Verifying continuous variable entanglement of intense light pulses

Three different methods have been discussed to verify continuous variable entanglement of intense light beams. We demonstrate all three methods using the same set--up to facilitate the comparison. The non--linearity used to generate entanglement is the Kerr--effect in optical fibres. Due to the brightness of the entangled pulses, standard homodyne detection is not an appropriate tool for the verification. However, we show that by using large asymmetric interferometers on each beam individually, two non-commuting variables can be accessed and the presence of entanglement verified via joint measurements on the two beams. Alternatively, we witness entanglement by combining the two beams on a beam splitter that yields certain linear combinations of quadrature amplitudes which suffice to prove the presence of entanglement.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Polarization squeezing of intense pulses with a fiber Sagnac interferometer

We report on the generation of polarization squeezing of intense, short light pulses using an asymmetric fiber Sagnac interferometer. The Kerr nonlinearity of the fiber is exploited to produce independent amplitude squeezed pulses. The polarization squeezing properties of spatially overlapped amplitude squeezed and coherent states are discussed. The experimental results for a single amplitude squeezed beam are compared to the case of two phase-matched, spatially overlapped amplitude squeezed pulses. For the latter, noise variances of -3.4dB below shot noise in the S0 and the S1 and of -2.8dB in the S2 Stokes parameters were observed, which is comparable to the input squeezing magnitude. Polarization squeezing, that is squeezing relative to a corresponding polarization minimum uncertainty state, was generated in S1.Comment: v4: 2 small typos corrected v3: misc problems with Tex surmounted - mysteriously missing text returned to results - vol# for Korolkova et al. PRA v2: was a spelling change in author lis

Experiment towards continuous-variable entanglement swapping: Highly correlated four-partite quantum state

We present a protocol for performing entanglement swapping with intense pulsed beams. In a first step, the generation of amplitude correlations between two systems that have never interacted directly is demonstrated. This is verified in direct detection with electronic modulation of the detected photocurrents. The measured correlations are better than expected from a classical reconstruction scheme. In the entanglement swapping process, a four--partite entangled state is generated. We prove experimentally that the amplitudes of the four optical modes are quantum correlated 3 dB below shot noise, which is due to the potential four--party entanglement.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, update of references 9 and 10; minor inconsistency in notation removed; format for units in the figures change

An efficient source of continuous variable polarization entanglement

We have experimentally demonstrated the efficient creation of highly entangled bipartite continuous variable polarization states. Exploiting an optimized scheme for the production of squeezing using the Kerr non-linearity of a glass fibre we generated polarization squeezed pulses with a mean classical excitation in (S)over-cap(3). Polarization entanglement was generated by interfering two independent polarization squeezed fields on a symmetric beam splitter. The resultant beams exhibit strong quantum noise correlations in the dark (S)over-cap(1)-(S)over-cap(2) polarization plane. To verify entanglement generation, we characterized the quantum correlations of the system for two different sets of conjugate Stokes parameters. The quantum correlations along the squeezed and the anti-squeezed Stokes parameters were observed to be - 4.1 +/- 0.3 and - 2.6 +/- 0.3 dB below the shot noise level, respectively. The degree of correlations was found to depend critically on the beam-splitting ratio of the entangling beam splitter. Carrying out measurements on a different set of conjugate Stokes parameters, correlations of -3.6 +/- 0.3 and -3.4 +/- 0.3 dB have been observed. This result is more robust against asymmetries in the entangling beam splitter, even in the presence of excess noise