A heralded two-qutrit entangled state

Abstract

We propose a scheme for building a heralded two-qutrit entangled state from polarized photons. An optical circuit is presented to build the maximally entangled two-qutrit state from two heralded Bell pairs and ideal threshold detectors. Several schemes are discussed for constructing the two Bell pairs. We also show how one can produce an unbalanced two-qutrit state that could be of general purpose use in some protocols. In terms of the applications of the maximally entangled qutrit state, we mainly focus on how to use the state to demonstrate a violation of the Collins–Gisin–Linden–Massar–Popescu inequality under the restriction of measurements which can be performed using linear optical elements and photon counting. Other possible applications of the state, such as for higher dimensional quantum cryptography, teleportation and generation of heralded two-qudit states, are also briefly discussed.