Experimental signature of Quantum Darwinism in photonic cluster states

Abstract

We report on an experimental assessment of the emergence of Quantum Darwinism (QD) from engineered open-system dynamics. We use a photonic hyperentangled source of graph states to address the effects that correlations among the elements of a multi-party environment have on the establishment of objective reality ensuing the quantum-to-classical transition. Besides embodying one of the first experimental efforts towards the characterization of QD, our work illustrates the non-trivial consequences that multipartite entanglement and, in turn, the possibility of having environment-to-system back-action have on the features of the QD framework.