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IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics

Multiphoton Interference as a Tool to Observe Families of Multiphoton Entangled States

Witlef Wieczorek, Nikolai Kiesel, Christian Schmid, Wiesław Laskowski, Marek Żukowski, Harald Weinfurter

Published Sep 30, 2009• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Spontaneous parametric downconversion in combination with linear optics was successfully used to observe a variety of multiphoton entangled states. Yet, experiments performed so far lacked flexibility, as each of the various setups was useful for only a particular multiphoton entangled state. In this paper, we describe how, by using multiphoton interference, one can observe entire families of multiphoton entangled states in the very same linear optical setup. Our method thus goes beyond the commonly used two-photon interference and turns out to be a very useful tool for state observation. We will discuss the interference of four and six photons at different types of beam splitters and show which families of entangled states are observable. The benefits of this approach are demonstrated in a four-photon interference experiment by observing a variety of highly entangled multiphoton states.

DOI
10.1109/jstqe.2009.2025697

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Spontaneous parametric downconversion in combination with linear optics was successfully used to observe a variety of multiphoton entangled states. Yet, experiments performed so far lacked flexibility, as each of the various setups was useful for only a particular multiphoton entangled state. In this paper, we describe how, by using multiphoton interference, one can observe entire families of multiphoton entangled states in the very same linear optical setup. Our method thus goes beyond the commonly used two-photon interference and turns out to be a very useful tool for state observation. We will discuss the interference of four and six photons at different types of beam splitters and show which families of entangled states are observable. The benefits of this approach are demonstrated in a four-photon interference experiment by observing a variety of highly entangled multiphoton states.
Multiphoton entanglement is an important resource for linear optics quantum computing. Here we show that a wide range of highly entangled multiphoton states, including WWW-states, can be prepared by interfering single photons inside a Bell multiport beam splitter and using postselection. A successful state preparation is indicated by the collection of one photon per output port. An advantage of the Bell multiport beam splitter is that it redirects the photons without changing their inner degrees of freedom. The described setup can therefore be used to generate polarization, time-bin, and frequency multiphoton entanglement, even when using only a single photon source.
A number of multiphoton interference schemes involving independent fields from parametric down-conversion are analyzed. They include fourth-order (two-photon) interference between two fields from two independent parametric down-conversion processes, interference with two independent single photon Fock states (produced by gated parametric down-conversion), and quantum state teleportation and entanglement swapping. It is shown that the visibility in these interference experiments is related to a quantity that is responsible for the photon bunching effect in one of the fields (signal or idler) from the parametric down-conversion process. Besides the two-photon interference schemes, a four-photon interference scheme is discussed where we consider four-photon partition at a beamsplitter. It is found that probability distribution of the partition is dramatically changed by four-photon interference of six paths and the four-photon effect also depends on the same quantity responsible for photon bunching. We will discuss the difference between two-photon interference and four-photon interference.
An experiment is performed to demonstrate the temporal distinguishability of a four-photon state and a six-photon state, both from parametric down-conversion. The experiment is based on a multiphoton interference scheme in a recently discovered projection measurement of a maximally entangled N-photon state. By measuring the visibility of the interference dip, we can distinguish the various scenarios in the temporal distribution of the pairs and, thus, quantitatively determine the degree of temporal distinguishability of a multiphoton state.
Multiphoton interference reveals strictly nonclassical phenomena. Its applications range from fundamental tests of quantum mechanics to photonic quantum information processing, where a significant fraction of key experiments achieved so far comes from multiphoton state manipulation. The progress, both theoretical and experimental, of this rapidly advancing research is reviewed. The emphasis is given to the creation of photonic entanglement of various forms, tests of the completeness of quantum mechanics (in particular, violations of local realism), quantum information protocols for quantum communication (e.g., quantum teleportation, entanglement purification, and quantum repeater), and quantum computation with linear optics. The scope of the review is limited to ``few-photon'' phenomena involving measurements of discrete observables.
Entanglement lies at the heart of quantum mechanics and challenged the intuition of physicists ever since it was discovered. At the same time, it is a powerful tool that serves as a key resource for quantum communication and quantum computation schemes. Many of these applications rely on multiparticle entanglement, whose description, generation and manipulation became therefore a very active field in theoretical and experimental quantum information science. The goals are here to classify and understand the different types of entanglement, to find new applications and to control and analyze the quantum states experimentally. In this thesis, the experimental observation and analysis of two different types of four-photon polarization entangled states is presented: The cluster state and the symmetric Dicke state with two excitations. For this purpose, experimental setups based on spontaneous parametric down conversion and linear optics with conditional detection were designed. They allowed to observe the cluster state with a fidelity of 74.1 % and the symmetric Dicke state with a fidelity of 84.4 %. The cluster state experiment included the development of a new instrument that is of interest for linear optics quantum logic in general: A probabilistic controlled phase gate that is, due to the simplification of a previous approach, highly stable and can actually be used in multiphoton experiments. The quality of the gate is evaluated by analyzing its entangling capability and by performing full process tomography. The achieved results demonstrate that this device is well suited for implementation in various multiphoton quantum information protocols. In order to study the observed quantum states, efficient analysis tools are introduced. It was possible to verify that essential properties of the ideal states are indeed reproduced in the experiment, among others, the presence of genuine four-partite entanglement. A particular focus is put on the behavior of the states under projective measurements and photon loss. Several new insights in their entanglement structure are revealed and verified experimentally. We further demonstrate properties that are characteristic for the entanglement classes of the states. These can be used to infer the applicability of the observed states for certain distributed quantum communication applications. The presented experiments are generic for the design of setups to observe cluster- and symmetric Dicke states with a higher number of photons. Furthermore, also the efficient non-tomographic methods for state analysis we employ can directly be generalized to experiments with higher qubit numbers, where the reduction of the experimental effort for state analysis is even more crucial.