Extreme spin squeezing for photons

Abstract

We apply spin-squeezing techniques to identify and quantify highly multi-partite photonic entanglement in polarization-squeezed light. We consider a practical single-mode scenario, and find that Wineland-criterion polarization squeezing implies entanglement of a macroscopic fraction of the total photons. A Glauber-theory computation of the observable N-photon density matrix, with N up to 100, finds that N-partite entanglement is observable despite losses and without post-selection. Genuine multi-partite entanglement up to at least is similarly confirmed. The preparation method can be made intrinsically permutation-invariant, allowing highly efficient state reconstruction. In this scenario, generation plus detection requires experimental resources, in stark contrast to the typical exponential scaling. We estimate existing detectors could observe 1000-partite entanglement from a few dB of polarization squeezing. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.