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We study the entanglement of two-qubit systems resulting from local interactions with spatially extended bosonic systems. Our results apply to the case where the initial state of the bosonic system is represented by a statistical mixture of states with fixed particle number. In particular, we derive and discuss necessary conditions to generate entanglement in the two-qubit system. We also study the scenario where the joint system is initially in its ground state and the interaction is switched on adiabatically. Using time independent perturbation theory and the adiabatic theorem, we show conditions under which the qubits become entangled as the joint system evolves into the ground state of the interacting theory

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / Quantum entanglement and non-locality are non-classical characteristics of quantum states with phase coherence that are of central importance to physics, and relevant to the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information science. This thesis examines quantum entanglement and non-locality in two- and three-component quantum states with phase coherence when they are subject to statistically independent, classical, Markovian, phase noise in various combinations at the local and collective level. Because this noise reduces phase coherence, it can also reduce quantum entanglement and Bell non-locality. After introducing and contextualizing the research, the results are presented in three broad areas. The first area characterizes the relative time scales of decoherence and disentanglement in 2 x 2 and 3 x 3 quantum states, as well as the various subsystems of the two classes of entangled tripartite two-level quantum states. In all cases, it was found that disentanglement time scales are less than or equal to decoherence time scales. The second area examines the finite-time loss of entanglement, even as quantum state coherence is lost only asymptotically in time due to local dephasing noise, a phenomenon entitled "Entanglement Sudden Death" (ESD). Extending the initial discovery in the simplest 2 x 2 case, ESD is shown to exist in all other systems where mixed-state entanglement measures exist, the 2 x 3 and d x d systems, for finite d > 2. The third area concerns non-locality, which is a physical phenomenon independent of quantum mechanics and related to, though fundamentally different from, entanglement. Non-locality, as quantified by classes of Bell inequalities, is shown to be lost in finite time, even when decoherence occurs only asymptotically. This phenomenon was named "Bell Non-locality Sudden Death" (BNSD).

This thesis is dedicated to the development, implementation and application of a combination of Density Functional Theory and Dynamical Mean Field Theory. The resulting program is shown through several examples to be a powerful and flexible tool for calculating the electronic structure of strongly correlated materials. The main part of this work is focused on the development and implementation of three methods for solving the effective impurity model arising in the Dynamical Mean Field Theory: Hubbard-I approximation (HIA), Exact Diagonalization (ED), and Spin-Polarized T-matrix Fluctuation-exchange (SPTF). The Hubbard-I approximation is limited to systems where the hybridization between the 4f-orbitals and the rest of the material can be completely neglected, and can therefore not capture any Kondo physics. It has been used to study the atomic-like multiplet spectrum of the strongly localized 4f-electrons in the Lanthanide compounds YbInCu4, YbB12, Yb2Pd2Sn, YbPd2Sn, SmB6, SmSn3, and SmCo5. The calculated spectral properties are shown to be in excellent agreement with experimental direct and inverse photoemission data, clearly affirming the applicability of the Hubbard-I approximation for this class of systems if we are not focusing on Kondo physics. Full self-consistence in both self-energy and electron density is shown to be of key importance in the extraction of the magnetic properties of the hard permanent magnet SmCo5. The Exact Diagonalization solver is implemented as an extension of the Hubbard-I approximation. It takes into account a significant part of the hybridization between the correlated atom and the host through the use of a few effective bath orbitals. This approach has been applied to the long-standing problem of the electronic structure of NiO, CoO, FeO, and MnO. The resulting spectral densities are favorably compared to photoemission spectroscopy. Apart from predicting the correct spectral properties, the Exact Diagonalization solver also provides full access to the many-body density operator. This feature is used to make an in-depth investigation of the correlations in the electronic structure, and two measures of the quantum entanglement of the many-body ground-states are presented. It is shown that CoO possesses the most intricate entanglement properties, due to a competition between crystal field effects and Coulomb interaction, and such a mechanism likely carries over to several classes of correlated electron systems. The Exact Diagonalization solver has also been applied to the prototypical dilute magnetic semiconductor Mn doped GaAs, a material of great importance in the study of future spintronics applications. The problem of Fe impurities in Cs has been used to study the dependence of the spectral properties on the local environment. Finally, the Spin-polarized T-matrix Fluctuation-exchange solver has been implemented and applied to more delocalized electron systems where the effective impurity problem can be solved as a perturbation with respect to the strength of the local Coulomb interaction. This approach has been used to study the magnetic and spectral properties of the late transition metals, Fe, Co and Ni, and NiS.

