Time-resolved photon detection can be used to generate entanglement between distinguishable photons. This technique can be extended to entangle quantum memories that emit photons with different frequencies and identical temporal profiles without the loss of entanglement rate or fidelity. We experimentally realize this process using remotely trapped $^{171}$Yb$^+$ ions where heralded entanglement is generated by interfering distinguishable photons. This technique may be necessary for future modular quantum systems and networks that are composed of heterogeneous qubits.
We theoretically evaluate establishing remote entanglement between distinguishable matter qubits through interference and detection of two emitted photons. The fidelity of the entanglement operation is analyzed as a function of the temporal and frequency mode-matching between the photons emitted from each quantum memory. With a general analysis, we define limits on the absolute magnitudes of temporal and frequency mode-mismatches in order to maintain entanglement fidelities greater than 99% with two-photon detection efficiencies greater than 90%. We apply our analysis to several selected syste…
In their 2002 article, Ghirardi, Marinatto and Weber have proposed a formal analysis of the entanglement properties for a system consisting of N distinguishable particles. Their analysis leads to the differentiation of three possible situations that can arise in such systems: complete entanglement, complete non-entanglement, and the remaining cases. I argue that this categorization leaves out one important possibility in which a system is completely entangled, and yet some of its subsystems are mutually non-entangled. As an example I present and discuss a state of a three-particle system which…
The entanglement between two bosons or fermions can be accessed if there exists an auxiliary degree of freedom which can be used to label and effectively distinguish the two particles. For some types of entanglement between two indistinguishable particles one can observe duality, i.e., if the entanglement is present in the Hilbert space H and an auxiliary Hilbert space H' is used to label the particles, then if we used H as a label the entanglement would be present in H'. For distinguishable particles this effect does not occur because of superselection rules which prevent superpositions of di…
Two important results of quantum physics are the \textit{no-cloning} theorem and the \textit{monogamy of entanglement}. The former forbids the creation of an independent and identical copy of an arbitrary unknown quantum state and the latter restricts the shareability of quantum entanglement among multiple quantum systems. For distinguishable particles, one of these results imply the other. In this Letter, we show that in qubit systems with indistinguishable particles (where each particle cannot be addressed individually), a maximum violation of the monogamy of entanglement is possible by the …
We give a simple proof, based on time-reversibility and purity, that a complete orthonormal family of pure states which can be perfectly distinguished by LOCC cannot contain any entangled state. Our results are really about the shape of certain states and processes, and are valid in arbitrary categorical probabilistic theories with time-reversal. From the point of view of the resource theory of entanglement, our results can be interpreted to say that free processes can distinguish between the states in a complete orthonormal family only when the states themselves are all free.
Coherent State Assisted Entanglement Generation Between Quantum Memories
The University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）；RTX BBN Technologies（RTX BBN技术公司）；Wyant College of Optical Sciences, The University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学怀安特光学科学学院）
Quantum networks are composed of quantum nodes that interact coherently by way of quantum channels and open a broad frontier of scientific opportunities. For example, a quantum network can serve as a `web' for connecting quantum processors for computation and communication, as well as a `simulator' for enabling investigations of quantum critical phenomena arising from interactions among the nodes mediated by the channels. The physical realization of quantum networks generically requires dynamical systems capable of generating and storing entangled states among multiple quantum memories, and of…
Entangled quantum states in high-dimensional space show many advantages compared with entangled states in two-dimensional space. The former enable quantum communication with higher channel capacity, enable more efficient quantum-information processing, and are more feasible for closing the detection loophole in Bell test experiments. Establishing high-dimensional entangled memories is essential for long-distance communication, but its experimental realization is lacking. We experimentally established high-dimensional entanglement in orbital angular momentum space between two atomic ensembles s…
We study the necessary conditions for bosons composed of two distinguishable fermions to exhibit bosonic-like behaviour. We base our analysis on tools of quantum information theory such as entanglement and the majorization criterion for probability distributions. In particular we scrutinize a recent interesting hypothesis by C. K. Law in the Ref. Phys. Rev. A 71, 034306 (2005) that suggests that the amount of entanglement between the constituent fermions is related to the bosonic properties of the composite boson. We show that a large amount of entanglement does not necessarily imply a good bo…
Reversible entanglement transfer between light and matter is a crucial requisite for the ongoing developments of quantum information technologies. Quantum networks and their envisioned applications, e.g., secure communications beyond direct transmission, distributed quantum computing or enhanced sensing, rely on entanglement distribution between nodes. Although entanglement transfer has been demonstrated, a current roadblock is the limited efficiency of this process that can compromise the scalability of multi-step architectures. Here we demonstrate the efficient transfer of heralded single-ph…
Solid-state quantum emitters are promising candidates for the realization of quantum networks, owing to their long-lived spin memories, high-fidelity local operations, and optical connectivity for long-range entanglement. However, due to differences in local environment, solid-state emitters typically feature a range of distinct transition frequencies, which makes it challenging to create optically mediated entanglement between arbitrary emitter pairs. We propose and demonstrate an efficient method for entangling emitters with optical transitions separated by many linewidths. In our approach, …
We consider two two-level systems (TLSs) coupled to the vacuum of guided modes confined in a rectangular waveguide. Two TLSs are fixed at different points in the waveguide and initially share an excitation. For the energy separation of the TLSs far away from the cutoff frequencies of transverse modes, two coupled delay-differential equations are obtained for the probability amplitudes of the TLSs. The effects of the difference of TLSs' energy separations and the inter-TLS distance on the time evolution of the concurrence of the TLSs are examined.
