We generate and study the entanglement properties of novel states composed of three polarisation-encoded photonic qubits. By varying a single experimental parameter we can coherently move from a fully separable state to a maximally robust W state, while at all times preserving an optimally robust, symmetric entanglement configuration. We achieve a high fidelity with these configurations experimentally, including the highest reported W state fidelity.
We propose two alternative entanglement concentration protocols (ECPs) using the Faraday rotation of photonic polarization. Through the single-photon input-output process in cavity QED, it is shown that the maximally entangled atomic (photonic) state can be extracted from two partially entangled states. The distinct feature of our protocols is that we can concentrate both atomic and photonic entangled states via photonic Faraday rotation, and thus they may be universal and useful for entanglement concentration in the experiment. Furthermore, as photonic Faraday rotation works in low-$Q$ caviti…
Entanglement is an essential resource in current experimental implementations for quantum information processing. We review a class of experiments exploiting photonic entanglement, ranging from one-way quantum computing over quantum communication complexity to long-distance quantum communication. We then propose a set of feasible experiments that will underline the advantages of photonic entanglement for quantum information processing.
Entanglement is at the heart of fundamental tests of quantum mechanics like tests of Bell-inequalities and, as discovered lately, of quantum computation and communication. Their technological advance made entangled photons play an outstanding role in entanglement physics. We give a generalized concept of qubit entanglement and review the state of the art of photonic experiments.
We present experimental schemes that allow to study the entanglement classes of all symmetric states in multiqubit photonic systems. In addition to comparing the presented schemes in efficiency, we will highlight the relation between the entanglement properties of symmetric Dicke states and a recently proposed entanglement scheme for atoms. In analogy to the latter, we obtain a one-to-one correspondence between well-defined sets of experimental parameters and multiqubit entanglement classes inside the symmetric subspace of the photonic system.
Quantum entanglement of particles is regarded as a fundamental character in quantum information, in which quantum state should be given for whole system instead of independently describing single particle. Constructing quantum memory of photonic entanglement is essential for realizing quantum networks, which had been performed previously by many memory protocols. Of which Raman quantum memory gives advantages in broadband and high-speed properties, resulting in huge potential in quantum network and quantum computation. However, Raman quantum memory of photonic polarised entanglement is a chall…
We propose an entanglement swapping of atomic states confined by cavities QED using a photonic Faraday rotation. Two schemes are considered in which we use three and four cavities, respectively, plus an additional circularly-polarized photon. After interacting with an atom trapped inside the cavity the system evolves to an entangled atom-photon state. The entanglement swapping is then achieved by a Bell-state measurement upon the entire atom-photon state.
We report on the realization and verification of quantum entanglement between an NV electron spin qubit and a telecom-band photonic qubit. First we generate entanglement between the spin qubit and a 637 nm photonic time-bin qubit, followed by photonic quantum frequency conversion that transfers the entanglement to a 1588 nm photon. We characterize the resulting state by correlation measurements in different bases and find a lower bound to the Bell state fidelity of F = 0.77 +/- 0.03. This result presents an important step towards extending quantum networks via optical fiber infrastructure.
We report on the quantification of entanglement by means of entanglement measures on a four- and a six- qubit cluster state realized by using photons entangled both in polarization and linear momentum. This paper also addresss the question of the scaling of entanglement bounds from incomplete tomographic information on the density matrix under realistic experimental conditions.
We study the entanglement evolution of photonic orbital angular momentum qubit states with opposite azimuthal indices $l_0$, in a weakly turbulent atmosphere. Using asymptotic methods, we deduce analytical expressions for the amplitude of turbulence-induced crosstalk between the modes $l_0$ and $-l_0$. Furthermore, we analytically establish distinct, universal entanglement decay laws for Kolmogorov's turbulence model and for two approximations thereof.
Giantly enhanced cross-phase modulation with suppressed spectral broadening is predicted between optically-induced dark-state polaritons whose propagation is strongly affected by photonic bandgaps of spatially periodic media with multilevel dopants. This mechanism is shown to be capable of fully entangling two single-photon pulses with high fidelity.
