We study the dynamics of a pair of molecular ensembles trapped inside a superconducting resonator through which they are strongly coupled via a microwave field mode. We find that entanglement can be generated via "vacuum fluctuations" even when the molecules and cavity field are initially prepared in their ground state. This entanglement is created in a relatively short time and without the need for further manipulation of the system. It does, therefore, provide a convenient scheme to entangle two mesoscopic systems, and may well be useful quantum information processing.
The generation and detection of entanglement between mesoscopic systems would have major fundamental and applicative implications. In this work, we demonstrate the utility of continuous variable tools to evaluate the Gaussian entanglement arising between two homogeneous levitated nanobeads interacting through a central potential. We compute the entanglement for the steady state and determine the measurement precision required to detect the entanglement in the laboratory.
We show that two, non interacting, infinitely long spin chains can become globally entangled at the mesoscopic level of their fluctuation operators through a purely noisy microscopic mechanism induced by the presence of a common heat bath. By focusing on a suitable class of mesoscopic observables, the behaviour of the dissipatively generated quantum correlations between the two chains is studied as a function of the dissipation strength and bath temperature.
We describe an experimentally straightforward method for preparing an entangled W state of up to 100 qubits. Our repeat-until-success protocol relies on detection of single photons from collective spontaneous emission in free space. Our method allows entanglement preparation in a wide range of qubit implementations that lack entangling qubit-qubit interactions. We give detailed numerical examples for entanglement of neutral atoms in optical lattices and of nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond. The simplicity of our method should enable preparation of mesoscopic entangled states in a number of p…
We propose a method for entangling two non-interacting qubits by measuring their parity indirectly through an intermediate mesoscopic system. The protocol is designed to require only global control and course-grained collective measurement of the mesoscopic system along with local interactions between the target qubits and mesoscopic system. A generalization of the method measures the hamming weight of the qubits' state and probabilistically produces an entangled state by post-selecting on hamming weight one. Our technique provides a new design element that can be integrated into quantum proce…
We investigate the multiparticle quantum superposition and the persistence of multipartite entanglement of the quantum superposition generated by the quantum injected high-gain optical parametric amplification of a single photon. The physical configuration based on the optimal universal quantum cloning has been adopted to investigate how the entanglement and the quantum coherence of the system persists for large values of the nonlinear parametric gain g.
Entanglement between two macroscopic atomic ensembles induced by measurement on an ancillary light system has proven to be a powerful method for engineering quantum memories and quantum state transfer. Here we investigate the feasibility of such methods for generation, manipulation and detection of genuine multipartite entanglement between mesoscopic atomic ensembles. Our results extend in a non trivial way the EPR entanglement between two macroscopic gas samples reported experimentally in [B. Julsgaard, A. Kozhekin, and E. Polzik, Nature {\bf 413}, 400 (2001)]. We find that under realistic co…
We propose a scheme of generating and verifying mesoscopic-level entanglement between two atomic ensembles using non-resonant stimulated Raman scattering. Entanglement can be generated by direct detection or balanced homodyne detection of the Stokes fields from the two cells, after they interfere on a beam splitter. The entanglement of the collective atomic fields can be transferred to the anti-Stokes fields in a readout process. By measuring the operator moments of the anti-Stokes fields, we can verify the presence of entanglement. We model the effects of practical factors such as Stokes fiel…
Quantum superpositions and entanglement are at the heart of the quantum information science. There have been only a few investigations of these phenomena at the mesoscopic level, despite the fact that these systems are promising for quantum state storage and processing. Here we present two novel experiments with surface plasmons propagating on cm-long metallic stripe waveguides. We demonstrate that two plasmons can be entangled at remote places. In addition, we create a single plasmon in a temporal superposition state: it exists in a superposition of two widely separated moments. These quantum…
We analyse the entanglement dynamics of the two particles interacting through gravity in the recently proposed experiments aiming at testing quantum signatures for gravity [Phy. Rev. Lett 119, 240401 & 240402 (2017)]. We consider the open dynamics of the system under decoherence due to the environmental interaction. We show that as long as the coupling between the particles is strong, the system does indeed develop entanglement, confirming the qualitative analysis in the original proposals. We show that the entanglement is also robust against stochastic fluctuations in setting up the system. T…
We observe that a mesoscopic field made of several tens of microwave photons exhibits quantum features when interacting with a single Rydberg atom in a high-Q cavity. The field is split into two components whose phases differ by an angle inversely proportional to the square root of the average photon number. The field and the atomic dipole are phase-entangled. These manifestations of photon graininess vanish at the classical limit. This experiment opens the way to studies of large Schrodinger cat states at the quantum-classical boundary.