Promising access to high-speed quantum networks relies on the creation of high-dimensional entangled memories that provide quantum communication with higher capacity of noisy quantum channels, thereby reducing the transmission time of information. Yet, the distribution of multidimensional entanglement between remote memory nodes is still faintly investigated. We propose an experimentally feasible protocol of deterministic generation of high-dimensional entanglement between distant multi-level atoms confined in high-finesse optical cavities and driven by laser pulses. Three-dimensional entangle…
We study entanglement and squeezing of two uncoupled impurities immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate. We treat them as two quantum Brownian particles interacting with a bath composed of the Bogoliubov modes of the condensate. The Langevin-like quantum stochastic equations derived exhibit memory effects. We study two scenarios: (i) In the absence of an external potential, we observe sudden death of entanglement; (ii) In the presence of an external harmonic potential, entanglement survives even at the asymptotic time limit. Our study considers experimentally tunable parameters.
Atomic ensembles are effective memory nodes for quantum communication network due to the long coherence time and the collective enhancement effect for the nonlinear interaction between an ensemble and a photon. Here we investigate the possibility of achieving the entanglement distillation for nonlocal atomic ensembles by the input-output process of a single photon as a result of cavity quantum electrodynamics. We give an optimal entanglement concentration protocol (ECP) for two-atomic-ensemble systems in a partially entangled pure state with known parameters and an efficient ECP for the system…
In this paper, we construct $2n-1$ locally indistinguishable orthogonal product states in $\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^{4}~(n>4)$ and $\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^{5}~(n\geq 5)$ respectively. Moreover, a set of locally indistinguishable orthogonal product states with $2(n+2l)-8$ elements in $\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^{2l}~(n\geq 2l>4)$ and a class of locally indistinguishable orthogonal product states with $2(n+2k+1)-7$ elements in $\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^{2k+1}~(n\geq 2k+1>5)$ are also constructed respectively. These classes of quantum states are then shown to be distinguishabl…
We find that a bipartite quantum state is entangled if and only if it is quantum coherent with respect to complete bases of states in the corresponding system that are distinguishable under local quantum operations and classical communication. The corresponding minimal quantum coherence is the entanglement of formation. Connections to the relative entropy of entanglement and quantum coherence, and generalizations to the multiparty case are also considered.
Future quantum networks will enable the distribution of entanglement between distant locations and allow applications in quantum communication, quantum sensing and distributed quantum computation. At the core of this network lies the ability of generating and storing entanglement at remote, interconnected quantum nodes. While remote physical systems of various nature have been successfully entangled, none of these realisations encompassed all of the requirements for network operation, such as telecom-compatibility and multimode operation. Here we report the demonstration of heralded entangleme…
Entangling quantum systems with different characteristics through the exchange of photons is a prerequisite for building future quantum networks. Proving the presence of entanglement between quantum memories for light working at different wavelengths furthers this goal. Here, we report on a series of experiments with a thulium-doped crystal, serving as a quantum memory for 794 nm photons, an erbium-doped fibre, serving as a quantum memory for telecommunication-wavelength photons at 1535 nm, and a source of photon pairs created via spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Characterizing the phot…
Given two quantum memories for continuous variables (e.g., the collective pseudo-spin of two atomic ensembles) and the possibility to perform passive optical operations (typically beam-splitters) on the optical modes before or after the storage, two possible scenarios arise resulting in generally different degrees of final entanglement. Namely, one could either store an entangled state and retrieve it directly from the memory, or rather store two separate single-mode squeezed states and then combine them with a beam-splitter to generate the final entangled state. In this paper, we address the …
The sources, which generate atom-photon quantum correlations or entanglement based on quantum memory, are basic blocks for building quantum repeaters (QRs). For achieving highly entanglement-generation rates in ensemble-based QRs, spatial-, temporal- and spectral-multimode memories are needed. The previous temporal-multimode memories are based on rephrasing mechanisms in inhomogeneous-broadened media. Here, by applying a train of multi-direction write pulses into a homogeneous-broadened atomic ensemble to induce Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller-like Raman processes, we prepare up to 19 pairs of modes, …
Owing to the inevitable loss in communication channels, the distance of entanglement distribution is limited to approximately 100 kilometres on the ground. Quantum repeaters can circumvent this problem by using quantum memory and entanglement swapping. As the elementary link of a quantum repeater, the heralded distribution of two-party entanglement between two remote nodes has only been realized with built-in-type quantum memories. These schemes suffer from the trade-off between multiplexing capacity and deterministic properties and hence hinder the development of efficient quantum repeaters. …
