Experimental demonstration of photonic entanglement collapse and revival

Jin-Shi Xu, Chuan-Feng Li, Ming Gong, Xu-Bo Zou, Cheng-Hao Shi, Geng Chen, Guang-Can Guo

Published 2009-03-30, updated 2010-03-04Version 2

We demonstrate the collapse and revival features of the entanglement dynamics of different polarization-entangled photon states in a non-Markovian environment. Using an all-optical experimental setup, we show that entanglement can be revived even after it suffers from sudden death. A maximally revived state is shown to violate a Bell's inequality with 4.1 standard deviations which verifies its quantum nature. The revival phenomenon observed in this experiment provides an intriguing perspective on entanglement dynamics.