Experimental bound entanglement in a four-photon state

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Sep 24;105(13):130501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.130501. Epub 2010 Sep 23.

Abstract

Bound entanglement is central to many exciting theoretical results in quantum information processing, but has thus far not been experimentally realized. In this work, we consider a one-parameter family of four-qubit Smolin states. We experimentally produce these states in the polarization of four optical photons produced from parametric down-conversion. Within a range of the parameter, we show that our states are entangled and undistillable, and thus bound entangled. Using these bound-entangled states we demonstrate entanglement unlocking.