The dynamics of a cascaded system that consists of two atom-cavity subsystems is studied by using the quantum trajectory method. Unwanted losses are included, such as photon absorption and scattering by the cavity mirrors and spontaneous emission of the atoms. Considering an initially excited two-level atom in the source subsystem, analytical solutions are obtained. The entanglement evolution is studied for the two atoms and for the two intracavity fields.
We theoretically show that bright six-partite continuous-variable entanglement can be generated using cascaded four-wave mixing effects of third-order nonlinearity atomic systems above threshold. The six-partite continuous-variable entanglement among the six cavity fields with different frequencies is analyzed by applying optimized inseparability criteria proposed by Van Loock and Furusawa.
We present a cascaded system consisting of three non-degenerate optical parametric amplifiers (NOPAs) for the generation and the enhancement of quantum entanglement of continuous variables. The entanglement of optical fields produced by the first NOPA is successively enhanced by the second and the third NOPAs from -5.3 $dB$ to -8.1 $dB$ below the quantum noise limit. The dependence of the enhanced entanglement on the physical parameters of the NOPAs and the reachable entanglement limitation for a given cascaded NOPA system are calculated. The calculation results are in good agreement with the …
The dynamics of a cascaded system that consists of two atom-cavity subsystems is studied by using the quantum trajectory method. Considering the two atom-cavity subsystems driven by a Raman interaction, analytical solutions are obtained. Subsequently, the entanglement evolution between the two atoms is studied, and it is shown that the entanglement can be stored by switching off the Raman coupling. By monitoring the radiation field, the entanglement between the two atoms can be enhanced.
We analyse a nonlinear optical system which uses cascaded nonlinearities to produce both second and fourth harmonic outputs from an input field at the fundamental frequency. Using fully quantum equations of motion, we show that the system produces quadrature squeezed outputs which exhibit bipartite entanglement, EPR-steering, and asymmetric steering across a two octave frequency range.
We compare the bipartite entanglement and EPR-steering properties of the two different schemes which produce third harmonic optical fields from an input field at the fundamental frequency. The first scheme uses second harmonic cascaded with sum-frequency generation while the second uses triply degenerate four-wave mixing, also known as direct third harmonic generation. We examine and compare the two schemes in both the travelling wave and intra-cavity configurations. We find that both schemes produce continuous-variable bipartite entanglement and EPR-steering. The direct scheme produces a grea…
We propose a scheme to unconditionally entangle the internal states of atoms trapped in separate high finesse optical cavities. The scheme uses the technique of quantum reservoir engineering in a cascaded cavity QED setting, and for ideal (lossless) coupling between the cavities generates an entangled pure state. Highly entangled states are also shown to be possible for realizable cavity QED parameters and with nonideal coupling.
We theoretically investigate the spectral entanglement of a multiphoton source generated from the cascade emissions in the cascaded cold atomic ensembles.\ This photon source is highly directional, guaranteed under the four-wave mixing condition, and is also highly frequency-correlated due to finite driving pulse durations and superradiant decay constants.\ We utilize Schmidt decomposition to study the bipartite entanglement of the biphoton states projected from the multiphoton ones.\ This entropy of entanglement can be manipulated by controlling the driving parameters and superradiant decay r…
We study the entanglement distillation in continuous variable systems when a photon replacement protocol is employed. A cascaded protocol is studied and we find that the resultant entanglement increases by increasing the number of repetitions. Interestingly, the entanglement enhancement is not sensitive to the asymmetry of the protocol and gives the same result for any arrangement in the absence of loss. The non-Gaussianity of the outcome state is also studied and it is found that the non-Gaussianity of the state dramatically depends on the experimental arrangements. By providing practical inf…
Stable sources of entangled photons are important requirements for quantum communications. In recent years, cascaded downconversion has been demonstrated as an effective method of directly producing three-photon entanglement. However, to produce polarization entanglement these sources have until now relied on intricate active phase stabilization schemes, thus limiting their robustness and usability. In this work, we present a completely phase-stable source of three-photon entanglement in the polarization degree of freedom. With this source, which is based on a cascade of two pair sources based…
In this paper, we propose a scheme for generating steady-state entanglement of remote micromechanical oscillators in unidirectionally-coupled cavities. For the system of two mechanical oscillators, we show that when two cavity modes in each cavity are driven at red- and blue-detuned sidebands, respectively, a stationary two-mode squeezed vacuum state of the two mechanical oscillators can be generated with the help of the cavity dissipation. The degree of squeezing is controllable by adjusting the relative strength of the pump lasers. Our calculations also show that the achieved mechanical enta…
We studied the quantum correlation between the photon pairs generated by biexciton cascade decays of self-assembled quantum dots, and determined the temperature behavior associated with so-called sudden change of the quantum correlation. The relationship between the fine structure splitting and the sudden change temperature is also provided. Our study indicates that this correlation behavior sudden change temperature is independent on the back ground noise in the system and far lower than entanglement sudden death temperature, therefore it should be easier to observe the phenomenon of correlat…
We analyze the resilience under photon loss of the bi-partite entanglement present in multi-photon states produced by parametric down-conversion. The quantification of the entanglement is made possible by a symmetry of the states that persists even under polarization-independent losses. We examine the approach of the states to the set of states with a positive partial transpose as losses increase, and calculate the relative entropy of entanglement. We find that some bi-partite distillable entanglement persists for arbitrarily high losses.
Cascaded Rydberg antiblockade: Multi-atom excitation dynamics and entanglement
School of Physics, Zhengzhou University（郑州大学物理学院）；School of Physics, Anhui University（安徽大学物理学院）；School of Electronics and Information, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry（郑州轻工业大学电子与信息工程学院）；Institute of Quantum Materials and Physics, Henan Academy of Science（河南省科学院量子材料与物理研究所）
We analyse the output quantum tripartite correlations from an intracavity nonlinear optical system which uses cascaded nonlinearities to produce both second and fourth harmonic outputs from an input field at the fundamental frequency. Using fully quantum equations of motion, we investigate two parameter regimes and show that the system produces tripartite inseparability, entanglement and EPR steering, with the detection of these depending on the correlations being considered.
The cascade-emitted biphotons generated from the alkali metal atomic ensembles are an excellent entanglement resource which enables long-distance quantum communication. The communication of quantum information between distant locations can be realized by utilizing the low-loss telecom bandwidth in the upper transition of the cascaded photons in a fiber-based quantum network. Meanwhile, the infrared photon from the lower transition of this highly directional and frequency-correlated biphoton can be created under the four-wave mixing process and can be stored locally as a collective spin wave. H…
In this paper, we demonstrate the generation of high-performance entangled photon-pairs in different degrees of freedom from a single piece of fiber pigtailed periodically poled LiNbO$_3$ (PPLN) waveguide. We utilize cascaded second-order nonlinear optical processes, i.e. second-harmonic generation (SHG) and spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC), to generate photon-pairs. Previously, the performance of the photon pairs is contaminated by Raman noise photons from the fiber pigtails. Here by integrating the PPLN waveguide with noise rejecting filters, we obtain a coincidence-to-accidenta…
The cascaded biphoton state generated from a cold atomic ensemble presents one of the strongly correlated resources that can preserve and relay quantum information. Under the four-wave mixing condition, the emitted signal and idler photons from the upper and lower excited states become highly correlated in their traveling directions and entangled in continuous frequency spaces. In this system, we theoretically study the spectral compression of the biphoton source using an external cavity and show the reduction in its frequency entanglement entropy. This indicates, respectively, an improved lig…
Single-photon entanglement is one of the primary resources for quantum networks, including quantum repeater architectures. Such entanglement can be revealed with only local homodyne measurements through the entanglement witness presented in [Morin et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 130401 (2013)]. Here, we provide an extended analysis of this witness by introducing analytical bounds and by reporting measurements confirming its great robustness with regard to losses. This study highlights the potential of optical hybrid methods, where discrete entanglement is characterized through continuous-variable…
We present analytical compact solution for the density matrix and correlation functions of two collective-macroscopic spins evolving via Ising-like Hamiltonian in the presence of particle losses. The losses introduce non-local phase noise which destroys highly entangled states arising in the evolution. On the other hand, the states appearing at relatively short timescales, possessing EPR-like entanglement will survive. Applying our solutions to the recently proposed scheme to entangle two Bose-Einstein condensates, we estimate the optimal number of atoms for EPR correlations.
Trace decreasing dynamical maps are as physical as trace preserving ones; however, they are much less studied. Here we overview how the quantum Sinkhorn theorem can be successfully applied to find a two-qubit entangled state which has the strongest robustness against local noises and losses of quantum information carriers. We solve a practically relevant problem of finding an optimal initial encoding to distribute entangled polarized qubits though communication lines with polarization dependent losses and extra depolarizing noise. The longest entanglement lifetime is shown to be attainable wit…
We propose how to achieve nonreciprocal quantum entanglement of light and motion and reveal its counterintuitive robustness against random losses. We find that by splitting the counterpropagating lights of a spinning resonator via the Sagnac effect, photons and phonons can be entangled strongly in a chosen direction but fully uncorrelated in the other. This makes it possible both to realize quantum nonreciprocity even in the absence of any classical nonreciprocity and also to achieve significant entanglement revival against backscattering losses in practical devices. Our work provides a way to…
We examined the possibility of recovering the losses of entanglement and the non-local advantage by using the local symmetric operations. The improvement efficiency may be increased by applying the symmetric operations on both qubits. The recovering process of both phenomenon is exhibited clearly when only one qubit is accelerated and the symmetric operations is applied on both qubits. It is shown that, for large acceleration, the non-local coherent advantage may be re-birthed by using these symmetric operations.
We study the diffraction of two maximally entangled qubits encoded into spatial modes of light with orbital angular momenta $\pm \hbar l_0$, on angular apertures. Exploiting the uncertainty relation between angular position and momentum, we quantify the diffraction-induced entanglement loss, for different $l_0$, as a function of the angular uncertainty $Δϕ$ induced by the apertures. We demonstrate that the degradation of entanglement follows a universal law parametrised by the product $l_0Δϕ$ alone.} {We study the diffraction of two photonic qubits, which are initially maximally entangled in t…
We analyze the stabilizability of entangled two-mode Gaussian states in three benchmark dissipative models: local damping, dissipators engineered to preserve two-mode squeezed states, and cascaded oscillators. In the first two models, we determine principal upper bounds on the stabilizable entanglement, while in the last model, arbitrary amounts of entanglement can be stabilized. All three models exhibit a tradeoff between state entanglement and purity in the entanglement maximizing limit. Our results are derived from the Hamiltonian-independent stabilizability conditions for Gaussian systems.…
For entangled states of light both the amount of entanglement and the sensitivity to noise generally increase with the number of photons in the state. The entanglement-sensitivity tradeoff is investigated for a particular set of states, multi-dimensional entangled coherent states. Those states possess an arbitrarily large amount of entanglement $E$ provided the number of photons is at least of order $2^{2E}$. We calculate how fast that entanglement decays due to photon absorption losses and how much entanglement is left. We find that for very small losses the amount of entanglement lost is equ…
Quantum entanglement is an integral part of quantum optics and has been exploited in areas such as computation, cryptography and metrology. The entanglement between photons can be present in various degrees of freedom (DOFs), and even the simplest bi-partite systems can occupy a large Hilbert space. Therefore, it is desirable to exploit this multi-dimensional space for various quantum applications by fully controlling the properties of the entangled photons in multiple DOFs. While current entangled-photon sources are capable of generating entanglement in one or more DOFs, there is currently a …
We theoretically investigate the stability of a two cascaded cavity optomechanical system with optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) inside the two coupled cavities, and study the steady-state entanglement between two distant mechanical resonators. We show that the parameter regime where the system is unstable without OPAs, such as relatively high laser intensity and blue detuning, can be exploited to build the steady-state mechanical entanglement by modulating the parametric gain. The application of OPAs is helpful to preserve the mechanical entanglement suffered from the dissipation at some f…
We address the dynamics induced by collective atomic recoil in a Bose-Einstein condensate in presence of radiation losses and atomic decoherence. In particular, we focus on the linear regime of the lasing mechanism, and analyze the effects of losses and decoherence on the generation of entanglement. The dynamics is that of three bosons, two atomic modes interacting with a single-mode radiation field, coupled with a bath of oscillators. The resulting three-mode dissipative Master equation is solved analytically in terms of the Wigner function. We examine in details the two complementary limits …
We study the effects of losses on the entanglement created between two separate atomic gases by optical probing and homodyne detection of the transmitted light. The system is well-described in the Gaussian state formulation. Analytical results quantifying the degree of entanglement between the two gases are derived and compared with the entanglement in a pair of light pulses generated by an EPR source. For low (high) transmission losses the highest degree of entanglement is obtained by probing with squeezed (antisqueezed) light. In an asymmetric setup where light is only sent one way through t…