Using a traveling-wave OPA with two orthogonally oriented type-I BBO crystals pumped by picosecond pulses, we generate vertically and horizontally polarized squeezed vacuum states within a broad range of wavelengths and angles. Depending on the phase between these states, fluctuations in one or another Stokes parameters are suppressed below the shot-noise limit. Due to the large number of photon pairs produced, no local oscillator is required, and 3dB squeezing is observed by means of direct detection.
Squeezing of quantum fluctuations by means of entanglement is a well recognized goal in the field of quantum information science and precision measurements. In particular, squeezing the fluctuations via entanglement between two-level atoms can improve the precision of sensing, clocks, metrology, and spectroscopy. Here, we demonstrate 3.4 dB of metrologically relevant squeezing and entanglement for ~ 10^5 cold cesium atoms via a quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement on the atom clock levels. We show that there is an optimal degree of decoherence induced by the quantum measurement which maximi…
We create entangled states of the spin and motion of a single $^{40}$Ca$^+$ ion in a linear ion trap. The motional part consists of coherent states of large separation and long coherence time. The states are created by driving the motion using counterpropagating laser beams. We theoretically study and experimentally observe the behaviour outside the Lamb-Dicke regime, where the trajectory in phase space is modified and the coherent states become squeezed. We directly observe the modification of the return time of the trajectory, and infer the squeezing. The mesoscopic entanglement is observed …
The distribution of entangled states between distant parties in an optical network is crucial for the successful implementation of various quantum communication protocols such as quantum cryptography, teleportation and dense coding [1-3]. However, owing to the unavoidable loss in any real optical channel, the distribution of loss-intolerant entangled states is inevitably inflicted by decoherence, which causes a degradation of the transmitted entanglement. To combat the decoherence, entanglement distillation, which is the process of extracting a small set of highly entangled states from a large…
We show that current correlations at the exit ports of a beam splitter can be used to detect electronic entanglement for a fairly general input state. This includes the situation where electron pairs can enter the beam splitter from the same port or be separated due to backscattering. The proposed scheme allows to discriminate between occupation-number and degree-of-freedom entanglement.
We quantify the resources required for entangling two uncoupled spin qubits through an intermediate mesoscopic spin system (MSS) by indirect joint measurement. Indirect joint measurement benefits from coherent magnification of the target qubits' state in the collective magnetization of the MSS; such that a low-resolution collective measurement on the MSS suffices to prepare post-selected entanglement on the target qubits. A MSS consisting of two non-interacting halves, each coupled to one of the target qubits is identified as a geometry that allows implementing the magnification process with e…
We propose a spin-independent scheme to generate and detect two-particle entanglement in a mesoscopic normal-superconductor system. A superconductor, weakly coupled to the normal conductor, generates an orbitally entangled state by injecting pairs of electrons into different leads of the normal conductor. The entanglement is detected via violation of a Bell inequality, formulated in terms of zero-frequency current cross-correlators. It is shown that the Bell inequality can be violated for arbitrary strong dephasing in the normal conductor.
Implementations of solid state quantum optics provide us with devices where qubits are placed at fixed positions in photonic or plasmonic one dimensional waveguides. We show that solely by controlling the position of the qubits and with the help of a coherent driving, collective spontaneous decay may be engineered to yield an entangled mesoscopic steady-state. Our scheme relies on the realization of pure superradiant Dicke models by a destructive interference that cancels dipole-dipole interactions in one-dimension.
An experiment that involves two distant mesoscopic SQUID rings is studied. The superconducting rings are irradiated with correlated photons, which are produced by a single microwave source. Classically correlated (separable) and quantum mechanically correlated (entangled) microwaves are considered, and their effect on the Josephson currents is quantified. It is shown that the currents tunnelling through the Josephson junctions in the distant rings, are correlated.
We present a theoretical analysis of the appearance of entanglement in non-interacting mesoscopic structures. Our setup involves two oppositely polarized sources injecting electrons of opposite spin into the two incoming leads. The mixing of these polarized streams in an ideal four-channel beam splitter produces two outgoing streams with particular tunable correlations. A Bell inequality test involving cross-correlated spin-currents in opposite leads signals the presence of spin-entanglement between particles propagating in different leads. We identify the role of fermionic statistics and proj…
We consider two chains, each made of $N$ independent oscillators, immersed in a common thermal bath and study the dynamics of their mutual quantum correlations in the thermodynamic, large-$N$ limit. We show that dissipation and noise due to the presence of the external environment are able to generate collective quantum correlations between the two chains at the mesoscopic level. The created collective quantum entanglement between the two many-body systems turns out to be rather robust, surviving for asymptotically long times even for non vanishing bath temperatures.
