We report experimental results on mixed-state generation by multiple scattering of polarization-entangled photon pairs created from parametric down-conversion. By using a large variety of scattering optical systems we have experimentally obtained entangled mixed states that lie upon and below the Werner curve in the linear entropy-tangle plane. We have also introduced a simple phenomenological model built on the analogy between classical polarization optics and quantum maps. Theoretical predictions from such model are in full agreement with our experimental findings.
We report an experiment to generate maximally entangled states of D-dimensional quantum systems, qudits, by using transverse spatial correlations of two parametric down-converted photons. Apertures with D-slits in the arms of the twin fotons define the qudit space. By manipulating the pump beam correctly the twin photons will pass only by symmetrically opposite slits, generating entangled states between these differents paths. Experimental results for qudits with D=4 and D=8 are shown. We demonstrate that the generated states are entangled states.
Recently, the nonlocal optimal probabilistic cloning (NLOPC) of two non-orthogonal qubit states has been proposed [Phys. Rev. A 86, 052332 (2012)] by means of an experimental setup based on a pair of twin photons in a maximally entangled state. Here we study the performance of the NLOPC protocol when implemented via a partially entangled state. We show that the errors introduced by the use of partial entanglement can be undone by applying a quantum state discrimination process. Since quantum state discrimination is a probabilistic process the correction succeeds with a certain probability but …
A pulsed source of energy-time entangled photon pairs pumped by a standard laser diode is proposed and demonstrated. The basic states can be distinguished by their time of arrival. This greatly simplifies the realization of 2-photon quantum cryptography, Bell state analyzers, quantum teleportation, dense coding, entanglement swapping, GHZ-states sources, etc. Moreover the entanglement is well protected during photon propagation in telecom optical fibers, opening the door to few-photon applications of quantum communication over long distances.
It is pointed out that every mixed state statistical operator is, up to a normalization constant, a super state vector in the Hilbert space of linear Hilbert-Schmidt operators acting in the state space of the quantum system. Hence, the well understood Schmidt canonical expansion of ordinary state vectors can be carried over to mixed states. In particular, it can be utilized for evaluating all the twins, i. e., the opposite-subsystem observables the measurement of one of which is, on account of entanglement, ipso facto also a measurement of the other. This is illustrated in full detail in the c…
To acquire the best path-entangled photon Fock states for robust quantum optical metrology with parity detection, we calculate phase information from a lossy interferometer by using twin entangled Fock states. We show that (a) when loss is less than 50% twin entangled Fock states with large photon number difference give higher visibility while when loss is higher than 50% the ones with less photon number difference give higher visibility; (b) twin entangled Fock states with large photon number difference give sub-shot-noise limit sensitivity for phase detection in a lossy environment. This res…
Spatial entanglement is at the heart of quantum enhanced imaging applications and high-dimensional quantum information protocols. In particular, for imaging and sensing applications, quantum states with a macroscopic number of photons are needed to provide a real advantage over the classical state-of-the-art. We demonstrate the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox in its original position and momentum form with bright twin beams of light by showing the presence of EPR spatial (position-momentum) entanglement. An electron-multiplying charge-coupled-device camera is used to record images of the…
Continuing the study of mixed-state entanglement in terms of opposite-subsystem observables the measurement of one of which amounts to the same as that of the other (so-called twins), begun in a recent article, so-called strong twin events, which imply biorthogonal mixing of states, are defined and studied. It is shown that for each mixed state there exists a Schmidt canonical (super state vector) expansion in terms of Hermitian operators, and that it can be the continuation of the mentioned biorthogonal mixing due to strong twins. The case of weak twins and nonhermitian Schmidt canonical expa…
It is shown that for each mixed state there exists a Schmidt (super state vector) decomposition in terms of Hermitian operators. Its utilization for finding all twins is illustrated in full detail in the case of the two spin-one-half-particle states with maximally disordered subsystems (mixtures of Bell states).
Twin observables, i.e. opposite subsystem observables A+ and A- that are indistinguishable in measurement in a given mixed or pure state W, are investigated in detail algebraicly and geometrically. It is shown that there is a far-reaching correspondence between the detectable (in W) spectral entities of the two operators. Twin observables are state-dependently quantum-logically equivalent, and direct subsystem measurement of one of them ipso facto gives rise to the indirect (i.e. distant) measurement of the other. Existence of nontrivial twins requires singularity of W. Systems in thermodynami…
We study the conditions when mixtures of entangled pure states with maximally mixed one-qudit reduced density matrices remain entangled. We found that the resulting mixed state remains entangled when the number of entangled pure states to be mixed is less than or equal to the dimension of the pure states. For the latter case of mixing a number of pure states equal to their dimension, we found that the mixed state is entangled provided that the entangled pure states to be mixed are not equally weighted. We also found that one can restrict the set of pure states that one can mix from in order to…
We consider six-photon entangled state emitted from a single third-order parametric down-conversion process. In the regime of weak nonlinearities, we present a symmetry detector which is capable of analyzing the twin-beam six-photon symmetric states. By cascading the symmetry detectors, as an application, it is shown that one can purify the desired six-photon entangled state from an arbitrary twin-beam six-photon symmetric state. With linear optics we propose a fruitful scheme for exploring a class of multimode-photon entangled states from third-order parametric down-conversion process. Furthe…
Quantum states of light with multiple spatial modes are fundamental for quantum imaging and parallel quantum information processing. Thus, their characterization, which can be achieved through measurements of the coherence area, is an important area of research. We present a comparative study between two different measurement techniques for the coherence area of bright entangled twin beams of light generated with a four-wave mixing process in a hot rubidium vapor cell. The first one provides a direct characterization of the size of the coherence area and is based on correlation measurements be…
We study a class of mixed non-Gaussian entangled states that, whilst closely related to Gaussian entangled states, none-the-less exhibit distinct properties previously only associated with more exotic, pure non-Gaussian states.
Twin-field quantum key distribution (TFQKD), using single-photon-type interference, offers a way to exceed the rate-distance limit without quantum repeaters. However, it still suffers from the photon losses and dark counts, which impose an ultimate limit on its transmission distance. In this letter, we propose a scheme to implement TFQKD with an entangled coherent state source in the middle to increase its range, as well as comparing its performance under coherent attacks with that of TFQKD variants. Simulations show that our protocol has a theoretical distance advantage of 400 kilometers. Mor…
Using the coincidence-count (CC) measurement of the generated frequency-entangled twin-photons beam (TWB) via the process of type-I spontaneous parametric-down conversion (SPDC) in BBO nonlinear crystal (NLC), we have precisely measured the transmittance of very diluted Rabbit- and Human-DNA, Methylene-Blue (MB), as a disinfectant, and thin-film multilayer at near IR wavelength 810nm with an accuracy in order of $\% 0.01 $ due to the quantum correlation, while accuracy of classical-like measurement, single-count (SC), is in order of $\% 0.1 $ in our setup. Moreover, using quantum measurement o…
We show that it is possible to achieve maximally entangled mixed states of two qubits from the singlet state via the action of local non-trace-preserving quantum channels. Moreover, we present a simple, feasible linear optical implementation of one of such channels.
In some off-resonant cases, the reduced density matrix of two atoms symmetrically coupled with an optical cavity can very approximately approach to maximally entangled mixed states or maximal Bell violation mixed states in their evolution. The influence of phase decoherence on the generation of maximally entangled mixed state is also discussed. PACS numbers: 03.67.-a, 03.65.Ud
We present a full definition of mixed maximally entangled (MME) states for multipartite systems, generalizing their existing definition for bipartite systems by using multipartite Schmidt decomposition. MME states are a special kind of maximally entangled mixed state (MEMS) for which every pure decomposition state in all decompositions is maximally entangled. Thus, MME states have entanglement 1 by all valid unit-normalized entanglement measures, whereas general MEMS can have entanglement less than 1. Multipartite MME states likely have important applications such as remote state preparation, …
We study the fully entangled fraction of a quantum state. An upper bound is obtained for arbitrary bipartite system. This upper bound only depends on the Frobenius norm of the state.
We study the efficacy of two-qubit mixed entangled states as resources for quantum teleportation. We first consider two maximally entangled mixed states, viz., the Werner state\cite{werner}, and a class of states introduced by Munro {\it et al.} \cite{munro}. We show that the Werner state when used as teleportation channel, gives rise to better average teleportation fidelity compared to the latter class of states for any finite value of mixedness. We then introduce a non-maximally entangled mixed state obtained as a convex combination of a two-qubit entangled mixed state and a two-qubit separa…
We find that the mixed maximally entangled states exist and prove that the form of the mixed maximally entangled states is unique in terms of the entanglement of formation. Moreover, even if the entanglement is quantified by other entanglement measures, this conclusion is still proven right. This result is a supplementary to the generally accepted fact that all maximally entangled states are pure. These states possess important properties of the pure maximally entangled states, for example, these states can be used as a resource for faithful teleportation and they can be distinguished perfectl…
We demonstrate production of quantum correlated and entangled beams by second harmonic generation in a nonlinear resonator with two output ports. The output beams at wavelength 428.5 nm exhibit 0.9 dB of nonclassical intensity correlations and 0.3 dB of entanglement.