Coherent information quantifies the achievable rate of the reliable quantum information transmission through a communication channel. Use of the correlated quantum states instead of the factorized ones may result in an increase in the coherent information, a phenomenon known as superadditivity. However, even for simple physical models of channels it is rather difficult to detect the superadditivity and find the advantageous multipartite states. Here we consider the case of polarization dependent losses and propose some physically motivated multipartite entangled states which outperform all fac…
We report an experimental demonstration of entanglement swapping over two quantum stages. By successful realizations of two cascaded photonic entanglement swapping processes, entanglement is generated and distributed between two photons, that originate from independent sources and do not share any common past. In the experiment we use three pairs of polarization entangled photons and conduct two Bell-state measurements (BSMs) one between the first and second pair, and one between the second and third pair. This results in projecting the remaining two outgoing photons from pair 1 and 3 into an …
Entanglement in bipartite continuous-variable systems is investigated in the presence of partial losses, such as those introduced by a realistic quantum communication channel, e.g. by propagation in an optical fiber. We find that entanglement can vanish completely for partial losses, in a situa- tion reminiscent of so-called entanglement sudden death. Even states with extreme squeezing may become separable after propagation in lossy channels. Having in mind the potential applications of such entangled light beams to optical communications, we investigate the conditions under which 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…
We investigate the process of entanglement transfer from a three-mode quantized field to a system of three spatially separated qubits each one made of a two-level atom resonantly coupled to a cavity mode. The optimal conditions for entanglement transfer, evaluated by atomic tripartite negativity, are derived for radiation prepared in qubit-like and Gaussian entangled states in terms of field parameters, atom-cavity interaction time, cavity mirror losses, and atomic preparation. For qubit-like states we found that for negligible cavity losses some states may completely transfer their entangleme…
We consider a Bell-like inequality performed using various instances of multi-photon entangled states to demonstrate that losses occurring after the unitary transformations used in the nonlocality test can be counteracted by enhancing the "size" of such entangled states. In turn, this feature can be used to overcome detection inefficiencies affecting the test itself: a slight increase in the size of such states, pushing them towards a more "macroscopic" form of entanglement, significantly improves the state robustness against detection inefficiency, thus easing the closing of the detection loo…
The influence of losses in the transmission of continuous-variable entangled light through linear devices such as optical fibers is studied, with special emphasis on Gaussian states. Upper bounds on entanglement and the distance to the set of separable Gaussian states are calculated. Compared with the distance measure, the bounds can substantially overestimate the entanglement and thus do not show the drastic decrease of entanglement with increasing mean photon number, as does the distance measure. In particular, it shows that losses give rise to entanglement saturation, which principally limi…
A parametric down-conversion (PDC) source can be used as either a triggered single photon source or an entangled photon source in quantum key distribution (QKD). The triggering PDC QKD has already been studied in the literature. On the other hand, a model and a post-processing protocol for the entanglement PDC QKD are still missing. In this paper, we fill in this important gap by proposing such a model and a post-processing protocol for the entanglement PDC QKD. Although the PDC model is proposed to study the entanglement-based QKD, we emphasize that our generic model may also be useful for ot…
Understanding the distribution of quantum entanglement over many parties is a fundamental challenge of quantum physics and is of practical relevance for several applications in the field of quantum information. Here we use methods from quantum metrology to microscopically characterize the entanglement structure of multimode continuous-variable states in all possible multi-partitions and in all reduced distributions. From experimentally measured covariance matrices of Gaussian states with 2, 3, and 4 photonic modes with controllable losses, we extract the metrological sensitivity as well as an …
Subtracting photons from a two-mode squeezed state is a well-known method to increase entanglement. We analyse different strategies of local photon subtraction from a two-mode squeezed state in terms of entanglement gain and success probability. We develop a general framework that incorporates imperfections and losses in all stages of the process: before, during, and after subtraction. By combining all three effects into a single efficiency parameter, we provide analytical and numerical results for subtraction strategies using photon-number-resolving and threshold detectors. We compare the ent…