In this paper we investigate the behaviour of a fully quantum mechanical system consisting of a mesoscopic SQUID ring coupled to one or two electromagnetic field modes. We show that we can use a static magnetic flux threading the SQUID ring to control the transfer of energy, the entanglement and the statistical properties of the fields coupled to the ring. We also demonstrate that at, and around, certain values of static flux the effective coupling between the components of the system is large. The position of these regions in static flux is dependent on the energy level structure of the ring …
We study the time dependent electron-electron and electron-hole correlations in a mesoscopic device which is splitting an incident current of free fermions into two spatially separated particle streams. We analyze the appearance of entanglement as manifested in a Bell inequality test and discuss its origin in terms of local spin-singlet correlations already present in the initial channel and the action of post-selection during the Bell type measurement. The time window over which the Bell inequality is violated is determined in the tunneling limit and for the general situation with arbitrary t…
The creation and detection of entanglement in solid state electronics is of fundamental importance for quantum information processing. We prove that second-order quantum correlations can be always interpreted classically and propose a general test of entanglement based on the violation of a classically derived inequality for continuous variables by fourth-order quantum correlation functions. Our scheme provides a way to prove the existence of entanglement in a mesoscopic transport setup by measuring higher order cumulants without requiring the additional assumption of a single charge detection
A scheme is proposed for preparing delocalised mesoscopic states of the motion of two or more atoms trapped at distantly-separated locations. Generation of entanglement is achieved using interactions in cavity quantum electrodynamics which facilitate motional quantum state transmission, via light, between separate nodes of a quantum network. Possible applications of the scheme are discussed.
We demonstrate spectroscopy and thermometry of individual motional modes in a mesoscopic 2D ion array using entanglement-induced decoherence as a method of transduction. Our system is a $\sim$400 $μ$m-diameter planar crystal of several hundred $^9$Be$^+$ ions exhibiting complex drumhead modes in the confining potential of a Penning trap. Exploiting precise control over the $^9$Be$^+$ valence electron spins, we apply a homogeneous spin-dependent optical dipole force to excite arbitrary transverse modes with an effective wavelength approaching the interparticle spacing ($\sim$20 \nolinebreak$μ$m…
We investigate the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) interference pattern in the electron transmission through a mesoscopic ring in which two identical non-interacting magnetic impurities are embedded. Adopting a quantum waveguide theory, we derive the exact transmission probability amplitudes and study the influence of maximally entangled states of the impurity spins on the electron transmittivity interference pattern. For suitable electron wave vectors, we show that the amplitude of AB oscillations in the absence of impurities is in fact not reduced within a wide range of the electron-impurity coupling con…
We consider a pair of three - level atoms interacting with a common vacuum and analyze the process of entanglement production due to spontaneous emission. We show that in the case of closely separated atoms, collective damping can generate robust entanglement of the asymptotic states.
We propose a scheme for generating the superposition and the entanglement of squeezed vacuum states of electromagnetical fields. The scheme involves single-photon source, single photon detector, and cross Kerr nonlinearity. The Kerr nonlinearity required for generating the superposition of squeezed vacuum states is 1/2 of that required for generating the superposition of coherent states. The proposal can also be extended to generate the entanglement states between two coherent states and that between one coherent state and one squeezed vacuum state.
We present a proposal for the production of longer-lived mesoscopic superpositions which relies on two requirements: parametric amplification and squeezed vacuum reservoir for cavity-field states. Our proposal involves the interaction of a two-level atom with a cavity field which is simultaneously subjected to amplification processes.
We discuss recent experimental evidence of decoherence in a laboratory mesoscopic system in a cavity, from which we draw analogies with the decoherence that we argue is induced by microscopic quantum-gravity fluctuations in the space-time background. We emphasize the parallel rôles played in both cases by dissipation through non-trivial vacuum fluctuations that trigger the collapse of an initially coherent quantum state. We review a phenomenological parametrization of possible effects of this kind in the neutral kaon system, where they would induce CPT violation, and describe some epxerimental…
We derive sufficient conditions for infinite-dimensional systems whose entanglement is not completely lost in a finite time during its decoherence by a passive interaction with local vacuum environments. The sufficient conditions allow us to clarify a class of bipartite entangled states which preserve their entanglement or, in other words, are tolerant against decoherence in a vacuum. We also discuss such a class for entangled qubits.
