Stimulated Emission of Polarization-Entangled Photons

Authors

Antia Lamas-Linares, University of Oxford
John C. Howell, Chapman UniversityFollow
Dik Bouwmeester, University of Oxford

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-30-2001

Abstract

Entangled photon pairs—discrete light quanta that exhibit non-classical correlations—play a crucial role in quantum information science (for example, in demonstrations of quantum non-locality^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}, quantum teleportation^8,9 and quantum cryptography^10,11,12,31). At the macroscopic optical-field level non-classical correlations can also be important, as in the case of squeezed light¹³, entangled light beams^14,15 and teleportation of continuous quantum variables¹⁶. Here we use stimulated parametric down-conversion to study entangled states of light that bridge the gap between discrete and macroscopic optical quantum correlations. We demonstrate experimentally the onset of laser-like action for entangled photons, through the creation and amplification of the spin-1/2 and spin-1 singlet states consisting of two and four photons, respectively. This entanglement structure holds great promise in quantum information science where there is a strong demand for entangled states of increasing complexity.

Comments

This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Nature, volume 412, issue 6850, in 2001 following peer review. The final publication may differ and is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1038/35091014.

A free-to-read copy of the final published article is available here.

Recommended Citation

A. Lamas-Linares, J. C. Howell, and D. Bouwmeester, Stimulated Emission of Polarization-Entangled Photons, Nature 412(6850), 887-890.

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

Nature