Generation of photonic entanglement in green fluorescent proteins

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 1934 - 7
• Main Authors: Shi, Siyuan, Kumar, Prem, Lee, Kim Fook
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 05.12.2017; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/624/399/54/1754; 639/624/400/385; 639/624/400/482; Biocompatibility; Biological materials; Fluorescence; Four-wave mixing; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Photon absorption; Photonics; Protective structures; Proteins; Quantum entanglement; Quantum theory; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sustainable development
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02027-9

Recent development of spectroscopic techniques based on quantum states of light can precipitate many breakthroughs in observing and controlling light-matter interactions in biological materials on a fundamental quantum level. For this reason, the generation of entangled light in biologically produced fluorescent proteins would be promising because of their biocompatibility. Here we demonstrate the generation of polarization-entangled two-photon state through spontaneous four-wave mixing in enhanced green fluorescent proteins. The reconstructed density matrix indicates that the entangled state is subject to decoherence originating from two-photon absorption. However, the prepared state is less sensitive to environmental decoherence because of the protective β-barrel structure that encapsulates the fluorophore in the protein. We further explore the quantumness, including classical and quantum correlations, of the state in the decoherence environment. Our method for photonic entanglement generation may have potential for developing quantum spectroscopic techniques and quantum-enhanced measurements in biological materials. Quantum-enhanced applications such as quantum spectroscopy of biological samples could take advantage from in situ generation of quantum states of light. Here, the authors characterize polarization-entangled photon states generated through spontaneous four-wave mixing in enhanced green fluorescent proteins.