Quantum network has significant applications both practically and fundamentally. A hybrid architecture with photons and stationary nodes is highly promising. So far, experimental realizations are limited to two nodes with two photons. Going beyond state of the art by entangling many photons with many quantum nodes is highly appreciated. Here, we report an experiment realizing hybrid entanglement between three photons and three atomic-ensemble quantum memories. We make use of three similar setups, in each of which one pair of photon-memory entanglement with high overall efficiency is created vi…
Quantum internet will enable a number of revolutionary applications. It relies on entanglement of remote quantum memories over long distances. Despite enormous progresses so far, the maximal physical separation achieved between two nodes is 1.3 km, and challenges for long distance remain. Here we make a significant step forward by entangling two atomic ensembles in one lab via photon transmission through metropolitan-scale fibers. We use cavity enhancement to create bright atom-photon entanglement, and harness quantum frequency conversion to shift the atomic wavelength to telecom. We realize e…
Entanglement distribution between distant parties is an essential component to most quantum communication protocols. Unfortunately, decoherence effects such as phase noise in optical fibers are known to demolish entanglement. Iterative (multistep) entanglement distillation protocols have long been proposed to overcome decoherence, but their probabilistic nature makes them inefficient since the success probability decays exponentially with the number of steps. Quantum memories have been contemplated to make entanglement distillation practical, but suitable quantum memories are not realised to d…
The fermionization regime and entanglement correlations of two distinguishable harmonically confined fermions interacting via a zero-range potential is addressed. We present two alternative representations of the ground state that we associate with two different types of one-dimensional spaces. These spaces, in turn, induce different correlations between particles and thus require a suitable definition of entanglement. We find that the entanglement of the ground state is strongly conditioned by those one-dimensional space features. We also find that in the strongly attractive regime the relati…
We adopt the beam splitter model for losses to analyse the performance of a recent compact continuous-variable entanglement distillation protocol [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 060502, (2012)] implemented using realistic quantum memories. We show that the decoherence undergone by a two-mode squeezed state while stored in a quantum memory can strongly modify the results of the preparatory step of the protocol. We find that the well-known method for locally increasing entanglement, phonon subtraction, may not result in entanglement gain when losses are taken into account. Thus, we investigate the critic…
We introduce a figure of merit for a quantum memory which measures the preservation of entanglement between a qubit stored in and retrieved from the memory and an auxiliary qubit. We consider a general quantum memory system consisting of a medium of two level absorbers, with the qubit to be stored encoded in a single photon. We derive an analytic expression for our figure of merit taking into account Gaussian fluctuations in the Hamiltonian parameters, which for example model inhomogeneous broadening and storage time dephasing. Finally we specialize to the case of an atomic quantum memory wher…
Hyper-hybrid entanglement for two indistinguishable bosons has been recently proposed by Li \textit{et al.} [Y. Li, M. Gessner, W. Li, and A. Smerzi, \href{https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.050404}{Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 050404 (2018)}]. In the current paper, we show that this entanglement exists for two indistinguishable fermions also. Next, we establish two {\em no-go} results: no hyper-hybrid entanglement for two {\em distinguishable} particles, and no unit fidelity quantum teleportation using {\em indistinguishable} particles. If either of these is possible, then the {\em no-signaling…
We present a novel approach to the study of entanglement decay, which focuses on collective properties. As an example, we investigate the entanglement decay of a two-qubit system, produced by local identical reservoirs acting on the qubits, for three experimentally and theoretically relevant cases. We study the probability distributions of disentanglement times, a quantity independent of the measure used to quantify entanglement, and the time-dependent probability distribution of concurrence. Analytical results are obtained for initially uniformly distributed pure states. The calculation of th…
We present an exact rate analysis for a secret key that can be shared among two parties employing a linear quantum repeater chain. One of our main motivations is to address the question whether simply placing quantum memories along a quantum communication channel can be beneficial in a realistic setting. The underlying model assumes deterministic entanglement swapping of single-spin quantum memories and it excludes probabilistic entanglement distillation, and thus two-way classical communication, on higher nesting levels. Within this framework, we identify the essential properties of any optim…
Modular quantum computing architectures require fast and efficient distribution of quantum information through propagating signals. Here we report rapid, on-demand quantum state transfer between two remote superconducting cavity quantum memories through traveling microwave photons. We demonstrate a quantum communication channel by deterministic transfer of quantum bits with 76% fidelity. Heralding on errors induced by experimental imperfection can improve this to 87% with a success probability of 0.87. By partial transfer of a microwave photon, we generate remote entanglement at a rate that ex…
