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arXiv:1005.1258 · Physical Review Letters

Experimental Bound Entanglement in a Four-Photon State

Jonathan Lavoie, Rainer Kaltenbaek, Marco Piani, Kevin J. Resch

Published Sep 23, 2010• 87 citations
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Abstract

Bound entanglement is central to many exciting theoretical results in quantum information processing, but has thus far not been experimentally realized. In this work, we consider a one-parameter family of four-qubit Smolin states. We experimentally produce these states in the polarization of four optical photons produced from parametric down-conversion. Within a range of the parameter, we show that our states are entangled and undistillable, and thus bound entangled. Using these bound-entangled states we demonstrate entanglement unlocking.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.105.130501

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Bound entanglement is central to many exciting theoretical results in quantum information processing, but has thus far not been experimentally realized. In this work, we consider a one-parameter family of four-qubit Smolin states. We experimentally produce these states in the polarization of four optical photons produced from parametric down-conversion. Within a range of the parameter, we show that our states are entangled and undistillable, and thus bound entangled. Using these bound-entangled states we demonstrate entanglement unlocking.
For efficient quantum information processing (QIP), pure and strong entanglement in qubits has been thought to be indispensable.However, it was recently pointed out that bound entangled states, which involve undistillable entanglement between qubits, also have great potential for QIP.In this paper, we report the efficient generation of a four-qubit bound entangled state referred to as the Smolin state using photon polarization qubits.We observed the unlockable bound entanglement which is the specific property of the Smolin state.
Quantum entanglement exhibits various interesting features that emerge only in high-dimensional systems. One of the most fascinating is bound entanglement, entanglement that cannot be extracted using local operations and classical communication. This thesis describes our work towards an experimental realization of the four-qubit bound-entangled Smolin state, using the polarization and spatial mode of photon pairs. We describe a number of interesting experimental challenges that this work faced. We present our results on entangled two-qubit spatial mode states and hyperentangled four-qubit polarization-spatial-mode states generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion from a second-order TEM mode pump. Some of the subtleties involved in preparing genuine mixed states in the lab are discussed.
Multipartite entangled states are key elements for quantum information processing. Here we experimentally investigate the particular properties of a polarization-entangled four-photon state, which can be generated directly by second order parametric down-conversion. The perfect correlations and the invariance under local transformations enable one to encode one qubit of quantum information in a decoherence-free subspace and thus to communicate it safely over noisy quantum channels. Furthermore, we present an experimental method to detect genuine fourpartite entanglement using entanglement witness operators. The implementation of such operators requires only of few local polarization measurements but uniquely proves the genuine multipartite entanglement.