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.
A scheme for the extraction of entanglement in two noninteracting qubits (spins) is proposed. The idea is to make use of resonant transmission of ancilla qubit through the two fixed qubits, controlled by the entanglement in the scatterers. Repetition of the resonant transmission extracts the singlet state in the target qubits from their arbitrary given state. Neither the preparation nor the post-selection of the ancilla spin is required, in contrast to the previously proposed schemes.
Generation of entanglement between two qubits by scattering an entanglement mediator is discussed. The mediator bounces between the two qubits and exhibits a resonant scattering. It is clarified how the degree of the entanglement is enhanced by the constructive interference of such bouncing processes. Maximally entangled states are available via adjusting the incident momentum of the mediator or the distance between the two qubits, but their fine tunings are not necessarily required to gain highly entangled states and a robust generation of entanglement is possible.
We use a versatile model to evaluate the multipartite entanglement and the nonclassical light generation in optical parametric oscillators, exploring the differences between doubly and triply resonant cavity configurations. We demonstrate the entanglement of the pump mode with converted fields in both situations, and the fundamental differences of oscillators using parametric down conversion and four wave mixing processes as the intracavity amplification technique. The strong correlations involving the sidebands of the pump and converted fields gives the signatures of a rich dynamic of multipa…
We propose and discuss a scheme for robust and efficient generation of many-particle entanglement in an ensemble of Rydberg atoms with resonant dipole-dipole interactions. It is shown that in the limit of complete dipole blocking, the system is isomorphic to a multimode Jaynes-Cummings model. While dark-state population transfer is not capable of creating entanglement, other adiabatic processes are identified that lead to complex, maximally entangled states, such as the N-particle analog of the GHZ state in a few steps. The process is robust, works for even and odd particle numbers and the cha…
We describe a method for generating entanglement between two spatially separated dipoles coupled to optical micro-cavities. The protocol works even when the dipoles have different resonant frequencies and radiative lifetimes. This method is particularly important for solid-state emitters, such as quantum dots, which suffer from large inhomogeneous broadening. We show that high fidelities can be obtained over a large dipole detuning range without significant loss of efficiency. We analyze the impact of higher order photon number states and cavity resonance mismatch on the performance of the pro…
We propose a scheme of generating and verifying mesoscopic-level entanglement between two atomic ensembles using non-resonant stimulated Raman scattering. Entanglement can be generated by direct detection or balanced homodyne detection of the Stokes fields from the two cells, after they interfere on a beam splitter. The entanglement of the collective atomic fields can be transferred to the anti-Stokes fields in a readout process. By measuring the operator moments of the anti-Stokes fields, we can verify the presence of entanglement. We model the effects of practical factors such as Stokes fiel…
We provide an exact and complete characterization of the entanglement dynamics of two qubits coupled to a common structured reservoir at zero temperature. We derive the conditions to maximize reservoir-induced entanglement for an initially factorized state of the two-qubit system. In particular, when the two qubits are placed inside a lossy cavity, we show that high values of entanglement can be obtained, even in the bad cavity limit, in the dispersive regime. Finally we show that, under certain conditions, the entanglement dynamics exhibits quantum beats and we explain their physical origin i…
In this chapter we review the use of semiconductor quantum dots as sources of quantum light. Principally, we focus on resonant two-photon excitation, which is a method that allows for on-demand generation of photon pairs. We explore the advantages of resonant excitation and present a number of measurements that were made in this excitation regime. In particular, we cover the following topics: photon statistics, coherent manipulation of the ground-excited state superposition, and generation of time-bin entangled photon pairs.
In this paper we show that three cavity fields can be entangled when they are tuned on resonance with an ensemble of dressed three-level atoms. The master equation for the three cavity modes is derived by using atomic dressed states and the inseparability of the three output cavity modes is described by using a sufficient criterion proposed by van Loock and Furusawa. The physical cause is the atomic coherence effects, by which the quantum correlations are created in the field dynamics.
We study the output entanglement in a three-mode optomechanical system via reservoir engineering by shifting the center frequency of filter function away from resonant frequency. We find the bandwidth of the filter function can suppress the entanglement in the vicinity of resonant frequency of the system, while the entanglement will become prosperous if the center frequency departs from the resonant frequency. We obtain the approximate analytical expressions of the output entanglement, and from which we give the optimal center frequency at which the entanglement takes the maximum. Furthermore,…
We show that initially localized and uncorrelated two-particles quantum wavepackets evolving in a one-dimensional discrete lattice become strongly entangled while drifting under the action of an harmonic AC field resonant with doubled Bloch oscillations promoted by a static DC field. Although partial entanglement is achieved when the AC field is resonant with the single-particle Bloch oscillations, it is strongly limited by the survival of anti-correlated unbounded states. We further show that the phase dependence of the wavepacket centroid velocity is similar to the semiclassical behavior dep…
Multiparticle entangled states generated via interaction between narrow-band light and an ensemble of identical two-level atoms are considered. Depending on the initial photon statistics, correlation between atoms and photons can give rise to entangled states of these systems. It is found that the state of any pair of atoms interacting with weak single-mode squeezed light is inseparable and robust against decay. Optical schemes for preparing entangled states of atomic ensembles by projective measurement are described.