Photonic entanglement has a wide range of applications in quantum computation and communication. Here we introduce a new device: the "photonic module", which allows for the rapid, deterministic preparation of a large class of entangled photon states. The module is an application independent, "plug and play" device, with sufficient flexibility to prepare entanglement for all major quantum computation and communication applications in a completely deterministic fashion without number-discriminated photon detection. We present two alternative constructions for the module, one using free-space com…
We describe an entanglement purification protocol (EPP) for atomic entangled pair using photonic Faraday rotation. It is shown that after the two single photons input-output process in cavity QED, the high quality entangled atomic state can be obtained from the low quality mixed entangled atomic states. Different from other EPPs, the two pairs of mixed states do not need to intact directly. As the photonic Faraday rotation works on the low-Q cavities, this EPP is useful in both quantum communication and computation.
Entanglement between light and matter combines the advantage of long distance transmission of photonic qubits with the storage and processing capabilities of atomic qubits. To distribute photonic states efficiently over long distances several schemes to encode qubits have been investigated -- time-bin encoding being particularly promising due to its robustness against decoherence in optical fibers. Here, we demonstrate the generation of entanglement between a photonic time-bin qubit and a single collective atomic spin excitation (spin-wave) in a cold atomic ensemble, followed by the mapping of…
Entanglement is a unique property of quantum systems and an essential resource for many quantum technologies. The ability to transfer or swap entanglement between systems is an important protocol in quantum information science. Entanglement between photons forms the basis of distributed quantum networks and the demonstration of photonic entanglement swapping is essential for their realization. Here an experiment demonstrating entanglement swapping from two independent multimode time-frequency entangled sources is presented, resulting in multiple heralded temporal-mode Bell states. Entanglement…
The effects of an intracavity photonic crystal in a multimode optical parametric oscillator are studied, with a special focus on quantum fluctuations. The capability to either stimulate or inhibit the spatial instability, lowering or increasing the parametric threshold, allows to control the intensity fluctuations and correlations. A significative quantum noise reduction and an increase of the range of squeezed quadratures are found above threshold where spatial Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entanglement and inseparability are found.
We show that the quantum disentanglement eraser implemented on a two-photon system from parametric down-conversion is a general method to create hybrid photonic entanglement, namely the entanglement between different degrees of freedom of the photon pair. To demonstrate this, we generate and characterize a source with tunable degree of hybrid entanglement between two qubits, one encoded in the transverse momentum and position of a photon, and the other in the polarization of its partner. In addition, we show that a simple extension of our setup enables the generation of two-photon qubit-qudit …
In this thesis, we report the theoretical and experimental investigations towards the creation, characterization, and manipulation of quantum entanglement in a photonic system. We examine two different aspects of quantum entanglement: In the first part, we discuss the experimental method for the preparation and characterization of SPDC-based polarization-entangled photon source. We provide a review study comparing different Entanglement Measures for non-maximally entangled two-qubit pure states and extend this analysis to higher-dimensional systems. In the second part, we study the entanglemen…
Fiber transport of multi-dimensional photonic qudits promises high information capacity per photon without space restriction. This work experimentally demonstrates transmission of spatial qudits through multi-core optical fibers and measurement of the entanglement between two fibers with quantum state analyzers, each composed of a spatial light modulator and a single-mode fiber. Quantum state tomography reconstructs the four-dimension entangled state that verifies the non-locality through concurrences in two-dimensional subspaces and a high-dimensional Bell-type CGLMP inequality.
Recent developments of quantum information science critically rely on entanglement, an intriguing aspect of quantum mechanics where parts of a composite system can exhibit correlations stronger than any classical counterpart. In particular, scalable quantum networks require capabilities to create, store, and distribute entanglement among distant matter nodes via photonic channels. Atomic ensembles can play the role of such nodes. So far, in the photon counting regime, heralded entanglement between atomic ensembles has been successfully demonstrated via probabilistic protocols. However, an inhe…
We propose an efficient protocol for measuring the concurrence of arbitrary two-photon pure entangled state with the help of the photonic Faraday rotation. In the protocol, the concurrence of the photonic entangled state can be conversed into the total success probability for picking up the odd-parity photonic state. For completing the measurement task, we require some auxiliary three-level atoms, which are trapped in the low-quality cavities. Our protocol can be well realized under current experimental conditions. Moreover, under practical imperfect atom state detection and photonic Faraday r…
We present a procedure for confirming the generation of long strings of photons in an entangled (cluster) state that does not rely on complete state tomography and that works even at low collection efficiencies. The scheme has the added advantage of being passive - it does not require switching of optical elements to perform measurements in different bases for instance.
