Experimental Realization of Dicke States of up to Six Qubits for Multiparty Quantum Networking

We report the first experimental generation and characterization of a six-photon Dicke state. The produced state shows a fidelity of F=0.56 +/- 0.02 with respect to an ideal Dicke state and violates a witness detecting genuine six-qubit entanglement by 4 standard deviations. We confirm characteristic Dicke properties of our resource and demonstrate its versatility by projecting out four- and five-photon Dicke states, as well as four-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and W states. We also show that Dicke states have interesting applications in multiparty quantum networking protocols such as open-destination teleportation, telecloning, and quantum secret sharing.

Dissipative scheme to approach the boundary of two-qubit entangled mixed states

We discuss the generation of states close to the boundary family of maximally entangled mixed states as defined by the use of concurrence and linear entropy. The coupling of two qubits to a dissipation-affected bosonic mode is able to produce a bipartite state having, for all practical purposes, the entanglement and mixedness properties of one of such boundary states. We thoroughly study the effects that thermal and squeezed characters of the bosonic mode have in such a process and we discuss tolerance to qubit phase-damping mechanisms. The nondemanding nature of the scheme makes it realizable in a matter-light-based physical setup, which we address in some details.

Violations of Bell's inequality for Gaussian states with homodyne detection and nonlinear interactions

We show that homodyne measurements can be used to demonstrate violations of Bell's inequality with Gaussian states, when the local rotations used for these types of tests are implemented using nonlinear unitary operations. We reveal that the local structure of the Gaussian state under scrutiny is crucial in the performance of the test. The effects of finite detection efficiency are thoroughly studied and shown to only mildly affect the revelation of Bell violations. We speculate that our approach may be extended to other applications such as entanglement distillation where local operations are necessary elements besides quantum entanglement.

Perfect State Transfer on a Spin Chain without State Initialization

We demonstrate that perfect state transfer can be achieved using an engineered spin chain and clean local end-chain operations, without requiring the initialization of the state of the medium nor fine-tuning of control pulses. This considerably relaxes the prerequisites for obtaining reliable transfer of quantum information across interacting-spin systems. Moreover, it allows us to shed light on the interplay among purity, entanglement, and operations on a class of many-body systems potentially useful for quantum information processing tasks.

Control-limited perfect state transfer, quantum stochastic resonance, and many-body entangling gate in imperfect qubit registers

We propose a protocol for perfect quantum state transfer that is resilient to a broad class of realistic experimental imperfections, including noise sources that could be modeled either as independent Markovian baths or as certain forms of spatially correlated environments. We highlight interesting connections between the fidelity of state transfer and quantum stochastic resonance effects. The scheme is flexible enough to act as an effective entangling gate for the generation of genuine multipartite entanglement in a control-limited setting. Possible experimental implementations using superconducting qubits are also briefly discussed.

Generation of entangled coherent states via cross-phase-modulation in a double electromagnetically induced transparency regime

The generation of an entangled coherent state is one of the most important ingredients of quantum information processing using coherent states. Recently, numerous schemes to achieve this task have been proposed. In order to generate travelling-wave entangled coherent states, cross-phase-modulation, optimized by optical Kerr effect enhancement in a dense medium in an electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) regime, seems to be very promising. In this scenario, we propose a fully quantized model of a double-EIT scheme recently proposed [D. Petrosyan and G. Kurizki, Phys. Rev. A 65, 33 833 (2002)]: the quantization step is performed adopting a fully Hamiltonian approach. This allows us to write effective equations of motion for two interacting quantum fields of light that show how the dynamics of one field depends on the photon-number operator of the other. The preparation of a Schrodinger cat state, which is a superposition of two distinct coherent states, is briefly exposed. This is based on nonlinear interaction via double EIT of two light fields (initially prepared in coherent states) and on a detection step performed using a 50:50 beam splitter and two photodetectors. In order to show the entanglement of an entangled coherent state, we suggest to measure the joint quadrature variance of the field. We show that the entangled coherent states satisfy the sufficient condition for entanglement based on quadrature variance measurement. We also show how robust our scheme is against a low detection efficiency of homodyne detectors.

Probing the environment of an inaccessible system by a qubit ancilla

We study the conditions for probing the environment affecting an inaccessible system by means of continuous interaction and measurements performed only on a probe. The scheme exploits the statistical properties of the probe at its steady state and simple data postprocessing. Our results, highlighting the roles played by interaction and entanglement in this process, are both pragmatically relevant and fundamentally interesting.

