Multipartite entanglement of billions of motional atoms heralded by single photon

作     者：Li, Hang Dou, Jian-Peng Pang, Xiao-Ling Zhang, Chao-Ni Yan, Zeng-Quan Yang, Tian-Huai Gao, Jun Li, Jia-Ming Jin, Xian-Min 

作者机构： School of Physics and Astronomy State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai200240 China CAS Center for Excellence Synergetic Innovation Center in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics University of Science and Technology of China Hefei Anhui230026 China School of Physics and Astronomy Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai200240 China 

出 版 物：《arXiv》 (arXiv)

年 卷 期：2020年

核心收录：

主　　题：Atoms 

摘      要：Quantum entanglement is of central importance to quantum computing, quantum metrology, quantum information as well as the nature of quantum physics. Quantum theory does not prevent entanglement from being created and observed in macroscopic physical systems, in reality however, the accessible scale of entanglement is still very limited due to decoherence effects. Recently, entanglement has been observed among atoms from thousands to millions level in extremely low-temperature and well-isolated systems. Here, we create multipartite entanglement of billions of motional atoms in a quantum memory at room temperature, and certify the genuine entanglement via M-separability witness associated with photon statistics. The information contained in a single photon is found strongly correlated with the excitation shared by the motional atoms, which intrinsically address the large system and therefore stimulate the multipartite entanglement. Remarkably, our heralded and quantum memory built-in entanglement generation allows us to directly observe the dynamic evolution of entanglement depth and further to reveal the effects of decoherence. Our results verify the existence of genuine multipartite entanglement among billions of motional atoms at ambient condition, significantly extending the boundary of the accessible scale of entanglement. Besides probing the quantum-to-classical transition in an entirely new realm, the developed abilities of manipulating such a large-scale entanglement may enhance a wide spectrum of applications for emerging quantum technologies. Copyright © 2020, The Authors. All rights reserved.