The entanglement distribution network connects remote users through sharing entanglement resources, which is essential for realizing quantum internet. We proposed a controllable entanglement distribution network (c-EDN) based on a silicon quantum photonic chip. The entanglement resources were generated by a quantum light source array based on spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) in silicon waveguides and distributed to different users through time-reversed Hong-Ou-Mandel interferences in on-chip Mach-Zehnder interferometers with thermal phase shifters. A chip sample was designed and fabricated,…
We present an experimental scheme based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion to produce multiple photon pairs in maximally entangled polarization states using an arrangement of two type-I nonlinear crystals. By introducing correlated polarization noise in the paths of the generated photons we prepare mixed entangled states whose properties illustrate fundamental results obtained recently in quantum information theory, in particular those concerning bound entanglement and privacy.
This communication is an enquiry into the circumstances under which concurrence and phase entropy methods can give an answer to the question of quantum entanglement in the composite state when the photonic band gap is exhibited by the presence of photonic crystals in a three-level system. An analytic approach is proposed for any three-level system in the presence of photonic band gap. Using this analytic solution, we conclusively calculate the concurrence and phase entropy, focusing particularly on the entanglement phenomena. Specifically, we use concurrence as a measure of entanglement for di…
Photonic entanglement is a crucial resource for quantum information technologies, including quantum information processing and long-distance communication. These applications call for narrow-band entanglement sources, being compatible with the photon-electron interfaces and relax the dispersion-induced entanglement-degradation in the network mediums. However, such Giga-hertz-level bandwidth is a challenge for the photonic entanglement based on conventional spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Here we introduce a state-of-art domain-engineering technology for the counterpropagating phase mat…
We experimentally test invariance properties of the six-photonic-qubits generalization of a singlet state. Our results clearly corroborate with theory. The invariance properties are useful to beat some types of decoherence. We also experimentally detect entanglement in the state using an appropriate witness observable, composed of local observables. Our results clearly indicate that the tested setup, which is very stable, is a good candidate for realization of various multi-party quantum communication protocols. The estimated fidelity of the produced state is very high: it reveals very strong …
We propose the use of hybrid entanglement in an entanglement swapping protocol, as means of distributing a Bell state with high fidelity to two parties, Alice and Bob. The hybrid entanglement used in this work is described as a discrete variable (Fock state) and a continuous variable (cat state superposition) entangled state. We model equal and unequal levels of photonic loss between the two propagating continuous variable modes, before detecting these states via a projective vacuum-one-photon measurement, and the other mode via balanced homodyne detection. We investigate homodyne measurement …
Quantum information processing with hybrid protocols making use of discrete- and continuous-variable currently attracts of great interest because of its promising applications in scalable quantum computer and distant quantum network. By inducing a giant cross-Kerr nonlinearity between two cavities, we propose a general protocol for hybrid quantum gate and quantum entanglement with high fidelity between a stationary, discrete photonic qubit and a flying photonic state. Interestingly, our protocol can be used to conduct a controlled-Z quantum gate between a stationary microwave photon stored in …
We consider a photonic crystal (PC) doped with four-level atoms whose intermediate transition is coupled near-resonantly with a photonic band-gap edge. We show that two photons, each coupled to a different atomic transition in such atoms, can manifest strong phase or amplitude correlations: One photon can induce a large phase shift on the other photon or trigger its absorption and thus operate as an ultrasensitive nonlinear photon-switch. These features allow the creation of entangled two-photon states and have unique advantages over previously considered media: (i) no control lasers are neede…
We investigate spontaneous and pumped entanglement of two level systems in the vicinity of a photonic topological insulator interface, which supports a nonreciprocal (unidirectional), scattering-immune and topologically-protected surface plasmon polariton in the bandgap of the bulk material. To this end, we derive a master equation for qubit interactions in a general three-dimensional, nonreciprocal, inhomogeneous and lossy environment. The environment is represented exactly, via the photonic Green function. The resulting entanglement is shown to be extremely robust to defects occurring in the…
We demonstrate the collapse and revival features of the entanglement dynamics of different polarization-entangled photon states in a non-Markovian environment. Using an all-optical experimental setup, we show that entanglement can be revived even after it suffers from sudden death. A maximally revived state is shown to violate a Bell's inequality with 4.1 standard deviations which verifies its quantum nature. The revival phenomenon observed in this experiment provides an intriguing perspective on entanglement dynamics.
