We propose and study a method for detecting ground-state entanglement in a chain of trapped ions, which realizes a suggested scheme for detecting vacuum entanglement in quantum field theory. We show that the entanglement between single ions or groups of ions can be swapped to the internal levels of two ions by sending laser pulses that couple the internal and motional degrees of freedom. This allows to entangle two ions without actually doing gates. A proof of principle of the effect can be realized with two trapped ions and is feasible with current technology.
In this paper, we propose a scheme to enhance trapping of entanglement of two qubits in the environment of a photonic band gap material. Our entanglement trapping promotion scheme makes use of combined weak measurements and quantum measurement reversals. The optimal promotion of entanglement trapping can be acquired with a reasonable finite success probability by adjusting measurement strengths.
The entanglement dynamics of two independent qubits each embedded in a structured environment under conditions of inhibition of spontaneous emission is analyzed, showing entanglement trapping. We demonstrate that entanglement trapping can be used efficiently to prevent entanglement sudden death. For the case of realistic photonic band-gap materials, we show that high values of entanglement trapping can be achieved. This result is of both fundamental and applicative interest since it provides a physical situation where the entanglement can be preserved and manipulated, e.g. by Stark-shifting th…
We analyze the quantum entanglement between two interacting atoms trapped in a spherical harmonic potential. At ultra-cold temperature, ground state entanglement is generated by the dominated s-wave interaction. Based on a regularized pseudo-potential Hamiltonian, we examine the quantum entanglement by performing the Schmidt decomposition of low-energy eigenfunctions. We indicate how the atoms are paired and quantify the entanglement as a function of a modified s-wave scattering length inside the trap.
We investigate quantum entanglement between two (spin-1/2) fermions inside a cylindrical harmonic trap, making use of the von Neumann entropy for the reduced single particle density matrix as the pure state entanglement measure. We explore the dependence of pair entanglement on the geometry and strength of the trap and on the strength of the pairing interaction over the complete range of the effective BCS to BEC crossover. Our result elucidates an interesting connection between our model system of two fermions and that of two interacting bosons.
For both cases with and without interactions, bipartite entanglement of two-fermions from a Fermi gas in a trap is investigated. We show how the entanglement depends on the locations of the two fermions and the total number of particles. Fermions at the verge of trap have longer entanglement distance (beyond it, the entanglement disappears) than those in the center. We derive a lower limitation to the average overlapping for two entangled fermions in the BCS ground state, it is shown to be $\sqrt{Q/2M}$, a function of Cooper pair number $Q$ and total number of occupied energy levels $M$.
We consider a pair of three - level atoms interacting with a common vacuum and analyze the process of entanglement production due to spontaneous emission. We show that in the case of closely separated atoms, collective damping can generate robust entanglement of the asymptotic states.
The mode-mode entanglement between trapped ions and cavity fields is investigated in the dispersive regime. We show how a simple initial preparation of Gaussian coherent states and a postselection may be used to generate motional non-local mesoscopic states (NLMS) involving ions in different traps. We also present a study of the entanglement induced by dynamical Stark-shifts considering a cluster of N-trapped ions. In this case, all entanglement is due to the dependence of the Stark-shifts on the ions' state of motion manifested as a cross-Kerr interaction between each ion and the field.
We propose a scheme for generating the superposition and the entanglement of squeezed vacuum states of electromagnetical fields. The scheme involves single-photon source, single photon detector, and cross Kerr nonlinearity. The Kerr nonlinearity required for generating the superposition of squeezed vacuum states is 1/2 of that required for generating the superposition of coherent states. The proposal can also be extended to generate the entanglement states between two coherent states and that between one coherent state and one squeezed vacuum state.
The development of efficient network nodes is a key element for the realisation of quantum networks which promise great capabilities as distributed quantum computing or provable secure communication. We report the realisation of a quantum network node using a trapped ion inside a fiber-based Fabry-Perot cavity. We show the generation of deterministic entanglement at a high fidelity of $ 91.2(2) $\,\% between a trapped Yb--ion and a photon emitted into the resonator mode. We achieve a success probability for generation and detection of entanglement for a single shot of $ 2.5 \cdot 10^{-3}$ resu…
The dynamical properties of quantum entanglement in two three-level trapped ions interacting with a laser field are studied in terms of the negative eigenvalues of the partial transposition of the density operator. In contrast to the usual belief that destroying the entanglement can be observed due to the environment, it is found that the Stark shift can also produce sudden death of entanglement and long-lived entanglement between the qubits that are prepared initially in separable states or mixed states.
