Experimental demonstration of five-photon entanglement and open-destination teleportation

Quantum-mechanical entanglement of three or four particles has been achieved experimentally, and has been used to demonstrate the extreme contradiction between quantum mechanics and local realism. However, the realization of five-particle entanglement remains an experimental challenge. The ability to manipulate the entanglement of five or more particles is required for universal quantum error correction. Another key process in distributed quantum information processing, similar to encoding and decoding, is a teleportation protocol that we term 'open-destination' teleportation. An unknown quantum state of a single particle is teleported onto a superposition of N particles; at a later stage, this teleported state can be read out (for further applications) at any of the N particles, by a projection measurement on the remaining particles. Here we report a proof-of-principle demonstration of five-photon entanglement and open-destination teleportation (for N = 3). In the experiment, we use two entangled photon pairs to generate a four-photon entangled state, which is then combined with a single-photon state. Our experimental methods can be used for investigations of measurement-based quantum computation and multi-party quantum communication.     

Measurement-induced entanglement for excitation stored in remote atomic ensembles

A critical requirement for diverse applications in quantum information science is the capability to disseminate quantum resources over complex quantum networks. For example, the coherent distribution of entangled quantum states together with quantum memory (for storing the states) can enable scalable architectures for quantum computation, communication and metrology. Here we report observations of entanglement between two atomic ensembles located in distinct, spatially separated set-ups. Quantum interference in the detection of a photon emitted by one of the samples projects the otherwise independent ensembles into an entangled state with one joint excitation stored remotely in 10(5) atoms at each site. After a programmable delay, we confirm entanglement by mapping the state of the atoms to optical fields and measuring mutual coherences and photon statistics for these fields. We thereby determine a quantitative lower bound for the entanglement of the joint state of the ensembles. Our observations represent significant progress in the ability to distribute and store entangled quantum states.     

Experimental long-lived entanglement of two macroscopic objects

Entanglement is considered to be one of the most profound features of quantum mechanics. An entangled state of a system consisting of two subsystems cannot be described as a product of the quantum states of the two subsystems. In this sense, the entangled system is considered inseparable and non-local. It is generally believed that entanglement is usually manifest in systems consisting of a small number of microscopic particles. Here we demonstrate experimentally the entanglement of two macroscopic objects, each consisting of a caesium gas sample containing about 1012 atoms. Entanglement is generated via interaction of the samples with a pulse of light, which performs a non-local Bell measurement on the collective spins of the samples. The entangled spin-state can be maintained for 0.5 milliseconds. Besides being of fundamental interest, we expect the robust and long-lived entanglement of material objects demonstrated here to be useful in quantum information processing, including teleportation of quantum states of matter and quantum memory.     

双模压缩真空态与运动原子相互作用过程中模间纠缠特性的研究

运用全量子理论,研究双模压缩真空态与运动原子相互作用过程中,双模光场的模间纠缠性质,讨论了原子初态处于激发态时,原子运动和场模结构对模间纠缠性质的影响.结果表明,原子的运动速度和场模结构影响模间纠缠度,但不破坏模间纠缠演化的周期性.     

Scalable multiparticle entanglement of trapped ions

The generation, manipulation and fundamental understanding of entanglement lies at the very heart of quantum mechanics. Entangled particles are non-interacting but are described by a common wavefunction; consequently, individual particles are not independent of each other and their quantum properties are inextricably interwoven. The intriguing features of entanglement become particularly evident if the particles can be individually controlled and physically separated. However, both the experimental realization and characterization of entanglement become exceedingly difficult for systems with many particles. The main difficulty is to manipulate and detect the quantum state of individual particles as well as to control the interaction between them. So far, entanglement of four ions or five photons has been demonstrated experimentally. The creation of scalable multiparticle entanglement demands a non-exponential scaling of resources with particle number. Among the various kinds of entangled states, the 'W state' plays an important role as its entanglement is maximally persistent and robust even under particle loss. Such states are central as a resource in quantum information processing and multiparty quantum communication. Here we report the scalable and deterministic generation of four-, five-, six-, seven- and eight-particle entangled states of the W type with trapped ions. We obtain the maximum possible information on these states by performing full characterization via state tomography, using individual control and detection of the ions. A detailed analysis proves that the entanglement is genuine. The availability of such multiparticle entangled states, together with full information in the form of their density matrices, creates a test-bed for theoretical studies of multiparticle entanglement. Independently, 'Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger' entangled states with up to six ions have been created and analysed in Boulder.     

