Experimental bound entanglement in a four-photon state

Bound entanglement is central to many exciting theoretical results in quantum information processing, but has thus far not been experimentally realized. In this work, we consider a one-parameter family of four-qubit Smolin states. We experimentally produce these states in the polarization of four optical photons produced from parametric down-conversion. Within a range of the parameter, we show that our states are entangled and undistillable, and thus bound entangled. Using these bound-entangled states we demonstrate entanglement unlocking.     

Experimental demonstration of four-photon entanglement and high-fidelity teleportation

We experimentally demonstrate observation of highly pure four-photon GHZ entanglement produced by parametric down-conversion and a projective measurement. At the same time this also demonstrates teleportation of entanglement with very high purity. Not only does the achieved high visibility enable various novel tests of quantum nonlocality, it also opens the possibility to experimentally investigate various quantum computation and communication schemes with linear optics. Our technique can, in principle, be used to produce entanglement of arbitrarily high order or, equivalently, teleportation and entanglement swapping over multiple stages.     

Qutrits and ququarts in spontaneous parametric down-conversion, correlations and entanglement

We investigate features of biphoton qutrits and ququarts with the symmetry of biphoton wavefunctions fully taken into account. Entanglement quantifiers of such states are found as functions of qutrit and ququart parameters. For biphoton qutrits, a general relation between degrees of entanglement and polarization is established. In the case of biphoton ququarts, photon frequencies are considered as variables independent of polarization variables, with both polarization and frequency degrees of freedom equally contributing to the total ququart entanglement. Averaging over one of these two degrees of freedom is shown to reduce pure ququart states to mixed two-qubit states. The degree of polarization and degrees of correlations in mixed polarization states are investigated.     

Experimental violation of local realism by four-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger entanglement

We report the first experimental violation of local realism by four-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) entanglement. In the experiment, the nonstatistical GHZ conflicts between quantum mechanics and local realism are confirmed, within the experimental accuracy, by four specific measurements of polarization correlations between four photons. In addition, our experimental results also demonstrate a strong violation of Mermin-Ardehali-Belinskii-Klyshko inequality by 76 standard deviations. Such a violation can only be attributed to genuine four-photon entanglement.     

基于自发参量下转换源二阶激发过程产生四光子超纠缠态

目前,多光子纠缠态的制备大多通过线性光学器件演化自发参量下转换一阶激发过程产生的纠缠光子对得到.本文考虑由自发参量下转换源二阶激发产生四个不可区分的纠缠光子制备四光子超纠缠态的情况.通过几组分束器、半波片和偏振分束器等线性光学器件设计量子线路演化四光子系统,结合四模符合探测,可得到同时具有偏振纠缠和空间纠缠的四光子超纠缠态.     

Purity and entanglement of two-photon polarization states generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion

We elucidate the dependence of purity and entanglement of two-photon states generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion on the parameters of the source, such as crystal length, pump beam divergence, frequency bandwidth, and detectors angular aperture. The effect of crystal anisotropy is taken into account. Numerical simulations are presented for two types of commonly used source configurations.     

Anisotropically and high entanglement of biphoton states generated in spontaneous parametric down-conversion

We show both theoretically and experimentally that biphoton wave packets generated via spontaneous parametric down-conversion can be strongly anisotropic and highly entangled. The conditions under which these effects exist are found and discussed.     

Direct observation of nonclassical photon statistics in parametric down-conversion

We employ a high quantum efficiency photon number counter to determine the photon number distribution of the output field from a parametric down-converter. The raw photocount data directly demonstrates that the source is nonclassical by 40 standard deviations, and correcting for the quantum efficiency yields a direct observation of oscillations in the photon number distribution.     

Spontaneous parametric down-conversion

Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion (SPDC), also known as parametric fluorescence, parametric noise, parametric scattering and all various combinations of the abbreviation SPDC, is a non-linear optical process where a photon spontaneously splits into two other photons of lower energies. One would think that this article is about particle physics and yet it is not, as this process can occur fairly easily on a day to day basis in an optics laboratory. Nowadays, SPDC is at the heart of many quantum optics experiments for applications in quantum cryptography, quantum simulation, quantum metrology but also for testing fundamentals laws of physics in quantum mechanics. In this article, we will focus on the physics of this process and highlight a few important properties of SPDC. There will be two parts: a first theoretical one showing the particular quantum nature of SPDC, and the second part, more experimental and in particular focusing on applications of parametric down-conversion. This is clearly a non-exhaustive article about parametric down-conversion as there is a tremendous literature on the subject, but it gives the necessary first elements needed for a novice student or researcher to work on SPDC sources of light.     