The phenomenon of quantum entanglement is a fundamental feature of quantum mechanics which, as a counterintuitive and inherently ”quantum” phenomenon (with no classical analogue) has been the subject of much study, especially in quantum information theory. One fruitful approach to the description of entanglement has been in its operational description - that is, in the consideration of what can be achieved using entangled states under certain restrictions, typically the regime of local operations and classical communications. We present results here related to the operational characterisation of entanglement in the resource model, in both bipartite and multipartite cases. First, we consider the conversion between pure bipartite entangled states in terms of an often-ignored resource - the classical communication cost. Using prior results for more specific conversions, we derive lower bounds on this cost (and the related quantity of the conversion inefficiency) for general bipartite pure states. We also consider pure-state conversions of multipartite entanglement, in particular the class of protocols in which multipartite states are converted to states shared between fewer parties. We have found a previously-unconsidered variety of such conversions, in which the target state of the conversion is a state shared between a random subset of the parties. We find that when such post-selection of parties in the protocol is permitted allows for a wider variety of achievable target states; certain states which can not be reliably obtained between predetermined parties (even some where the probability of doing so is arbitrarily small) can be obtained between random parties. We consider a variety of states in which this phenomenon occurs, as well as bounds on such protocols can achieve. Finally we consider a practical use of entanglement as a resource, in an experimental implementation of a multipartite QKD protocol. This is based on the tripartite GHZ entangled state, but can be implemented using only bipartite entanglement. We adapt existing QKD results for both the bipartite and multipartite case to derive a secure key rate for this implementation, taking into account the ways in which it differs from the idealised theoretical case.

The phenomenon of quantum entanglement is a fundamental feature of quantum mechanics which, as a counterintuitive and inherently ”quantum” phenomenon (with no classical analogue) has been the subject of much study, especially in quantum information theory. One fruitful approach to the description of entanglement has been in its operational description - that is, in the consideration of what can be achieved using entangled states under certain restrictions, typically the regime of local operations and classical communications. We present results here related to the operational characterisation of entanglement in the resource model, in both bipartite and multipartite cases. First, we consider the conversion between pure bipartite entangled states in terms of an often-ignored resource - the classical communication cost. Using prior results for more specific conversions, we derive lower bounds on this cost (and the related quantity of the conversion inefficiency) for general bipartite pure states. We also consider pure-state conversions of multipartite entanglement, in particular the class of protocols in which multipartite states are converted to states shared between fewer parties. We have found a previously-unconsidered variety of such conversions, in which the target state of the conversion is a state shared between a random subset of the parties. We find that when such post-selection of parties in the protocol is permitted allows for a wider variety of achievable target states; certain states which can not be reliably obtained between predetermined parties (even some where the probability of doing so is arbitrarily small) can be obtained between random parties. We consider a variety of states in which this phenomenon occurs, as well as bounds on such protocols can achieve. Finally we consider a practical use of entanglement as a resource, in an experimental implementation of a multipartite QKD protocol. This is based on the tripartite GHZ entangled state, but can be implemented using only bipartite entanglement. We adapt existing QKD results for both the bipartite and multipartite case to derive a secure key rate for this implementation, taking into account the ways in which it differs from the idealised theoretical case.

This thesis describes experimental generation, manipulation and measurement of quantum information using photon pairs emitted in bulk crystals. Multi-photon sources engineered during the course of this thesis have proven to be ideal for original contributions in the field of optical quantum information. In the first part of this dissertation, we study nonlocality, bound entanglement and measurement-based quantum computing using entangled resources produced by our source. First, we produced and characterised three-photon GHZ polarisation states. We then experimentally violate the long-standing Svetlichny's inequality with a value of 4.51, which is greater than the classical bound by 3.6 standard deviations. Our results agree with the predictions of quantum mechanics, rule out nonlocal hidden-variable theories and certify the genuine tripartite entanglement achievable by our source. Second, with four-photon polarisation states, we demonstrate bound entanglement in Smolin states and realize all of their conceptually important characteristics. Our results highlight the difficulties to achieve the critical condition of undistillability without completely losing entanglement. We conclude the first part by simulating, for the first time, valence-bond solid states and use them as a resource for measurement-based quantum computing. Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki states are produced with 87% fidelity and single-qubit quantum logic gates reach an average fidelity of 92% over all input states and rotations. In the second part of this dissertation, we explore controlled waveform manipulation at the single-photon level. Specifically, we shrink the spectral bandwidth of a single photon from 1740 GHz to 43 GHz and demonstrate tunability over a range 70 times that bandwidth. The results are a considerable addition to the field of quantum frequency conversion and have genuine potential for technological applications.