We propose a deterministic and scalable scheme to construct a two-qubit controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate and realize entanglement swapping between photonic qubits using a quantum-dot (QD) spin in a double-sided optical microcavity. The scheme is based on spin selective photon reflection from the cavity and can be achieved in a nondestructive and heralded way. We assess the feasibility of the scheme and show that the scheme can work in both the weak coupling and the strong coupling regimes. The scheme opens promising perspectives for long-distance photonic quantum communication and distributed quantu…
High-dimensional entanglement offers promising perspectives in quantum information science. In practice, however, the main challenge is to devise efficient methods to characterize high-dimensional entanglement, based on the available experimental data which is usually rather limited. Here we report the characterization and certification of high-dimensional entanglement in photon pairs, encoded in temporal modes. Building upon recently developed theoretical methods, we certify an entanglement of formation of 2.09(7) ebits in a time-bin implementation, and 4.1(1) ebits in an energy-time implemen…
Measuring entanglement is a demanding task that usually requires full tomography of a quantum system, involving a number of observables that grows exponentially with the number of parties. Recently, it was suggested that adding a single ancillary qubit would allow for the efficient measurement of concurrence, and indeed any entanglement monotone associated to antilinear operations. Here, we report on the experimental implementation of such a device---an embedding quantum simulator---in photonics, encoding the entangling dynamics of a bipartite system into a tripartite one. We show that biparti…
We create independent, synchronized single-photon sources with built-in quantum memory based on two remote cold atomic ensembles. The synchronized single photons are used to demonstrate efficient generation of entanglement. The resulting entangled photon pairs violate a Bell's Inequality by 5 standard deviations. Our synchronized single photons with their long coherence time of 25 ns and the efficient creation of entanglement serve as an ideal building block for scalable linear optical quantum information processing.
Quantum network applications like distributed quantum computing and quantum secret sharing present a promising future network equipped with quantum resources. Entanglement generation and distribution over long distances is critical and unavoidable to utilize quantum technology in a fully-connected network. The distribution of bipartite entanglement over long distances has seen some progresses, while the distribution of multipartite entanglement over long distances remains unsolved. Here we report a two-dimensional quantum repeater protocol for the generation of multipartite entanglement over l…
We consider the design of photonic circuits that make use of Ti:LiNbO$_{3}$ diffused channel waveguides for generating photons with various combinations of modal, spectral, and polarization entanglement. Down-converted photon pairs are generated via spontaneous optical parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in a two-mode waveguide. We study a class of photonic circuits comprising: 1) a nonlinear periodically poled two-mode waveguide structure, 2) a set of single-mode and two-mode waveguide-based couplers arranged in such a way that they suitably separate the three photons comprising the SPDC proces…
We consider two classes of non-Gaussian entangled states generated from the product of number states with the action of the beamsplitter or the two-mode squeezer. It is shown that, for many of these states, the covariance matrix is compatible with the covariance matrix of separable Gaussian states and their separability cannot be verified by the measurements of the first and second moments of canonical variables. We identify a couple of continuous-variable entanglement criteria with higher order moments to verify these non-Gaussian entanglement.
We propose a scheme of loss-resilient entanglement swapping between two distant parties via an imperfect optical channel. In this scheme, two copies of hybrid entangled states are prepared and the continuous-variable parts propagate through lossy media. In order to perform successful entanglement swapping, several different measurement schemes are considered for the continuousvariable parts such as single-photon detection for ideal cases and a homodyne detection for practical cases. We find that the entanglement swapping using hybrid states with small amplitudes offers larger entanglement than…
An obvious way to entangle two atoms located at remote locations is to produce a pair of entangled photons half-way between the two atoms, to sent one photon to each location and to subsequently map the photonic entanglement into the atoms. The efficiency of this process is, however, fundamentally limited due to overall transmission losses. We propose a method to herald the success of the mapping operation in free space without destroying nor revealing the stored quantum state. Interestingly for a Bell test, the heralding signal does not open the detection loophole provided the measurement cho…
We propose a method for generation of entangled photonic states in high dimensions, the so-called qudits, by exploiting quantum correlations of Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) entangled photons, produced via Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion. Diffraction masks containing $N$ angular slits placed in the path of twin photons define a qudit space of dimension $N^2$, spanned by the alternative pathways of OAM-entangled photons. We quantify the high-dimensional entanglement of path-entangled photons by the Concurrence, using an analytic expression valid for pure states. We report numerical resu…
