arXiv subjects

Rupert Ursin

Publications and source records attributed to Rupert Ursin.

80 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2008

Comment on: Testing the speed of 'spooky action at a distance'

In a recent experiment, Salart et al. addressed the important issues of the speed of hypothetical communication and of reference frames in Bell-type experiments. The authors report that they "performed a Bell experiment using entangled photons" and conclude from their experimental results that "to maintain an explanation based on spooky action at a distance we would have to assume that the spooky action propagates at speeds even greater than the bounds obtained in our experiment", exceeding the speed of light by orders of magnitude. Here we show that, analyzing the experimental procedure, explanations with subluminal or even no communication at all exist for the experiment.

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arXiv2008

Quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping with linear optics logic gates

We report on the usage of a linear optics phase gate for distinguishing all four Bell states simultaneously in a quantum teleportation and entanglement swapping protocol. This is demonstrated by full state tomography of the one and two qubit output states of the two protocols, yielding average state fidelities of about 0.83 and 0.77, respectively. In addition, the performance of the teleportation channel is characterised by quantum process tomography. The non classical properties of the entanglement swapping output states are further confirmed by the violation of a CHSH-type Bell inequality of 2.14 on average.

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arXiv2008

Space-QUEST: Experiments with quantum entanglement in space

The European Space Agency (ESA) has supported a range of studies in the field of quantum physics and quantum information science in space for several years, and consequently we have submitted the mission proposal Space-QUEST (Quantum Entanglement for Space Experiments) to the European Life and Physical Sciences in Space Program. We propose to perform space-to-ground quantum communication tests from the International Space Station (ISS). We present the proposed experiments in space as well as the design of a space based quantum communication payload.

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arXiv2008

Experimental verification of the feasibility of a quantum channel between Space and Earth

Extending quantum communication to Space environments would enable to perform fundamental experiments on quantum physics as well as applications of quantum information at planetary and interplanetary scales. Here, we report the first experimental implementation of a scheme for single-photon exchange between a satellite and an Earth-based station. We built an experiment that mimics a single photon source on a satellite, exploiting the telescope at the Matera Laser Ranging Observatory of the Italian Space Agency to detect the transmitted photons. Weak laser pulses, emitted by the ground-based station, are directed towards a satellite equipped with cube-corner retroreflectors. These reflect a small portion of the pulse, with an average of less-than-one photon per pulse directed to our receiver, as required for the faint-pulse quantum communication. We were able to detect returns from satellite Ajisai, a low-earth orbit geodetic satellite, whose orbit has a perigee height of 1485 km.

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arXiv2005

Experimental Analysis of a 4-Qubit Cluster State

Linear optics quantum logic operations enabled the observation of a four-photon cluster state. We prove genuine four-partite entanglement and study its persistency, demonstrating remarkable differences to the usual GHZ state. Efficient analysis tools are introduced in the experiment, which will be of great importance in further studies on multi-particle entangled states.

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arXiv2005

Linear Optics C-Phase gate made simple

Linear optics quantum logic gates are the best tool to generate multi-photon entanglement. Simplifying a recent approach [Phys. Rev. A 65, 062324; Phys. Rev. A 66, 024308] we were able to implement the conditional phase gate with only one second order interference at a polarization dependent beam splitter, thereby significantly increasing its stability. The improved quality of the gate is evaluated by analysing its entangling capability and by performing full process tomography. The achieved results ensure that this device is well suited for implementation in various multi photon quantum information protocols.

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arXiv2004

Experimental teleportation of quantum entanglement with an optimal linear optics Bell-state analyzer

We demonstrate an experiment on entanglement swapping using an optimal Bell-state measurement capable of identifying two of the four Bell-states for polarization entangled photons, which is the optimum with linear optical elements. The two final photons belong to separately created paris. They are entangled after their original partner photons have been subjected to the Bell state measurement, whose outcome determines the type of entanglement of the final photon pair. The resulting violation of Bell's inequality in both cases confirms the success of the teleportation protocol.

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arXiv2003

De Broglie Wavelength of a Nonlocal Four-Photon

Superposition is one of the most distinct features of quantum theory and has been demonstrated in numerous realizations of Young's classical double-slit interference experiment and its analogues. However, quantum entanglement - a significant coherent superposition in multiparticle systems - yields phenomena that are much richer and more interesting than anything that can be seen in a one-particle system. Among them, one important type of multi-particle experiments uses path-entangled number-states, which exhibit pure higher-order interference and allow novel applications in metrology and imaging such as quantum interferometry and spectroscopy with phase sensitivity at the Heisenberg limit or quantum lithography beyond the classical diffraction limit. Up to now, in optical implementations of such schemes lower-order interference effects would always decrease the overall performance at higher particle numbers. They have thus been limited to two photons. We overcome this limitation and demonstrate a linear-optics-based four-photon interferometer. Observation of a four-particle mode-entangled state is confirmed by interference fringes with a periodicity of one quarter of the single-photon wavelength. This scheme can readily be extended to arbitrary photon numbers and thus represents an important step towards realizable applications with entanglement-enhanced performance.

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