Remote engineering of particle-like topologies to visualise entanglement dynamics

TL;DR

This paper visualizes tripartite entanglement dynamics using topological structures called skyrmions in quantum photonics, demonstrating remote control, experimental verification, and potential for advanced quantum information applications.

Contribution

It introduces a topological Bloch sphere for visualizing entanglement, reports the first quantum multiskyrmions, and experimentally demonstrates topological particle-like motion driven by entanglement.

Findings

Visualization of tripartite entanglement via topological structures

Experimental realization of quantum multiskyrmions

Entanglement-driven particle-like dynamics observed

Abstract

Skyrmions are a particle-like topology with a quantised skyrmion number, realised across condensed matter and photonic platforms alike. In quantum photonics, they constitute an emerging resource, promising robust quantum information encoding, so far realised as single photon and bi-photon entangled states. Here we report the first visualisation of tripartite entanglement dynamics through topological structure using spin-skyrmion entangled states, where the topology of a single photon is remotely controlled through the spin of its entangled partner. We visualise our tripartite state theoretically by introducing the notion of a topological Bloch sphere that completely captures the entanglement and topolological features of the state. By leveraging this state, we realise the first quantum multiskyrmions, comprising multiple localised skyrmions within a single structure, that emulate signatures of their magnetic counterparts. We verify this experimentally and show that traversing our topological sphere reveals entanglement-driven particle-like motion of the localised topological structures. These dynamics unveil a physical manifestation of tripartite entanglement correlations which we illustrate by example of GHZ-like states, enabling a visualisation of multiple Bell states encoded within our system. Our work opens exciting possibilities for quantum sensing by mapping complex quantum channel features onto topological observables of multipartite states and offers a promising avenue for harnessing quantum topologies for multi-level encoding quantum communication schemes.