Entanglement of isolated elementary particles other than photons has not yet been achieved. We show how building blocks demonstrated with one trapped electron might be used to make a model system and method for entangling two electrons. Applications are then considered, including two-qubit gates and more precise quantum metrology protocols.
We derive sufficient conditions for infinite-dimensional systems whose entanglement is not completely lost in a finite time during its decoherence by a passive interaction with local vacuum environments. The sufficient conditions allow us to clarify a class of bipartite entangled states which preserve their entanglement or, in other words, are tolerant against decoherence in a vacuum. We also discuss such a class for entangled qubits.
We discuss the dynamical behavior of the entanglement between the internal and the external degrees of freedom of a trapped atom in electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) laser cooling. It is shown that essential features of the intricate entanglement dynamics observed in full numerical simulations of the underlying quantum master equation can be understood in terms of a two-state model on the basis of Landau-Zener splittings in the atom-laser field Hamiltonian. An extension of this model to an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian is constructed which describes the decay of entanglement…
We study the entanglement between the internal electronic and the external vibrational degrees of freedom of a trapped atom which is driven by two lasers into electromagnetically-induced transparency. It is shown that basic features of the intricate entanglement dynamics can be traced to Landau-Zener splittings (avoided crossings) in the spectrum of the atom-laser field Hamiltonian. We further construct an effective Hamiltonian that describes the behavior of entanglement under dissipation induced by spontaneous emission processes. The proposed approach is applicable to a broad range of scenari…
The radiation pressure of two detuned laser beams can create a stable trap for a suspended cavity mirror; here it is shown that such a configuration entangles the output light fields via interaction with the mirror. Intra-cavity, the opto-mechanical system can become entangled also. The degree of entanglement is quantified spectrally using the logarithmic negativity. Entanglement survives in the experimentally accessible regime of gram-scale masses subject to thermal noise at room temperature.
We study the entanglement between the 2D vibrational motion and two ground state hyperfine levels of a trapped ion, Under particular conditions this entanglement depends on the parity of the total initial vibrational quanta. We study the robustness of this quantum coherence effect with respect to the presence of non-dissipative sources of decoherence, and of an imperfect initial state preparation.
The so-called entanglement with vacuum is not a property of the Fock space, but of some rather pathological representations of CCR/CAR algebras. In some other Fock space representations the notion simply does not exist. We have checked all the main Gedanken experiments where the notion of entanglement with vacuum was used, and found that all the calculations could be performed at a representation-independent level. In particular any such experiment can be formulated in a Fock-space representation where the notion of entanglement with vacuum is meaningless. So, for the moment there is no single…
he dynamical properties of quantum entanglement in a time-dependent three-level-trapped ion interacting with a laser field are studied in terms of the reduced-density linear entropy considering two specific initial states of the field. Allowing the instantaneous position of the center-of-mass motion of the ion to be explicitly time-dependent, it is shown that either sudden death of entanglement or survivability of quantum entanglement can be obtained with a specific choice of the initial state parameters. The difference in evolution picture corresponding to the multi-quanta processes is discus…
Applying a magnetic field gradient to a trapped ion allows long-wavelength microwave radiation to produce a mechanical force on the ion's motion when internal transitions are driven. We demonstrate such a coupling using a single trapped \Yb{171}~ion, and use it to produce entanglement between the spin and motional state, an essential step towards using such a field gradient to implement multi-qubit operations.
A number of comments are provided on Rogers's model experiment to measure the circular Unruh vacuum noise by means of a hyperbolic Penning trap inside a microwave cavity. It is suggested that cylindrical Penning traps, being geometrically simpler, and controlled almost at the same level of accuracy as the hyperbolic trap, might be a better choice for such an experiment. Besides, the microwave modes of the trap itself, of known analytical structure, can be directly used in trying to obtain measurable results for such a tiny noise effect.
