Sequential Quantum Teleportation of Optical Coherent States

We demonstrate a sequence of two quantum teleportations of optical coherent states, combining two high-fidelity teleporters for continuous variables. In our experiment, the individual teleportation fidelities are evaluated as F_1 = 0.70 \pm 0.02 and F_2 = 0.75 \pm 0.02, while the fidelity between the input and the sequentially teleported states is determined as F^{(2)} = 0.57 \pm 0.02. This still exceeds the optimal fidelity of one half for classical teleportation of arbitrary coherent states and almost attains the value of the first (unsequential) quantum teleportation experiment with optical coherent states.Comment: 5page, 4figure

Entanglement, Purity, and Information Entropies in Continuous Variable Systems

Quantum entanglement of pure states of a bipartite system is defined as the amount of local or marginal ({\em i.e.}referring to the subsystems) entropy. For mixed states this identification vanishes, since the global loss of information about the state makes it impossible to distinguish between quantum and classical correlations. Here we show how the joint knowledge of the global and marginal degrees of information of a quantum state, quantified by the purities or in general by information entropies, provides an accurate characterization of its entanglement. In particular, for Gaussian states of continuous variable systems, we classify the entanglement of two--mode states according to their degree of total and partial mixedness, comparing the different roles played by the purity and the generalized $p-$entropies in quantifying the mixedness and bounding the entanglement. We prove the existence of strict upper and lower bounds on the entanglement and the existence of extremally (maximally and minimally) entangled states at fixed global and marginal degrees of information. This results allow for a powerful, operative method to measure mixed-state entanglement without the full tomographic reconstruction of the state. Finally, we briefly discuss the ongoing extension of our analysis to the quantification of multipartite entanglement in highly symmetric Gaussian states of arbitrary $1 \times N$-mode partitions.Comment: 16 pages, 5 low-res figures, OSID style. Presented at the International Conference ``Entanglement, Information and Noise'', Krzyzowa, Poland, June 14--20, 200

Broadband teleportation

Quantum teleportation of an unknown broadband electromagnetic field is investigated. The continuous-variable teleportation protocol by Braunstein and Kimble [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 80}, 869 (1998)] for teleporting the quantum state of a single mode of the electromagnetic field is generalized for the case of a multimode field with finite bandwith. We discuss criteria for continuous-variable teleportation with various sets of input states and apply them to the teleportation of broadband fields. We first consider as a set of input fields (from which an independent state preparer draws the inputs to be teleported) arbitrary pure Gaussian states with unknown coherent amplitude (squeezed or coherent states). This set of input states, further restricted to an alphabet of coherent states, was used in the experiment by Furusawa {\it et al.} [Science {\bf 282}, 706 (1998)]. It requires unit-gain teleportation for optimizing the teleportation fidelity. In our broadband scheme, the excess noise added through unit-gain teleportation due to the finite degree of the squeezed-state entanglement is just twice the (entanglement) source's squeezing spectrum for its ``quiet quadrature.'' The teleportation of one half of an entangled state (two-mode squeezed vacuum state), i.e., ``entanglement swapping,'' and its verification are optimized under a certain nonunit gain condition. We will also give a broadband description of this continuous-variable entanglement swapping based on the single-mode scheme by van Loock and Braunstein [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 61}, 10302 (2000)]Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, revised version for publication, Physical Review A (August 2000); major changes, in parts rewritte

Quantum information with continuous variables

Quantum information is a rapidly advancing area of interdisciplinary research. It may lead to real-world applications for communication and computation unavailable without the exploitation of quantum properties such as nonorthogonality or entanglement. We review the progress in quantum information based on continuous quantum variables, with emphasis on quantum optical implementations in terms of the quadrature amplitudes of the electromagnetic field.Comment: accepted for publication in Reviews of Modern Physic

Optical implementation of continuous-variable quantum cloning machines

We propose an optical implementation of the Gaussian continuous-variable quantum cloning machines. We construct a symmetric N -> M cloner which optimally clones coherent states and we also provide an explicit design of an asymmetric 1 -> 2 cloning machine. All proposed cloning devices can be built from just a single non-degenerate optical parametric amplifier and several beam splitters.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, REVTe