We propose a scheme for preparing arbitrary two photons polarization entangled mixed states via controlled location decoherence. The scheme uses only linear optical devices and single-mode optical fibers, and may be feasible in experiment within current optical technology.
We prove that for many ranks r<2m-2, random rank r mixed states in bipartite mxm systems have relatively high Schmidt numbers, which is based on algebraic-geometric separability criterion proved in [1]. This also means that the algebraic-geometric separability criterion can be used to detect all low rank entangled mixed states outside a measure zero set.
We present a general theoretical method to generate maximally entangled mixed states of a pair of photons initially prepared in the singlet polarization state. This method requires only local operations upon a single photon of the pair and exploits spatial degrees of freedom to induce decoherence. We report also experimental confirmation of these theoretical results.
We propose novel mixed states in two qubits, ``maximally entangled mixed states'', which have a property that the amount of entanglement of these states cannot be increased further by applying any unitary operations. The property is proven when the rank of the states is less than 4, and confirmed numerically in the other general cases. The corresponding entanglement of formation specified by its eigenvalues gives an upper bound of that for density matrices with same eigenvalues.
Entangled pure-states, Werner-states and generalized mixed-states of any structure, spanning a 2x2 Hilbert space are created by a novel high-brilliance universal source of polarization-entangled photon pairs. The violation of a Bell inequality has been tested for the first time with a pure-state, indeed a conceptually relevant ideal condition, and with Werner-states. The generalized ''maximally entangled mixed states'' (MEMS) were also synthetized for the first time and their exotic properties investigated by means of a quantum tomographic technique.
Twin entangled beams produced by single-pass parametric down-conversion (PDC) offer the opportunity to detect weak amount of absorption with an improved sensitivity with respect to standard techniques which make use of classical light sources. We propose a differential measurement scheme which exploits the spatial quantum correlation of type II PDC to image a weak amplitude object with a sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit imposed by shot-noise.
Quantum nonlocality is tested for an entangled coherent state, interacting with a dissipative environment. A pure entangled coherent state violates Bell's inequality regardless of its coherent amplitude. The higher the initial nonlocality, the more rapidly quantum nonlocality is lost. The entangled coherent state can also be investigated in the framework of $2\times2$ Hilbert space. The quantum nonlocality persists longer in $2\times2$ Hilbert space. When it decoheres it is found that the entangled coherent state fails the nonlocality test, which contrasts with the fact that the decohered enta…
Three-qubit mixed states are used as a channel for controlled quantum teleportation (CQT) of single-qubit states. The connection between different channel parameters to achieve maximum controlled teleportation fidelity is investigated. We show that for a given multipartite entanglement and mixedness, a class of non-maximally entangled mixed $X$ states ($X-$NMEMS) achieves optimum controlled quantum teleportation fidelity, interestingly a class of maximally entangled mixed $X$ states ($X-$MEMS) fails to do so. This demonstrates, for a given spectrum and mixedness, that $X-$MEMS are not sufficie…
A scheme for generating the maximally entangled mixed state of two atoms on-resonance asymmetrically coupled to a single mode optical cavity field is presented. The part frontier of both maximally entangled mixed states and maximal Bell violating mixed states can be approximately reached by the evolving reduced density matrix of two atoms if the ratio of coupling strengths of two atoms is appropriately controlled. It is also shown that exchange symmetry of global maximal concurrence is broken if and only if coupling strength ratio lies between $\frac{\sqrt{3}}{3}$ and $\sqrt{3}$ for the case o…
Purifying noisy entanglement is a protocol which can increase the entanglement of a mixed state (as a source)at expense of the entanglement of others(as an ancilla)by collective measurement. A protocol with which one can get a pure entangled state from a mixed state is defined as purifying mixed states. We address a basic question: can one get a pure entangled state from a mixed state? We give a necessary and sufficient condition of purifying a mixed state by fit local operations and classical communication and show that for a class of source states and ancilla states in arbitrary bipartite sy…
We constructed a class of non-maximally entangled mixed states \cite{roy2010} and extensively studied its entanglement properties and also their usefulness as teleportation channels. In this article, we revisited our constructed state and have studied it from three different perspectives. Since every entangled state is associated with an witness operator, we have found a suitable entanglement as well as teleportation witness for our non-maximally entangled mixed states. We considered the noisy channel's effects on our constructed state and to see whether it affects the states' capacity as tele…
The maximally entangled mixed states of Munro, James, White, and Kwiat [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 64} (2001) 030302] are shown to exhibit interesting features vis a vis conditional entropic measures. The same happens with the Ishizaka and Hiroshima states [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 62} 022310 (2000)], whose entanglement-degree can not be increased by acting on them with logic gates. Special types of entangled states that do not violate classical entropic inequalities are seen to exist in the space of two qubits. Special meaning can be assigned to the Munro {\it et al.} special participation ratio of 1.8.
