Experimental realization of Dicke states of up to six qubits for multiparty quantum networking

R. Prevedel, G. Cronenberg, M. S. Tame, M. Paternostro, P. Walther, M. S. Kim, A. Zeilinger

Published 2009-03-12, updated 2009-07-13Version 2

We report the first experimental generation and characterization of a six-photon Dicke state. The produced state shows a fidelity of F=0.56+/-0.02 with respect to an ideal Dicke state and violates a witness detecting genuine six-qubit entanglement by four standard deviations. We confirm characteristic Dicke properties of our resource and demonstrate its versatility by projecting out four- and five-photon Dicke states, as well as four-photon GHZ and W states. We also show that Dicke states have interesting applications in multiparty quantum networking protocols such as open-destination teleportation, telecloning and quantum secret sharing.