On four-photon entanglement from parametric down-conversion process

Abstract: We propose two schemes to generate four-photon polarization-entangled states from the second-order emission of the spontaneous parametric down-conversion process. By using linear optical elements and the coincidence-detection, the four indistinguishable photons emitted from parametric down-conversion source result in the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state or the superposition of two orthogonal GHZ states. For this superposition state, under particular phase settings we analyze the quantum correlation function and the local hidden variable (LHV) correlation. As a result, the Bell inequality derived from the LHV correlation is violated with the visibility larger than 0.442. It means that the present four-photon entangled state is therefore suitable for testing the LHV theory.