In the 1990¡¦s, the research of quantum information attracts many people¡¦s attention. In this period of time, Shor find a new method to demonstrate that a quantum computer could factor very large numbers super-efficiently. The method also shows that quantum computer has more potential than classical computer. Beside, quantum information contains many different new fields, such as quantum computation, quantum entanglement, quantum searching, etc. We believe the most fundamental physics of the applications of quantum information is quantum entanglement. In order to understand the physical meaning of entanglement, we choose entanglement as the goal of our thesis.

Coherence and entanglement are the two key concepts that distinguish quantum mechanics from classical mechanics. Many novel phenomena occuring in the quantum world are due to these two “physical quantities”. They also play essential roles in quantum computation and quantum information. For example, coherence, which says that a quantum mechanical system could be in a superposition state, makes the quantum parallel computing scheme possible; and entanglement, which says that two quantum systems separated in space could be in an intervened state, is the key factor in various quantum teleportation algorithms. We have studied entanglement generation in various systems. We found that with atomic coherence, entanglement could be generated between two thermal fields with arbitrarily high temperatures. We also found that temperature difference instead of the purity of state is essential for the entanglement generation between an atom and a thermal field. We discovered that correlated spontaneous emission lasers (CELs) could be used to generate bright entanglement laser beams. As a special case of CEL systems, we studied entanglement generation in Non-degenerate Optical Parametric Amplifiers (NOPAs). We performed the input-output calculations for a NOPA system and showed that the two output optical beams are still entangled. This justifies our idea that CEL (or NOPA) systems can be used as an ideal entanglement source for various quantum information schemes. From an experimental point of view, we considered the effects of pumping fluctuations on entanglement generation in CEL and NOPA systems. We found that these fluctuations, especially the phase diffusion processes, in the pump laser would greatly reduce the entanglement generated in such systems.

Most applications in quantum information processing make either explicit or implicit use of entanglement. It is thus important to have a good understanding of entanglement and the role it plays in these protocols. However, especially when it comes to multipartite entanglement, there still remain a lot of mysteries. This thesis is devoted to getting a better understanding of multipartite entanglement, and its role in various quantum information protocols. First, we investigate transformations between multipartite entangled states that only use local operations and classical communication (LOCC). We mostly focus on three qubit states in the GHZ class, and derive upper and lower bounds for the successful transformation probability between two states. We then focus on absolutely maximally entangled (AME) states, which are highly entangled multipartite states that have the property that they are maximally entangled for any bipartition. With them as a resource, we develop new parallel teleportation protocols, which can then be used to implement quantum secret sharing (QSS) schemes. We further prove the existence of AME states for any number of parties, if the dimension of the involved quantum systems is chosen appropriately. An equivalence between threshold QSS schemes and AME states shared between an even number of parties is established, and further protocols are designed, such as constructing ramp QSS schemes and open-destination teleportation protocols with AME states as a resource. As a framework to work with AME states, graph states are explored. They allow for efficient bipartite entanglement verification, which makes them a promising candidate for the description of AME states. We show that for all currently known AME states, absolutely maximally entangled graph states can be found, and we were even able to use graph states to find a new AME state for seven three-dimensional systems (qutrits). In addition, the implementation of QSS schemes from AME states can be conveniently described within the graph state formalism. Finally, we use the insight gained from entanglement in QSS schemes to derive necessary and sufficient conditions for quantum erasure channel and quantum error correction codes that satisfy the quantum Singleton bound, as these codes are closely related to ramp QSS schemes. This provides us with a very intuitive approach to codes for the quantum erasure channel, purely based on the entanglement required to protect information against losses by use of the parallel teleportation protocol.