No Arabic abstract
Entanglement distribution between distant parties is one of the most important and challenging tasks in quantum communication. Distribution of photonic entangled states using optical fiber links is a fundamental building block towards quantum networks. Among the different degrees of freedom, orbital angular momentum (OAM) is one of the most promising due to its natural capability to encode high dimensional quantum states. In this article, we experimentally demonstrate fiber distribution of hybrid polarization-vector vortex entangled photon pairs. To this end, we exploit a recently developed air-core fiber which supports OAM modes. High fidelity distribution of the entangled states is demonstrated by performing quantum state tomography in the polarization-OAM Hilbert space after fiber propagation, and by violations of Bell inequalities and multipartite entanglement tests. The present results open new scenarios for quantum applications where correlated complex states can be transmitted by exploiting the vectorial nature of light.
Light beams having a vectorial field structure - or polarization - that varies over the transverse profile and a central optical singularity are called vector-vortex (VV) beams and may exhibit specific properties, such as focusing into light needles or rotation invariance, with applications ranging from microscopy and light trapping to communication and metrology. Individual photons in such beams exhibit a form of single-particle quantum entanglement between different degrees of freedom. On the other hand, the quantum states of two photons can be also entangled with each other. Here we combine these two concepts and demonstrate the generation of quantum entanglement between two photons that are both in VV states - a new form of quantum entangled entanglement. This result may lead to quantum-enhanced applications of VV beams as well as to quantum-information protocols fully exploiting the vectorial features of light.
Hybrid entangled states exhibit entanglement between different degrees of freedom of a particle pair and thus could be useful for asymmetric optical quantum network where the communication channels are characterized by different properties. We report the first experimental realization of hybrid polarization-orbital angular momentum (OAM) entangled states by adopting a spontaneous parametric down conversion source of polarization entangled states and a polarization-OAM transferrer. The generated quantum states have been characterized through quantum state tomography. Finally, the violation of Bells inequalities with the hybrid two photon system has been observed.
We present an entangled-state quantum cryptography system that operated for the first time in a real world application scenario. The full key generation protocol was performed in real time between two distributed embedded hardware devices, which were connected by 1.45 km of optical fiber, installed for this experiment in the Vienna sewage system. The generated quantum key was immediately handed over and used by a secure communication application.
We propose a scheme for long-distance quantum communication where the elementary entanglement is generated through two-photon interference and quantum swapping is performed through one-photon interference. Local polarization maximally entangled states of atomic ensembles are generated by absorbing a single photon from on-demand single-photon sources. This scheme is robust against phase fluctuations in the quantum channels, moreover speeds up long-distance high-fidelity entanglement generation rate.
A significant limitation of practical quantum key distribution (QKD) setups is currently their limited operational range. It has recently been emphasized (X. Ma, C.-H. F. Fung, and H.-K. Lo., Phys. Rev. A, 76:012307, 2007) that entanglement-based QKD systems can tolerate higher channel losses than systems based on weak coherent laser pulses (WCP), in particular when the source is located symmetrically between the two communicating parties, Alice and Bob. In the work presented here, we experimentally study this important advantage by implementing different entanglement-based QKD setups on a 144~km free-space link between the two Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife. We established three different configurations where the entangled photon source was placed at Alices location, asymmetrically between Alice and Bob and symmetrically in the middle between Alice and Bob, respectively. The resulting quantum channel attenuations of 35~dB, 58~dB and 71~dB, respectively, significantly exceed the limit for WCP systems. This confirms that QKD over distances of 300~km and even more is feasible with entangled state sources placed in the middle between Alice and Bob.