Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-2014

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Physics

Major Professor

Joseph Macek

Committee Members

Warren Grice, Robert Compton, Norman Mannella, Ray Garrett

Abstract

At present, quantum entanglement is a resource, distributed to enable a variety of quantum information applications such as quantum key distribution, superdense coding, and teleportation. Necessarily, the distribution and characterization of entanglement is fundamental to its application. This dissertation details three research efforts to enable nonlocal entanglement detection, distribution, and characterization. Foremost of these efforts, we present the theory and demonstration of a nonlocal polarization interferometer capable of detecting entanglement and identifying Bell states statistically. This is possible due to the interferometer’s unique correlation dependence on the anti-diagonal elements of the density matrix, which have distinct bounds for separable states and unique values for the four Bell states. Second, we propose a nonlocal method of interferometrically mapping time-entangled photons to polarization entangled states, capitalizing on the strengths of both the robust temporal degree of freedom and the “easy to measure” polarization degree of freedom. Finally, we propose a method of estimating and representing correlation probabilities in nonlocal two-photon experiments using Bayes’ rule. Numerical simulations confirm that a vigorous consideration of the available information offers a correlation characterization superior to the standard approach.

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