An experiment is performed where a single rubidium atom trapped within a high-finesse optical cavity emits two independently triggered entangled photons. The entanglement is mediated by the atom and is characterized both by a Bell inequality violation of S=2.5, as well as full quantum-state tomography, resulting in a fidelity exceeding F=90%. The combination of cavity-QED and trapped atom techniques makes our protocol inherently deterministic - an essential step for the generation of scalable entanglement between the nodes of a distributed quantum network.
I investigate the decoherence of two-mode squeezed vacuum states by analyzing the relative entropy of entanglement. I consider two sources of decoherence: (i) the phase damping and (ii) the amplitude damping due to the coupling to the thermal environment. In particular, I give the exact value of the relative entropy of entanglement for the phase damping model. For the amplitude damping model, I give an upper bound for the relative entropy of entanglement, which turns out to be a good approximation for the entanglement measure in usual experimental situations.
Recently, it has been shown that the massless quantum vacuum state contains entanglement between timelike separated regions of spacetime, in addition to the entanglement between the spacelike separated regions usually considered. Here, we show that timelike entanglement can be extracted from the Minkowski vacuum and converted into ordinary entanglement between two inertial, two-state detectors at the same spatial location -- one coupled to the field in the past and the other coupled to the field in the future. The procedure used here demonstrates a clear time correlation as a requirement for e…
Levitated optomechanical systems, and particularly particles trapped in vacuum, provide unique platforms for studying the mechanical behavior of objects well-isolated from their environment. Ultimately, such systems may enable the study of fundamental questions in quantum mechanics, gravity, and other weak forces. While the optical trapping of nanoparticles has emerged as the prototypical levitated optomechanical system, it is not without problems due to the heating from the high optical intensity required, particularly when combined with a high vacuum environment. Here we investigate a magnet…
We note that massless fields within the future and past light cone may be quantized as independent systems. We show that the vacuum is an entangled state of these systems, exactly mirroring the known entanglement between the spacelike separated Rindler wedges. We describe a detector which exhibits a thermal response to the vacuum when switched on at t=0. The feasibility of experimentally detecting this effect is discussed.
We explore and develop the mathematics of the two multi-level ions. In particular, we describe some new features of quantum entanglement in two three-level trapped ions confined in a one-dimensional harmonic potential, allowing the instantaneous position of the center-of-mass motion of the ions to be explicitly time-dependent. By solving the exact dynamics of the system, we show how survivability of the quantum entanglement is determined by a specific choice of the initial state settings.
We investigate the dynamics of entanglement between two continuous variable quantum systems. The model system consists of two atoms in a harmonic trap which are interacting by a simplified s-wave scattering. We show, that the dynamically created entanglement changes in a steplike manner. Moreover, we introduce local operators which allow us to violate a Bell-CHSH inequality adapted to the continuous variable case. The correlations show nonclassical behavior and almost reach the maximal quantum mechanical value. This is interesting since the states prepared by this interaction are very differen…
We propose a method to refine entanglement via swapping from a pair of squeezed vacuum states by performing the Bell measurement of number sum and phase difference. The resultant states are maximally entangled by adjusting the two squeezing parameters to the same value. We then describe the teleportation of number states by using the entangled states prepared in this way.
