Spatially distributed multipartite entanglement enables EPR steering of atomic clouds
Abstract
When particles in a quantum mechanical system are entangled, a measurement performed on one part of the system can affect the results of the same type of measurement performed on another part—even if these subsystems are physically separated. Kunkel et al., Fadel et al., and Lange et al. achieved this so-called distributed entanglement in a particularly challenging setting: an ensemble of many cold atoms (see the Perspective by Cavalcanti). In all three studies, the entanglement was first created within an atomic cloud, which was then allowed to expand. Local measurements on the different, spatially separated parts of the cloud confirmed that the entanglement survived the expansion.Science, this issue p. 413, p. 409, p. 416; see also p. 376A key resource for distributed quantum-enhanced protocols is entanglement between spatially separated modes. However, the robust generation and detection of entanglement between spatially separated regions of an ultracold atomic system remain a challenge. We used spin mixing in a tightly confined Bose-Einstein condensate to generate an entangled state of indistinguishable particles in a single spatial mode. We show experimentally that this entanglement can be spatially distributed by self-similar expansion of the atomic cloud. We used spatially resolved spin read-out to reveal a particularly strong form of quantum correlations known as Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering between distinct parts of the expanded cloud. Based on the strength of EPR steering, we constructed a witness, which confirmed genuine 5-partite entanglement.
