Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

QUANTUM OPTICS

Entanglement-enhanced sensor networks

Nature Photonics volume 15, pages 74–76 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

A network of quantum sensors for estimating phase shifts is shown to operate with superior sensitivity when delocalized highly entangled states are employed.

In 1935, the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger coined the term ‘quantum entanglement’ to indicate a form of non-local correlation predicted by quantum mechanics that has no classical analogue1. The counterintuitive behaviour of entanglement leads to paradoxical physical situations that have been puzzling generations of physicists since the founding fathers of quantum mechanics2,3. However, in the past few decades, it has been recognized that entanglement is not only a strange “spooky action at a distance” phenomenon, as identified by Albert Einstein in a famous 1947 letter to Max Born4, but also a powerful physical resource to underpin a new generation of quantum technologies.

This is a preview of subscription content

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Fig. 1: Entanglement strategies in a sensor network.

References

  1. Schrödinger, E. Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 31, 555–563 (1935).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Bell, J. S. Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987).

  3. Horodecki, R., Horodecki, P., Horodecki, M. & Horodecki, K. Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 865–942 (2009).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Einstein, A. & Born, M. The Born-Einstein Letters 1916 to 1955 157 (MacMillan, 1971).

  5. Pezzè, L. & Smerzi, A. Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 100401 (2009).

    ADS  MathSciNet  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Greenberger, D. M., Horne, M. A. & Zeilinger, A. In Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Theory, and Conceptions of the Universe (ed. Kafatos, M.) 73–76 (Kluwer Academics, 1989).

  7. Giovannetti, V., Lloyd, S. & Maccone, L. Nat. Photon. 5, 222–229 (2011).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Pezzè, L., Smerzi, A., Oberthaler, M. K., Schmied, R. & Treutlein, P. Rev. Mod. Phys. 90, 035005 (2018).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Liu, L.-Z. et al. Nat. Photon. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-00718-2 (2021).

  10. Gessner, M., Pezzè, L. & Smerzi, A. Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 130503 (2018).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Proctor, T. J., Knott, P. A. & Dunningham, J. A. Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 080501 (2018).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Ge, W., Jacobs, K., Eldredge, Z., Gorshkov, A. V. & Foss-Feig, M. Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 043604 (2018).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Zhao, S.-R. et al. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.02807 (2020).

  14. Guo, X. et al. Nat. Phys. 16, 281–284 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Xia, Y. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 150502 (2020).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Polino, E. et al. Optica 6, 288–295 (2019).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Instituto Nazionale di Ottica — Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (INO-CNR), Firenze, Italy

    Luca Pezzè

  2. European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS), Sesto Fiorentino, Italy

    Luca Pezzè

Authors
  1. Luca Pezzè
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luca Pezzè.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Pezzè, L. Entanglement-enhanced sensor networks. Nat. Photonics 15, 74–76 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-00755-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-00755-x

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing