Entangler and analyzer for multiphoton maximally entangled states using weak nonlinearities

In the regime of weak nonlinearity we present two general feasible schemes. One is an entangler for generating any one of the $n$-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinge (GHZ) states and Bell states. After the interactions with cross-Kerr nonlinear media, a phase gate followed by a measurement on the probe beam, and appropriate local operations via classical feed-forward, one can obtain the desired states in a nearly deterministic way. Another scheme is an analyzer for multiphoton maximally entangled states, which is taken as a further application of the above entangler. In this scheme, all of the $2^n$ $n$-photon GHZ states can, nearly deterministically, be discriminated. Furthermore, an efficient two-step nondestructive Bell-state analyzer is designed.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Multi-photon entanglement and interferometry

Multi-photon interference reveals strictly non-classical phenomena. Its applications range from fundamental tests of quantum mechanics to photonic quantum information processing, where a significant fraction of key experiments achieved so far comes from multi-photon state manipulation. We review the progress, both theoretical and experimental, of this rapidly advancing research. The emphasis is given to the creation of photonic entanglement of various forms, tests of the completeness of quantum mechanics (in particular, violations of local realism), quantum information protocols for quantum communication (e.g., quantum teleportation, entanglement purification and quantum repeater), and quantum computation with linear optics. We shall limit the scope of our review to "few photon" phenomena involving measurements of discrete observables.Comment: 71 pages, 38 figures; updated version accepted by Rev. Mod. Phy