The occupancies and entropic entanglement measures for the ground state of two particles in a two-dimensional harmonic anisotropic trap are studied. We implement a method to study the large interaction strength limit for different short- and long-range interaction potentials that allows to obtain the exact entanglement spectrum and several entropies. We show that for long-range interactions, the von Neumann, min-entropy and the family of Rényi entropies remain finite for the anisotropic traps and diverge logarithmically for the isotropic traps. In the short-range interaction case the entanglem…
Quantum entanglement is a fascinating phenomenon, especially if it is observed at the macroscopic scale. Importantly, macroscopic quantum correlations can be revealed only by accurate measurement outcomes and strategies. Here, we formulate feasible entanglement witnesses for bright squeezed vacuum in the form of the macroscopically populated polarization triplet Bell states. Their testing involves efficient photodetection and the measurement of the Stokes operators variances. We also calculate the measures of entanglement for these states such as the Schmidt number and the logarithmic negativi…
With the reliance in the processing of quantum information on a cold trapped ion, we analyze the entanglement entropy in the ion-field interaction with pair cat states. We investigate a long-living entanglement allowing the instantaneous position of the center-of-mass motion of the ion to be explicitly time dependent. An analytic solution for the system operators is obtained. We show that different nonclassical effects arise in the dynamics of the population inversion, depending on the initial states of the vibrational motion. We study in detail the entanglement degree and demonstrate how the …
We propose a method for generating maximally entangled states of N two-level trapped ions. The method is deterministic and independent of the number of ions in the trap. It involves a controlled-NOT acting simultaneously on all the ions through a dispersive interaction. We explore the potential application of our scheme for high precision frequency standards.
We investigate the generation of squeezing and entanglement for the motional degrees of freedom of ions in linear traps, confined by time-varying and oscillating potentials, comprised of an DC and an AC component. We show that high degrees of squeezing and entanglement can be obtained by controlling either the DC or the AC trapping component (or both), and by exploiting transient dynamics in regions where the ions' motion is unstable, without any added optical control. Furthermore, we investigate the time-scales over which the potentials should be switched in order for the manipulations to be …
We describe a efficient way to photoionize strontium atoms in a linear radio-frequency trap. We use a 2-photon second order process to excite the autoionization resonance (4d2 + 5p2) 1D2. A doubled pulsed Ti:Saphire laser system is used at 431nm to provide 100fsec pulses at 82Mhz. The fabrication of the laser systems for addressing the Sr+ transitions necessary for laser cooling and excitation of quantum jumps, vacuum system and ion trap structure are also described in detail. With the current setup a easy and repeatable trapping of linear ion chains is achieved at UHV pressures.
The aim of this work is to find ways to trap an atom in a cavity. In contrast to other approaches we propose a method where the cavity is basically in the vacuum state and the atom in the ground state. The idea is to induce a spatial dependent AC Stark shift by irradiating the atom with a weak laser field, so that the atom experiences a trapping force. The main feature of our setup is that dissipation can be strongly suppressed. We estimate the lifetime of the atom as well as the trapping potential parameters and compare our estimations with numerical simulations.
Entanglement plays a crucial role in quantum information protocols, thus the dynamical behavior of entangled states is of a great importance. In this paper we suggest a useful scheme that permits a direct measure of entanglement in a two-qubit cavity system. It is realized in the cavity-QED technology utilizing atoms as fying qubits. To quantify entanglement we use the concurrence. We derive the conditions, which assure that the state remains entangled in spite of the interaction with the reservoir. The phenomenon of sudden death entanglement (ESD) in a bipartite system subjected to squeezed v…
Entanglement dynamics through electromagnetic interactions in single-electron traps
Instituto de Física Teórica, UAM-CSIC（理论物理研究所，UAM-CSIC）；Van Swinderen Institute for Particle Physics and Gravity, University of Groningen（范斯温德伦粒子物理与引力研究所，格罗宁根大学）；Departamento de Física Teórica and CIAFF, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid（理论物理系及CIAFF，马德里自治大学）
We describe an entanglement purification protocol (EPP) for multipartite three-level atomic entangled pair using photonic Faraday rotation. In this EPP, the multipartite atomic entangled state can be purified with the help of some single photons. This protocol resorts to the photonic Faraday rotation to realize the function of the controlled-Not (CNOT) gate. The purified multipartite atomic entangled state can be retained and to be repeated to reach a higher fidelity.
We study the structure of vacuum entanglement for two complimentary segments of a linear harmonic chain, applying the modewise decomposition of entangled gaussian states discussed in \cite {modewise}. We find that the resulting entangled mode shape hierarchy shows a distinctive layered structure with well defined relations between the depth of the modes, their characteristic wavelength, and their entanglement contribution. We re-derive in the strong coupling (diverging correlation length) regime, the logarithmic dependence of entanglement on the segment size predicted by conformal field theory…
We study the dynamics of a pair of molecular ensembles trapped inside a superconducting resonator through which they are strongly coupled via a microwave field mode. We find that entanglement can be generated via "vacuum fluctuations" even when the molecules and cavity field are initially prepared in their ground state. This entanglement is created in a relatively short time and without the need for further manipulation of the system. It does, therefore, provide a convenient scheme to entangle two mesoscopic systems, and may well be useful quantum information processing.
