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Optics Letters

Unrestricted generation of pure two-qubit states and entanglement diagnosis by single-qubit tomography

J. Gonzales, P. Sánchez, Fabio J. Auccapuclla, Benton Miller, Miguel Vicente Andrés, F. De Zela

Published Jun 24, 2019• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present an experimental proof-of-principle for the generation and detection of pure two-qubit states that have been encoded in degrees of freedom that are common to both classical-light beams and single photons. Our protocol requires performing polarization tomography on a single qubit from a qubit pair. The degree of entanglement in the qubit pair is measured by concurrence, which can be directly extracted from intensity measurements-or photon counting-entering single-qubit polarization tomography.

DOI
10.1364/ol.44.003310

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We present an experimental proof-of-principle for the generation and detection of pure two-qubit states that have been encoded in degrees of freedom that are common to both classical-light beams and single photons. Our protocol requires performing polarization tomography on a single qubit from a qubit pair. The degree of entanglement in the qubit pair is measured by concurrence, which can be directly extracted from intensity measurements-or photon counting-entering single-qubit polarization tomography.
Abstract We have designed and experimentally put to test a protocol to synthesize and characterize pure, two-qubit states encoded in polarization and momentum (path) of light beams. Because these degrees of freedom are common to both classical and quantum light, it was possible to implement our protocol with classical light, thereby offering an advantageous and versatile testing ground. The experimental setup is robust and does not require state-dependent scheme modifications. We exhibited the capabilities of our protocol by generating three types of two-qubit states: Bell states, states with variable phases, and states with variable amplitudes.
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Abstract Entanglement and polarization of pure, two-qubit systems are known to be constrained by the relationship C 2 + P 2 = 1 . Here, C stands for concurrence, a standard measure of entanglement, and P refers to the degree of polarization of either of the two, single-qubit subsystems. The above constraint may be understood as reflecting that a system cannot be in a pure state, if it is entangled with another one. In order to explore the connection between entanglement and polarization beyond two-qubit systems, we addressed states in which at least one of the parties has dimensionality greater than two. The case of pure, tripartite states offered itself as a timely candidate. We focussed on three qubits and studied the connection between one qubit’s polarization and its entanglement with the other two taken together. We derived new constraints, akin to the above one, and submitted them to experimental tests using single photons entangled in polarization. The latter provided two qubits, each one attached to one photon. The third qubit was chosen to be the path (momentum) of one of the photons. Our experimental results confirmed the validity of the new constraints. Our theoretical results hold also for classical light. Possible experimental tests could be done with so-called structured light beams.