Transmission of light-matter entanglement over a metropolitan network

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the successful transmission of light-matter entanglement over a 50 km metropolitan optical fiber network, maintaining high fidelity and non-classical correlations, advancing quantum communication capabilities.

Contribution

It presents the first demonstration of light-matter entanglement transmission over a real-world metropolitan fiber network with stable fidelity and non-classical correlations.

Findings

Entanglement preserved over 50 km fiber

Fidelity up to 88% maintained during transmission

Non-classical correlations confirmed at remote detection

Abstract

We report on the transmission of telecom photons entangled with a multimode solid-state quantum memory over a deployed optical fiber in a metropolitan area. Photon pairs were generated through spontaneous parametric down-conversion, with one photon stored in a rare earth-based quantum memory, and the other, at telecommunication wavelengths, traveling through increasing distances of optical fibre, first in the laboratory and then outside in a deployed fibre loop. We measured highly-non-classical correlations between the stored and the telecom photons for storage times up to 25 $\mu$s and for a fibre separation up to 50 km. We also report light-matter entanglement with a two-qubit fidelity up to 88$\%$, which remains constant within error bars for all fibre lengths, showing that the telecom qubit does not suffer decoherence during the transmission. Finally, we moved the detection stage of the telecom photons to a different location placed 17 km away, and confirmed the non-classical correlations between the two photons. Our system was adapted to provide the transmission of precise detection times and synchronization signals over long quantum communication channels, providing the first steps for a future quantum network involving quantum memories and non-classical states.