The use of entangled photons in an imaging system can exhibit effects that cannot be mimicked by any other two-photon source, whatever the strength of the correlations between the two photons. We consider a two-photon imaging system in which one photon is used to probe a remote (transmissive or scattering) object, while the other serves as a reference. We discuss the role of entanglement versus correlation in such a setting, and demonstrate that entanglement is a prerequisite for achieving distributed quantum imaging.
We propose a curious protocol for swapping the intra-photon entanglement between path and polarization degrees of freedom of a single photon to inter-photon entanglement between two spatially separated photons which have never interacted. This is accomplished by using an experimental setup consisting of three suitable Mach-Zehnder interferometers along with number of beam splitters, polarization rotators and detectors. Using the same setup, we have also demonstrated an interesting quantum state transfer protocol, symmetric between Alice and Bob. Importantly, the Bell-basis discrimination is no…
The simplest single-photon entanglement is the entanglement of the vacuum state and the single-photon state between two path modes. The verification of the existence of single-photon entanglement has attracted extensive research interests. Here, based on the construction of Bell's inequality in wave space, we propose a new method to verify single photon entanglement. Meanwhile, we define the wave state in two-dimensional space relative to the photon number state, and propose a method to measure it. Strong violation of Bell inequality based on joint measurement of wave states indicates the exis…
Single-photon entanglement may be the simplest type of entanglement but it is of vice importance in quantum communication. Here we present a practical protocol for distilling the single-photon entanglement from both photon loss and decoherence. With the help of some local single photons, the probability of single photon loss can be decreased and the less-entangled state can also be recovered to maximally entangled state simultaneously. It only requires some linear optical elements which makes it feasible in current experiment condition. This protocol might find applications in current quantum …
We discuss both theoretically and experimentally elementary two-photon polarization entanglement localization after break of entanglement caused by linear coupling of environmental photon with one of the system photons. The localization of entanglement is based on simple polarization measurement of the surrounding photon after the coupling. We demonstrate that non-zero entanglement can be localized back irrespectively to the distinguishability of coupled photons. Further, it can be increased by local single-copy polarization filters up to an amount violating Bell inequalities. The present tech…
We propose a simple scheme to generate deterministic entanglement between two movable end mirrors in a Fabry-Perot cavity using a single photon superposition state. We derive analytically the expressions of the generated entangled states and the degree of entanglement for each state. We show that strong entanglement can be obtained either in the single-photon strong coupling regime deterministically or in the single-photon weak coupling regime conditionally.
We study the evolution of quantum entanglement in double cavity systems. The entanglement of cavity atoms induced by entangled pair of photons is investigated. Both entanglement sudden death and entanglement sudden birth phenomena are shown to be existed and analyzed in detail. We also propose a strategy to enhance the entanglement between the atom in one cavity and the photon in another cavity by using quantum Zeno effect.
We examine transfer of particle entanglement and spin squeezing between atomic and photonic subsystems in optical cavities coupled by two-photon exchange. Each cavity contains a single atom, interacting with cavity photons with a two-photon cascade transition. Particle entanglement is characterized by evaluating optimal spin squeezing inequalities, for the cases of initially separable and entangled two-photon states. It is found that particle entanglement is first generated among the photons in separate cavities and then transferred to the atoms. The underlying mechanism is recognized as an in…
Hybrid matter-photon entanglement is the building block for quantum networks. It is very favorable if the entanglement can be prepared with a high probability. In this paper, we report the deterministic creation of entanglement between an atomic ensemble and a single photon by harnessing Rydberg blockade. We design a scheme that creates entanglement between a single photon's temporal modes and the Rydberg levels that host a collective excitation, using a process of cyclical retrieving and patching. The hybrid entanglement is tested via retrieving the atomic excitation as a second photon and pe…
Entanglement is an indispensable quantum resource for quantum information technology. In continuous-variable quantum optics, photon subtraction can increase the entanglement between Gaussian states of light, but for mixed states the extent of this entanglement increase is poorly understood. In this work, we use an entanglement measure based the Rényi-2 entropy to prove that single-photon subtraction increases bipartite entanglement by no more than log 2. This value coincides with the maximal amount of bipartite entanglement that can be achieved with one photon. The upper bound is valid for all…
We study a general theory on the interference of two-photon wavepacket in a beam splitter. We find that the symmetry of two-photon spectrum plays an important role in the manners of interference. We distinguish the coalescence and anti-coalescence interferences, and prove that the anti-coalescence interference is the signature of photon entanglement.
With quantum interference of two-path spontaneous emissions, we propose a novel scheme to coherently control the atom--photon momentum entanglement through atomic internal coherence. A novel phenomenon called ``momentum phase entanglement'' is reported, and we found, under certain conditions, that more controllable entangled state can be produced with super--high degree of entanglement.
