Experimental filtering of two-, four-, and six-photon singlets from a single parametric down-conversion source

Abstract

Invariant entangled states remain unchanged under simultaneous identical unitary transformations of all their subsystems. We experimentally generate and characterize such invariant two-, four-, and six-photon polarization entangled states. This is done only with a suitable filtering procedure of multiple emissions of entangled photon pairs from a single source without any interferometric overlaps. We get the desired states utilizing bosonic emission enhancement due to indistinguishability. The setup is very stable and gives high interference contrasts. Thus, the process is a very likely candidate for various photonic demonstrations of quantum information protocols.