Young's experiment and the finiteness of information

Young's experiment is the quintessential quantum experiment. It is argued here that quantum interference is a consequence of the finiteness of information. The observer has the choice whether that information manifests itself as path information or in the interference pattern or in both partially to the extent defined by the finiteness of information.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, typos remove

Experimental violation of a cluster state Bell inequality

Cluster states are a new type of multiqubit entangled states with entanglement properties exceptionally well suited for quantum computation. In the present work, we experimentally demonstrate that correlations in a four-qubit linear cluster state cannot be described by local realism. This exploration is based on a recently derived Bell-type inequality [V. Scarani et al., Phys. Rev A 71, 042325 (2005)] which is tailored, by using a combination of three- and four-particle correlations, to be maximally violated by cluster states but not violated at all by GHZ states. We observe a cluster state Bell parameter of $2.59\pm 0.08$, which is more than 7 standard deviations larger than the threshold of 2 imposed by local realism.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Complementarity and Information in "Delayed-choice for entanglement swapping"

Building on Peres's idea of "Delayed-choice for extanglement swapping" we show that even the degree to which quantum systems were entangled can be defined after they have been registered and may even not exist any more. This does not arise as a paradox if the quantum state is viewed as just a representative of information. Moreover such a view gives a natural quantification of the complementarity between the measure of information about the input state for teleportation and the amount of entanglement of the resulting swapped entangled state.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, submitted to the special issue of Foundation of Physics in honor of Asher Peres' 70th birthda

Representation of SO(3) Group by a Maximally Entangled State

A representation of the SO(3) group is mapped into a maximally entangled two qubit state according to literatures. To show the evolution of the entangled state, a model is set up on an maximally entangled electron pair, two electrons of which pass independently through a rotating magnetic field. It is found that the evolution path of the entangled state in the SO(3) sphere breaks an odd or even number of times, corresponding to the double connectedness of the SO(3) group. An odd number of breaks leads to an additional $\pi$ phase to the entangled state, but an even number of breaks does not. A scheme to trace the evolution of the entangled state is proposed by means of entangled photon pairs and Kerr medium, allowing observation of the additional $\pi$ phase.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Nonclassicality of pure two-qutrit entangled states

We report an exhaustive numerical analysis of violations of local realism by two qutrits in all possible pure entangled states. In Bell type experiments we allow any pairs of local unitary U(3) transformations to define the measurement bases. Surprisingly, Schmidt rank-2 states, resembling pairs of maximally entangled qubits, lead to the most noise-robust violations of local realism. The phenomenon seems to be even more pronounced for four and five dimensional systems, for which we tested a few interesting examples.Comment: 6 pages, journal versio

Matter-wave interferometer for large molecules

We demonstrate a near-field Talbot-Lau interferometer for C-70 fullerene molecules. Such interferometers are particularly suitable for larger masses. Using three free-standing gold gratings of one micrometer period and a transversally incoherent but velocity-selected molecular beam, we achieve an interference fringe visibility of 40 % with high count rate. Both the high visibility and its velocity dependence are in good agreement with a quantum simulation that takes into account the van der Waals interaction of the molecules with the gratings and are in striking contrast to a classical moire model.Comment: revtex4, 4 pages, 3 figure

Full characterization of a three-photon GHZ state using quantum state tomography

We have performed the first experimental tomographic reconstruction of a three-photon polarization state. Quantum state tomography is a powerful tool for fully describing the density matrix of a quantum system. We measured 64 three-photon polarization correlations and used a "maximum-likelihood" reconstruction method to reconstruct the GHZ state. The entanglement class has been characterized using an entanglement witness operator and the maximum predicted values for the Mermin inequality was extracted.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure

High-fidelity entanglement swapping with fully independent sources

Entanglement swapping allows to establish entanglement between independent particles that never interacted nor share any common past. This feature makes it an integral constituent of quantum repeaters. Here, we demonstrate entanglement swapping with time-synchronized independent sources with a fidelity high enough to violate a Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality by more than four standard deviations. The fact that both entangled pairs are created by fully independent, only electronically connected sources ensures that this technique is suitable for future long-distance quantum communication experiments as well as for novel tests on the foundations of quantum physics.Comment: added technical details and extended introduction and conclusion, slightly modified the abstract, corrected a mistake in the affiliation

A posteriori teleportation

The article by Bouwmeester et al. on experimental quantum teleportation constitutes an important advance in the burgeoning field of quantum information. The experiment was motivated by the proposal of Bennett et al. in which an unknown quantum state is `teleported' by Alice to Bob. As illustrated in Fig. 1, in the implementation of this procedure, by Bouwmeester et al., an input quantum state is `disembodied' into quantum and classical components, as in the original protocol. However, in contrast to the original scheme, Bouwmeester et al.'s procedure necessarily destroys the state at Bob's receiving terminal, so a `teleported' state can never emerge as a freely propagating state for subsequent examination or exploitation. In fact, teleportation is achieved only as a postdiction.Comment: 1 page LaTeX including 1 figure. Scientific Correspondence about: "Experimental quantum teleportation" Nature 390, 575 (1997