Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Multi-photon entanglement in high dimensions

Nature Photonics volume 10, pages 248–252 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Forming the backbone of quantum technologies today, entanglement1,2 has been demonstrated in physical systems as diverse as photons3, ions4 and superconducting circuits5. Although steadily pushing the boundary of the number of particles entangled, these experiments have remained in a two-dimensional space for each particle. Here we show the experimental generation of the first multi-photon entangled state where both the number of particles and dimensions are greater than two. Two photons in our state reside in a three-dimensional space, whereas the third lives in two dimensions. This asymmetric entanglement structure6 only appears in multiparticle entangled states with d > 26. Our method relies on combining two pairs of photons, high-dimensionally entangled in their orbital angular momentum7. In addition, we show how this state enables a new type of ‘layered’ quantum communication protocol. Entangled states such as these serve as a manifestation of the complex dance of correlations that can exist within quantum mechanics.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Schematic of the experiment.
Figure 2: Three-photon coherent superposition.
Figure 3: Witnessing genuine multipartite entanglement in high dimensions.
Figure 4: A layered quantum communication protocol.

References

  1. Schrödinger, E. Die gegenwärtige situation in der quantenmechanik. Naturwissenschaften 23, 823–828 (1935).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Trimmer, J. D. The present situation in quantum mechanics: a translation of Schrödinger's “Cat Paradox” paper. Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. 124, 323–338 (1980).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Yao, X.-C. et al. Observation of eight-photon entanglement. Nature Photon. 6, 225–228 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Lanyon, B. P. et al. Experimental violation of multipartite bell inequalities with trapped ions. Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 100403 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Kelly, J. et al. State preservation by repetitive error detection in a superconducting quantum circuit. Nature 519, 66–69 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Huber, M. & de Vicente, J. Structure of multidimensional entanglement in multipartite systems. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 030501 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Zeilinger, A., Horne, M., Weinfurter, H. & Żukowski, M. Three-particle entanglements from two entangled pairs. Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 3031–3034 (1997).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Bell, J. On the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox. Physics 1, 195–200 (1964).

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  9. Clauser, J., Horne, M., Shimony, A. & Holt, R. Proposed experiment to test local hidden-variable theories. Phys. Rev. Lett. 23, 880–884 (1969).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Greenberger, D. M., Horne, M. A. & Zeilinger, A. in Bell‘s Theorem, Quantum Theory, and Conceptions of the Universe (ed. Kafatos, M.) 69–72 (Kluwer, 1989).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Mermin, N. D. Extreme quantum entanglement in a superposition of macroscopically distinct states. Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 1838–1840 (1990).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  12. Pan, J.-W., Bouwmeester, D., Daniell, M., Weinfurter, H. & Zeilinger, A. Experimental test of quantum nonlocality in three-photon Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger entanglement. Nature 403, 515–519 (2000).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  13. Klyachko, A. A., Can, M. A., Binicioğlu, S. & Shumovsky, A. S. Simple test for hidden variables in spin-1 systems. Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 020403 (2008).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  14. Lapkiewicz, R. et al. Experimental non-classicality of an indivisible quantum system. Nature 474, 490–493 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Cerf, N., Bourennane, M., Karlsson, A. & Gisin, N. Security of quantum key distribution using d-level systems. Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 127902 (2002).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Mirhosseini, M. et al. High-dimensional quantum cryptography with twisted light. New J. Phys. 17, 033033 (2015).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  17. Malik, M. & Boyd, R. W. Quantum imaging technologies. Riv. Nuovo Cimento 37, 273–332 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  18. Molina-Terriza, G., Torres, J. P. & Torner, L. Twisted photons. Nature Phys. 3, 305–310 (2007).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  19. Dada, A. C., Leach, J., Buller, G. S., Padgett, M. J. & Andersson, E. Experimental high-dimensional two-photon entanglement and violations of generalized Bell inequalities. Nature Phys. 7, 677–680 (2011).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  20. Krenn, M. et al. Generation and confirmation of a (100 × 100)-dimensional entangled quantum system. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 6243–6247 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Wang, X.-L. et al. Quantum teleportation of multiple degrees of freedom of a single photon. Nature 518, 516–519 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. Terhal, B. M. & Horodecki, P. Schmidt number for density matrices. Phys. Rev. A 61, 040301 (2000).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  23. Huber, M., Perarnau-Llobet, M. & de Vicente, J. I. Entropy vector formalism and the structure of multidimensional entanglement in multipartite systems. Phys. Rev. A 88, 042328 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Cadney, J., Huber, M., Linden, N. & Winter, A. Inequalities for the ranks of multipartite quantum states. Linear Algebra Appl. 452, 153–171 (2014).