Using a geometric measure of entanglement quantification based on Euclidean distance of the Hermitian matrices, we obtain the minimum distance between a bipartite bound entangled $n$- qudit density matrix and the maximally mixed state.This minimum distance for which entangled density matrices necessarily have positive partial transpose (PPT) is obtained as $\frac{1}{\sqrt{\sqrt{d^n(d^n-1)}+1}}$, which is also a lower limit for the existence of 1-distillable entangled states. The separable states necessarily lie within a minimum distance of $\frac{R}{1+d^{n-1}}$ from the Identity,where R is the…
The ability to teleport entanglement through maximally entangled mixed states as defined by concurrence and linear entropy is studied. We show how the teleported entanglement depends on the quality of the quantum channel used, as defined through its entanglement and mixedness, as well as the form of the target state to be teleported. We present new results based on the fidelity of the teleported state as well as an experimental set-up that is immediately implementable with currently available technology.
We consider mixed states of two qubits and show under which global unitary operations their entanglement is maximized. This leads to a class of states that is a generalization of the Bell states. Three measures of entanglement are considered: entanglement of formation, negativity and relative entropy of entanglement. Surprisingly all states that maximize one measure also maximize the others. We will give a complete characterization of these generalized Bell states and prove that these states for fixed eigenvalues are all equivalent under local unitary transformations. We will furthermore chara…
Genuine entanglement is the strongest form of multipartite entanglement. Genuinely entangled pure states contain entanglement in every bipartition and as such can be regarded as a valuable resource in the protocols of quantum information processing. A recent direction of research is the construction of genuinely entangled subspaces -- the class of subspaces consisting entirely of genuinely multipartite entangled pure states. In this paper we present several methods of construction of such subspaces including those of maximal possible dimension. The approach is based on the correspondence betwe…
Linden, Massar and Popescu have recently given an optimization argument to show that a single two-qubit Werner state, or any other mixture of the maximally entangled Bell states, cannot be purified by local operations and classical communications. We generalise their result and give a simple explanation. In particular, we show that no purification scheme using local operations and classical communications can produce a pure singlet from any mixed state of two spin-1/2 particles. More generally, no such scheme can produce a maximally entangled state of any pair of finite-dimensional systems fro…
We analyze a controllable generation of maximally entangled mixed states of a circuit containing two-coupled superconducting charge qubits. Each qubit is based on a Cooper pair box connected to a reservoir electrode through a Josephson junction. Illustrative variational calculations were performed to demonstrate the effect on the two-qubits entanglement. At sufficiently deviation between the Josephson energies of the qubits and/or strong coupling regime, maximally entangled mixed states at certain instances of time is synthesized. We show that entanglement has an interesting subsequent time ev…
Maximally entangled mixed states are those states that, for a given mixedness, achieve the greatest possible entanglement. For two-qubit systems and for various combinations of entanglement and mixedness measures, the form of the corresponding maximally entangled mixed states is determined primarily analytically. As measures of entanglement, we consider entanglement of formation, relative entropy of entanglement, and negativity; as measures of mixedness, we consider linear and von Neumann entropies. We show that the forms of the maximally entangled mixed states can vary with the combination of…
A novel ultrabright parametric source of polarization entangled photon pairs with striking spatial characteristics is reported. The distribution of the output electromagnetic k-modes excited by Spontaneous Parametris Down Conversion and coupled to the output detectors can be very broad. It could coincide with the full set of phase-matched excited modes, at least in principle. In this case a relevant conditional quasi-pure output state should be realized. By these (approximate) states realized over a full Entanglement-Ring output distribution, the non local properties of the generated entanglem…
We suggest an entanglement purification scheme for mixed entangled coherent states using 50-50 beam splitters and photodetectors. This scheme is directly applicable for mixed entangled coherent states of the Werner type, and can be useful for general mixed states using additional nonlinear interactions. We apply our scheme to entangled coherent states decohered in a vacuum environment and find the decay time until which they can be purified.
