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     

Full separability criterion for tripartite quantum systems

In this paper, an intuitive approach is employed to generalize the full separability criterion of tripartite quantum states of qubits to the higher-dimensional systems [Phys. Rev. A 72, 022333 (2005)]. A distinct characteristic of the present generalization is that less restrictive conditions are needed to characterize the properties of full separability. Furthermore, the formulation for pure states can be conveniently extended to the case of mixed states by utilizing the Kronecker product approximate technique. As applications, we give the analytic approximation of the criterion for weakly mixed tripartite quantum states and investigate the full separability of some weakly mixed states.     

Analysis of a recent experiment seemingly favouring local realism against quantum mechanics

A recent experiment by Brida et al. [Eur. Phys. J. D 44, 547 (2007)] is analyzed with the conclusion that the results disagree with standard quantum predictions but fit a simple local hidden variables model. New experiments are proposed which might throw new light on the anomaly.     

Quantum tomography with wavelet transform in Banach space on homogeneous space

In this study the intimate connection is established between the Banach space wavelet reconstruction method on homogeneous spaces with both singular and nonsingular vacuum vectors, and some of the well known quantum tomographies, such as: Moyal-representation for a spin, discrete phase space tomography, tomography of a free particle, Homodyne tomography, phase space tomography and SU(1,1) tomography. And both the atomic decomposition and the Banach frame nature of these quantum tomographic examples are also revealed in details. Finally the connection between the wavelet formalism on Banach space and Q-function is discussed.     

Decomposition of pure states of quantum register

The generalization of Schmidt decomposition due to Cartelet-Higuchi-Sudbery applied to quantum register (a system of N qubits) is shown to acquire direct geometrical meaning: any pure state is canonically associated with a chain of a simplicial complex. A leading vector method is presented to calculate the values of the coefficients of appropriate chain.     

Two-qutrit entanglement witnesses and Gell-Mann matrices

The Gell-Mann λ matrices for Lie algebra su(3) are the natural basis for the Hilbert space of Hermitian operators acting on the states of a three-level system(qutrit). So the construction of EWs for two-qutrit states by using these matrices may be an interesting problem. In this paper, several two-qutrit EWs are constructed based on the Gell-Mann matrices by using the linear programming (LP) method exactly or approximately. The decomposability and non-decomposability of constructed EWs are also discussed and it is shown that the λ-diagonal EWs presented in this paper are all decomposable but by adding λ-non-diagonal terms, one can obtain various non-decomposable EWs.     

Entanglement between nuclear spin and field mode in GaAs semiconductors

In this paper we investigate entanglement between the nuclear spin and field mode in a GaAs semiconductor. The eigenfuctions of nuclear spin in the quantized external field are obtained and thus the von Neumann entropy is evaluated explicitly. It is shown that the von Neumann entropy monotonously increases with the spin-field coupling constant but monotonously decreases with the anisotropy energy.     

Multi-qubit stabilizer and cluster entanglement witnesses

One of the problems concerning entanglement witnesses (EWs) is the construction of them by a given set of operators. Here several multi-qubit EWs called stabilizer EWs are constructed by using the stabilizer operators of some given multi-qubit states such as GHZ, cluster and exceptional states. The general approach to manipulate the multi-qubit stabilizer EWs by exact(approximate) linear programming (LP) method is described and it is shown that the Clifford group play a crucial role in finding the hyper-planes encircling the feasible region. The optimality, decomposability and non-decomposability of constructed stabilizer EWs are discussed.     

Quantum state sharing of an arbitrary two-qubit state with two-photon entanglements and Bell-state measurements

Two schemes for sharing an arbitrary two-qubit state based on entanglement swapping are proposed with Bell-state measurements and local unitary operations. One is based on the quantum channel with four Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs shared in advance. The other is based on a circular topological structure, i.e., each user shares an EPR pair with his neighboring one. The advantage of the former is that the construction of the quantum channel between the agents is controlled by the sender Alice, which will improve the security of the scheme. The circular scheme reduces the quantum resource largely when the number of the agents is large. Both of those schemes have the property of high efficiency as almost all the instances can be used to split the quantum information. They are more convenient in application than the other schemes existing as they require only two-qubit entanglements and two-qubit joint measurements for sharing an arbitrary two-qubit state.     

Twin photons entangled in polarization and angular momentum

Quantum states of twin photons entangled in angular momentum and polarization provide new degrees of freedom to researchers in quantum information and imaging. This work discuss these states and also emphasizes differences between two proposed models for twin photons entangled in angular momentum. Answers to the presented questions would contribute to a better understanding of this nonlinear process. Received 30 August 2002 / Received in final form 10 October 2002 Published online 21 January 2003     

Quantum state sharing of an arbitrary multiqubit state using nonmaximally entangled GHZ states

We explicitly present a scheme for quantum state sharing of an arbitrary multiqubit state using nonmaximally entangled GHZ states as the quantum channel and generalized Bell states as the measurement basis. The scheme succeeds only probabilistically with its total success probability depending on the degree of entanglement matching between the quantum channel and the generalized Bell states. Security of the scheme is guaranteed by the fact that attacks of an outside eavesdropper or/and an inside dishonest party will inevitably introduce detectable errors.     