Quantum communication between remote superconducting systems is being studied intensively to increase the number of integrated superconducting qubits and to realize a distributed quantum computer. Since optical photons must be used for communication outside a dilution refrigerator, the direct conversion of microwave photons to optical photons has been widely investigated. However, the direct conversion approach suffers from added photon noise, heating due to a strong optical pump, and the requirement for large cooperativity. Instead, for quantum communication between superconducting qubits, we…
A central challenge for many quantum technologies concerns the generation of large entangled states of individually addressable quantum memories. Here, we show that percolation theory allows the rapid production of arbitrarily large graph states by heralded photonic entanglement in a lattice of atomic memories. This approach can greatly reduce the time required to produce large cluster resource states for quantum information processing, including states required for universal one-way quantum computing. This reduction puts our architecture in an operational regime where demonstrated collection,…
Global scale quantum communication links will form the backbone of the quantum internet. However, exponential loss in optical fibres precludes any realistic application beyond few hundred kilometres. Quantum repeaters and space-based systems offer to overcome this limitation. Here, we analyse the use of quantum memory (QM)-equipped satellites for quantum communication focussing on global range repeaters and Measurement-Device-Independent (MDI) QKD. We demonstrate that satellites equipped with QMs provide three orders of magnitude faster entanglement distribution rates than existing protocols b…
The use of multiplexed atomic quantum memories (MAQM) can significantly enhance the efficiency to establish entanglement in a quantum network. In the previous experiments, individual elements of a quantum network, such as the generation, storage and transmission of quantum entanglement have been demonstrated separately. Here we report an experiment to show the compatibility of these basic operations. Specifically, we generate photon-atom entanglement in a $6\times 5$ MAQM, convert the spin wave to time-bin photonic excitation after a controllable storage time, and then store and retrieve the p…
We introduce a new protocol in continuous variable entanglement distillation that requires only linear temporal and constant physical or spatial resources.Compared with the existing protocols, our protocol uses atom-photon entanglement to substitute for atom-atom entanglement in existing protol, which will not only save the number of quantum memories, but also has the advantages in operation efficiency and temporal saving. The distillation can be realized by a fixed model of iterations, in which only three quantum memories and photon detectors are required.
A bipartite state which is secretly chosen from a finite set of known entangled pure states cannot be immediately useful in standard quantum information processing tasks. To effectively make use of the entanglement contained in this unknown state, we introduce a new way to locally manipulate the original quantum system: either identify the state successfully or distill some pure entanglement. Remarkably, if many copies are available, we show that any finite set of entangled pure states, whatever orthogonal or not, can be locally distinguished in this way, which further implies that pure entang…
Improving Entanglement Resilience in Quantum Memories with Error-Detection-Based Distillation
School of Electrical Engineering, Korea University（韩国大学电气工程学院）；Quantum Network Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information（韩国科学技术信息研究院量子网络研究中心）
Memory dephasing and its impact on the rate of entanglement generation in quantum repeaters is addressed. For systems that rely on probabilistic schemes for entanglement distribution and connection, we estimate the maximum achievable rate per employed memory for our optimized partial nesting protocol. We show that, for any given distance $L$, the polynomial scaling of rate with distance can only be achieved if quantum memories with coherence times on the order of $L/c$ or longer, with $c$ being the speed of light in the channel, are available. The above rate degrades as a power of $\exp[-\sqrt…
Entanglement distribution between trapped-atom quantum memories, viz. single atoms in optical cavities, is addressed. In most scenarios, the rate of entanglement distribution depends on the efficiency with which the state of traveling single photons can be transferred to trapped atoms. This loading efficiency is analytically studied for two-level, $V$-level, $Λ$-level, and double-$Λ$-level atomic configurations by means of a system-reservoir approach. An off-resonant non-adiabatic approach to loading $Λ$-level trapped-atom memories is proposed, and the ensuing trade-offs between the atom-light…
We are motivated by tripartite entanglement for fermions. While GHZ or W states involve 3-fold intrication, we consider here piecewise intrication of 3 fermions in ${\bf C}^2$, namely of type $ab+bc+ca$. Before interaction with Stern-Gerlach apparatus, qu-bits are distinguishable; at the output however they turn into un-distinguishable particles, whose anti-symmetric wave function is of the form $\det(b-a,c-a)$ (affine determinant). More generally, $d+1$ intricated fermions in ${\bf C}^d$ can be represented by the anti-symmetric wave function $\det(a_1-a_0,a_2-a_0,\cdots,a_d-a_0)$. We investig…
