No Arabic abstract
A single photon incident on a beam splitter produces an entangled field state, and in principle could be used to violate a Bell-inequality, but such an experiment (without post-selection) is beyond the reach of current experiments. Here we consider the somewhat simpler task of demonstrating EPR-steering with a single photon (also without post-selection). That is, of demonstrating that Alices choice of measurement on her half of a single photon can affect the other half of the photon in Bobs lab, in a sense rigorously defined by us and Doherty [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 140402 (2007)]. Previous work by Lvovsky and co-workers [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 047903 (2004)] has addressed this phenomenon (which they called remote preparation) experimentally using homodyne measurements on a single photon. Here we show that, unfortunately, their experimental parameters do not meet the bounds necessary for a rigorous demonstration of EPR-steering with a single photon. However, we also show that modest improvements in the experimental parameters, and the addition of photon counting to the arsenal of Alices measurements, would be sufficient to allow such a demonstration.
We investigate whether paradigmatic measurements for quantum state tomography, namely mutually unbiased bases and symmetric informationally complete measurements, can be employed to certify quantum correlations. For this purpose, we identify a simple and noise-robust correlation witness for entanglement detection, steering and nonlocality that can be evaluated based on the outcome statistics obtained in the tomography experiment. This allows us to perform state tomography on entangled qutrits, a test of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering and a Bell inequality test, all within a single experiment. We also investigate the trade-off between quantum correlations and subsets of tomographically complete measurements as well as the quantification of entanglement in the different scenarios. Finally, we perform a photonics experiment in which we demonstrate quantum correlations under these flexible assumptions, namely with both parties trusted, one party untrusted and both parties untrusted.
We demonstrate the violation of an EPR steering inequality developed for single photon path entanglement with displacement-based detection. We use a high-rate source of heralded single-photon path-entangled states, combined with high-efficiency superconducting-based detectors, in a scheme that is free of any post-selection and thus immune to the detection loophole. This result conclusively demonstrates single-photon entanglement in a one-sided device-independent scenario, and opens the way towards implementations of device-independent quantum technologies within the paradigm of path entanglement.
We derive a new steering inequality based on a fine-grained uncertainty relation to capture EPR-steering for bipartite systems. Our steering inequality improves over previously known ones since it can experimentally detect all steerable two-qubit Werner state with only two measurement settings on each side. According to our inequality, pure entangle states are maximally steerable. Moreover, by slightly changing the setting, we can express the amount of violation of our inequality as a function of their violation of the CHSH inequality. Finally, we prove that the amount of violation of our steering inequality is, up to a constant factor, a lower bound on the key rate of a one-sided device independent quantum key distribution protocol secure against individual attacks. To show this result, we first derive a monogamy relation for our steering inequality.
Entanglement is the defining feature of quantum mechanics, and understanding the phenomenon is essential at the foundational level and for future progress in quantum technology. The concept of steering was introduced in 1935 by Schrodinger as a generalization of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox. Surprisingly, it has only recently been formalized as a quantum information task with arbitrary bipartite states and measurements, for which the existence of entanglement is necessary but not sufficient. Previous experiments in this area have been restricted to the approach of Reid [PRA 40, 913], which followed the original EPR argument in considering only two different measurement settings per side. Here we implement more than two settings so as to be able to demonstrate experimentally, for the first time, that EPR-steering occurs for mixed entangled states that are Bell-local (that is, which cannot possibly demonstrate Bell-nonlocality). Unlike the case of Bell inequalities, increasing the number of measurement settings beyond two--we use up to six--dramatically increases the robustness of the EPR-steering phenomenon to noise.
We propose and analyse a nonlinear optical apparatus in which the direction of asymmetric steering is controllable within the apparatus, rather than by adding noise to measurements. Using a nondegenerate parametric oscillator with an injected signal field, we show how the directionality and extent of the steering can be readily controlled for output modes which can be up to one octave apart. The two downconverted modes, which exhibit the greater violations of the steering inequalities, can also be controlled to exhibit asymmetric steering in some regimes.