We introduce the entanglement gauge describing the combined effects of local operations and nonlocal unitary transformations on bipartite quantum systems. The entanglement gauge exploits the invariance of nonlocal properties for bipartite systems under local (gauge) transformations. This new formalism yields observable effects arising from the gauge geometry of the bipartite system. In particular, we propose a non-Abelian gauge theory realized via two separated spatial modes of the quantized electromagnetic field manipulated by linear optics. In this linear optical realization, a bi-partite st…
We present an experiment where two photonic systems of arbitrary dimensions can be entangled. The method is based on spontaneous parametric down conversion with trains of d pump pulses with a fixed phase relation, generated by a mode-locked laser. This leads to a photon pair created in a coherent superposition of $d$ discrete emission times, given by the successive laser pulses. Entanglement is shown by performing a two-photon interference experiment and by observing the visibility of the interference fringes increasing as a function of the dimension d. Factors limiting the visibility, such as…
Logic-qubit entanglement is a promising resource in quantum information processing, especially in future large-scale quantum networks. In the paper, we put forward an efficient entanglement purification protocol (EPP) for nonlocal mixed logic entangled states with the bit-flip error in the logic qubits of the logic Bell state, resorting to the photon-atom interaction in low-quality (Q) cavity and atomic state measurement. Different from existing EPPs, this protocol can also purify the logic phase-flip error, and the bit-flip error and the phase-flip error in physic qubit. During the protocol, …
Entanglement--one of the most delicate phenomena in nature--is an essential resource for quantum information applications. Large entangled cluster states have been predicted to enable universal quantum computation, with the required single- qubit measurements readily implemented with photons. Useful large-scale systems must generate and control qubit entanglement on-chip, where quantum information is naturally encoded in photon path. Here we report a silicon photonic chip which integrates resonant-enhanced sources, filters, and reconfigurable optics to generate a path-entangled two-qubit state…
We report an experiment in which the moments of spatial coordinates of down-converted photons are measured directly, without having to reconstruct any marginal probability distributions. We use a spatial light modulator to couple the spatial degrees of freedom and the polarization of the fields, which act as ancilla systems. Information about the spatial correlations is obtained via measurements on the ancilla qubits. Among other applications, this new method provides a more efficient technique to identify continuous variable entanglement.
A photonic cluster state with a tree-type entanglement structure constitutes an efficient resource for quantum error correction of photon loss. But the generation of a tree cluster state with an arbitrary size is notoriously difficult. Here, we propose a protocol to deterministically generate photonic tree states of arbitrary size by using only a single quantum emitter. Photonic entanglement is established through both emission and re-scattering from the same emitter, enabling fast and resource-efficient entanglement generation. The same protocol can also be extended to generate more general t…
Higher dimensional quantum systems are an important avenue for new explorations in quantum computing as well as quantum communications. One of the ubiquitous resources in quantum technologies is entanglement. However, so far, entanglement has been certified in higher dimensional systems through suitable bounds on known entanglement measures. In this work, we have, for the first time, quantified the amount of entanglement in bi-partite pure qutrit states by analytically relating statistical correlation measures and known measures of entanglement, and have determined the amount of entanglement i…
By interpreting the well-known, qualitative criteria for the existence of quantum error correction (QEC) codes by Knill and Laflamme from a quantitative perspective, we propose a figure of merit for assessing a QEC scheme based on the average fidelity between codewords. This enables us to quantify the performance of a protocol as a whole, including errors beyond the correctable set. Various examples are calculated for photonic qubit codes dealing with the experimentally relevant case of photon loss, demonstrating the advantages of the new measure. In the context of continuous-variable QEC, our…
Entangled quantum states play an important role in quantum information science and also in quantum mechanics fundamental investigations. Implementation and characterization of techniques allowing for easy preparation of entangled states are important steps in such fields. Here we generated entangled quantum states encoded in photons transversal paths, obtained by pumping a non-linear crystal with multiple transversal Gaussian beams. Such approach allows us to generate entangled states of two qubits and two qutrits encoded in Gaussian transversal path of twin photons. We make a theoretical anal…
A quantum interface for two-way entanglement transfer between orbital angular momentum degree of freedom in free space and time-energy degree of freedom in optical fibers, provides a novel way toward establishing entanglement between remote heterogeneous quantum nodes. Here, we experimentally demonstrate this kind of transfer interface by using two interferometric cyclic gates. By using this quantum interface, we perform two-way entanglement transfer for the two degrees of freedom. The results show that the quantum entangled state can be switched back and forth between orbital angular momentum…
