Hannover 2010 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 22: Quantum Effects: Entanglement and Decoherence II
Q 22.3: Talk
Wednesday, March 10, 2010, 11:00–11:15, A 310
Environment-induced bound entanglement — •Julio T. Barreiro1, Philipp Schindler1, Otfried Gühne2,3, Thomas Monz1, Michael Chwalla1, Volckmar Nebendahl2, Markus Hennrich1, and Rainer Blatt1,3 — 1Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstr. 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria — 2Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstr. 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria — 3Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Entanglement, the most powerful physical resource for quantum information, has been conjectured to decay, under the influence of decoherence, into a seemingly unprofitable form, known as bound entanglement. Bound entangled states have several applications, but most importantly, they underpin our understanding of multiparticle entanglement and its dynamics under decohering environments.
Here, we discuss our experiments with trapped calcium ions showing the existence of bound entanglement in nature. By embedding an entangled and distillable quantum state of four qubits in a dephasing environment (via spontaneous decay), we explore the rich dynamics of multiparticle entanglement. Upon the action of the environment, we observe the transition from multiparticle entanglement, via bound entanglement, to a fully separable state. The environment possibly even leads to a novel kind of bound entangled state, separable in all bipartitions, but not fully separable. To our knowledge, our work is the first to experimentally explore such multiparticle entanglement dynamics.