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Protecting entanglement from decoherence using weak measurement and quantum measurement reversal

Nature Physics volume 8, pages 117–120 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

Decoherence, often caused by unavoidable coupling with the environment, leads to degradation of quantum coherence1. For a multipartite quantum system, decoherence leads to degradation of entanglement and, in certain cases, entanglement sudden death2,3. Tackling decoherence, thus, is a critical issue faced in quantum information, as entanglement is a vital resource for many quantum information applications including quantum computing4, quantum cryptography5, quantum teleportation6,7,8 and quantum metrology9. Here, we propose and demonstrate a scheme to protect entanglement from decoherence. Our entanglement protection scheme makes use of the quantum measurement itself for actively battling against decoherence and it can effectively circumvent even entanglement sudden death.

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Figure 1: Scheme for protecting entanglement from decoherence using weak measurement and quantum measurement reversal.
Figure 2: Theoretical estimation of concurrence change as functions of decoherence and weak measurement.
Figure 3: Schematic of the experiment.
Figure 4: Experimental data for protecting entanglement from decoherence using weak measurement and quantum measurement reversal.
Figure 5: The success probability as a function of weak measurement strength.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (2009-0070668 and 2011-0021452).

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Author notes

  1. Yong-Su Kim and Jong-Chan Lee: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, 790-784, Korea

    Yong-Su Kim, Jong-Chan Lee, Osung Kwon & Yoon-Ho Kim

Authors
  1. Yong-Su Kim
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  2. Jong-Chan Lee
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  3. Osung Kwon
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  4. Yoon-Ho Kim
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Contributions

Y-S.K. and J-C.L. carried out the theoretical calculations, designed and carried out the experiment, analysed data and drafted the manuscript. O.K. carried out the experiment. Y-H.K. conceived the idea, designed the experiment, analysed data, wrote the manuscript and supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Yoon-Ho Kim.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Kim, YS., Lee, JC., Kwon, O. et al. Protecting entanglement from decoherence using weak measurement and quantum measurement reversal. Nature Phys 8, 117–120 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2178

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