Direct measurement of the concurrence of two-photon polarization-entangled states
Li-Hua Zhang, Qing Yang, Ming Yang, Wei Song, Zhuo‐Liang Cao · Physical Review A · 2013
We present three protocols for directly measuring the concurrence of two-photon polarization-entangled states, including pure states and mixed states. Two signal photon pairs in the same polarization-entangled states are needed in each detection round, and the signal photons will pass through polarization-independent beam splitters simultaneously. The concurrence of the photon pairs will be encoded in the total probability of picking up the balanced states in the two output modes of the beam splitter, which can be directly measured by single-photon detectors. The photon detection efficiency can be further enhanced with the help of the weak cross-Kerr nonlinearity, and the signal photons will not be absorbed. The third scheme using the bilateral nondemolition measurements can measure the concurrence of both pure and mixed states with high efficiency and high fidelity and is robust against the copy error of the state to be measured. The sophisticated controlled-not operation of the previous schemes is not required here, so our protocols are more feasible within the current experimental technology.