Experimental determination of entanglement with a single measurement

Nearly all protocols requiring shared quantum information--such as quantum teleportation or key distribution--rely on entanglement between distant parties. However, entanglement is difficult to characterize experimentally. All existing techniques for doing so, including entanglement witnesses or Bell inequalities, disclose the entanglement of some quantum states but fail for other states; therefore, they cannot provide satisfactory results in general. Such methods are fundamentally different from entanglement measures that, by definition, quantify the amount of entanglement in any state. However, these measures suffer from the severe disadvantage that they typically are not directly accessible in laboratory experiments. Here we report a linear optics experiment in which we directly observe a pure-state entanglement measure, namely concurrence. Our measurement set-up includes two copies of a quantum state: these 'twin' states are prepared in the polarization and momentum degrees of freedom of two photons, and concurrence is measured with a single, local measurement on just one of the photons.     

Entanglement of single-atom quantum bits at a distance

Quantum information science involves the storage, manipulation and communication of information encoded in quantum systems, where the phenomena of superposition and entanglement can provide enhancements over what is possible classically. Large-scale quantum information processors require stable and addressable quantum memories, usually in the form of fixed quantum bits (qubits), and a means of transferring and entangling the quantum information between memories that may be separated by macroscopic or even geographic distances. Atomic systems are excellent quantum memories, because appropriate internal electronic states can coherently store qubits over very long timescales. Photons, on the other hand, are the natural platform for the distribution of quantum information between remote qubits, given their ability to traverse large distances with little perturbation. Recently, there has been considerable progress in coupling small samples of atomic gases through photonic channels, including the entanglement between light and atoms and the observation of entanglement signatures between remotely located atomic ensembles. In contrast to atomic ensembles, single-atom quantum memories allow the implementation of conditional quantum gates through photonic channels, a key requirement for quantum computing. Along these lines, individual atoms have been coupled to photons in cavities, and trapped atoms have been linked to emitted photons in free space. Here we demonstrate the entanglement of two fixed single-atom quantum memories separated by one metre. Two remotely located trapped atomic ions each emit a single photon, and the interference and detection of these photons signals the entanglement of the atomic qubits. We characterize the entangled pair by directly measuring qubit correlations with near-perfect detection efficiency. Although this entanglement method is probabilistic, it is still in principle useful for subsequent quantum operations and scalable quantum information applications.     

Generation of nonclassical photon pairs for scalable quantum communication with atomic ensembles

Quantum information science attempts to exploit capabilities from the quantum realm to accomplish tasks that are otherwise impossible in the classical domain. Although sufficient conditions have been formulated for the physical resources required to achieve quantum computation and communication, there is a growing understanding of the power of quantum measurement combined with the conditional evolution of quantum states for accomplishing diverse tasks in quantum information science. For example, a protocol has recently been developed for the realization of scalable long-distance quantum communication and the distribution of entanglement over quantum networks. Here we report the first enabling step in the realization of this protocol, namely the observation of quantum correlations for photon pairs generated in the collective emission from an atomic ensemble. The nonclassical character of the fields is demonstrated by the violation of an inequality involving their normalized correlation functions. Compared to previous investigations of non-classical correlations for photon pairs produced in atomic cascades and in parametric down-conversion, our experiment is distinct in that the correlated photons are separated by a programmable time interval (of about 400 nanoseconds in our initial experiments).     

