Entanglement quantification enhanced by dark count correction

Abstract

In this letter, we propose a method of dark count correction in quantum state tomography of entangled photon pairs. The framework is based on a linear model of dark counts, which is imposed on the measurement formalism. The method is tested on empirical data derived from an experiment on polarization-entangled photons. We demonstrate that the numerical approach to dark count correction guarantees more reliable state reconstruction compared with standard estimation. Most importantly, however, the conceptually simple theoretical approach proves to be more efficient at entanglement quantification than experimental techniques.