Studying the physics of quantum correlations has gained new interest after it has become possible to measure entanglement entropies of few body systems in experiments with ultracold atomic gases. Apart from investigating trapped atom systems, research on correlation effects in other artificially fabricated few-body systems, such as quantum dots or electromagnetically trapped ions, is currently underway or in planning. Generally, the systems studied in these experiments may be considered as composed of a small number of interacting elements with controllable and highly tunable parameters, effec…
The behavior of an atomic double lambda system in the presence of a strong off-resonant classical field and a few-photon resonant quantum field is examined. It is shown that the system possesses properties that allow a single-photon state to be distilled from a multi-photon input wave packet. In addition, the system is also capable of functioning as an efficient photodetector discriminating between one- and two-photon wave packets with arbitrarily high efficiency.
Two-mode squeezing and entanglement is obtained in a atom-cavity system cosisting a three-level atom and a two-mode cavity with driving laser fields. Here non-resonatn dressed-state transitions between the cavity modes and atom are used to get the effective Hamiltonian.
While the Rydberg-blockade regime provides the natural setting for creating $W$-type entanglement with cold neutral atoms, it is demonstrated here that a scalable entanglement resource of this type can even be obtained under completely different physical circumstances. To be more precise, a special instance of twisted $W$ states -- namely, $π$-twisted ones -- can be engineered in one-dimensional arrays of cold neutral atoms with Rydberg-dressed resonant dipole-dipole interaction. In particular, it is shown here that this is possible even when a (dressed) Rydberg excitation is coupled to the mo…
We propose a scheme that employs dissipation to deterministically generate entanglement in an ensemble of strongly interacting Rydberg atoms. With a combination of microwave driving between different Rydberg levels and a resonant laser coupling to a short lived atomic state, the ensemble can be driven towards a dark steady state that entangles all atoms. The long-range resonant dipole-dipole interaction between different Rydberg states extends the entanglement beyond the van der Walls interaction range with perspectives for entangling large and distant ensembles.
A detailed treatment of the entanglement dynamics of two distant but non-identical systems is presented. We study the entanglement evolution of two remote atoms interacting independently with a cavity field, as in the double Jaynes-Cummings (JC) model. The four-qubit pairwise concurrences are studied, allowing for asymmetric atom-cavity couplings and off-resonant ineractions. Counter to intuition, imperfect matching can prove advantageous to entanglement creation and evolution. For two types of initial entanglement, corresponding to spin correlated and anti-correlated Bell states Φand Ψ, a ful…
The optical scheme is proposed for realization of controlled phase quantum gate based on the off-resonant interaction of photon with three-level atom in single mode QED-cavity. Possible physical implementation of this scheme is discussed.
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…
We analyze both analytically and numerically the resonant four-wave mixing of two co-propagating single-photon wave packets. We present analytic expressions for the two-photon wave function and show that soliton-type quantum solutions exist which display a shape-preserving oscillatory exchange of excitations between the modes. Potential applications including quantum information processing are discussed.
Resonant dissipation-enabled adiabatic quantum state transfer processes between the polarization degrees of freedom of a single photon wave packet and quantum emitters are discussed. These investigations generalize previous work [N. Trautmann and G. Alber, Phys. Rev. A 93, 053807 (2015)] by taking into account the properties of the spontaneously emitted photon wave packet and of non adiabatic corrections. It is demonstrated that the photonic degrees of freedoms of these adiabatic one-photon quantum state transfer processes can be used for the passive, heralded and deterministic preparation of …
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 demonstrate the generation of rubidium-resonant heralded single photons for quantum memories. Photon pairs are created by cavity-enhanced down-conversion and narrowed in bandwidth to 7 MHz with a novel atom-based filter operating by "interaction-free measurement" principles. At least 94% of the heralded photons are atom-resonant as demonstrated by a direct absorption measurement with rubidium vapor. A heralded auto-correlation measurement shows $g_c^{(2)}(0)=0.040 \pm 0.012$, i.e., suppression of multi-photon contributions by a factor of 25 relative to a coherent state. The generated herald…
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 show that two groups of slow two-level atoms in a weak resonant laser field, are entangled. The considered groups can be separated by a macroscopic distance, and be parts of a larger atomic ensemble. In a dilute regime, for two very distant groups of atoms, in a plane wave laser beam, we determine the maximum attainable entanglement negativity, and a laser intensity below which they are certainly entangled. They both decrease with increasing distance between the two groups, but increase with enlarging groups sizes. As a consequence, for given laser intensity, far separated groups of atoms a…
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.
We have investigated the excitation-power dependence of polarization-entangled photon-pairs generated from a CuCl single crystal using biexciton resonant hyper-parametric scattering. The measured two-photon polarization density matrix which corresponds to the two-photon polarization state changes with increasing the excitation power. The evaluation of the tangle and the linear entropy obtained from the measured density matrix indicates that the two-photon polarization density matrix can be expressed as the mixed state of an ideal state and a totally mixed state, and the mixture ratio of the to…
We observe the interaction of a single trapped calcium ion with single photons produced by a narrow-band, resonant down-conversion source [A. Haase et al., Opt. Lett. 34, 55 (2009)], employing a quantum jump scheme. Using the temperature dependence of the down-conversion spectrum and the tunability of the narrow source, absorption of the down-conversion photons is quantitatively characterized.
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.
In this work, we calculate the exact asymptotic quantum correlations between two interacting non-resonant harmonic oscillators in a common Ohmic bath. We derive \emph{analytical formulas} for the covariances, fully describing any Gaussian stationary state of the system, and use them to study discord and entanglement in the strong and weak dissipation regimes. We discuss the rich structure of the discord of the stationary separable states arising in the strong dissipation regime. Also under strong dissipation, when the modes are not mechanically coupled, these may entangle only through their in…
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.