Using two crystals for spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a parallel setup, we observe two-photon interference with high visibility. The high visibility is consistent with complementarity and the absence of which-path information. The observations are explained as effects of entanglement or equivalently in terms of interfering probability amplitudes, and also by the calculation of a second-order field correlation function in the Heisenberg picture. The latter approach brings out explicitly the role of the vacuum fields in the down-conversion at the crystals and in the photon coincidence…
We investigate theoretically the optical properties of an atomic gas which has been cooled by the laser cooling method velocity-selective coherent population trapping. We demonstrate that the application of a weak laser pulse gives rise to a backscattered pulse, which is a direct signal for the entanglement in the atomic system, and which leads to single-particle entanglement on the few-photon level. If the pulse is applied together with the pump lasers, it also displays the phenomenon of electromagnetically induced transparency. We suggest that the effect should be observable in a gas of Rubi…
We present a method of generating collective multi-qubit entanglement via global addressing of an ion chain following the guidelines of the Tavis-Cummings model, where several qubits are coupled to a collective motional mode. We show that a wide family of Dicke states and irradiant states can be generated by single global laser pulses, unitarily or helped with suitable postselection techniques.
Recently, there have been a number of works investigating the entanglement properties of distinct noncomplementary parts of discrete and continuous Bosonic systems in ground and thermal states. The Fermionic case, however, has yet to be expressly addressed. In this paper we investigate the entanglement between a pair of far-apart regions of the 3+1 dimensional massless Dirac vacuum via a previously introduced distillation protocol [B. Reznik et al., Phys. Rev. A 71, 042104 (2005)]. We show that entanglement persists over arbitrary distances, and that as a function of L/R, where L is the distan…
We demonstrate high fidelity entangling quantum gates within a chain of five trapped ion qubits by optimally shaping optical fields that couple to multiple collective modes of motion. We individually address qubits with segmented optical pulses to construct multipartite entangled states in a programmable way. This approach enables both high fidelity and fast quantum gates that can be scaled to larger qubit registers for quantum computation and simulation.
We demonstrate tunable spin-spin couplings between trapped atomic ions, mediated by laser forces on multiple transverse collective modes of motion. A $σ_x σ_x$-type Ising interaction is realized between quantum bits stored in the ground hyperfine clock states of Yb ions. We demonstrate entangling gates and tailor the spin-spin couplings with two and three trapped ions. The use of closely-spaced transverse modes provides a new class of interactions relevant to quantum computing and simulation with large collections of ions in a single crystal.
The separability of the spatial modes of a charged particle in a Penning trap in the presence of an environment is studied by means of the positive partial transpose (PPT) criterion. Assuming a weak Markovian environment, described by linear Lindblad operators, our results strongly suggest that the environmental coupling of the axial and cyclotron degrees of freedom does not lead to entanglement at experimentally realistic temperatures. We therefore argue that, apart from unavoidable decoherence, the presence of such an environment does not alter the effectiveness of recently suggested quantum…
We investigate the entanglement patterns of photon-added and -subtracted four-mode squeezed vacuum states. Entanglements in different scenarios are analyzed by varying the number of photons added or subtracted in certain modes, which are referred to as the "player" modes, the others being "spectators." We find that the photon-subtracted state can give us higher entanglement than the photon-added state which is in contrast of the two-mode situation. We also study the logarithmic negativity of the two-mode reduced density matrix obtained from the four-mode state which again shows that the state …
We have prepared the internal states of two trapped ions in both the Bell-like singlet and triplet entangled states. In contrast to all other experiments with entangled states of either massive particles or photons, we do this in a deterministic fashion, producing entangled states on demand without selection. The deterministic production of entangled states is a crucial prerequisite for large-scale quantum computation.
