Towards searching for entangled photons in the CMB sky

We explore the possibility of detecting entangled photon pairs from cosmic microwave background or other cosmological sources coming from two patches of the sky. The measurements use two detectors with different photon polarizer directions. When two photon sources are separated by a large angle rela...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chen, Jiunn-Wei, Dai, Shou-Huang, Maity, Debaprasad, Sun, Sichun, Zhang, Yun-Long
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2019
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120137
Description
Summary:We explore the possibility of detecting entangled photon pairs from cosmic microwave background or other cosmological sources coming from two patches of the sky. The measurements use two detectors with different photon polarizer directions. When two photon sources are separated by a large angle relative to the earth, such that each detector has only one photon source in its field of view, a null test of unentangled photons can be performed. The deviation from this unentangled background is, in principle, the signature of photon entanglement. To confirm whether the deviation is consistent with entangled photons, we derive a photon polarization correlation to compare with, similar to that in a Bell inequality measurement. However, since photon coincidence measurement cannot be used to discriminate unentangled cosmic photons, it is unlikely that the correlation expectation value alone can violate Bell inequality to provide the signature for entanglement.