Spontaneous parametric down-conversion

Spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in media with no inversion center and the use of this phenomenon in the spectroscopy of natural oscillation states of a crystal lattice (i.e., optical phonons) are retrospectively described. We think that the SPDC spectroscopy method is estimated inappropriately and hope to again attract the attention of readers to one of the most interesting quantum phenomena of nonlinear optics that has no classical analog. The capabilities of SPDC spectroscopy will certainly be used in both fundamental science and technology of new materials.     

High-fidelity source of four-photon entanglement

A polarisation-entangled four-photon state can be generated directly by a second order parametric down-conversion process. We use this emission to characterise the properties of a four-qubit state and to analyse its entanglement based on the violation of a four-particle Bell inequality. The observed high count rates and the fidelity of the polarisation correlations are the basis for the realisation of several new multiparty quantum communications schemes, such as secure multiparty key distribution and quantum telecloning. PACS 03.67.Mn; 03.65.Ud; 42.50.Ar; 42.65.Lm     

Effect of polarization deviation of spontaneous parametric down-conversion on the degree of biphoton entanglement

Analysis is given to the effect of polarization deviation due to spontaneous parametric downconversion on the states of polarization-entangled photons generated via a cascaded two-crystal geometry with type I phase matching (e?oo).     

Revisiting non-degenerate parametric down-conversion

The quantum dynamics of a two-mode non-resonant parametric down-conversion process is studied by recasting the time evolution equations for the basic operators in an equivalent spin equation form with simpler exact solutions for a pump field with harmonic time dependence. Expectation values of suitable operators for studying important features such as squeezing and quantum revivals are presented in simple forms.      

Entanglement in cascaded-crystal parametric down-conversion

We use spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a cascade of crystals, driven by a single monochromatic cw pump laser, to study the interference of entangled photon pairs. By changing the distance between the crystals, the observed quantum interference pattern varies continuously from that associated with a longer single crystal to that associated with independent emissions from two distinct crystals. Postselection via spectral filtering suppresses this phenomenon. These findings are expected to advance the field of quantum-state engineering.     

Experimental observation of an entire family of four-photon entangled states

A single linear-optical setup is used to observe an entire family of four-photon entangled states. This approach breaks with the inflexibility of present linear-optical setups usually designed for the observation of a particular multipartite entangled state only. The family includes several prominent entangled states that are known to be highly relevant for quantum information applications.     

Four-photon correlations in parametric down-conversion

Four-photon correlations of the output radiation of a parametric amplifier with a vacuum at the input are considered for an arbitrary parametric gain coefficient. Such states are interpreted in the literature as four-photon states. It is shown that the fourth-order correlation function for such states in the limit of a small number of photons has an asymptotics typical of two-photon states. Nevertheless, even in the “classical” limit of high intensities, the level of four-photon correlations, i.e., the value of the normalized fourth-order correlation function, is substantially greater than that for coherent and even thermal fields.     

Experimental observation of four-photon entangled Dicke state with high fidelity

We present the experimental observation of the symmetric four-photon entangled Dicke state with two excitations |D_{4};{(2)}. A simple experimental setup allowed quantum state tomography yielding a fidelity as high as 0.844+/-0.008. We study the entanglement persistency of the state using novel witness operators and focus on the demonstration of a remarkable property: depending on the orientation of a measurement on one photon, the remaining three photons are projected into both inequivalent classes of genuine tripartite entanglement, the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and W class. Furthermore, we discuss possible applications of |D_{4};{(2)} in quantum communication.     

Multimode description of stimulated parametric down-conversion

We derive multimode generating functions, photon-number distributions, integrated-intensity distributions, moments and quadrature fluctuations for stimulated parametric down-conversion in relation to experiments measuring joint distributions. The border between classical and quantum behaviour is given.