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Physical Review Letters

Generation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Pairs of Atoms

E. W. Hagley, Xavier Maı̂tre, Gilles Nogues, C. Wunderlich, M. Brune, J. M. Raimond, S. Haroche

Published Jul 7, 1997• 808 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Pairs of atoms have been prepared in an entangled state of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) type. They were produced by the exchange of a single photon between the atoms in a high $Q$ cavity. The atoms, entangled in a superposition involving two different circular Rydberg states, were separated by a distance of the order of 1 cm. At variance with most previous EPR experiments, this one involves massive particles. It can be generalized to three or more atoms and opens the way to new tests of nonlocality in mesoscopic quantum systems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.79.1

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Pairs of atoms have been prepared in an entangled state of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) type. They were produced by the exchange of a single photon between the atoms in a high QQQ cavity. The atoms, entangled in a superposition involving two different circular Rydberg states, were separated by a distance of the order of 1 cm. At variance with most previous EPR experiments, this one involves massive particles. It can be generalized to three or more atoms and opens the way to new tests of nonlocality in mesoscopic quantum systems.
The interaction of circular Rydberg atoms with a high-quality microwave cavity makes it possible to realize complex quantum state manipulations. The state of an atom can be “copied” onto the cavity. Reversing this operation at a later time with a second atom, we realize an elementary “quantum memory” holding an atomic quantum coherence for a while in a cavity mode. We have also generated two-atom entangled states of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen type. At variance with previous experiments, this one implies massive particles in a completely controlled process. These entanglement manipulations can be generalized to more complex or to mesoscopic systems and open the way to new tests of fundamental aspects of the quantum world.
Summary form only given. The preparation of simple entangled quantum systems and the demonstration of their nonclassical properties has been a challenging goal since the early days of quantum mechanics and the famous Einstein Poldolsky Rosen (ERR) paper. Using circular Rydberg atoms strongly interacting with a zero or one-photon field stored in a microwave superconducting cavity, we have been able to prepare a new kind of EPR pair involving two entangled massive particles. The entanglement originates from the Rabi oscillation of a single excited atom emitting a photon in an initially empty cavity on a transition between two adjacent Rydberg levels.
Experiments involving Rydberg atoms crossing one at a time a superconducting cavity lead to new tests of quantum theory, such as the generation of entangled pairs of atoms of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen type, the preparation of mesoscopic superpositions of field states in the cavity ("Schrödinger cats") and the observation of the progressive decoherence of these states. These experiments illustrate basic aspects of the quantum-classical boundary and demonstrate steps of quantum logic operations essential for quantum information processing.
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) entanglement introduced in 1935 deals with two particles that are entangled in their positions and momenta. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of EPR position-momentum entanglement of narrow-band photon pairs generated from cold atoms. By using two-photon quantum ghost imaging and ghost interference, we demonstrate explicitly that the narrow-band photon pairs violate the separability criterion, confirming EPR entanglement. We further demonstrate continuous variable EPR steering for positions and momenta of the two photons. Our new source of EPR-entangled narrow-band photons is expected to play an essential role in spatially multiplexed quantum information processing, such as, storage of quantum correlated images, quantum interface involving hyperentangled photons, etc.
After they have interacted, quantum particles generally behave as a single nonseparable entangled system. The concept of entanglement plays an essential role in quantum physics. We have performed entanglement experiments with Rydberg atoms and microwave photons in a cavity and tested quantum mechanics in situations of increasing complexity. Entanglement resulted either from a resonant exchange of energy between atoms and the cavity field or from dispersive energy shifts affecting atoms and photons when they were not resonant. With two entangled particles (two atoms or one atom and a photon), we have realized new versions of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen situation. The detection of one particle projected the other, at a distance, in a correlated state. This process could be viewed as an elementary measurement, one particle being a ‘‘meter’’ measuring the other. We have performed a ‘‘quantum nondemolition’’ measurement of a single photon, which we detected repeatedly without destroying it. Entanglement is also essential to understand decoherence, the process accounting for the classical appearance of the macroscopic world. A mesoscopic superposition of states (‘‘Schrodinger cat’’) gets rapidly entangled with its environment, losing its quantum coherence. We have prepared a Schrodinger cat made of a few photons and studied the dynamics of its decoherence, in an experiment which constitutes a glimpse at the quantum/classical boundary. We have also investigated entanglement as a resource for the processing of quantum information. By using quantum two-state systems (qubits) instead of classical bits of information, one can perform logical operations exploiting quantum interferences and taking advantage of the properties of entanglement. Manipulating as qubits atoms and photons in a cavity, we have operated a quantum gate and applied it to the generation of a complex three-particle entangled state. We finally discuss the perspectives opened by these experiments for further fundamental studies.