Proposal for Inverting the Quantum Cloning of Photons

Abstract

We propose an experiment where a photon is first cloned by stimulated parametric down-conversion, making many (imperfect) copies, and then the cloning transformation is inverted, regenerating the original photon while destroying the copies. Focusing on the case where the initial photon is entangled with another photon, we study the conditions under which entanglement can be proven in the final state. The proposed experiment would provide a clear demonstration that quantum information is preserved in quantum cloning. It would furthermore allow a definitive experimental proof for micro-macro entanglement in the intermediate multiphoton state, which is still an outstanding challenge. Finally, it might provide a quantum detection technique for small differences in transmission (e.g., in biological samples), whose sensitivity scales better with the number of photons used than a classical transmission measurement.

5 pages, 2 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Quantum Cloning Machines and the Applications
• Observation of micro-macro entanglement of light
• Displacing entanglement back and forth between the micro and macro domains
• Opto-mechanical micro-macro entanglement
• Exploring Macroscopic Entanglement with a Single Photon and Coherent States
• Nonlocal Interferometry Using Macroscopic Coherent States and Weak Nonlinearities
• Investigating macroscopic quantum superpositions and the quantum-to-classical transition by optical parametric amplification
• Characterizations and Quantifications of Macroscopic Quantumness and Its Implementations using Optical Fields
• Creating and detecting micro-macro photon-number entanglement by amplifying and de-amplifying a single-photon entangled state
• Quantum-enhanced Phase Estimation with an Amplified Bell State
• Minimal sets determining universal and phase-covariant quantum cloning