We experimentally show that two-photon path-entangled states can be coherently manipulated by multimode interference in multimode waveguides. By measuring the output two-photon spatial correlation function versus the phase of the input state, we show that multimode waveguides perform as nearly ideal multiport beam splitters at the quantum level, creating a large variety of entangled and separable multipath two-photon states.     

Complete entanglement transfer between light and qubits

Using the two-mode two-photon Jaynes-Cummings model, entanglement transfer between atoms and field is studied. It is found that when the field is in state constructed from the two-mode photon number states |00〉,|11〉 or the two-mode squeezed vacuum states, full entanglement exchange can be attained no matter the atoms are initially in pure or mixed states. These investigations show that CV entangled states can act as perfectly as the entangled number states in entangling initially separable atoms. The two-mode two-photon atom-field interaction also provides a simple way for the quantum teleportation of atomic or field states.