Geometric phase in entangled bipartite systems

The geometric phase (GP) for bipartite systems in transverse external magnetic fields is investigated in this paper. Two different situations have been studied. We first consider two non-interacting particles. The results show that because of entanglement, the geometric phase is very different from that of the non-entangled case. When the initial state is a Werner state, the geometric phase is, in general, zero and moreover the singularity of the geometric phase may appear with a proper evolution time. We next study the geometric phase when intra-couplings appear and choose Werner states as the initial states to entail this discussion. The results show that unlike our first case, the absolute value of the GP is not zero, and attains its maximum when the rescaled coupling constant J is less than 1. The effect of inhomogeneity of the magnetic field is also discussed.     

Pairwise entanglement in symmetric multi-qubit systems

For pairs of particles extracted from a symmetric state of N two-level systems, the two-particle density matrix is expressed in terms of expectation values of collective spin operators for the large system. Results are presented for experimentally relevant examples of pure states: Dicke states | S, M>, spin coherent, and spin squeezed states, where only the symmetric subspace, S = N/2 is populated, and for thermally entangled mixed states populating also lower S values. The entanglement of the extracted pair is then quantified by a calculation of the concurrence, which provides directly the entanglement of formation of the pair. Received 9 May 2001 and Received in final form 16 November 2001     

Testing Bell inequalities in photonic crystals

We show how entangled atomic pairs can be prepared in order to test the Bell inequalities. The scheme is based on the interaction of the atoms with a highly localized field mode within a photonic crystal. The potential of using optically separated transitions and the stability of the entangled state to spontaneous emission could lead to the closure of the communication and the detection loopholes appearing in experiments so far. The robustness of the scheme against detector inefficiencies, the spread in the atomic velocities and the fact that the entangled pairs are not generated simultaneously is also studied. Received 31 July 2001 and Received in final form 30 November 2001     

Bell inequalities for a sensible family of local hidden variable theories testable at low detection efficiency

A family of local models containing two angles as hidden variables is defined for experiments measuring polarization correlation of optical photons. Searching for the best model of the family, that is giving predictions most close to quantum mechanics, allows deriving Bell-type inequalities which may be tested with relatively low detection efficiency.     

Effects of phase decoherence on the entanglement of a two-qubit anisotropic Heisenberg XYZ chain with an in-plane magnetic field

We investigate the phase decoherence effects on the entanglement of a two-qubit anisotropic Heisenberg model with a nonuniform magnetic field in the x–z-plane. As a measure of the entanglement, the concurrence of the system is calculated. It is shown that when the magnetic field is along the z-axis, the nonuniform and uniform components of the field have no influence on the entanglement for the cases of and , respectively. But when the magnetic field is not along the z-axis, both the uniform and the nonuniform components of the field will introduce the decoherence effects. It is found that the effects of the Heisenberg chain's anisotropy in the Z-direction on the entanglement are dependent on the direction of the field. Moreover, the larger the initial concurrence is, the higher value it will exhibit during the time evolution of the system for a proper set of the parameters ν, Δ, θ, γ , B and b.     

Entanglement generation in trapped atoms

The two atoms in the ion trap are entangled by the interaction with an external excited atom. The evolution of the entanglement is analytically derived without the decoherence. Considering the spontaneous decay from the environment, the evolution of the entanglement is similar to the damping Rabi oscillation. The generation of entanglement is induced by the dipole-dipole type interaction of atoms. It is found that the entanglement of two trapped atoms is robust with the uniform interaction with the external atom. The collective spontaneous emission from the coupling between the atoms may enhance the entanglement.     

The bound of entanglement of superpositions with more than two components

A bipartite quantum state (for two systems in any dimensions) can be decomposed as a superposition of many components. For a superposition of more than two components we prove that there is a bound of the entanglement of the superposition state which can be expressed according to entanglements of its component states. Especially, if the component states are mutually bi-orthogonal, the entanglement of the superposition state can be exactly given in terms of the entanglements of the states being superposed.     

Engineering entanglement of a general three-level system interacting with a correlated two-mode nonlinear coherent state

In this article a treatment of a three-level atom interacting with two modes of light in a cavity with arbitrary forms of nonlinearities of both the fields and the intensity-dependent atom-field coupling is presented. A factorization of the initial density operator is assumed, with the privileged field modes being in a pair-coherent state. We derive and illustrate an exact expression for the time evolution of the density operator, by means of which we identify and numerically demonstrate the region of parameters where significantly large entanglement can be obtained. We show that entanglement can be significantly influenced by different kinds of nonlinearities. The nonlinear medium yields the superstructure of atomic Rabi oscillation. We propose a generation of Bell-type states having a simple initial state preparation of the present system. Received 29 July 2002 / Received in final form 18 October 2002 Published online 21 January 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: abdelaty@uni-flensburg.dePresent address: Institut für Mathematik, Universit?t Flensburg, Germany.     

Phonon effects in tunnelling through a double quantum dot molecule

Phonon effects in tunnelling through a double quantum dot molecule are investigated by use of a recently developed technique, which is based on an exact mapping of a many-body electron-phonon interaction problem onto a multichannel one-body problem. The molecule is sandwiched between two ideal electrodes and the electron at each dot of the molecule interacts independently with Einstein phonons. Single-electron transmission rates through the molecule are computed and the nonlinear spectrum obtained shows a structure with many more satellite peaks due to the excitations of phonons. The strength of resonant peaks is found to be strongly dependent on the number of excited phonons. The effects of electron-phonon interaction on the current and shot noise, depending on the voltage bias applied at the two electrodes as well as the potential energy of the molecule, are discussed.