Experimental test of entangled histories
- Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, Stanford University (United States)
- Center for Quantum Information, Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084 (China)
- Center for Theoretical Physics, MIT, Cambridge MA 02139 (United States)
Entangled histories arise when a system partially decoheres in such a way that its past cannot be described by a sequence of states, but rather a superposition of sequences of states. Such entangled histories have not been previously observed. We propose and demonstrate the first experimental scheme to create entangled history states of the Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) type. In our experiment, the polarization states of a single photon at three different times are prepared as a GHZ entangled history state. We define a GHZ functional which attains a maximum value 1 on the ideal GHZ entangled history state and is bounded above by 1∕16 for any three-time history state lacking tripartite entanglement. We have measured the GHZ functional on a state we have prepared experimentally, yielding a value of 0.656±0.005, clearly demonstrating the contribution of entangled histories.
- OSTI ID:
- 22852412
- Journal Information:
- Annals of Physics, Journal Name: Annals of Physics Vol. 387; ISSN 0003-4916; ISSN APNYA6
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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