Whereas single- and two-photon wave packets are usually treated as pure states, in practice they will be mixed. We study how entanglement created with mixed photon wave packets is degraded. We find in particular that the entanglement of a delocalized single-photon state of the electro-magnetic field is determined simply by its purity. We also discuss entanglement for two-photon mixed states, as well as the influence of a vacuum component.
We study the entanglement creation between two flux qubits interacting with electromagnetic field modes. No direct interaction between the qubits exists. Entanglement is reached using entanglement swapping method by an interference measurement performed on photons. We discuss the influence of off-resonance and multi-photon initial states on the qubit-qubit entanglement. The presented scheme is able to drive an initially separable state of two qubits into an highly entangled state suitable for quantum information processing.
A SWAP operation between different types of qubits of single photons is essential for manipulating hyperentangled photons for a variety of applications. We have implemented an efficient SWAP gate for the momentum and polarization degrees of freedom of single photons. The SWAP gate was utilized in a single-photon two-qubit quantum logic circuit to deterministically transfer momentum entanglement between a pair of down-converted photons to polarization entanglement. The polarization entanglement thus obtained violates Bell's inequality by more than 150 standard deviations.
Single-photon entanglement is a simple form of entanglement that exists between two spatial modes sharing a single photon. Despite its elementary form, it provides a resource as useful as polarization-entangled photons and it can be used for quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping operations. Here, we report the first experiment where single-photon entanglement is purified with a simple linear-optics based protocol. Besides its conceptual interest, this result might find applications in long distance quantum communication based on quantum repeaters.
We investigate the change of entanglement of photons due to propagation. We find that post-selected entanglement in general varies by propagation and, as a consequence, states with maximum bi- and tri-partite entanglement can be generated from propagation of unentangled photons. We generalize the results to n photons and show that entangled states with permutation symmetry can be generated from propagation of unentangled states. Generation of n-photon GHZ states is discussed as an example of a class of states with the desired symmetry.
We propose a simple non-linear crystal based optical scheme for experimental realization of the frequency entanglement swapping between the photons belonging to two independent biphotons.
We discuss the possibility of quantum interferences and entanglement of photons which exist at different intervals of time, i.e., one photon being recorded before the other has been created. The corresponding two-photon correlation function is shown to violate Bell's inequalities.
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.
With the quantum interference between two transition pathways, we demonstrate a novel scheme to coherently control the momentum entanglement between a single atom and a single photon. The unavoidable disentanglement is also studied from the first principle, which indicates that the stably entangled atom--photon system with superhigh degree of entanglement may be realized with this scheme under certain conditions.
We propose a new scheme to generate the multi-photon entanglement via two steps, that is, first to utilize the superconductor to create the multi-quantum-dot entanglement, and then to use the input photon to transfer it into the multi-photon entanglement. Moreover, the maximum probability for the swap of photon and quantum-dot qubits is close to unit for a single input Gaussian photon. More importantly, by mapping the multi-quantum-dot state into the coherent states of oscillators, such as cavity modes, the multi-quantum-dot entanglement in our scheme can be protected from the decoherence indu…
Multi-photon states from parametric down-conversion can be entangled both in polarization and photon number. Maximal high-dimensional entanglement can be concentrated from these states via photon counting. This makes them natural candidates for quantum key distribution, where the presence of more than one photon per detection interval has up to now been considered as undesirable. We propose a simple multi-photon protocol for the case of low losses and point out the robustness of the entanglement under photon loss.
We will study entangled two-photon states generated from a two-mode supersymmetric model and quantify degree of entanglement in terms of the entropy of entanglement. The influences of the nonlinearity on the degree of entanglement is also examined, and it is shown that amount of entanglement increase with increasing the nonlinear coupling constant.
It is shown that entanglement, which is a quantum correlation property of at least two subsystems, is imprinted in the mode structure of a single photon. The photon, which is emitted by two coupled cavities, carries the information on the concurrence of the two intracavity fields. This can be useful for recording the entanglement dynamics of two cavity fields and for entanglement transfer.
Faraday rotation based on AC Stark shifts is a mechanism that can entangle the polarization variables of photons and atoms. We analyze the structure of such entanglement by using the Schmidt decomposition method. The time-dependence of entanglement entropy and the effective Schmidt number are derived for Gaussian amplitudes. In particular we show how the entanglement is controlled by the initial fluctuations of atoms and photons.