An error-free protocol for quantum entanglement distribution in long-distance quantum communication

Quantum entanglement distribution is an essential part of quantum communication and computation protocols. Here, linear optic elements are employed for the distribution of quantum entanglement over a long distance. Polarization beam splitters and wave plates are used to realize an error-free protocol for broadcasting quantum entanglement in optical quantum communication. This protocol can determine the maximum distance of quantum communication without decoherence. Error detection and error correc-tion are performed in the proposed scheme. In other words, if there is a bit flip along the quantum channel, the end stations (Alice and Bob) can detect this state change and obtain the correct state (entangled photon) at another port. Existing general error detec-tion protocols are based on the quantum controlled-NOT (CNOT) or similar quantum logic operations, which are very difficult to implement experimentally. Here we present a feasible scheme for the implementation of entanglement distribution based on a linear optics element that does not need a quantum CNOT gate.     

超导量子比特中的Landau-Zener-Stckelberg干涉

超导量子比特是人工固态量子系统,在低温和弱耗散条件下,具有量子化的能级结构.这些能级之间的间隔可以随外加偏置电磁场连续变化,不同能级在某些偏置场可能形成量子系统中所特有的免交叉.最近研究成果表明,利用这些免交叉,可以在固态量子比特中实现Landau-Zener-Stckelberg（LZS）干涉,为测量系统的能谱、表征系统与环境的耦合、实现量子逻辑门、产生量子纠缠等提供了一个便捷的新手段.     

Non-classical light generated by quantum-noise-driven cavity optomechanics

Optomechanical systems, in which light drives and is affected by the motion of a massive object, will comprise a new framework for nonlinear quantum optics, with applications ranging from the storage and transduction of quantum information to enhanced detection sensitivity in gravitational wave detectors. However, quantum optical effects in optomechanical systems have remained obscure, because their detection requires the object’s motion to be dominated by vacuum fluctuations in the optical radiation pressure; so far, direct observations have been stymied by technical and thermal noise. Here we report an implementation of cavity optomechanics using ultracold atoms in which the collective atomic motion is dominantly driven by quantum fluctuations in radiation pressure. The back-action of this motion onto the cavity light field produces ponderomotive squeezing. We detect this quantum phenomenon by measuring sub-shot-noise optical squeezing. Furthermore, the system acts as a low-power, high-gain, nonlinear parametric amplifier for optical fluctuations, demonstrating a gain of 20?dB with a pump corresponding to an average of only seven intracavity photons. These findings may pave the way for low-power quantum optical devices, surpassing quantum limits on position and force sensing, and the control and measurement of motion in quantum gases.     

Quantum jumps of light recording the birth and death of a photon in a cavity

A microscopic quantum system under continuous observation exhibits at random times sudden jumps between its states. The detection of this quantum feature requires a quantum non-demolition (QND) measurement repeated many times during the system's evolution. Whereas quantum jumps of trapped massive particles (electrons, ions or molecules) have been observed, this has proved more challenging for light quanta. Standard photodetectors absorb light and are thus unable to detect the same photon twice. It is therefore necessary to use a transparent counter that can 'see' photons without destroying them. Moreover, the light needs to be stored for durations much longer than the QND detection time. Here we report an experiment in which we fulfil these challenging conditions and observe quantum jumps in the photon number. Microwave photons are stored in a superconducting cavity for times up to half a second, and are repeatedly probed by a stream of non-absorbing atoms. An atom interferometer measures the atomic dipole phase shift induced by the non-resonant cavity field, so that the final atom state reveals directly the presence of a single photon in the cavity. Sequences of hundreds of atoms, highly correlated in the same state, are interrupted by sudden state switchings. These telegraphic signals record the birth, life and death of individual photons. Applying a similar QND procedure to mesoscopic fields with tens of photons should open new perspectives for the exploration of the quantum-to-classical boundary.     

高斯型调制相干态的零差测量原理

对高斯型调制相干态的零差测量技术进行分析,认为用平衡零差探测效果最佳。在量子力学的框架下,研究零差探测技术测量高斯型调制相干态的原理,确定光子数与相位的关系,阐述相干态的测量技术,分析了测量信号及其方差。     

