Multipartite Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen steering and genuine tripartite entanglement with optical networks

Abstract

The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox established a link between entanglement and nonlocality in quantum mechanics. EPR steering is the nonlocality associated with the EPR paradox and has traditionally only been investigated between two parties. Here, we present the first experimental observations of multipartite EPR steering, and of the genuine tripartite continuous variable entanglement of three mesoscopic optical systems. We explore different linear optics networks - each one with optimised asymmetries - that create multipartite steerable states containing different numbers of quantised optical modes (qumodes). By introducing asymmetric loss on a 7-qumode state, we characterize 8 regimes of directional steering, showing that N + 1 regimes exist for an N-qumode state. Further, we reveal the directional monogamy of steering, and experimentally demonstrate continuous variable one-sided semi device-independent quantum secret sharing. Our methods establish principles for the development of multiparty quantum communication protocols with asymmetric observers, and can be extended to qubits, whether photonic, atomic, superconducting, or otherwise.