Eur. Phys. J. D 53, 359-363 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2009-00129-2

Scheme for linear optical preparation of a type of four-photon entangled state with conventional photon detectors

¹ Center for the Condensed-Matter Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, Heilongjiang, 150001, P.R. China
² Department of Physics, College of Science, Yanbian University, Yanji, Jilin, 133002, P.R. China

Corresponding author: ^a szhang@ybu.edu.cn

Received: 6 February 2009
Revised: 10 March 2009
Published online: 28 April 2009

Abstract

We propose a simple experimental scheme to prepare a type of four-photon entangled state |χ〉 that has many interesting entanglement properties and possible applications in quantum information processing with a certain success probability. The proposed setup involves only simple linear optical devices, a single-photon polarization state, three pairs of two-photon polarization entangled states, and the conventional photon detectors that cannot distinguish a single photon from two or more photons, which greatly simplify the experimental realization of the scheme.