Experimental demonstration of a BDCZ quantum repeater node

Quantum communication is a method that offers efficient and secure ways for the exchange of information in a network. Large-scale quantum communication (of the order of 100 km) has been achieved; however, serious problems occur beyond this distance scale, mainly due to inevitable photon loss in the transmission channel. Quantum communication eventually fails when the probability of a dark count in the photon detectors becomes comparable to the probability that a photon is correctly detected. To overcome this problem, Briegel, Dür, Cirac and Zoller (BDCZ) introduced the concept of quantum repeaters, combining entanglement swapping and quantum memory to efficiently extend the achievable distances. Although entanglement swapping has been experimentally demonstrated, the implementation of BDCZ quantum repeaters has proved challenging owing to the difficulty of integrating a quantum memory. Here we realize entanglement swapping with storage and retrieval of light, a building block of the BDCZ quantum repeater. We follow a scheme that incorporates the strategy of BDCZ with atomic quantum memories. Two atomic ensembles, each originally entangled with a single emitted photon, are projected into an entangled state by performing a joint Bell state measurement on the two single photons after they have passed through a 300-m fibre-based communication channel. The entanglement is stored in the atomic ensembles and later verified by converting the atomic excitations into photons. Our method is intrinsically phase insensitive and establishes the essential element needed to realize quantum repeaters with stationary atomic qubits as quantum memories and flying photonic qubits as quantum messengers.     

Squeezing and entanglement in a Bose-Einstein condensate

Entanglement, a key feature of quantum mechanics, is a resource that allows the improvement of precision measurements beyond the conventional bound attainable by classical means. This results in the standard quantum limit, which is reached in today's best available sensors of various quantities such as time and position. Many of these sensors are interferometers in which the standard quantum limit can be overcome by using quantum-entangled states (in particular spin squeezed states) at the two input ports. Bose-Einstein condensates of ultracold atoms are considered good candidates to provide such states involving a large number of particles. Here we demonstrate spin squeezed states suitable for atomic interferometry by splitting a condensate into a few parts using a lattice potential. Site-resolved detection of the atoms allows the measurement of the atom number difference and relative phase, which are conjugate variables. The observed fluctuations imply entanglement between the particles, a resource that would allow a precision gain of 3.8 dB over the standard quantum limit for interferometric measurements.     

利用动力学去耦合脉冲增大和调节量子相干性和三体纠缠

本文研究了动力学去耦合脉冲对腔量子电动力学系统中量子相干性, 量子失谐和量子纠缠的影响, 发现动力学去耦合脉冲不仅能够增大系统中两原子之间的量子相干性, 同时也能增大它们之间非经典关联（量子失谐和量子纠缠）. 同时, 凭借迹距离的方法, 探讨了动力学去耦合脉冲增大两原子之间量子相干性的原因, 通过探究可以看出动力学去耦合脉冲能够控制和加速量子信息从其他子系统回流到两个原子中去, 并减少两原子子系统和其他子系统之间的量子信息流动, 从而增加两原子间的量子相干性和非经典关联. 最后, 利用保真度的方法研究了系统中三体纠缠出现的情况, 结果显示在不同的时间, 系统中会出现三体纠缠, 特别值得指出的是, 可以通过动力学去耦合脉冲来调节和增加系统中三体纠缠出现的时间.     

Efficient quantum computing using coherent photon conversion

Single photons are excellent quantum information carriers: they were used in the earliest demonstrations of entanglement and in the production of the highest-quality entanglement reported so far. However, current schemes for preparing, processing and measuring them are inefficient. For example, down-conversion provides heralded, but randomly timed, single photons, and linear optics gates are inherently probabilistic. Here we introduce a deterministic process--coherent photon conversion (CPC)--that provides a new way to generate and process complex, multiquanta states for photonic quantum information applications. The technique uses classically pumped nonlinearities to induce coherent oscillations between orthogonal states of multiple quantum excitations. One example of CPC, based on a pumped four-wave-mixing interaction, is shown to yield a single, versatile process that provides a full set of photonic quantum processing tools. This set satisfies the DiVincenzo criteria for a scalable quantum computing architecture, including deterministic multiqubit entanglement gates (based on a novel form of photon-photon interaction), high-quality heralded single- and multiphoton states free from higher-order imperfections, and robust, high-efficiency detection. It can also be used to produce heralded multiphoton entanglement, create optically switchable quantum circuits and implement an improved form of down-conversion with reduced higher-order effects. Such tools are valuable building blocks for many quantum-enabled technologies. Finally, using photonic crystal fibres we experimentally demonstrate quantum correlations arising from a four-colour nonlinear process suitable for CPC and use these measurements to study the feasibility of reaching the deterministic regime with current technology. Our scheme, which is based on interacting bosonic fields, is not restricted to optical systems but could also be implemented in optomechanical, electromechanical and superconducting systems with extremely strong intrinsic nonlinearities. Furthermore, exploiting higher-order nonlinearities with multiple pump fields yields a mechanism for multiparty mediation of the complex, coherent dynamics.     