The entanglement of two dipole-coupled atoms with nondegenerate two-photon transitions interacting with two-mode field in lossless cavity has been investigated. It shows that the entanglement is dependent on the initial atomic states. The possibility of considerable growth of atomic entanglement due atomic coherence and dipole-dipole interaction is shown in the case of great mean values of thermal photons.
We experimentally observe that quantum duality of a single photon is controlled by its self-entanglement through a three-way quantum coherence identity $V^2+D^2+C^2=1$. Here V, D, C represent waveness, particleness, and self-entanglement respectively.
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.
Single--photon which is initially uncorrelated with atom, will evolve to be entangled with the atom on their continuous kinetic variables in the process of resonant scattering. We find the relations between the entanglement and their physical control parameters, which indicates that high entanglement can be reached by broadening the scale of the atomic wave or squeezing the linewidth of the incident single--photon pulse.
Cold atomic ensembles can mediate the generation of entanglement between pairs of photons. Photons with specific directions of propagation are detected, and the entanglement can reside in any of the degrees of freedom that describe the whole quantum state of the photons: polarization, spatial shape or frequency. We show that the direction of propagation of the generated photons determines the spatial quantum state of the photons and therefore, the amount of entanglement generated. When photons generated in different directions are combined, this spatial distinguishing information can degrade t…
In this paper, photonic entanglement and interference are described and analyzed with the language of quantum information process. Correspondingly, a photon state involving several degrees of freedom is represented in a new expression based on the permutation symmetry of bosons. In this expression, each degree of freedom of a single photon is regarded as a qubit and operations on photons as qubit gates. The two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel interference is well interpreted with it. Moreover, the analysis reveals the entanglement between different degrees of freedom in a four-photon state from parametr…
We address parametric-downconversion seeded by multimode pseudo-thermal fields. We show that this process may be used to generate multimode pairwise correlated states with entanglement properties that can be tuned by controlling the seed intensities. Multimode pseudo-thermal fields seeded parametric-downconversion represents a novel source of correlated states, which allows one to explore the classical-quantum transition in pairwise correlations and to realize ghost imaging and ghost diffraction in regimes not yet explored by experiments.
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 …
We propose a scheme for the observation of micro-macro entanglement in photon number based on amplifying and de-amplifying a single-photon entangled state in combination with homodyne quantum state tomography. The created micro-macro entangled state, which exists between the amplification and de-amplification steps, is a superposition of two components with mean photon numbers that differ by approximately a factor of three. We show that for reasonable values of photon loss it should be possible to detect micro-macro photon-number entanglement where the macro system has a mean number of one hun…
The three-photon Compton effect is studied. An incoming photon undergoes triple scattering off a free electron, which leads to the emission of three entangled photons. We investigate the properties of both the total cross section, assuming a low-energy cutoff for the detected photons, and the differential cross section. Particular emphasis is laid on evaluating polarization-resolved cross sections. The entanglement of the final three-photon state is analyzed.
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.
In this work, I consider the effect of the unavoidable presence of soft-photons on the spin entanglement of charged qubits, arguing that the spin entanglement is not modified if we consider the effects of the infrared structure of QED on it.
A system of two two-level atoms interacting with a squeezed vacuum field can exhibit stationary entanglement associated with nonclassical two-photon correlations characteristic of the squeezed vacuum field. The amount of entanglement present in the system is quantified by the well known measure of entanglement called concurrence. We find analytical formulas describing the concurrence for two identical and nonidentical atoms and show that it is possible to obtain a large degree of steady-state entanglement in the system. Necessary conditions for the entanglement are nonclassical two-photon corr…
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…
We study transport properties of two entangled photons which are initially injected into two nearest-neighbor coupling cavities in a one-dimensional coupled-cavity array (CCA). It is found that photonic transport dynamics in the two-photon CCA exhibits entanglement-enhanced two-photon delocalization (TPD) phenomenon. It is shown that the CCA can realize the localization-to-delocalization transition for two entangled photons.
We demonstrate a novel approach of violating position dependent Bell inequalities by photons emitted via independent photon sources in free space. We trace this violation back to path entanglement created a posteriori by the selection of modes due to the process of detection.
In this paper, we have given the spin states of two-photon, which are expressed by the quadratic combination of two single photon spin states, they are a kind of quantum expression. Otherwise, we give all entanglement states of two-photon, which are different from the xanzsd classical polarization vector expression of two-photon entanglement state.