Using correlated photons from parametric downconversion, we extend the boundaries of experimentally accessible two-qubit Hilbert space. Specifically, we have created and characterized maximally entangled mixed states (MEMS) that lie above the Werner boundary in the linear entropy-tangle plane. In addition, we demonstrate that such states can be efficiently concentrated, simultaneously increasing both the purity and the degree of entanglement. We investigate a previously unsuspected sensitivity imbalance in common state measures, i.e., the tangle, linear entropy, and fidelity.
An entangled two-mode coherent state is studied within the framework of $2\times 2$ dimensional Hilbert space. An entanglement concentration scheme based on joint Bell-state measurements is worked out. When the entangled coherent state is embedded in vacuum environment, its entanglement is degraded but not totally lost. It is found that the larger the initial coherent amplitude, the faster entanglement decreases. We investigate a scheme to teleport a coherent superposition state while considering a mixed quantum channel. We find that the decohered entangled coherent state may be useless for qu…
The maximally entangled state can be in a mixed state as well as the well-known pure state. Taking the negativity as a measure of entanglement, we study the entanglement dynamics of bipartite, mixed maximally entangled states (MMESs) in multipartite cavity-reservoir systems. It is found that the MMES can exhibit the phenomenon of entanglement sudden death, which is quite different from the asymptotic decay of the pure-Bell-state case. We also find that maximal entanglement cannot guarantee maximal nonlocality and the MMES does not correspond to the state with maximal measurement-induced nonloc…
In this paper, we propose a novel scheme that can generate two-atom maximally entangled states from pure product states and mixed states using linear optics. Because the scheme can generate pure maximally entangled states from mixed states, we denote it as purification-like generation scheme.
The problem of of how many entangled or, respectively, separable states there are in the set of all quantum states is investigated. We study to what extent the choice of a measure in the space of density matrices describing N--dimensional quantum systems affects the results obtained. We demonstrate that the link between the purity of the mixed states and the probability of entanglement is not sensitive to the measure chosen. Since the criterion of partial transposition is not sufficient to distinguish all separable states for N > 6, we develop an efficient algorithm to calculate numerically th…
We obtain the necessary and sufficient separability and distillability conditions of mixtures of a maximally entangled state and the completely separable state in relativistic setting. In an inertial frame we study the entanglement under Wigner rotations induced by Lorentz transformations. We also investigate the mixed state entanglement of scalar and Dirac fields as seen by two relatively accelerated observers. For scalar field we show that in infinite acceleration limit the state has no longer distillable entanglement. For dirac field the entanglement in the infinite acceleration limit is fi…
There has been much discussion recently regarding entanglement transformations in terms of local filtering operations and whether the optimal entanglement for an arbitrary two-qubit state could be realised. We introduce an experimentally realisable scheme for manipulating the entanglement of an arbitrary state of two polarisation entangled qubits. This scheme is then used to provide some perspective to the mathematical concepts inherent in this field with respect to a laboratory environment. Specifically, we look at how to extract enhanced entanglement from systems with a fixed rank and in the…
The geometric phase for a pure quantal state undergoing an arbitrary evolution is a ``memory'' of the geometry of the path in the projective Hilbert space of the system. We find that Uhlmann's geometric phase for a mixed quantal state undergoing unitary evolution not only depends on the geometry of the path of the system alone but also on a constrained bi-local unitary evolution of the purified entangled state. We analyze this in general, illustrate it for the qubit case, and propose an experiment to test this effect. We also show that the mixed state geometric phase proposed recently in the c…
We present a local-hidden-variable model for positive-operator-valued measurements (an LHVPOV model) on a class of entangled generalized Werner states, thus demonstrating that such measurements do not always violate a Bell-type inequality. We also show that, in general, if the state $ρ'$ can be obtained from $ρ$ with certainty by local quantum operations without classical communication then an LHVPOV model for the state $ρ$ implies the existence of such a model for $ρ'$.
We report on a delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment based on a two-photon imaging scheme using entangled photon pairs. After the detection of a photon which passed through a double-slit, a random delayed choice is made to erase or not erase the which-path information by the measurement of its distant entangled twin; the particle-like and wave-like behavior of the photon are then recorded simultaneously and respectively by only one set of joint detection devices. The present eraser takes advantage of two-photon imaging. The complete which-path information of a photon is transferred to its d…
We consider the problems of maximizing the entanglement negativity of X-form qubit-qutrit density matrices with (i) a fixed spectrum and (ii) a fixed purity. In the first case, the problem is solved in full generality whereas, in the latter, partial solutions are obtained by imposing extra spectral constraints such as rank-deficiency and degeneracy, which enable a semidefinite programming treatment for the optimization problem at hand. Despite the technically-motivated assumptions, we provide strong numerical evidence that three-fold degenerate X states of purity $P$ reach the highest entangle…