The so-called entanglement with vacuum is not a property of the Fock space, but of some rather pathological representations of CCR/CAR algebras. In some other Fock space representations the notion simply does not exist. We have checked all the main Gedanken experiments where the notion of entanglement with vacuum was used, and found that all the calculations could be performed at a representation-independent level. In particular any such experiment can be formulated in a Fock-space representation where the notion of entanglement with vacuum is meaningless. So, for the moment there is no single…
We investigate the behavior of N atoms resonantly coupled to a single electromagnetic field mode sustained by a high quality cavity, containing a mesoscopic coherent field. We show with a simple effective hamiltonian model that the strong coupling between the cavity and the atoms produces an atom-field entangled state, involving N+1 nearly-coherent components slowly rotating at different paces in the phase plane. The periodic overlap of these components results in a complex collapse and revival pattern for the Rabi oscillation. We study the influence of decoherence due to the finite cavity qua…
I investigate the decoherence of two-mode squeezed vacuum states by analyzing the relative entropy of entanglement. I consider two sources of decoherence: (i) the phase damping and (ii) the amplitude damping due to the coupling to the thermal environment. In particular, I give the exact value of the relative entropy of entanglement for the phase damping model. For the amplitude damping model, I give an upper bound for the relative entropy of entanglement, which turns out to be a good approximation for the entanglement measure in usual experimental situations.
Recently, it has been shown that the massless quantum vacuum state contains entanglement between timelike separated regions of spacetime, in addition to the entanglement between the spacelike separated regions usually considered. Here, we show that timelike entanglement can be extracted from the Minkowski vacuum and converted into ordinary entanglement between two inertial, two-state detectors at the same spatial location -- one coupled to the field in the past and the other coupled to the field in the future. The procedure used here demonstrates a clear time correlation as a requirement for e…
We note that massless fields within the future and past light cone may be quantized as independent systems. We show that the vacuum is an entangled state of these systems, exactly mirroring the known entanglement between the spacelike separated Rindler wedges. We describe a detector which exhibits a thermal response to the vacuum when switched on at t=0. The feasibility of experimentally detecting this effect is discussed.
We propose a method to refine entanglement via swapping from a pair of squeezed vacuum states by performing the Bell measurement of number sum and phase difference. The resultant states are maximally entangled by adjusting the two squeezing parameters to the same value. We then describe the teleportation of number states by using the entangled states prepared in this way.
Quantum entanglement is a fascinating phenomenon, especially if it is observed at the macroscopic scale. Importantly, macroscopic quantum correlations can be revealed only by accurate measurement outcomes and strategies. Here, we formulate feasible entanglement witnesses for bright squeezed vacuum in the form of the macroscopically populated polarization triplet Bell states. Their testing involves efficient photodetection and the measurement of the Stokes operators variances. We also calculate the measures of entanglement for these states such as the Schmidt number and the logarithmic negativi…
Entanglement plays a crucial role in quantum information protocols, thus the dynamical behavior of entangled states is of a great importance. In this paper we suggest a useful scheme that permits a direct measure of entanglement in a two-qubit cavity system. It is realized in the cavity-QED technology utilizing atoms as fying qubits. To quantify entanglement we use the concurrence. We derive the conditions, which assure that the state remains entangled in spite of the interaction with the reservoir. The phenomenon of sudden death entanglement (ESD) in a bipartite system subjected to squeezed v…
We propose and study a method for detecting ground-state entanglement in a chain of trapped ions, which realizes a suggested scheme for detecting vacuum entanglement in quantum field theory. We show that the entanglement between single ions or groups of ions can be swapped to the internal levels of two ions by sending laser pulses that couple the internal and motional degrees of freedom. This allows to entangle two ions without actually doing gates. A proof of principle of the effect can be realized with two trapped ions and is feasible with current technology.
