Decoherence manipulation through entanglement dynamics: A photonic experiment

Abstract

Decoherence serves as a major obstacle to achieving higher efficiency in all quantum technologies. Thus, controlling and mitigating decoherence is currently an active research direction. In this work, we experimentally manipulate entanglement sudden death (ESD), a major manifestation of decoherence, in an all-photonic setup. We demonstrate a protocol that uses local unitary NOT operations along with a variant of amplitude-damping decoherence to influence the evolution of bipartite entangled states through an amplitude-damping channel. Our results obtained using the photonic test-bed demonstrate the ability to hasten, delay, or completely prevent ESD, thereby offering a potential avenue for improving and scaling various quantum architectures.