Entanglement of spin waves among four quantum memories

Quantum networks are composed of quantum nodes that interact coherently through quantum channels, and open a broad frontier of scientific opportunities. For example, a quantum network can serve as a 'web' for connecting quantum processors for computation and communication, or as a 'simulator' allowing investigations of quantum critical phenomena arising from interactions among the nodes mediated by the channels. The physical realization of quantum networks generically requires dynamical systems capable of generating and storing entangled states among multiple quantum memories, and efficiently transferring stored entanglement into quantum channels for distribution across the network. Although such capabilities have been demonstrated for diverse bipartite systems, entangled states have not been achieved for interconnects capable of 'mapping' multipartite entanglement stored in quantum memories to quantum channels. Here we demonstrate measurement-induced entanglement stored in four atomic memories; user-controlled, coherent transfer of the atomic entanglement to four photonic channels; and characterization of the full quadripartite entanglement using quantum uncertainty relations. Our work therefore constitutes an advance in the distribution of multipartite entanglement across quantum networks. We also show that our entanglement verification method is suitable for studying the entanglement order of condensed-matter systems in thermal equilibrium.     

Quantum teleportation between light and matter

Quantum teleportation is an important ingredient in distributed quantum networks, and can also serve as an elementary operation in quantum computers. Teleportation was first demonstrated as a transfer of a quantum state of light onto another light beam; later developments used optical relays and demonstrated entanglement swapping for continuous variables. The teleportation of a quantum state between two single material particles (trapped ions) has now also been achieved. Here we demonstrate teleportation between objects of a different nature--light and matter, which respectively represent 'flying' and 'stationary' media. A quantum state encoded in a light pulse is teleported onto a macroscopic object (an atomic ensemble containing 10 caesium atoms). Deterministic teleportation is achieved for sets of coherent states with mean photon number (n) up to a few hundred. The fidelities are 0.58 +/- 0.02 for n = 20 and 0.60 +/- 0.02 for n = 5--higher than any classical state transfer can possibly achieve. Besides being of fundamental interest, teleportation using a macroscopic atomic ensemble is relevant for the practical implementation of a quantum repeater. An important factor for the implementation of quantum networks is the teleportation distance between transmitter and receiver; this is 0.5 metres in the present experiment. As our experiment uses propagating light to achieve the entanglement of light and atoms required for teleportation, the present approach should be scalable to longer distances.     

Generation of optical 'Schrödinger cats' from photon number states

Schr?dinger's cat is a Gedankenexperiment in quantum physics, in which an atomic decay triggers the death of the cat. Because quantum physics allow atoms to remain in superpositions of states, the classical cat would then be simultaneously dead and alive. By analogy, a 'cat' state of freely propagating light can be defined as a quantum superposition of well separated quasi-classical states-it is a classical light wave that simultaneously possesses two opposite phases. Such states play an important role in fundamental tests of quantum theory and in many quantum information processing tasks, including quantum computation, quantum teleportation and precision measurements. Recently, optical Schr?dinger 'kittens' were prepared; however, they are too small for most of the aforementioned applications and increasing their size is experimentally challenging. Here we demonstrate, theoretically and experimentally, a protocol that allows the generation of arbitrarily large squeezed Schr?dinger cat states, using homodyne detection and photon number states as resources. We implemented this protocol with light pulses containing two photons, producing a squeezed Schr?dinger cat state with a negative Wigner function. This state clearly exhibits several quantum phase-space interference fringes between the 'dead' and 'alive' components, and is large enough to become useful for quantum information processing and experimental tests of quantum theory.