The effects of nonlinear couplings and external magnetic field on the thermal entanglement in a two-spin-qutrit system

We investigate the effects of nonlinear couplings and external magnetic field on the thermal entanglement in a two-spin-qutrit system by applying the concept of negativity. It is found that the nonlinear couplings favor the thermal entanglement creating. Only when the nonlinear couplings ∣K∣ are larger than a certain critical value does the entanglement exist. The dependence of the thermal entanglement in this system on the magnetic field and temperature is also presented. The critical magnetic field increases with the increasing nonlinear couplings constant ∣K∣. And for a fixed nonlinear couplings constant, the critical temperature is independent of the magnetic field B.     

PPLN waveguide for quantum communication

We report on energy-time and time-bin entangled photon-pair sources based on a periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide. Degenerate twin photons at 1 314 nm wavelength are created by spontaneous parametric down-conversion and coupled into standard telecom fibers. Our PPLN waveguide features a very high conversion efficiency of about 10^-6, roughly 4 orders of magnitude more than that obtained employing bulk crystals [#!Tanzilli01a!#]. Even if using low power laser diodes, this engenders a significant probability for creating two pairs at a time - an important advantage for some quantum communication protocols. We point out a simple means to characterize the pair creation probability in case of a pulsed pump. To investigate the quality of the entangled states, we perform photon-pair interference experiments, leading to visibilities of 97% for the case of energy-time entanglement and of 84% for the case of time-bin entanglement. Although the last figure must still be improved, these tests demonstrate the high potential of PPLN waveguide based sources to become a key element for future quantum communication schemes. Received 13 July 2001     

Persistence of quantum information

We study the flip-processes in a two-level system, which is triggered by the coupling to a classical bath. When the bath is represented by a stochastic field, the time evolution of the density matrix leads to a stochastic equation with a multiplicative noise. Accordingly the Fokker–Planck-equation (FPE) depends on the matrix elements of the underlying density operator. The solution of the FPE can be parametrized in terms of an inherent conserved quantity α, which is interpreted as a measure for the persistence of quantum information. We show that the FPE exhibits a single unique steady state solution different from Boltzmann's law. The exactly computable discrete spectrum of the relaxation times is characterized by two quantum numbers and the ratio of Planck's constant and the coupling strength to the bath. The total entropy is analyzed as function of the quantum number α  . In case of α=1$\alpha =1$ the system is in a pure state whereas for α≠1$\alpha \ne 1$ a mixed state is realized. In case of two, two-level systems, immersed in the common bath, the two noninteracting two-level systems become mutually entangled. The annealed entropy is in that case non-extensive.     

The second law of thermodynamics in the quantum Brownian oscillator at an arbitrary temperature

In the classical limit no work is needed to couple a system to a bath with sufficiently weak coupling strength (or with arbitrarily finite coupling strength for a linear system) at the same temperature. In the quantum domain this may be expected to change due to system-bath entanglement. Here we show analytically that the work needed to couple a single linear oscillator with finite strength to a bath cannot be less than the work obtainable from the oscillator when it decouples from the bath. Therefore, the quantum second law holds for an arbitrary temperature. This is a generalization of the previous results for zero temperature [Ford and O'Connell, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 020402 (2006); Kim and Mahler, Eur. Phys. J. B 54, 405 (2006)]; in the high temperature limit we recover the classical behavior.     

The effect and control on remaining the quantum correlation by the coupling symmetry between qubits and the bath

We study the dynamic evolution of quantum correlation of two interacting coupled qubits system in non-Markov environment, and quantify the quantum correlation using concurrence and quantum discord. We find that although both of them are physical quantities which measure the system characteristics of the quantum correlations, the quantum discord is more robust than concurrence, since it can keep a positive value even when the ESD happens. The quantum correlation of quantum system not only depends on the initial state but also strongly depends on the coupling ways between qubits and environment. For the given initial state, by keeping the coupling between qubits and environment in completely symmetric, we can completely avoid the effect the decoherence influenced on the quantum correlation and effectively prolong the survival time of quantum discord and concurrence. We also find that the stronger the interaction between qubits is, the more conducive the death of the quantum correlation is resisted.     

Monogamy and entanglement in tripartite quantum states

We present an interesting monogamy equation for (2⊗2⊗n)-dimensional pure states, by which a quantity is found to characterize the tripartite entanglement with the GHZ type and W type entanglements as a whole. In particular, we, for the first time, reveals that for any quantum state of a pair of qubits, the difference between the two remarkable entanglement measures, concurrence and negativity, characterizes the W type entanglement of tripartite pure states with the two-qubit state as reduced density.     

Sudden death and birth of entanglement beyond the Markovian approximation

We investigate the entanglement dynamics of two initially entangled qubits interacting independently with two uncorrelated reservoirs beyond the Markovian approximation. Quite different from the Markovian reservoirs [C.E. López, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101 (2008) 080503], we find that entanglement sudden birth (ESB) of the two reservoirs occurs without certain symmetry with respect to the entanglement sudden death (ESD) of the two qubits. A phenomenological interpretation of entanglement revival is also given.     

Quantum communication through anisotropic Heisenberg XY spin chains

We study quantum communication through an anisotropic Heisenberg XY chain in a transverse magnetic field. We find that for some time t and anisotropy parameter γ, one can transfer a state with a relatively high fidelity. In the strong-field regime, the anisotropy does not significantly affect the fidelity while in the weak-field regime the affect is quite pronounced. The most interesting case is the intermediate regime where the oscillation of the fidelity with time is low and the high-fidelity peaks are relatively broad. This would, in principle, allow for quantum communication in realistic circumstances. Moreover, we calculate the purity, or tangle, as a measure of the entanglement between one spin and all the other spins in the chain and find that the stronger the anisotropy and exchange interaction, the more entanglement will be generated for a given time.     

Entanglement in eight-qubit graph states

Any 8-qubit graph state belongs to one of the 101 equivalence classes under local unitary operations within the Clifford group. For each of these classes we obtain a representative which requires the minimum number of controlled-Z gates for its preparation, and calculate the Schmidt measure for the 8-partite split, and the Schmidt ranks for all bipartite splits. This results into an extension to 8 qubits of the classification of graph states proposed by Hein, Eisert, and Briegel [M. Hein, J. Eisert, H.J. Briegel, Phys. Rev. A 69 (2004) 062311].     

Generation of free-travelling four-mode cluster-type entangled coherent states

A new scheme is proposed to generate free-travelling four-mode cluster-type entangled coherent states. Compared with other previously proposed schemes ours is very simple in execution using only one π-cross-Kerr medium, two 50:50 beam-splitters and two π/2-phase-shifters. Despite the setup simplicity, our scheme, unlike the others which are all probabilistic, is efficient with 100% success probability since no measurements are involved at all.