We report the experimental realization of heralded distribution of single-photon path entanglement at telecommunication wavelengths in a repeater-like architecture. The entanglement is established upon detection of a single photon, originating from one of two spontaneous parametric down conversion photon pair sources, after erasing the photon's which-path information. In order to certify the entanglement, we use an entanglement witness which does not rely on post-selection. We herald entanglement between two locations, separated by a total distance of 2 km of optical fiber, at a rate of 1.6 kH…
In this letter, we report a realization of synchronization-free quantum teleportation and narrowband three-photon entanglement through interfering narrowband photon sources. Since both the single-photon and the entangled photon pair utilized are completely autonomous, it removes the requirement of high demanding synchronization technique in long-distance quantum communication with pulsed spontaneous parametric down-conversion sources. The frequency linewidth of the three-photon entanglement realized is on the order of several MHz, which matches the requirement of atomic ensemble based quantum …
Entanglement between a single photon and a quantum memory forms the building blocks for quantum repeater and quantum network. Previous entanglement sources are typically with low retrieval efficiency, which limits future larger-scale applications. Here, we report a source of highly retrievable spinwave-photon entanglement. Polarization entanglement is created through interaction of a single photon with ensemble of atoms inside a low-finesse ring cavity. The cavity is engineered to be resonant for dual spinwave modes, which thus enables efficient retrieval of the spinwave qubit. An intrinsic re…
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…
Two-photon interference effects, such as the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect, can be used to characterize to what extent two photons are identical. Identical photons are necessary for both linear optics quantum computing and single-photon quantum cryptography. We study here how storage and delay of photons in coupled cavity arrays, which inevitably will lead to changes in the photons' spectral and temporal profiles, affects their HOM interference. In addition we consider various types of entanglement that occur naturally in such a context.
We analyze the security of the efficient two-party quantum private comparison protocol with decoy photons and two-photon entanglement. It is shown that the compromised third party (TP) can obtain the final comparison result without introducing any detectable errors in the standard semi-honest model. The attack strategy is discussed in detail and an improvement of this protocol is demonstrated. The idea of our attack might be instructive for the cryptanalysis of quantum cryptographic schemes.
A doubled q-Fock space is constructed by introducing an idle mode system dual to the physical one under consideration. The quantum entanglements of photons in the squeezed states and thermal states based on the doubled q-Fock space are discussed.
It is possible to achieve an arbitrary amount of entanglement between two atoms using only spontaneously emitted photons, linear optics, single photon sources and projective measurements. This is in contrast to all current experimental proposals for entangling two atoms, which are fundamentally restricted to one entanglement bit or ebit.
Entanglement verification and measurement is essential for experimental tests of quantum mechanics and also for quantum communication and information science. Standard methods of verifying entanglement in a bipartite mixed state require detection of both particles and involve coincidence measurement. We present a method that enables us to verify and measure entanglement in a two-photon mixed state without detecting one of the photons, i.e., without performing any coincidence measurement or postselection. We consider two identical sources, each of which can generate the same two-photon mixed st…
The electron-positron annihilation into two photons is a standard technology in medicine to observe e.g. metabolic processes in human bodies. A new tomograph will provide the possibility to observe not only direct $e^+ e^-$ annihilations but also the $3$ photons from the decay of ortho-positronium atoms formed in the body. We show in this contribution that the three-photon state with respect to polarisation degrees of freedom depends on the angles between the photons and exhibits various specific entanglement features. In particular genuine multipartite entanglement, a type of entanglement inv…
We investigate the quantum entanglement of the three modes associated with the three-photon states obtained by triple-photon generation in a phase-matched third-order nonlinear optical interaction. Although the second order processes have been extensively dealt with, there is no direct analogy between the second and third-order mechanisms. We show for example the absence of quantum entanglement between the quadratures of the three modes in the case of spontaneous parametric triple-photon generation. However, we show that genuine triple-photon entanglement is obtained in the fully seeded case, …
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 …
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) entanglement introduced in 1935 deals with two particles that are entangled in their positions and momenta. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of EPR position-momentum entanglement of narrowband photon pairs generated from cold atoms. By using two-photon quantum ghost imaging and ghost interference, we demonstrate explicitly that the narrowband photon pairs violate the separability criterion, confirming EPR entanglement. We further demonstrate continuous variable EPR steering for positions and momenta of the two photons. Our new source of EPR-enta…
Large photon-number path entanglement is an important resource for enhanced precision measurements and quantum imaging. We present a general constructive protocol to create any large photon number path-entangled state based on the conditional detection of single photons. The influence of imperfect detectors is considered and an asymptotic scaling law is derived.
Entanglement is a fundamental feature of quantum theory as well as a key resource for quantum computing and quantum communication, but the entanglement mechanism has not been found at present. We think when the two subsystems exist interaction directly or indirectly, they can be in entanglement state. such as, in the Jaynes-Cummings model, the entanglement between an atom and light field comes from their interaction. In this paper, we have studied the entanglement mechanism of electron-electron and photon-photon, which are from the spin-spin interaction. We found their total entanglement state…