The process of cascaded downconversion and sum-frequency generation inside an optical cavity has been predicted to be a potential source of three-mode continuous-variable entanglement. When the cavity is pumped by two fields, the threshold properties have been analysed, showing that these are more complicated than in well-known processes such as optical parametric oscillation. When there is only a single pumping field, the entanglement properties have been calculated using a linearised fluctuation analysis, but without any consideration of the threshold properties or critical operating points …
We present a detailed theoretical analysis for the distillation of one copy of a mixed two-mode continuous-variable entangled state using beamsplitters and coherent photon-detection techniques, including conventional on-off detectors and photon number resolving detectors. The initial Gaussian mixed-entangled states are generated by transmitting a two-mode squeezed state through a lossy bosonic channel, corresponding to the primary source of errors in current approaches to optical quantum communication. We provide explicit formulas to calculate the entanglement in terms of logarithmic negativit…
Entangled quantum states, such as N00N states, are of major importance for quantum technologies due to their quantum-enhanced performance. At the same time, their quantum correlations are relatively vulnerable when they are subjected to imperfections. Therefore, it is crucial to determine under which circumstances their distinct quantum features can be exploited. In this paper, we study the entanglement property of noisy N00N states. This class of states is a generalization of N00N states including various attenuation effects, such as mixing, constant or fluctuating losses, and dephasing. To v…
We present a first-principles theoretical analysis of the entanglement of two superconducting qubits in spatially separated microwave cavities by a sequential (cascaded) probe of the two cavities with a coherent mode, that provides a full characterization of both the continuous measurement induced dynamics and the entanglement generation. We use the SLH formalism to derive the full quantum master equation for the coupled qubits and cavities system, within the rotating wave and dispersive approximations, and conditioned equations for the cavity fields. We then develop effective stochastic maste…
This paper studies a scheme of two spatially distant oscillator systems that are connected by Gaussian fields and examines distributed entanglement generation between two continuous-mode output Gaussian fields that are radiated by the oscillators. It is demonstrated that using measurement-feedback control while a non-local effective entangling operation is on can help to enhance the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen (EPR)-like entanglement between the output fields. The effect of propagation delays and losses in the fields interconnecting the two oscillators, and the effect of other losses in the system…
We propose to realize the two-mode continuous-variable entanglement of microwave photons in an electro-optic system, consisting of two superconducting microwave resonators and one or two optical cavities filled with certain electro-optic medium. The cascaded and parallel schemes realize such entanglement via coherent control on the dynamics of the system, while the dissipative dynamical scheme utilizes the reservoir-engineering approach and exploits the optical dissipation as a useful resource. We show that, for all the schemes, the amount of entanglement is determined by the ratio of the effe…
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 …
The experimental verification of quantum features, such as entanglement, at large scales is extremely challenging because of environment-induced decoherence. Indeed, measurement techniques for demonstrating the quantumness of multiparticle systems in the presence of losses are difficult to define and, if not sufficiently accurate, they provide wrong conclusions. We present a Bell test where one photon of an entangled pair is amplified and then detected by threshold detectors, whose signals undergo postselection. The amplification is performed by a classical machine, which produces a fully sepa…
The generation of entanglement between disparate physical objects is a key ingredient in the field of quantum technologies, since they can have different functionalities in a quantum network. Here we propose and analyze a generic approach to steady-state entanglement generation between two oscillators with different temperatures and decoherence properties coupled in cascade to a common unidirectional light field. The scheme is based on a combination of coherent noise cancellation and dynamical cooling techniques for two oscillators with effective masses of opposite signs, such as quasi-spin an…
We discuss the nonlocality of the $W$ and the Dicke states subject to losses. We consider two noise models, namely loss of excitations and loss of particles, and investigate how much loss can be tolerated such that the final state remains nonlocal. This leads to a measure of robustness of the nonlocality of Dicke states, with a clear physical interpretation. Our results suggest that the relation between nonlocality and entanglement of Dicke states is not monotonous.
We discuss the generation of a macroscopic entangled state in a single atom cavity-QED system. The three-level atom in a cascade configuration interacts dispersively with two classical coherent fields inside a doubly resonant cavity. We show that a macroscopic entangled state between these two cavity modes can be generated under large detuning conditions. The entanglement persists even under the presence of cavity losses.
