Abstract
Bell state measurement (BSM) plays crucial roles in photonic quantum information processing. The standard linear optical BSM is based on Hong-Ou-Mandel interference where two photons meet and interfere at a beamsplitter (BS). However, a generalized two-photon interference is not based on photon-photon interaction, but interference between two-photon probability amplitudes. Therefore, it might be possible to implement BSM without interfering photons at a BS. Here, we investigate a linear optical BSM scheme which does not require two photon overlapping at a BS. By unleashing the two photon coexistence condition, it can be symmetrically divided into two parties. The symmetrically dividable property suggests an informationally symmetrical BSM between remote parties without a third party. We also present that our BSM scheme can be used for Bell state preparation between remote parties without a third party. Since our BSM scheme can be easily extended to multiple photons, it can be useful for various quantum communication applications.
Highlights
Photons are promising physical system for quantum information [1,2,3]
We present a linear optical Bell state measurement (BSM) scheme which does not require two photon overlapping at a beamsplitter
Unlike the standard BSM scheme, our scheme can be symmetrically divided into two parties
Summary
Photons are promising physical system for quantum information [1,2,3]. Bell state measurement (BSM), which is a projective measurement onto maximally entangled states, plays crucial roles in many photonic quantum information processing applications including quantum teleportation [4, 5], quantum key distribution [6, 7], and quantum computation [8,9,10]. The physical origin behind HOM interference is not photon-photon interaction at a BS, but interference between two-photon probability amplitudes [16,17,18,19,20,21] This enables two-photon coupling without overlapping two photons at an optical element in time [22,23,24,25]. It is fundamentally interesting to investigate whether it is possible to design a new linear optical BSM scheme where two photons do not overlap at a BS. It might suggest new applications in quantum information processing by unleashing the condition of two photon coexistence from the standard BSM scheme.
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