The evolution of the entanglement between two oscillators coupled to a common thermal environment is non-trivial. The long time limit has three qualitatively different behaviors (phases) depending on parameters such as the temperature of the bath ({\em Phys. Rev. Lett.} \textbf{100}, 220401). The phases include cases with non-vanishing long-term entanglement, others with a final disentangled state, and situations displaying an infinite sequence of events of disappearance and revival of entanglement. We describe an experiment to realize these different scenarios in an ion trap. The motional deg…
We investigate the correlations between any number of arbitrarily far-apart regions of the vacuum of the free Klein-Gordon field by means of its finite duration coupling to an equal number of localized detectors. We show that the correlations between any N such regions enable us to distill an N-partite W state, and therefore exhibit true $N$-fold entanglement. Furthermore, we show that for N=3, the correlations cannot be reproduced by a hybrid local-nonlocal hidden-variable model. For N >= 4 the issue remains open.
The transmission spectrum for one atom strongly coupled to the field of a high-finesse optical resonator is observed to exhibit a clearly resolved vacuum-Rabi splitting characteristic of the normal modes in the eigenvalue spectrum of the atom-cavity system. A new Raman scheme for cooling atomic motion along the cavity axis enables a complete spectrum to be recorded for an individual atom trapped within the cavity mode, in contrast to all previous measurements in cavity QED that have required averaging over many atoms.
We quantify multiparticle quantum entanglement in a system of N two-level atoms interacting with a squeezed vacuum state of the electromagnetic field. We calculate the amount of quantum entanglement present among one hundred such two-level atoms and also show the variation of that entanglement with the radiation field parameter. We show the continuous variation of the amount of quantum entanglement as we continuously increase the number of atoms from N=2 to N=100. We also discuss that the multiparticle correlations among the N two-level atoms are made up of all possible bipartite correlations …
A Mølmer-Sørensen entangling gate is realized for pairs of trapped $^{111}$Cd$^+$ ions using magnetic-field insensitive "clock" states and an implementation offering reduced sensitivity to optical phase drifts. The gate is used to generate the complete set of four entangled states, which are reconstructed and evaluated with quantum-state tomography. An average target-state fidelity of 0.79 is achieved, limited by available laser power and technical noise. The tomographic reconstruction of entangled states demonstrates universal quantum control of two ion-qubits, which through multiplexing can …
We demonstrate and characterize the extraction of genuine tripartite entanglement from the vacuum of a periodic cavity field. That is, three probe quantum systems (detectors) can become both bipartitely and tripartitely entangled without coming into causal contact, by means of interaction with a common quantum field. We do this by using an oscillator-detector model that forgoes the need for perturbation theory and which instead is solved exactly. We find that the extraction of tripartite entanglement is considerably easier than that of bipartite. As a secondary result, we also compare a period…
The dynamics of entanglement between three - level atoms coupled to the common vacuum is investigated. We show that the collective effects such as collective damping, dipole - dipole interaction and the cross coupling between orthogonal dipoles, play a crucial role in the process of creation of entanglement. In particular, the additional cross coupling enhances the production of entanglement. For the specific initial states we find that the effect of delayed sudden birth of entanglement, recently invented by Ficek and Tanas [Phys. Rev. A 77, o54301(2008)] in the case of two - level atoms, can …
We analyze an example of a photon in superposition of different modes, and ask what is the degree of their entanglement with vacuum. The problem turns out to be ill-posed since we do not know which representation of the algebra of canonical commutation relations (CCR) to choose for field quantization. Once we make a choice, we can solve the question of entanglement unambiguously. So the difficulty is not with mathematics, but with physics of the problem. In order to make the discussion explicit we analyze from this perspective a popular argument based on a photon leaving a beam splitter and in…
We discuss the creation of many-particle entanglement in an ion trap where all ions are simultaneously coupled to bichromatic laser fields. It is shown that in a time-averaged, coarse-grained picture the system can be mapped onto a spin ensemble with controllable collective interactions. An adiabatic change of laser parameters allows a transfer from separable to entangled eigenstates of the many-particle Hamiltonian. Of particular interest is a transition in the ground state which in some cases corresponds to a quantum phase transition. The influence of decoherence mechanisms can be substantia…
