2004/03/12 by J. L. van Velsen, C. W. J. Beenakker
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.70.032325
published as Phys.Rev. A 70, 032325 (2004) · 6 pages including 3 figures
arxiv created 2004/03/12 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We calculate the effect of polarization-dependent scattering by disorder on the degree of polarization-entanglement of two beams of radiation. Multi-mode detection converts an initially pure state into a mixed state with respect to the polarization degrees of freedom. The degree of entanglement decays exponentially with the number of detected modes if the scattering mixes the polarization directions and algebraically if it does not.