We study the structure of vacuum entanglement for two complimentary segments of a linear harmonic chain, applying the modewise decomposition of entangled gaussian states discussed in \cite {modewise}. We find that the resulting entangled mode shape hierarchy shows a distinctive layered structure with well defined relations between the depth of the modes, their characteristic wavelength, and their entanglement contribution. We re-derive in the strong coupling (diverging correlation length) regime, the logarithmic dependence of entanglement on the segment size predicted by conformal field theory…
Using two crystals for spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a parallel setup, we observe two-photon interference with high visibility. The high visibility is consistent with complementarity and the absence of which-path information. The observations are explained as effects of entanglement or equivalently in terms of interfering probability amplitudes, and also by the calculation of a second-order field correlation function in the Heisenberg picture. The latter approach brings out explicitly the role of the vacuum fields in the down-conversion at the crystals and in the photon coincidence…
Recently, there have been a number of works investigating the entanglement properties of distinct noncomplementary parts of discrete and continuous Bosonic systems in ground and thermal states. The Fermionic case, however, has yet to be expressly addressed. In this paper we investigate the entanglement between a pair of far-apart regions of the 3+1 dimensional massless Dirac vacuum via a previously introduced distillation protocol [B. Reznik et al., Phys. Rev. A 71, 042104 (2005)]. We show that entanglement persists over arbitrary distances, and that as a function of L/R, where L is the distan…
We investigate the entanglement patterns of photon-added and -subtracted four-mode squeezed vacuum states. Entanglements in different scenarios are analyzed by varying the number of photons added or subtracted in certain modes, which are referred to as the "player" modes, the others being "spectators." We find that the photon-subtracted state can give us higher entanglement than the photon-added state which is in contrast of the two-mode situation. We also study the logarithmic negativity of the two-mode reduced density matrix obtained from the four-mode state which again shows that the state …
We investigate the correlations between any number of arbitrarily far-apart regions of the vacuum of the free Klein-Gordon field by means of its finite duration coupling to an equal number of localized detectors. We show that the correlations between any N such regions enable us to distill an N-partite W state, and therefore exhibit true $N$-fold entanglement. Furthermore, we show that for N=3, the correlations cannot be reproduced by a hybrid local-nonlocal hidden-variable model. For N >= 4 the issue remains open.
We quantify multiparticle quantum entanglement in a system of N two-level atoms interacting with a squeezed vacuum state of the electromagnetic field. We calculate the amount of quantum entanglement present among one hundred such two-level atoms and also show the variation of that entanglement with the radiation field parameter. We show the continuous variation of the amount of quantum entanglement as we continuously increase the number of atoms from N=2 to N=100. We also discuss that the multiparticle correlations among the N two-level atoms are made up of all possible bipartite correlations …
We demonstrate and characterize the extraction of genuine tripartite entanglement from the vacuum of a periodic cavity field. That is, three probe quantum systems (detectors) can become both bipartitely and tripartitely entangled without coming into causal contact, by means of interaction with a common quantum field. We do this by using an oscillator-detector model that forgoes the need for perturbation theory and which instead is solved exactly. We find that the extraction of tripartite entanglement is considerably easier than that of bipartite. As a secondary result, we also compare a period…
The dynamics of entanglement between three - level atoms coupled to the common vacuum is investigated. We show that the collective effects such as collective damping, dipole - dipole interaction and the cross coupling between orthogonal dipoles, play a crucial role in the process of creation of entanglement. In particular, the additional cross coupling enhances the production of entanglement. For the specific initial states we find that the effect of delayed sudden birth of entanglement, recently invented by Ficek and Tanas [Phys. Rev. A 77, o54301(2008)] in the case of two - level atoms, can …
We study the quantum entanglement between two coupled cavities, in which one is initially prepared in a mesoscopic superposition state and the other is in the vacuum in dissipative environment and show how the entanglement between two cavities can arise in the dissipative environment. The dynamic behavior of the nonlocality for the system is also investigated.
We analyze an example of a photon in superposition of different modes, and ask what is the degree of their entanglement with vacuum. The problem turns out to be ill-posed since we do not know which representation of the algebra of canonical commutation relations (CCR) to choose for field quantization. Once we make a choice, we can solve the question of entanglement unambiguously. So the difficulty is not with mathematics, but with physics of the problem. In order to make the discussion explicit we analyze from this perspective a popular argument based on a photon leaving a beam splitter and in…
I theoretically investigate how the entanglement properties of a two-mode squeezed vacuum state (TMSVS) can be enhanced by operating quantum-optical catalysis on each mode of the TMSVS. The quantum-optical catalysis is simply mixing one photon at the beam splitter and post-select the beam-splitter (BS) output based on detection of one photon, first proposed by Lvovsky and Mlynek [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 250401 (2002)]. I find that there exists some enhancement in the entanglement properties (namely, entanglement entropy, second-order Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlation, and the fidelity of quantu…
It is well known that magnons, elementary excitations in a magnetic material, behave as bosons when their density is low. We study how the bosonic character of magnons is governed by the amount of a multipartite entanglement in the vacuum state on which magnons are excited. We show that if the multipartite entanglement is strong, magnons cease to be bosons. We also consider some examples, such as ground states of the Heisenberg ferromagnet and the transverse Ising model, the condensation of magnons, the one-way quantum computer, and Kitaev's toric code. Our result provides insights into the qu…