Passing quantum correlations to qubits using any two-mode state

We draw an explicit connection between the statistical properties of an entangled two-mode continuous variable (CV) resource and the amount of entanglement that can be dynamically transferred to a pair of noninteracting two-level systems. More specifically, we rigorously reformulate entanglement-transfer process by making use of covariance matrix formalism. When the resource state is Gaussian, our method makes the approach to the transfer of quantum correlations much more flexible than in previously considered schemes and allows the straightforward inclusion of the effects of noise affecting the CV system. Moreover, the proposed method reveals that the use of de-Gaussified two-mode states is almost never advantageous for transferring entanglement with respect to the full Gaussian picture, despite the entanglement in the non-Gaussian resource can be much larger than in its Gaussian counterpart. We can thus conclude that the entanglement-transfer map overthrows the

Controllable Gaussian-Qubit Interface for Extremal Quantum State Engineering

We study state engineering through bilinear interactions between two remote qubits and two-mode Gaussian light fields. The attainable two-qubit states span the entire physically allowed region in the entanglement-versus-global-purity plane. Two-mode Gaussian states with maximal entanglement at fixed global and marginal entropies produce maximally entangled two-qubit states in the corresponding entropic diagram. We show that a small set of parameters characterizing extremally entangled two-mode Gaussian states is sufficient to control the engineering of extremally entangled two-qubit states, which can be realized in realistic matter-light scenarios.

Genuine multipartite nonlocality of entangled thermal states

We assess quantum nonlocality of multiparty entangled thermal states by studying, quantitatively, both tripartite and quadripartite states belonging to the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger, W, and linear cluster-state classes and showing violation of relevant Bell-like inequalities. We discuss the conditions for maximizing the degree of violation against the local thermal character of the states and the inefficiency of the detection apparatuses. We demonstrate that such classes of multipartite entangled states can be made to last quite significantly, notwithstanding adverse operating conditions. This opens up the possibility for coherent exploitation of multipartite quantum channels made out of entangled thermal states. Our study is accompanied by a detailed description of possible generation schemes for the states analyzed.

Boson pairs in a one-dimensional split trap

We describe the properties of a pair of ultracold bosonic atoms in a one-dimensional harmonic trapping potential with a tunable zero-ranged barrier at the trap center. The full characterization of the ground state is done by calculating the reduced single-particle density, the momentum distribution, and the two-particle entanglement. We derive several analytical expressions in the limit of infinite repulsion (Tonks-Girardeau limit) and extend the treatment to finite interparticle interactions by numerical solution. As pair interactions in double wells form a fundamental building block for many-body systems in periodic potentials, our results have implications for a wide range of problems.

Low-energy excitations of a boson pair in a double-well trap

The states of a boson pair in a one-dimensional double-well potential are investigated. Properties of the ground and lowest excited states of this system are studied, including the two-particle wave function, momentum pair distribution, and entanglement. The effects of varying both the barrier height and the effective interaction strength are investigated.

Testing quantum contextuality of continuous-variable states

We investigate the violation of noncontextuality by a class of continuous-variable states, including variations of entangled coherent states and a two-mode continuous superposition of coherent states. We generalize the Kochen-Specker (KS) inequality discussed by Cabello [A. Cabello, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 210401 (2008)] by using effective bidimensional observables implemented through physical operations acting on continuous-variable states, in a way similar to an approach to the falsification of Bell-Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequalities put forward recently. We test for state-independent violation of KS inequalities under variable degrees of state entanglement and mixedness. We then demonstrate theoretically the violation of a KS inequality for any two-mode state by using pseudospin observables and a generalized quasiprobability function.

Non-locality of two ultracold trapped atoms

We undertake a detailed analysis of the non-local properties of the fundamental problem of two trapped, distinguishable neutral atoms that interact with a short-range potential characterized by an s-wave scattering length. We show that this interaction generates continuous variable (CV) entanglement between the external degrees of freedom of the atoms and consider its behaviour as a function of both, the distance between the traps and the magnitude of the inter-particle scattering length. We first quantify the entanglement in the ground state of the system at zero temperature and then, adopting a phase-space approach, test the violation of the Clauser-Horn-Shimony-Holt inequality at zero and non-zero temperature and under the effects of general dissipative local environments.