Experimental amplification of an entangled photon: what if the detection loophole is ignored?

Abstract

The experimental verification of quantum features, such as entanglement, at large scales is extremely challenging because of environment-induced decoherence. Indeed, measurement techniques for demonstrating the quantumness of multiparticle systems in the presence of losses are difficult to define, and if they are not sufficiently accurate they can provide wrong conclusions. We present a Bell test where one photon of an entangled pair is amplified and then detected by threshold detectors, whose signals undergo postselection. The amplification is performed by a classical machine, which produces a fully separable micro–macro state. However, by adopting such a technique one can surprisingly observe a violation of the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt inequality. This is due to the fact that ignoring the detection loophole opened by the postselection and the system losses can lead to misinterpretations, such as claiming micro–macro entanglement in a setup where evidently it is not present. By using threshold detectors and postselection, one can only infer the entanglement of the initial pair of photons, and so micro–micro entanglement, as is further confirmed by the violation of a nonseparability criterion for bipartite systems. How to detect photonic micro–macro entanglement in the presence of losses with the currently available technology remains an open question.