Entanglement of a pair of quantum emitters via continuous fluorescence measurements: a tutorial

Abstract

We propose a measurement protocol to generate quantum entanglement between two remote qubits, through joint homodyne detection of their spontaneous emission. The quadrature measurement scheme we propose is a realistic two-qubit extension of existing experiments which obtain quantum trajectories by homodyning or heterodyning a superconducting qubit's spontaneous emission. We develop a model for the two qubit case, and simulate stochastic quantum trajectories for a variety of measurement protocols; we use this tool to compare our proposed homodyne scheme with the comparable photodetection-based Bell state measurement, and heterodyne detection-based scheme. We discuss the quantum trajectories and concurrence dynamics in detail across a variety of example measurements. As with previously known measurement-based entanglement strategies, the entanglement yield between our qubits corresponds to our ability to erase information distinguishing certain two-qubit states from the signal. We demonstrate that the photon which-path information acquisition, and therefore the entanglement yield, is tunable under our homodyne detection scheme, generating at best equivalent average entanglement dynamics as in the comparable photodetection case. By contrast, heterodyne detection at each output after mixing fluorescence signals makes this information erasure impossible, and generates no entanglement between the qubits.