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  25. Leach, J., Padgett, M. J., Barnett, S. M. & Franke-Arnold, S. Measuring the orbital angular momentum of a single photon. Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 257901 (2002).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  26. Hong, C., Ou, Z. & Mandel, L. Measurement of subpicosecond time intervals between two photons by interference. Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 2044–2046 (1987).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  27. Kaltenbaek, R. Interference of Photons from Independent Sources PhD thesis, Univ. Vienna (2009).

  28. Fickler, R. et al. Interface between path and orbital angular momentum entanglement for high-dimensional photonic quantum information. Nature Commun. 5, 4502 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Hillery, M., Bužek, V. & Berthiaume, A. Quantum secret sharing. Phys. Rev. A 59, 1829–1834 (1999).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  30. Mirhosseini, M., Malik, M., Shi, Z. & Boyd, R. W. Efficient separation of the orbital angular momentum eigenstates of light. Nature Commun. 4, 2781 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  31. Krenn, M., Malik, M., Fickler, R., Lapkiewicz, R. & Zeilinger, A. Automated search for new quantum experiments. Phys. Rev. Lett. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.02749 (2015)

  32. Vieira, A. R., Hor-Myell, M. & Khoury, A. Z. Spin-orbit mode selection with a modified Sagnac interferometer. J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 30, 1623–1626 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  33. Scheidl, T. et al. Crossed-crystal scheme for femtosecond-pulsed entangled photon generation in periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate. Phys. Rev. A 89, 042324 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  34. Lavery, M. et al. Robust interferometer for the routing of light beams carrying orbital angular momentum. New J. Phys. 13, 093014 (2011).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  35. Mair, A., Vaziri, A., Weihs, G. & Zeilinger, A. Entanglement of the orbital angular momentum states of photons. Nature 412, 313–316 (2001).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  36. Qassim, H. et al. Limitations to the determination of a Laguerre–Gauss spectrum via projective, phase-flattening measurement. J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 31, A20–A23 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Tonolini, F., Chan, S., Agnew, M., Lindsay, A. & Leach, J. Reconstructing high-dimensional two-photon entangled states via compressive sensing. Sci. Rep. 4, 6542 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  38. Händchen, V. et al. Observation of one-way Einstein–Podolsky-Rosen steering. Nature Photon. 6, 596–599 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank T. Scheidl, M. Tillman, J. Handsteiner, R. Lapkiewicz, and G.B. Lemos for helpful discussions. M.M. acknowledges funding from the European Commission through a Marie Curie fellowship (OAMGHZ). M.H. acknowledges funding from the Juan de la Cierva fellowship (JCI 2012-14155), the European Commission (STREP ‘RAQUEL’) and the Spanish MINECO Project No. FIS2013-40627-P, the Generalitat de Catalunya CIRIT Project No. 2014 SGR 966, the Swiss National Science Foundation (AMBIZIONE PZ00P2_161351), and fruitful discussions at LIQUID. This project was supported by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), the European Research Council (SIQS Grant No. 600645 EU-FP7-ICT), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) with SFB F40 (FOQUS).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Robert Fickler

    Present address: Present address: Department of Physics and Max Planck Centre for Extreme and Quantum Photonics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa K1N 6N5, Canada,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Boltzmanngasse 3, Vienna, A-1090, Austria

    Mehul Malik, Manuel Erhard, Mario Krenn, Robert Fickler & Anton Zeilinger

  2. Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, Vienna, 1090, Austria

    Mehul Malik, Manuel Erhard, Mario Krenn, Robert Fickler & Anton Zeilinger

  3. Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

    Marcus Huber

  4. ICFO-Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, 08860 Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain

    Marcus Huber

  5. Group of Applied Physics, University of Geneva, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland

    Marcus Huber

Authors
  1. Mehul Malik
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Manuel Erhard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Marcus Huber
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Mario Krenn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Robert Fickler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Anton Zeilinger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

M.M. devised the concept of the experiment, with assistance from M.K. and R.F. M.M and M.E. performed the experiment. M.H. developed the high-dimensional entanglement witness. M.M., M.E., M.K. and M.H. analysed the data. M.M. and M.H. developed the layered quantum communication protocol. A.Z. initiated the research and supervised the project. M.M. wrote the manuscript with contributions from all authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mehul Malik.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information

Supplementary information (PDF 450 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Malik, M., Erhard, M., Huber, M. et al. Multi-photon entanglement in high dimensions. Nature Photon 10, 248–252 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.12

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.12

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing