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Scientific Reports

Photon Entanglement Through Brain Tissue

Lingyan Shi, Enrique J. Galvez, R. R. Alfano

Published Dec 20, 2016• 43 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Photon entanglement, the cornerstone of quantum correlations, provides a level of coherence that is not present in classical correlations. Harnessing it by study of its passage through organic matter may offer new possibilities for medical diagnosis technique. In this work, we study the preservation of photon entanglement in polarization, created by spontaneous parametric down-conversion, after one entangled photon propagates through multiphoton-scattering brain tissue slices with different thickness. The Tangle-Entropy (TS) plots show the strong preservation of entanglement of photons propagating in brain tissue. By spatially filtering the ballistic scattering of an entangled photon, we find that its polarization entanglement is preserved and non-locally correlated with its twin in the TS plots. The degree of entanglement correlates better with structure and water content than with sample thickness.

DOI
10.1038/srep37714

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Photon entanglement, the cornerstone of quantum correlations, provides a level of coherence that is not present in classical correlations. Harnessing it by study of its passage through organic matter may offer new possibilities for medical diagnosis technique. In this work, we study the preservation of photon entanglement in polarization, created by spontaneous parametric down-conversion, after one entangled photon propagates through multiphoton-scattering brain tissue slices with different thickness. The Tangle-Entropy (TS) plots show the strong preservation of entanglement of photons propagating in brain tissue. By spatially filtering the ballistic scattering of an entangled photon, we find that its polarization entanglement is preserved and non-locally correlated with its twin in the TS plots. The degree of entanglement correlates better with structure and water content than with sample thickness.
We investigated the preservation of non-local correlations between polarization-entangled photons when one of them traveled through brain tissue slices of different thicknesses. Using down-converted photons at a wavelength of 802 nm minimized the absorption by the tissue. After the light passed through the tissue samples, we performed quantum state tomography to obtain quantitative measures of the entanglement. We found that entanglement is preserved to a surprising degree, and when it degrades, it does so following a particular path in a tangle versus linear-entropy graph. Such a trajectory reveals direct transfer of probability from entangled to mixed state.
The generation, manipulation and quantification of non-classical light, such as quantum-entangled photon pairs, differs significantly from methods with classical light. Thus, quantum measures could be harnessed to give new information about the interaction of light with matter. In this study we investigate if quantum entanglement can be used to diagnose disease. In particular, we test whether brain tissue from subjects suffering from Alzheimer's disease can be distinguished from healthy tissue. We find that this is indeed the case. Polarization-entangled photons traveling through brain tissue lose their entanglement via a decohering scattering interaction that gradually renders the light in a maximally mixed state. We found that in thin tissue samples (between 120 and 600 micrometers) photons decohere to a distinguishable lesser degree in samples with Alzheimer's disease than in healthy-control ones. Thus, it seems feasible that quantum measures of entangled photons could be used as a means to identify brain samples with the neurodegenerative disease.
We present a study of a potential technique to diagnose brain disease using quantum-entangled twin photons. Our method consists of preparing polarization-entangled photon pairs and sending one member of each pair through brain tissue that is either healthy or suffering brain disease, such as Alzheimers, glioblastoma or other. The tissue imparts a decohering effect on the state of the light that we examine via quantum state tomography. Our preliminary experimental data shows a difference in the entanglement measures between healthy tissue and tissue bearing Alzheimers disease. We also explore an imaging technique of brain tissue based on quantum entanglement.
Multiphoton entanglement is the basis of many quantum communication schemes, quantum cryptographic protocols, and fundamental tests of quantum theory. Spontaneous parametric down-conversion is the most effective source for polarization entangled photon pairs. Here we show, that a entangled 4-photon state can be directly created by parametric down-conversion. This state exhibit perfect quantum correlations and a high robustness of entanglement against photon loss. We have used this state for four-particle test of local realistic theories. Therefore this state can be used for new types of quantum communication. We also report on possibilities for the experimentally realization of a 3-photon entangled state, the so called W-state, and discuss some of its properties.
One of the most intriguing concepts of quantum mechanics is quantum entanglement. Two physical systems are said to be entangled with respect to a certain variable, if their individual outcomes of the variable are undetermined before measurement, but strictly correlated. Measurement of the variable for only one system immediately determines the outcome for the other system, irrespective of the distance between the two systems. It is this strong correlation that provides a basis for perspective, powerful applications like quantum cryptography and quantum computation. The most studied entangled systems, often called EPR systems (after the pioneers Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen), are pairs of light particles or photon pairs. These photon pairs, usually generated via the optical process of a spontaneous parametric down-conversion, are, in principal, simultaneously entangled in three variables, being polarization (polarization entanglement), energy or time (time entanglement), and momentum or transverse space (spatial entanglement). The contents of this thesis cover new insights in the polarization and spatial entanglement of photons. We have investigated both the entanglement quality and the yield of entangled photons for different experimental geometries that are associated with the production and detection of the photons.